Varzolao

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Hello, Varzolao, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Human sexuality

Welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions, but in one of your recent edits, it appears that you have added original research, which is against Wikipedia's policies. Original research refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and personal experiences—for which no reliable, published sources exist; it also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. El_C 01:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Your edits

Hi, Varzolao. Regarding this, you are being reverted because there are issues with your edits, such as grammar and structure. And here? You removed the well-sourced, up-to-date human sexuality text for the definition to add your "human sexuality is a biological fact" text sourced to a 1974 reference. Not only is that source too old to consider for a definition in the lead, the article quite clearly shows that human sexuality is not simply a biological fact. There are societal and cultural aspects as well.

Pinging Shalor (Wiki Ed), who can further help you on your student editing. Shalor, if you reply to me or refer to me, there is no need to ping me to Varzolao's talk page. I'll check back here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks Flyer22 Reborn! Varzolao, Flyer22 is indeed correct in what they've written here. It's very important to be careful with any edits that alter a definition, especially since this is a very heavily edited and viewed topic area. You need to make sure that you're using the strongest possible sources, which can often mean that older sources aren't as reliable or strong. One of the reasons for this is that they'll have incredibly dated viewpoints on human sexuality. A good example of this is covered in the article Homosexuality in DSM. Now when it comes to making very major changes like this, I would absolutely recommend that you post to the talk page first to get some consensus about your edits before doing something like changing the definition in the lead. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:09, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• I saw that you'd moved your sandbox live - please be careful about this. In this case the draft has quite a bit of issues that need to be resolved as the draft has the same issues that were brought up by Flyer22 Reborn. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:03, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Varzolao. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board.
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:24, 15 November 2019 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).

Spice

Hi! I'm responding to your question on my talk page about your edits to the spice article. I see where you added material, however it looks like the user Pepperbeast removed the content with the following notes in their edit summary:

• "Medicinal benefits: Damiana isn't a spice"
• "‎Global exportation of spices: This is already covered in the Early Modern period."
• "Medicinal benefits: This needs a lot of work on where and when, as well as better referencing"
• "Contemporary history: No RS, only a commercial link, which gets a 404"

Looking at the work, I can see where some of their concerns came from. I have some notes for you, which I'll leave below:

• From what I can see damiana is an herb, as what is used looks to be the green, leafy parts of the plant. This differs from spices, which uses some of the other parts of the plant such as its roots, stem, or fruit. As such, this wouldn't belong in the spice article.

• Be very careful of creating original research. Keep in mind that we can only summarize what has been explicitly stated in the source material. This means that if the source doesn't mention something or make a specific tie or statement, we can't include it in the article. Anything that could be seen as a subjective or opinion statement must be attributed to the person making the claim.

• Since the Early Modern period already covers the section on the global exportation of spices that you wanted to add, I would focus on the other areas. If there's something in the given source that isn't in the article you can add it, but I think it would be better to focus on the other sections, particularly the medicinal benefits section.

• With sourcing, make sure that you're using the best, strongest possible sourcing. Be careful of commercial sites like this one. In most cases the content is likely written to steer people towards their products - which is the case with this website as they linked to one of their products. It's also typically unclear as to who is writing the material, what type of fact checking they use - if any, and what type of editorial oversight is used. It's much better to stick with the scholarly and academic sources, especially when it comes to any potential medical benefits.

• Watch out for grammar - this is something I can help you with, if you wish.

What I would recommend, as stated above, would be to focus solely or predominantly on the medicinal benefits. The section should include information about when and where spices were used medicinally. For example, the section would say something like "Cinnamon has been used to treat X and Y in England during the 1800s". It can take a general look at the topic, however it should be specific in who is stating this and when the statements were made.

I hope this helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:24, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

How to create a page in your userspace

To create additional pages in your userspace, the page title must begin with User:Varzolao. At least twice today you've created a page titled Varzolao/sandbox edit. That is not a user page. That is a page in the mainspace of Wikipedia, published as an article. Another editor moved the earlier page you created to User:Varzolao/sandbox edit, but then you created it again in mainspace. Please do not do that; work on the page in your userspace. Thanks. Schazjmd (talk) 23:02, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Your latest version of the page is now at User:Varzolao/sandbox edit2. Schazjmd (talk) 23:09, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks! I'll work with the student on this. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:36, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Notes

I took a look - something to keep in mind is that since this will be a section in a larger article, there's not really a need to explain the importance of spice as this should already be in the prior sections. What you want to do here is leap directly to the meat of the subject matter - the medicinal uses of spice. I've rearranged the content some and removed the introductory part of the section that should already be mentioned elsewhere in the article. I've put it below your paragraph - if you like it, feel free to copy it to the main article. It is all your own work, just rearranged and tweaked some.

So far the work definitely looks stronger than what was previously added. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)