Welcome!

Hello, Mbaafirehouse, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! --Patriot8790 (talk) 06:33, 6 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

Help request

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{{helpme}} Hi - I can't tell if the page I just completed will be reviewed and that I will receive feedback. If so, when? and how will I know? I also want to add some photos, but frankly I'm a little tired because I've been working on the article for about 6 hours. BTW the title is Fred Ford (Blues-Jazz Musician) and it's my first contribution. Thanx

Mbaafirehouse (talk) 06:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

You put the above message on User talk:Patriot8790, but you also used a {{helpme}}...if you wanted to contact that specific person, there was no need for the {{helpme}}...but if you did want help, then it's best to use {{helpme}} here, on your own user talk page.
Also, you put the message at the top of their talk page; please always add new things to the end of talk pages.
Re. Fred Ford, Blues-Jazz Musician - you created that as a live article. It looks OK, and hopefully other people will edit and improve it; some of the formatting isn't quite right, but that's fine - see WP:IMPERFECT.
To request some feedback, see WP:FEED.
The main thing would be to improve the references. I'll add some help on that below.
Best,  Chzz  ►  08:07, 6 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

How references work

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Simple references

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These require two parts;

a)
Chzz is 98 years old.<ref> "The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. </ref>

He likes tea. <ref> [http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com Tea website] </ref>
b) A section called "References" with the special code "{{reflist}}";
== References ==
{{reflist}}

(an existing article is likely to already have one of these sections)

To see the result of that, please look at user:chzz/demo/simpleref. Edit it, and check the code; perhaps make a test page of your own, such as user:Mbaafirehouse/reftest and try it out.

Named references

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Chzz was born in 1837. <ref name=MyBook>
"The book of Chzz", Aardvark Books, 2009. 
</ref> 

Chzz lives in Footown.<ref name=MyBook/>

Note that the second usage has a / (and no closing ref tag). This needs a reference section as above; please see user:chzz/demo/namedref to see the result.

Citation templates

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You can put anything you like between <ref> and </ref>, but using citation templates makes for a neat, consistent look;

Chzz has 37 Olympic medals. <ref> {{Citation
 | last = Smith
 | first = John
 | title = Olympic medal winners of the 20th century
 | publication-date = 2001
 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]
 | page = 125
 | isbn = 0-521-37169-4
}}
</ref>

Please see user:chzz/demo/citeref to see the result.

For more help and tips on that subject, see user:chzz/help/refs.