User talk:Kerouac86

Welcome!

Welcome to Wikipedia, Kerouac86! Thank you for your contributions. I am ThatPeskyCommoner and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You might want to consider being "adopted" by an experienced user who would show you how wikipedia works through a program called adopt-a-user. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your username and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Pesky (talk …stalk!) 12:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some tips to help you out!

Hi Kerouac86, I thought I'd drop a few notes on your talk page with some help on writing articles :o)

First of all, it may be best for you to do a bit of reading, starting with the Wikipedia manual of style, which will give you a lot of information about how Wikipedia prefers its articles to be written. It's not as hard to follow as it might look; quite a bit of the information there probably won't be vital for you at first.

Second, I recommend you make a user sandbox - which is just an area you can use to practise in, and to make notes in, and to get things ready in. If you click this red link: user:Kerouac86/Sandbox, that will let you create that page (it gives you an edit window to start work in). Anything, anywhere, on the help and information pages which gives you an example, try it out in your sandbox until you're familiar with it.

For your article, the next thing you want to do is start collecting as much information as you can about it. Google searches (particularly in Books and Scholar) will be your best friend for this! Once you've found the information, the next most important thing is to start writing up each fact in your own words (very important, this), and make a note at the same time of exactly where that information came from. Build in the references as you go along; I'm going to copy in, down below this, a whole heap of help on doing references, which was produced by one of our best teachers (Chzz).

Here's another place that you'll find incredibly useful - citation templates which you can copy and paste into your sandbox, between <ref></ref> tags; you just fill in the blanks from your sources into the template, and you'll end up with nicely formatted inline citations :o) It all helps. Remember to add a references section to your sandbox (make a new line, and put ==References== on it, and type {{reflist}} on the next line, so that you can see how your citations look as you do them. Remember to save your page often! You don't want to lose your work.

Hopefully this will give you a good start and make life easier for you.

One last thing to keep as a motto: "It's better to write one good, well-referenced, nicely-presented article than it is to create fifty unreferenced one-line stubs!" Pesky (talk …stalk!) 12:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How references work

Simple references

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:Kerouac86/reftest and try it out.

Named references

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

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.

Something to make your life easier!

Hi there Kerouac86! I've just come across one of your articles, and noticed that you might appreciate some help with references.

You might want to consider using this tool - it makes your life a whole heap easier, by filling in complete citation templates for your links. All you do is install the script on Special:MyPage/common.js, or or Special:MyPage/vector.js, then paste the bare url (without [...] brackets) between your <ref></ref> tabs, and you'll find a clickable link called Reflinks in your toolbox section of the page (probably in the left hand column). Then click that tool. It does all the rest of the work (provided that you remember to save the page! It doesn't work for everything (particularly often not for pdf documents), but for pretty much anything ending in "htm" or "html" (and with a title) it will do really, really well. Happy editing! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 12:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

November 2015

Hello, I noticed that you may have recently made edits to Malmedy massacre trial while logged out. Making edits while logged out reveals your IP address, which may allow others to determine your location and identity. Wikipedia's policy on multiple accounts usually does not allow the use of more than one account or IP address by one person. If this was not your intention, then please always remember to log in when editing. Thank you. GAB^Hello! 20:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and I've noticed that your edits are all POV, attempting to minimize the war crimes commited by the Nazis during World War II. This will not be allowed. Wikipedia is a neutral encyclopedia, but "neutral" does not mean that Nazis and their sympathizers get to express their opinions when they fly in the face of what credible military historians write. BMK (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand this negative reaction and name-calling. I was only trying to show both sides to the same story, but I suppose anyone who presents sources that disagree with a popular viewpoint are discounted as "sympathizers", despite the fact that many sources were written by men who were present for the events. There is no justification or minimalizing going on here, and of course there were inexcusable atrocities committed (by all sides). However, history is never as black-and-white as making a grossly biased generalization about all members of a certain group, in this case the German military. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle in most cases, and no text is completely beyond reproach for a serious historian. It is possible my previous edits did not convey the intended information, and could be misinterpreted. Why then can we not have a discussion about the actual events, show both versions of the events, and analyze the impact on the way these events are portrayed post-war? Kerouac86 (talk) 00:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)Kerouac86[reply]

Yes, you were trying to show the "positive" side of a Nazi atrocity, to provide an excuse ofr the war crimes they perpetrated on innocent civilians. "Oh, if only those French bastards hadn't made us kill all of them." Bullshit, the facts of this are well established, and there is no need for showing the "other side". You've done the same thing with your IP, and I will be closely watching every edit of both your account and the IP. Any hint of your trying to act as an apologist for German war crimes will be reverted. Period. BMK (talk) 02:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Beyond My Ken:I believe Kerouac86 means well but may be a new editor not familiar with the protocol. Name calling is probably not appropriate. Please see: My talk page or Malmedy talk page

If this discussion is better done on the Malmedy Trial talk page rather than on the Malmedy massacre talk page, you could alert Kerouac86 and be civil about it. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

He's not a new editor, he's been here for over 4 years, and the majority of his edits have been of the same nature. He clearly knows what he's doing. I stand by my comments. BMK (talk) 14:51, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]