JonSidener

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Welcome!

Hello, JonSidener, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Nathan Johnson (talk) 00:24, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Just a quick note about references.

Hello. Be sure and check that the references you remove aren't used in other parts of the article, as the one in Pu-erh tea was. It's an easy mistake to make (I just did it myself a few days ago), but it makes a bit of a mess of the references section. I've reintroduced it in the other place it was used. Perhaps it doesn't belong in the article it all, but I'll leave that to more knowledgeable editors to decide. Anyway, just thought you should know. Happy editing. Grayfell (talk) 07:31, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 8 January

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Machine-or-transformation test page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

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) 00:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

January 2015

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not remove citations or information sourced through citations simply because a link to a source is not working, as you did to Machine-or-transformation test. Dead links should not be deleted. Instead, please repair or replace the link, if possible, and ensure properly sourced information is retained. Often, a live substitute link can be found. Links not used as references, notes or citations are not as important, such as those listed in the "External links" or "Further reading" sections, but bad links in those sections should also be fixed if possible. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. TJRC (talk) 00:46, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Dude, the link was dead. I searched the site and there was no reference to the article or the author. So I tried to fix it. But thanks for restoring the dead link. That's helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JonSidener (talk • contribs) 01:17, 9 January 2015‎ (UTC)

Yup, the link was dead. But we don't remove dead links, we replace them. If you can't replace it, that's okay, but leave it alone then; deleting it is not fixing it. The presence of a reference shows that someone backed up the statement with a reference.

Just because you're not able to look at the reference doesn't mean it didn't support the text. Better to leave a dead link in, showing the statement was supported by a reference, than to delete it, making the statement appear to be without support.

An analogy to a physical reference might help. If a the reference were a book, and it were out of print and you didn't have a copy and couldn't get one from your library, you wouldn't delete the reference, would you? TJRC (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)