User:Yunshui/Adoption/Kevin12xd

Hi Kevin, and welcome to your adoption page. This is where I will post tasks for you to complete on Wikipedia, suggestions on things you might like to edit, and occasional quizzes to test your knowledge. You can ask me questions on my talkpage at any time if you aren't sure about anything I've posted here.

Your first assignment - completed Y
Your first assignment I asked you to change your signature to include a link to your userpages - to demonstrate that you've done so successfully, please sign below using four tildes (~~~~): KazLabz (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC) Y Good stuff. Yunshui 雲‍水 07:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Patrolling pages - completed Y

Patrolling pages The Random article button is very useful for locating articles that are in need of improvement (although I find that 90% of the time you get a random article on either an obscure village in the mountains of Pakistan or a little-known Eastern European football team...). However, there are easier ways to locate articles that need attention. When editors come across a page that needs to be improved but they are unable to do so themselves (due to time constraints, lack of sources or just because they don't feel like it) they will often tag it with a cleanup tag. As well as placing a notice at the top of the page to say what needs doing, this also has the effect of listing the article in one of several cleanup categories. You can access most of these categories here. What I'd like you to do is this: First, locate an article in need of cleanup. I'd suggest something fairly straightforward, like a page that needs copyediting for spelling and grammar (there's a full list of pages tagged thus here). Make three improvements to the page; these can be minor changes to word order, wikilinks, punctuation or typo fixes, I'm not fussed. When you've done this post a link to the article here - type the page name and enclose it in double square brackets, like this: [[Name of page]]. Britain (placename) Whilst I appreciate the attempt (and I know I said minor changes), I'm not sure that these amendments really make any noticable improvement to the page. All you've done is change a couple of words for synonyms, and one of those substitutions ("an" for "the") actually makes the article slightly less accurate, since replacing a definite article with an indefinite article implies that there may be other islands called Great Britain out there. Please could you try this exercise again on another page? Yunshui 雲‍水 08:35, 24 October 2012 (UTC) Hi Yunshui; Sorry for the inconvenience. Here is another page: Vacuum flask Thanks! KazLabz (talk) 22:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC) No need to apologise, I'm obviously not being clear enough about the requirements of this exercise. Once again, your edit has really just replaced some words with other words that mean the same thing - you haven't fixed any actual problems. Here's a slightly different page improvment task instead: Go to the page Commonly misspelled words and select a word from the list there. Now put the incorrect spelling of the word into the Wikipedia search bar at the top right, prefacing it with a single tilde, like this "~mispeling". The tilde means that, rather than searching for an article titled "Mispeling", the search engine will instead return a list of pages which contain the word "mispeling". You can now open each of these in turn, locate the typo, and change it to the correct spelling. Find and fix a typo three times and we'll call this task completed. Yunshui 雲‍水 08:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC) Hi Yunshui; I have fixed three typos. Thanks! NOTE: I focused on fixing the commonly misspelled word "acquire". KazLabz (talk) Respond on my talkpage! I'm not an administrator! 21:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC) Good stuff, well done. Yunshui 雲‍水 07:04, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The importance of references - completed Y

The importance of references Because anyone can edit Wikipedia at any time, it's impossible to be sure that the information contained here is always accurate. At any point, a random passerby can change the text of a page to something that isn't actually correct - many do. We have methods in place to prevent this (you've encountered some yourself in the past), but the most fundamental one is the requirement that information here must be verifiable. If Wikipedia says something, it should be possible to locate that information in a source and check that it is correct. Because of this, we need references to reliable sources in every article. Your next task is to find a page that require additional references and supply them. You can choose any page for this purpose (there's a full list of articles without sources here), but for the purposes of explanation, I'm going to use Jorge Bobone. What you need to do is this: First, find something in the article that looks as though it should be referenced. Facts and figures are a good place to start. For example, the last line of Jorge Bobone claims that "The crater Bobone on the Moon and the asteroid 2507 Bobone were named after him." How can we confirm that? Get your Google hat on. Do a search for the information that needs a citation, for example "jorge bobone crater". Lots of results pop up, including some from Wikipedia. You want to make sure that you cite information to a reliable source; a lot of the search results won't meet those criteria. For something like this, I suggest Google Books: in the Google menu on the left of the page, choose "More", then "Books". You'll see this. The very first entry, the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1 clearly say something appropriate... open it up and you'll see this. It confirms that both the asteroid and the crater are named after him. Go back to the Jorge Bobone article (I often use multiple browser windows to make this sort of navigation easier; the article I'm editing is open in one, and the search is open in another). Enter the Edit screen. Find the information you want to cite on the page. Immediately after its appearance in the text, add the following string: <ref>Schmadel, Lutz; ''Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1'', Springer, 2003, page 205</ref> At the end of the article text (before the chunk of code that starts "{{Persondata...") you need a references section. Add the following: ==References== {{reflist}} The first part of this text creates the subheading "References"; the second creates a numbered list of references. Save or preview the page. If all has gone well, you should see a little blue [1] in the text, and lower down, under the References section, the details of the book. There are more complex ways of citing information (such as the {{cite book}} template), but don't worry about those for now. As long as you put sufficient information in between the <ref></ref> tags, it's fine. The minimum information is the author and title of the book (put the title in italics by placing two apostrophes ('') at either end); if you can also supply the publisher, ISBN, page number and year of publication that's a bonus. You can cite websites by putting the website address in between the <ref></ref> tags (don't forget the http://!) like this: <ref>http://www.example.co.uk</ref> again, there are better ways to do this, but for now, the important thing is to learn the use of <ref> tags. Have a go with the example I've give above, and then either see if you can find any more things in the article to reference or find another article in need of referencing. Let me know if you need a hand, or if you want anything explained further. When you've added three references (to this or any other article), leave a note here to let me know and I'll take a look for you. Hi Yunshui. I have completed the above. I have checked to see if the citations work, and they do. Thank you! KazLabz (talk) 22:18, 23 October 2012 (UTC) Quite a lot to go through here, so bear with me... First up, I'm very impressed that you not only got the hang of <ref> tags, but also jumped straight in and started using citation templates as well. That's fantastic, and shows a really good ability to locate and implement unfamiliar techniques - nice one. You've used the template syntax correctly, and added the right data in the right fields. I'm going to look at each of your references individually, in no particular order: Arithmetic (diff of reference) Reference verifies information: Y Technically it says "probably the oldest", so it would have been a good idea to add an extra word to the article indicating some uncertainty around the claim, but we'll let that slide. Reference uses a reliable source: N For scientific pages like this, sources should be academic and attributable to recognised experts. Science Clarified, whilst apparently (from the pages I looked at) accurate scientifically, is not an academically published source; nor can I locate anything suggesting expert authorship. To put it another way, a PhD student might find it a useful source of information, but couldn't quote it in his thesis. Reference is correctly placed: Y Although it's directly after the information which it verifies - which is correct - the Manual of style usually prefers references to go at the end of the sentence, after the full stop. However, in this case the citation is being used to verify a single word, so your positioning makes sense. Reference is correctly formatted and contains enough information: Y The URL is broken (you'd added "#b" at the end, indicating that the information was in paragraph B, however hypertext transfer protocol doesn't work like that - I've fixed it) but otherwise you've used the citation template correctly and you've added the necessary minimum of information for a web citation (title, publisher, URL and accessdate). United States v. Jones (2012) (diff) Reference verifies information: Y Yep. Reference uses a reliable source: Y Court documents, whilst a primary source, are perfectly appropriate for use as sources in Wikipedia. Reference is correctly placed: N The problem with this particular reference is that it's already in the article at the end of the very next sentence. The existing citation already serves to verify the information in both preceding sentences, so adding it again is unnecessary. Reference is correctly formatted and contains enough information: Y Adding the publisher and access date actually improves on the existing citation. Mobile phone (diff) Reference verifies information: N Unfortunately not. If you look at the Australian Science article, you'll see that it cites that information itself - to Wikipedia's article on mobile phones! That means you've basically used Wikipedia to reference Wikipedia - I don't think I need to explain why that's not right. Reference uses a reliable source: N Australian Science is basically a blog, with user-contributed content - we don't regard such sites as reliable. That's overlooking the fact that the text there is copied verbatim from Wikipedia and other sources. Reference is correctly placed: Y After the information is correct, but the citation should be after, not before, the full stop. Reference is correctly formatted and contains enough information: N With web references, an access date showing when you viewed the page is fairly essential - because the internet is always changing, the text of the source could be different at some point in the future, or the website might close down or move. For this reason, readers need to know when the source said what you claim it said, so that they can potentially use Google archives or the Wayback machine to check it. Note I've actually removed this reference, since it fails WP:RS. 1-800 Suicide (diff) Reference verifies information: Y Technically, I suppose it does - however, so does the album cover and any other source that refers to the single. It seems unlikely that the statement "the artists behind 1-800 Suicide were the Gravediggaz" would be challenged, meaning that a reference for that fact isn't strictly necessary. Reference uses a reliable source: N Lyrics 007 is a lyric database, which anyone can add to - as such, the content there is user-generated, and it's therefore not considered reliable. Reference is correctly placed: Y A better place to put this, in order to verify the information that "1-800 Suicide was a single by the Gravediggaz", would have been after the first sentence of the article. It's fine to place references in an infobox if that's the only place the information appears, but if it's duplicated in the article text, that's a better place to verify it. Reference is correctly formatted and contains enough information: N The reference itself is fine - however, with this diff you managed to mess up the "References" section, so the page as a whole doesn't display properly. User:Callanecc fixed it with this edit (using {{reflist}} instead of <references/> would have been my preference, but both codes work). Overall, I'm pleased with how you got on with this task - it might be a good idea for you to have a(nother) read of Identifying reliable sources, but you seem to have got the hang of the referencing syntax, even the comparatively complex {{cite web}} template. Feel free to carry on adding sources to articles that you think would benefit from them, and let me know if you'd like me to check them for you. The most important thing now is to work on your ability to recognise when sources are appropriate or not; I'll try and put an exercise together for you in the near future to help you with that. Yunshui 雲‍水 08:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Deletion - completed Y

Deletion Often, you'll encounter pages that are not suitable for Wikipedia, for one reason or another. Have a read of this essay, and then take a look at the policy on speedy deletion. Then have a go at this short quiz. Add your answers to that page, and let me know when you want me to check them for you. Hi Yunshui, I have completed the essay. Thanks! Good - generally very competent answers. I've added commentary at the quiz page itself. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:04, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkpage management - completed Y

As you're becoming more active on Wikipedia, your talkpage is filling up with messages from other users (me, mostly... sorry about that). To keep it from getting overloaded, you may want to look into setting up archiving for the page. Have a look at the archiving help page and set up a manual or automated archiving system for your user talkpage. Note: this is an entirely optional task; you are quite welcome to leave your page as it is or blank messages once you've read them - it's your talkpage, after all.

Vandals - completed  Done

Vandals As an editor who had previously turned to the dark side (but we forgive and forget!) you've had a chance to experience vandalism from both sides of the fence. Please have a read of this essay and this guideline, then answer the questions and perform the tasks on this page. There's no time limit for this, it's more important that your work in this area be accurate than fast. If you aren't sure whether it's vandalism or not, it probably isn't. Done, pending revision. --Kevin12xd (talk) (contribs) 01:57, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

What is a reliable source?

All of the information in Wikipedia should, at least in theory, have been published already in some sort of reliable source. Deciding what is and is not a reliable source can sometimes be a tricky process. Please read Identifying reliable sources and then have a go at this quiz.

I've marked your answers, but they are genarlly insufficient - please have another go. In particular, I asked for a discussion of the sources in relation to WP:V and WP:N, which you haven't provided for any of the answers. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:49, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Markup

Wiki syntax can be, frankly, a right bitch when you start editing. After a while, it becomes second nature - so much so that I now use it instinctively in places where it doesn't work, like emails and Word documents - but it takes time to become familiar with the nuances. You're handling it pretty well, but here's a sandbox full of markup tasks you can play about with to help increase your understanding. Most of the necessary codes are available at the cheatsheet.

Copyright

You probably already know that copy-pasting text from elsewhere is strongly frowned upon in Wikipedia. It's one of the things newer editors often fall foul of. Copyright, because it has legal ramifications in the real world, is one of the most important things to get right here, and for the same reason, is also a bit of a minefield. I've prepared a short quiz here to test your understanding of the major issues, however you'll need to do a bit of background reading first. The principal pages that cover copyright issues are as follows:

• Wikipedia's official copyright status and licensing
• Wikipedia's policy on copyright violations
• Wikipedia's policy on image copyright
• Instructions on donating copyrighted material

All the answers you're likely to need should be in one or more of these pages.

Working with others

Whilst mastering the technical nuances of Wikipedia can be a challenge (one you're starting to overcome!), it pales in comparison to navigating the delicate web of interaction between Wikipedia's users. Although our primary goal - one we should never lose sight of - is the construction of the world's greatest encylopedia, the nature of the project means that you will have to communicate with other editors in order to get things done.

To help you get a better handle on how to play nicely with others on Wikipedia, I've prepared this page, with a discussion of the major elements of editor interaction; have a read and answer the questions.