Welcome! edit

 
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Welcome to Wikipedia, Joans707! Thank you for your contributions. I am Ellin Beltz and I have been editing Wikipedia for some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type {{help me}} 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! Ellin Beltz (talk) 19:26, 17 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

P.S. Something to watch out for is Conflict of Interest - editing a page with which one has a very close personal connection. Cheers!! Ellin Beltz (talk) 19:28, 17 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Reference Errors on 17 December edit

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Your questions edit

Hi Joan: I'm moving this back here to keep it all in one place, I will see when you write below this from the "watch page" function. Here's the questions you wrote earlier: Hi Ellin--thanks for your welcome.

My question concerns your caveat about conflict of interest. I am currently preparing a book on the life of Carlo Mazzone-Clementi, Dell'Arte's founder (who I believe you knew). I also work for Dell'Arte. But I happen to be the only person in the world at this time in possession of this archives and there are many new dates, facts, etc that want to contribute to the content about him. So in spite of my closeness to this, I think that I need to be the one to place the facts there.
More difficult in terms of conflict of interest is the page about the Dell'Arte School, where last night I was trying to add some new citations on articles that have appeared in journals and books as further proof of verifiable content. (I was having an awful time trying to interpret the correct formatting!) I will try to remain as neutral as possible, so that the content doesn't resemble pr. Or would it be better to ask someone else to enter the information? thanks Joans707 (talk) 20:33, 17 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
As long as you're staying neutral, it will probably be ok. It's just something to read that COI page and be aware of; there are other editors who may hold a tighter standard; but then the major rule around here is "be bold and add to the project." So as long as you can come back and say "I read that, I think I'm operating within the rules," it's probably all good.
For adding citations, I can help you! There's a couple automated tricks:
  • (a) To give you the framework for a citation which is on the web but not on Google books, click this link [1]. Paste in the URL of the webpage to cite in one of those blank boxes at the top. Put checkmarks in two boxes "Append the author wiki links into the template" and "Add ref tags around citation templates" and push the "Generate" button. It won't be perfect, but it will generate the frame and add anything it can find to put in it.
  • (b) For citations which are on Google books, click this link [2]. Once there paste the URL from Google books including the page number (if any) and it will generate most of the framework for you.
  • (c) For all other citations, please see my user page and scroll down past the kitties to see a section of cut-and-paste frames for almost all the types of citations that are available. Regardless of which of the three you use, just fill in the remainder of the information, and from <ref name = "AuthorLast"> to </ref> will be ready to put in the article.
Don't worry about error messages, keep previewing. If it completely Fubars and you can't figure it out, put it all in your User:Joans707/Sandbox for testing. No one will ever get upset what you put in your sandbox, and if you're having super trouble with the citations, you could put the whole article in your sandbox to work on and invite folks in to help get it all right before repasting the entire article out to the mainspace in one move.
Don't worry about messing up a page entirely. Everything is always saved. We can always revert the page back to what it was before something terrible happened to it! Look at the little blue "view history" button to the upper right of all pages to see the various versions of every page, who changed what, and what message they left in the edit summary. And administrators can see even more than that!
I'm very happy to have your help, I've felt bad that the Dell'Arte page is so thin, but that is due to my lack of sources; which you have!
Please feel free to reply here or on my talk page whichever feels easier to you and I'll be back around to be helpful. If I'm not on and you need practically immediate help... place the {{helpme|describe the problem here}} tag on this page, explain which page you are trying to fix. You can even leave a paragraph below the "helpme" to help explain the problem. There's editors who keep an eye on the helpme requests and pop over as fast as possible to fix the problems.
One thing though, sometimes people come off as "cranky", which is probably more a function of our need to speak "encyclopedia" and not plain English. Mostly we just write it off to "tired editor writing same thing for the 900th time." :) We try not to bite the newcomers, just sometimes it seems like all we do is correct things!! With best wishes and welcome aboard! Ellin Beltz (talk) 02:34, 18 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Joans707, you are invited to the Teahouse edit

 

Hi Joans707! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia.
Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! Rosiestep (I'm a Teahouse host)

This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply