User talk:Stwyford

Welcome!

Hello, Stwyford, 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:

The five pillars of Wikipedia
Tutorial
How to edit a page and How to develop articles
How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
Simplified Manual of Style
Wikipedia Teahouse (a user-friendly help forum)
The Wikipedia Adventure (a fun game-like tour to help get you oriented within Wikipedia)

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk 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! We're so glad you're here! DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:56, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your draft article

Hi, St (no need for real names here to protect your privacy). I started some work on your draft at Martin Elkort by adding an infobox. In edit-mode, you can see all the blanks and can fill them in. Leave the blank ones blank (they won't show up) because a Wikipedia article lasts forever and much of the blank information will eventually be filled in by others. Don't upload or try to display a photo portrait yet. Add that as the article is moved into main space.

I have to go to my son's academy graduation ceremony and then congratulatory dinner afterward. Won't be back in time to do more today. Please take some time to at least scan over MOS:BIO, the guideline for writing Wikipedia biographical articles. Getting your draft pretty much in like with that will help make that good first impression on the next reviewer.

Reminder (in case you didn't get it written down): third-party source article as a reference.

Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 19:28, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Finding, mining and citing references and more

Hi again, St. I made a couple more minor changes to your draft. Here's a bit of guidance you may find useful, especially about those independent reliable sources as references.

Finding. Since you know the subject and his family, you're in a unique position to find sources others might not. Did he or others you know keep clippings (or entire newspapers and magazines) that feature or talk about Martin Elkort? Many of those will be independent reliable sources to meet Wikipedia's verifiability policy. That's what caused your article to be rejected by the previous reviewers.

Mining. Read How to mine a source. The LA Times article that I suggested is an independent reliable source for many of the facts stated in your draft such as his early camera. It can also support a lot more. When you find other sources, dig into them to support the information in your draft.

Citing. Take five minutes to watch the first video in the Referencing for beginners page. It's the easiest way to make in-line citations that comply with Wikipedia's current guidelines. When you use the same source more than once, give it a name the first time. Then use <ref name=RefName /> for later instances. Look at what I did to your draft using the LA Times article.

More. Gad, so much to learn when creating a new article as your first foray into Wikipedia editing. Here are a bunch of my thoughts in no particular order.

Article structure and readability: The current Career section of the current article fills my whole screen with a "wall of text." If I were writing the article, I'd break up that wall to make the article more readable and to make it easier for other readers to find what they're most interested in. The About.com reference is a good example of breaking up text to make it more readable. Choose your own way but consider:
- Early life and education - describing growing up during the depression, polio, etc.
- Early photographic career - New York
- Later photographic career - after going west
- Author - books and articles, any accolades or awards, etc.
- Personal life - some detail of work outside photography and publications, significant family relocations, children (grandchildren?), etc.
Photos 1: Most any biography is enhanced by a portrait of the subject. The easiest to include in a Wikipedia article about a living person is one that you took yourself and are willing to release to either the public domain or under a suitable license. Over on the left side of this page under Tools is Upload file. Click on it and use the Wizard to upload it to Commons.
Words to watch and frequently avoid: Peacock words are an instant red flag to many Wikipedians that somebody is trying to make a person not notable seem so. Scrub your draft a bit. Use encyclopedic wording. Let Martin Elkort's accomplishments speak for themselves.
Photos 2: The Wikipedia/Wikimedia community and readers would benefit from digital images, samples of Elkort's works. Donating them will be a somewhat involved process through the WP:OTRS process to release them under a suitable license. Be aware that once donated, the images can be used by anyone, even commercially, as long as the original source is attributed. The image could end up on postcards somebody else is selling. The copyright holder should/must carefully consider the possible implications. It is his choice.

If you have more questions for me, go ahead and ask right here with a note at the bottom of your talk page or any of the sections. I'll be watching your talk page here for at least a couple of weeks. I'll try to answer within a day or two. If you're in a hurry, you can usually get a question answered quickly either at the Teahouse or on IRC (that you already found).

Finally, please let me know when your article is reviewed and approved (and it will be, eventually). I want to guide you through the process of nominating the article for Did you know... so Elkort's article is featured on Wikipedia's Main Page or I can do the nominating. Before then, please take a look at the rules for the hook and look at the main page a few times to see what I'm telling you about for yourself.

I hope this is helpful. Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:53, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Doctree, thank you so much for all your suggestions and links. I've gone through and made some major modifications to the article as well as citing the two main online references. I am still trying to get ahold of Larry Brownstein's article from Jan 2006. He hasn't answered my email yet and Rangefinder's offices were closed yesterday. I will continue to work on it. Meantime, would you mind taking a look at the article in it's current iteration and see if it might be ready for resubmission?

I may have also made some mistakes. I find this method of editing very complicated so not sure I have complied with all the wiki tags, etc.

Thanks again and let me know whether I should hit the resubmit button. Feel free to correct anything else you may notice. :)

ST Stwyford (talk) 20:44, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite ready for the resubmit button but a lot closer. When I looked last, it still had some problems and uglies. Empty (blank) reference 3, for example. I think it's adequately sourced now; it might pass. Clean up a few violations of Wikipedia guidelines and add a bit of polish and it will almost certainly pass muster. You chose the hardest possible topic for your first article, a biography of a living person. For legal and moral reasons, Wikipedia policy is more strictly enforced and BLP articles are more thoroughly scrutinized than any other type of article.

Here's some, maybe most, of what I suggest:

Get rid of external links in the body of the article (violates WP guidelines; considered promotional). Some links might be converted to references. I'd also remove the pinterest, facebook and twitter links; anybody interested can easily find them from any search engine and they're generally not allowed per WP:LINKSTOAVOID.
Another cut-and-paste restructuring. I think the article will read better with all photography in a main section with subsections (titles with three equal signs on each side) for early work, 21st century work and then collections and exhibitions within that section. Photography is what Elkort is known for and notable enough for to deserve an article in the encyclopedia.
Last I'll likely do a bunch of wiki-stuff too obscure for a newcomer. For example, "Today..." will quickly become stale and incorrect in Wikipedia articles. Your great-great-great-great grandchildren will be able to read your article after we're long gone. They'll even be able to find when you wrote it. Convention is to use a template, {{As of}}, so that a WikiFairy will periodically check and update the article. Things like that wouldn't cause your article to be rejected again but it might impress a reviewer that you took the time and made the effort to get some of the more advanced stuff taken care of.

One final suggestion: Start your userpage. Just click on your red name in your signature and then add just a sentence or two and save it to start. Maybe add a userbox or two to describe your interests and expertise. One or more of the photography-related userboxes may be particularly suitable.

Eight inches of snow are forecast for tomorrow so I may be home and at my PC much of the day. If so, I'll try to take a detailed look and make some significant changes then. For now, take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 01:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Doctree,

Hope you're not shoveling your way out of an ice fortress there!

I've just added some user information for myself.

Reviewed the Wiki on Martin and it looks like you have done everything that you suggested in your prior post.

I still have not heard from Larry Brownstein but given the two articles, I think there's enough to back cite what we have. I can add more later when I have the article.

Under Later period - Los Angeles, there is a Template: AS of March 2014. Is there something that needs to be done with that?

I'm still a bit confused about certain markup tags and how to do them. I will try to add a photograph of Martin this afternoon.

Please let me know what else needs to be done before resubmitting.

Thanks again for all your help.--Stwyford (talk) 17:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Doctree, I think the article was just accepted tonight!

There is a yellow highlighted box that says This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; try the Find links tool for suggestions. (March 2014)

Is that something that I need to do? I suppose I could edit the New York Photo League and put Martin's name in there linking it to this article?

Thank you for all your help with this and yes, please go ahead and submit it to the Did You Know page. Let me know if there's anything else that I need to do.

Thanks!--Stwyford (talk) 03:05, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on your first Wikipedia article. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? I'll stick around and hopefully add a bit more polish. You should watch the article. Click on the little star in the header when you're in the edit mode to add your article to your watch list. Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 15:12, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PS: A non-mandatory custom is to add colons in front of new comments to indent them. Keeps the comments separated/threaded for easier reading. I put 'em in in front of your comments, then skipped it for this line to show what I mean.

Thank you! So good to be learning all these tricks. This is almost as difficult as when I first learned HTML back in the day. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was last night when I saw the article had finally been accepted. Big thrill and I can't wait to show my dad. He's no longer on his computer so I'll have to show this to him when I am home in a couple weeks.

So one thing I wanted to ask you is what to do on someone else's article where there is a dead link or incorrect information? Do I just go in and correct it with an edit summary? or altogether delete it? What would I do if someone adds something to my article that is incorrect? Is there a process for 'reporting' bad info or requesting a re-review? While writing this article, I came across articles that had missing or bad links. Thanks again.--Stwyford (talk) 16:02, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ulterior motivation

You are very welcome. Please stick around to help build an encyclopedia, a place on the Internet that contains the sum total of all knowledge. A place where anyone can access that knowledge. That's why Wikipedians do what we do. We need you to help out.

At this moment, you are an SPA, a single purpose account. You came here with a goal, writing one article about something that you are passionate about and getting it into Wikipedia. You did! My hope is that you will stay and continue to contribute. That's why I help newcomers. That's why I gave you hints and guidance to accomplish your goal rather than jumping in and fixing things myself. I hoped you'd get hooked and become a real Wikipedian, slowly building our encyclopedia.

Wikipedia needs you, your writing skill, your knowledge, your time and effort. We need your input for balance and neutrality. Somewhere around 90 percent of contributers are male. Wikipedia suffers from a gender gap. Gender bias can't be overcome by male awareness of the problem. You can help. Wikipedia is incomplete. It will never be finished. You can help. One occasional edit when you find the time and inclination will make a huge difference. Look at the Street photography article, especially the measly paragraph about street photography in the United States. Some of the research, some of what you learned and some of the sources you already found could help expand that article.

I'll add what I hope is a bit of polish to the Martin Elkort article. Next, I'll nominate your article for DYK. You'll see updates transclude onto your talk page so you can watch the progress. Then I'll take you and your article off my watch list and wander off into other areas of Wikipedia. I'm a bird geek and have unfinished articles like Cordelia Stanwood, an early nature photographer (among other things)), that I need to finish. I'm likely to find another newcomer who needs help getting started.

Many thanks for enduring the learning curve to finish your article. I learned a lot in the process. Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:14, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PS again: Take a swipe at your userpage. Make it first person, I or "This user..." in wiki-speak. The guidelines for what to include are here. I personally don't judge your userpage as promotional but if some wiki-cop tags it WP:UP#PROMO, just remove the company name. It's generally not good practice to edit someone else's userpage but I took the liberty of adding two userboxes to yours. Feel free to remove them.

I just went ahead and updated the userpage. I had originally put some copy from my LinkedIn profile, just to hold the space. It's now first person, thanks for pointing that out.

Good information about the gender aspect. I will definitely consider adding some further content now that I know how to do this. I think the street photography section is a mess, agreed it can use some updating. I have another friend who is interested in learning how to become an editor so I will pass some of these links on to her as well. Good luck in all you do and again, thanks for your help and making Wikipedia so much easier to understand.--Stwyford (talk) 18:51, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What to do

Starting a new section for your question: So one thing I wanted to ask you is what to do on someone else's article where there is a dead link or incorrect information? Do I just go in and correct it with an edit summary? or altogether delete it? What would I do if someone adds something to my article that is incorrect? Is there a process for 'reporting' bad info or requesting a re-review? While writing this article, I came across articles that had missing or bad links.

The best answer is WP:FIXIT. If you have the time, find a current link and replace the dead one. The long answer is at WP:DEADREF. Correct errors and provide a citation to a reliable secondary source. If you have neither the time nor inclination to fix a dead linmk, tag it. Go into the edit mode and put {{Dead link}} right after it. If you click on that tag, it'll take you to a full explanation of the tag and links to related ones. It's a flag for a WikiGnome to drop by and do what WikiGnomes do. The only thing(s) you should summarily delete are pretty obvious stuff like personal attacks, copyright violations and vandalism.

The Martin Elkort article is no longer yours. You are now its steward. There's a guideline, WP:BRD, Bold-Revert-Discuss, for handling disagreements over content. To revert, just click the View History tab at the top of the page. Then it'll be pretty obvious to click the Undo and leave an edit summary of why. If the problem can't be solved by discussion, there are other processes starting from simple to formal arbitration. Don't worry about dealing with any of them until needed. BRD solves almost all problems on noncontroversial subjects. You can always ping me on my talk page for help if you need a guide through other processes. Just click on the upside-down talk in my signature. To find out about any other editor, just click on her/his name in the signature (I even have a picture on my userpage if you want to see who you've been dealing with).

Your question has me doing a happy dance. You're a Wikipedian. Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:52, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Citation issues

Found problems in the citations for the Martin Elkort article that I would like to see cleaned up before a DYK reviewer goes through them.

The link for the Brownstein article, currently ref 2, goes to "Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived." If you can find a web link to the article, that would be great. If you can't find a web link but have the magazine or even a clipping, Wikipedia's policy is to assume good faith that the content you put in the article is verifiable in that issue of the magazine. In that case, just substitute a {{Cite journal}} without a URL or Access date. It is still a valid reference without a web link. I'll leave this one for you to fix.
Access date is the date that you viewed a source for including content from it in an article. That shows up as "Retrieve:" in the reference list. Looks like you put the original date of publication in the Access date spot in a couple of cases. I'll try to fix those if you can't get to them.

Be sure to keep an eye on Template:Did_you_know_nominations#Articles_created.2Fexpanded_on_March_18 to see if your article is still in the list for that day. When it disappears, start watching the DYK Queue closely because it's about to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page and I suspect you would like to grab a screen capture. It will only be featured for about 8 hours, give or take depending on how many hooks are in the pool at the time. Volunteers try to feature articles in 'prime time' (afternoon-evening) for each region, USA articles in afternoon-evening in the US, Australia/NZ articles in their afternoon-evening hours, and UK/S. Africa articles in their prime time... but they can't always do so. You may need to stay up late or get up early to grab a screen capture.

Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 17:37, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how to fix this. The link is good, https://web.archive.org/web/20120214002337/http://www2.rangefindermag.com/magazine/Jan06/showpage.taf?page=elkort.tml. I can see it there. Maybe somehow when you put it into the Wikipedia it sends it to the Wayback page? Here is the original link http://www2.rangefindermag.com/magazine/Jan06/showpage.taf?page=elkort.tml which when I put into archive.org, the link I've used is what shows up. It's actually a magazine article in an out of print issue. I'm trying to get the original article from the magazine but I think in the case of a magazine, its not necessary to show a web link unless there is one. If this one is going to cause problems, I'd rather leave it out and just cite the magazine, author, date of publication, and title of article. It's easy enough to verify. What do you think? I can also put a link to a PDF of the article once I get it but that will be a week or two to get a copy. Please let me know the best way to handle this.

Thanks also for heads up on keeping an eye on the template. Will try to remember to do that. If I could ask you a favor, if you see it online, can you shoot me a quick note? That shows up in my email and I will go take a screen grab should I miss checking up on it.

--Stwyford (talk) 18:19, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Doctree, I think I may have gotten the link fixed. I kept trying to inline edit it. I finally replaced it with a new reference and it seems to be working for me. Please see if it's good on your end. Thanks.--Stwyford (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work. Link is good now. I'm busy over at WP:RFA and encouraging a pretty darn good editor to try for adminship again. Will try to finish the article polishing this evening. Yes, I'll try to watch the DYK and ping you if I see it going. Since I was nominator, I'm watching anyway. I have missed a couple in the past (sigh). Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:41, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Headed to the main page

Early warning that your first article's nomination was moved to the DYK prep area. It will most likely be featured on the main page tomorrow. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 10:05, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oohh, this is great to know! I have it marked with an alarm in the morning to check the home page! Thank you so much. :)--Stwyford (talk) 17:20, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If all goes without a hitch, you needn't get up early. Prep 3 should get loaded into Queue 3 and appear on the main page at about 19:45 UTC 27 March... which translates to 12:45 PDT 27 March, 1:45 pm Central Daylight Time or 15:45 in the east, my time. Do make a check in the morning because if something goes wrong, Prep3/Q3 could get promoted early or your article could get moved to the earlier queue. According to the schedule, DYKs are staying up for 12 hours these days so you'll have plenty of time to grab a screen capture and maybe call some family and friends to surf over to http://wiki.x.io to see for themselves. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 18:46, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just checked, it's 8:15 CST, and it's not up yet. Will look a bit later on. So exciting!! :)--Stwyford (talk) 13:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Saw it, captured it! Thanks Doctree for nominating. Very exciting. --Stwyford (talk) 21:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Martin Elkort

On 27 March 2014, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Martin Elkort, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that street photographer Martin Elkort (pictured) took his first professional photograph at age 10 and it made the front page of The Baltimore Sun? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Martin Elkort. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 20:16, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]