User talk:Zadeftucion

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You appear to be a new user who's joined Wikipedia just today, so I'm taking the time to welcome you and also to explain why I've reverted your edits at Al Hewetson. Your edits violated two of Wikipedia's core principles, those of verifiability and of no original research — the latter generally meaning claims of personal knowledge found nowhere else. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and so everything in it has to verified by reliable-source footnoted citations. I'm sure you can understand that an encyclopedia needs verifiable published evidence and can't just "take someone's word for it."

I'd be happy to work with you on edits to this article. The best way to do this is to work step-by-step, and to start with non-controversial facts that we can document with reliable-source citations. Step one: Can you point to a publicly available article, book or website containing any of the claims you made? Let's start with that. --Tenebrae (talk) 14:51, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Al Hewetson - Tenebrae, Thank you for your commitment to excellence. I appreciate the importance of citations. However, rather than not having any references, I did not know how to enter them as I am new to Wikipedia. The information I provided can be verified through birth, death, and marriage certificates; as well as published newspaper announcements. Please let me know how this information can be added in a responsible manner. Kind Regards, Wendy Hewetson. (Zadeftucion (talk) 00:57, 21 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Hi, Wendy. Certainly; happy to.

You can find instructions at WP:CITE and WP:FOOTNOTE and related pages, but in brief it works like this: You put <ref> when you want to start a citation and </ref> to end it.

In between, you put the author of the article or book (last name first); the title of the article or book; the name of the magazine, newspaper or website if it's an article; the url, starting with http://, if it's an online source; the date of the article or year of the book; the publishing company, if it's a book; and the page number(s). Basic citation, really, like you'd use for a college paper. The best way I've found to learn how to do this is to look at existing citations and follow that model. But if you can put that basic information in, I'd be glad to tidy the formatting.

It's important to remember that we can't stick anything new into a footnoted passage that the footnoted source doesn't say. Anything new has to have its own cite.

Why not try a couple of cited edits, and I'll follow-up and do any tidying. If you have any questions, just let me know! --Tenebrae (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tenebrae, Thank you I will follow up and add one to see how I go. Then add more as time permits. Regards, Wendy (Zadeftucion (talk) 12:16, 21 September 2013 (UTC)).[reply]

Tenebrae, I have added one piece in the Personal Life section as per a citation guide for vital records that I found at http://www.genealogy.com/19_wylie.html Regards, Wendy. (Zadeftucion (talk) 13:17, 21 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Tenebrae, I have finished my additions and citations. Please assist me by fixing the citations so that they only appear as one number and not two (Photo credits of Diefenbaker 6,7,8 and 21,22,23). Are you satisfied the revisions meet Wikipedia standards? Thank you, Wendy. (Zadeftucion (talk) 15:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Tenebrae, After some thought, I am concerned about having full dates and file no.'s in the document references for family privacy reasons. Now that you have seen them and know they are verifiable, can I pare it back to just the year and exclude the file number, and my current location? I will do this and you can let me know if it is an issue by restoring it. In which case I will dig deeper to try to find newspaper clippings where ever possible. Thanks, Wendy.(Zadeftucion (talk) 22:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC))[reply]

I was hoping we'd do this a step at a time, rather than trying to make wholesale changes all at once. Wikipedia has no deadline.

Are your citations public records? They seem to be, but I'm not familiar with Canadian public records. If these are not public records, we can't use them.

I'll go clean things up a little. Wikipedia's manual of style for biographies is to put early life and family at the top of the article, and other personal-life details in their own section lower in the article. Right now, we've got redundant material about his early life, appearing in two places.

RE: "in possession of Wendy....": Something being in your or any other private person's possession is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the information is publicly available. That means any related dates and file numbers of public records need to be included to order for a researcher to, theoretically, be able to access this information and verify it for oneself. While Al Hewetson is not George Washington and it's unlikely any researcher would be doing this for him, first, one never knows, and second, we all have to follow Wikipedia's policies in order to support the bigger picture and the bigger mission.

I'm presuming your cites are public records, so as far as I'm concerned — and other editors may or may not feel the same way — they can stay live while we await confirmation from you that these are indeed public records. Thanks for taking the time to learn some of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and for having what certainly looks like a feel for encyclopedia research and writing! --Tenebrae (talk) 23:10, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Some issues I'm finding. First, the documents you're citing say "Alan T. Hewetson" — they evidently don't say "Alan Thomson Hewetson", so neither can we. Also, your cite for "Alan Hewetson met Julie Williams while he was working as a photographer in Ottawa, Ontario" are three photos of the Prime Minister credited to Hewetson. Those citations don't mention Julie Williams or when she and Al met.

You also give those cites to support the statement " served as a personal photographer" for the PM — yet the cites do not say that. For all anyone knows, the person who took those photos was just one of a pool of press photographers. We cannot say he was the PM's "personal photographer" without a reliable-source citation that says exactly that.

There may be other issues — this is just from my initial look — which is one reason I believe it would have been better to do this one step at a time. In any case: Presuming you really are Al's daughter — and I'm not doubting you, but other editors would because there's no way to prove you're who you say you are and Wikipedia has been hoaxed in the past, and your word would be a disallowed claim of personal knowledge anyway — I also have to caution that you're not an unbiased, disinterested editor. This is not meant as any criticism whatsoever, but merely as an objective fact.

Into the fray, then...! --Tenebrae (talk) 23:28, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Turned out not to be too time-consuming. If we can find a cite for his middle name, that'd be good. Also, Wikipedia biographies name a subject's children but not, unless they're independently notable, their grandchildren. In any case: All in all, not a bad little Wikipedia article, I think. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:03, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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