User talk:NHearn

Welcome!

Hello, NHearn, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, like Write your own wiki, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines for page creation, and may soon be deleted.

There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

• Your first article
• Biographies of living persons
• How to write a great article
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Help pages
• Tutorial

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign)} 14:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Write your own wiki

A tag has been placed on Write your own wiki requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign)} 14:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure I'll help out...

I'll gladly help out if I can. I understand the learning curve here is STEEP. One thing you might want to do before diving in and creating a new article from scratch is to clean up some other articles. It will give you a feel for the markup language, and you'll also learn quickly what good articles look like. Just find some articles that interest you, and start simple, cleaning up stuff like spelling and grammar. It will give you some time to get your feet wet. Also, if you told me specifically what the subject of your article is, I could perhaps help you set it up a bit better. Just let me know what you are trying to do, and I'll steer you in the right direction. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 00:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Answering the questions on my talk page:

1. Use the little [edit] at the right of each section header to edit that section only. This works on talk pages and in articles as well.
2. You are quite welcome. Glad to help any time.
3. Instructions have been left below by another user on how to work in a "sandbox" The trick is to understand a little about how Wikipedia is organized. Wikipedia is organized into "namespaces" (see Wikipedia:Namespace) which breaks the system down into different areas. There is the "User talk" namespace (where we are now), the "User" name space (where your main userpage is), the "Wikipedia" namespace (for information about how Wikipedia works) etc. etc. There is also the "main namespace" or "article namespace" which has no prefix. This is where all the articles are, and all new pages in the article namespace must meet all inclusion criteria for being articles, including notability, and verifiability, and neutrality. The best option is to create a "draft version" of an article in your own userspace, which you can do by titling it User:NHearn/YOURPAGE where YOURPAGE is replaced by any name you wish. There are some things not allowed in subpages, but generally any good-faith attempts to create articles are allowed. See Wikipedia:Userpage and Wikipedia:Subpage for more info on these topics.
4. You may want to read Wikipedia:Your first article for more info on creating your first article. Also, Wikipedia does not use HTML markup, it uses the MediaWiki software's markup language called WikiMarkup, the basics of which are outlined at Wikipedia:Cheatsheet.

I hope this is helpful. If you need any more questions answered, feel free to drop me another note. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 21:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Very helpful! Thank you. NHearn (talk) 21:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sandbox

Not a problem, for the sandbox you can simply type WP:SAND into the search box on the left and it will take you to the sandbox, hope this helps -- Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign)} 14:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

You really shouldn't make your talk page into a sandbox as it is used to communicate with you. You can however make a sandbox page in your user space. To to this go to your user page and then add /Sandbox to the URL or just make a wikilink to User:NHearn/Sandbox. This will be a red link if the page has not been created, simply click on it and add some content (anything will do) and you'll have your very own sandbox. P.S. Try sign all your posts with for tildes (~~~~) so people know who left them a message -- Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign)} 16:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the help. This will be most useful. NHearn (talk) 21:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

{{adminhelp}} I am having reference issues. I have read through the wiki ref tutors, but am still confused! Do I need to separately reference the footnotes? And if so, how? And the footnotes are links for my references, but is it acceptable to just skip the whole ref section when all the info can be referenced online directly? If I can ref. directly without a reference section, is it okay to use the [www.websitelink.com] and how do I make it superscript and smaller font? The page I'm working on is User:NHearn/Sandbox NHearn (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I will go take a look now and have nulled the adminhelp template. What you wanted to use was {{helpme}}. Adminhelp is only for matters that require administrator tools.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:57, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Oops! Thank you! Noted. Thanks for your help. NHearn (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The first thing you need to do is do your best to write this article from a more neutral point of view. The article's tone sounds quite promotional and is likely to be deleted as blatant advertising. Remove all peacock language and stumping (for example, "NanoScale has received recognition from a variety of organizations for its vision, growth, and innovation"). With regard to referencing it works like this. Wherever you want a reference to appear in the text (as a superscripted blue number) you place the citation in the text itself (these are called "inline citation" for this reason) enclosed in ref tags, that is, <ref>citation>/ref>. I will place a reference at the end of this sentence to show what I mean. Then you have to tell the software where to place the reference, which is done by created a references section (==References==) and placing below it {{Reflist}}. I will do so below, and then you need to look at my post in edit mode to see how it appears. Especially given the promotional tone and your extremely likely conflict of interest, you really need to source the article properly, which means yes, you need to do inline citations as I've described. I don't wish to confuse but another thing you need to know how to do is use a reference more than once. The first time you use a reference that you will be using more than once, instead of enclosing the citation in regular ref tags (<ref>citation text</ref>), you give the first ref tag an intuitive name. So if I was citing a New York Times article I might type: <ref name="NYT">citation text2</ref>. The next time you need to use that same reference, all you need to do is use the first part, with a closing slash, like so: <ref name="NYT" />. To see this in action I will use that at the end of this sentence five times, and you will see how that appears in the references section below.. I actually created a template to help new users with all this stuff. Please see {{Refref}}. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

References

Thank you, this has been a great help! I really do want to write a good wiki, which is unbiased, so I want to thank you for the constructive criticism. I have already removed much of the content for that purpose. I plan / hope to write many other (different type) wikis in the future, but this one is my biggest hurdle, and it is my utmost intention to write it properly, but this process is impossible without 3rd party input. Also, the template is an awesome idea. Thanks again. Have a great weekend. NHearn (talk) 14:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you again! That was very helpful! NHearn (talk) 22:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Good independent reliable source, and other matters

Hi again. A search of Google books turns up a good, reliable, non-promotion third party source for expansion. See http://books.google.com/books?id=aTXfWeFrEEUC&pg=PA3. The citation you can use for this is (filling in the blanks I left for accessdate and page numbers):

<ref name="Koper">{{cite book|last=Koper|first=Olga B. et al.|title=Environmental applications of nanomaterials|editor=Glen E. Fryxell, Guozhong Cao|publisher=World Scientific Publishing|location=Singapore|date=2007|pages=3-(insert page you use through)|chapter=Nanoparticle Metal Oxides For Chlorocarbon and Organophosphate Remediation|isbn=978-1-86094-662-2|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=aTXfWeFrEEUC&pg=PA3|accessdate=May ???, 2009}}</ref>

Regarding your question on my talk page about using an image, it's like this. If you have an image that is in the public domain or under a free-license (and you can show that), you upload it to the Wikimedia Commons, first signing up there, which takes seconds, and then going to the "upload file" link on the left hand side of the page. Once uploaded it can be immediately used here (for example in the infobox in the article). If, on the other hand, you do not have a free image, you may be able to use an unfree image as fair use. That would involve uploading it here, rather than the commons, with a clear fair use rationale supplied. That fair use image cannot be used in your sandbox, but only once the article is in the mainspace, because it would not be fair use in a draft article. It would be easier to tell you what to do and give you specific examples if you told me what image it was and its copyright status.

Finally, please note that the way to "go live" with this article is to move it to the name NanoScale Corporation. You must not cut and paste the material to the live name, which would destroy its edit history. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

how to cite a thesis/dissertation...

Can anyone tell me (first) how to post a question on the village pump? and (second), is there a template for or how do I cite an inline reference from a dissertation (ie...cite a thesis/dissertation)?

{{help me}}

NHearn (talk) 16:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Please try links WP:village pump and WP:cite for starters. Trafford09 (talk) 17:04, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Please ask for help again, if you have trouble following the guidelines there. Thanks, Trafford09 (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Live help

Thanks for the "thank you" message you left, NHearn. By the way, although it is noted in the helpme template, you may not be aware that the talk to us live thing really works; there are several people, including myself, sitting there all the time, more than happy to help users with any Wikipedia questions. Pop in and say "hi" some time. Trafford09 (talk) 19:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Giant lists of papers, publications, links and products

Hello again. You do realize that encyclopedia articles are mostly composed of prose, right? I guarantee you five minutes after going live the gigantic lists you are compiling will be eviscerated. Concentrate on writing neutrally voiced article prose and not on making lists of things associated with the company. Take a look at a few featured articles on companies to get some ideas. For example, see BAE Systems and Panavision. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, prose is the counterpart to poetry. A book is prose. What I am writing now is prose. What I mean is that you have to tell the story of the company in words. Not just make lists. I did not mean that to sound harsh. What I wanted to get across to you was the concept so you don't spend a lot of time on things that are wasted effort because they're going to be removed anyway.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)