User talk:Groovyist

Welcome!

Hello, Groovyist, 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)
Manual of Style

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! — Yerpo ^Eh? 14:01, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gerridae

Your additions to the article about Gerridae were removed yesterday by another editor (User:Brian Crawford) that thought they were too complex for a general article and suspected you copied the text from somewhere else because it wasn't properly formatted (i.e. "Wikified"). I, for one, don't think that it's more complex than other large articles about insect topics and I have a feeling that you (as a new user) wasn't aware of Wiki markup, just copying the style of references in raw form from another article you saw. That's why I'd like to ask you about the text - did you write it yourself? I think it would be a shame for it to go to waste if you did, because it was well written and thoroughly referenced - just what Wikipedia needs. So, please let me know what's with this text so we can maybe work on getting it properly formatted and set for readers. — Yerpo ^Eh? 14:01, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did write this paper myself. This was for a school project in my Animal Behavior class at Rice University. I used the sources listed below in the article to compile information and referenced using [#] format. I have never used Wikipedia before and am working on learning your "Wikified" formatting and would love as much help as possible. I will continue reading through tutorials and edit as soon as possible to make it up to Wikipedia formatting standards. Thank you for keeping it up and helping me work through to make it a nice reference! I really appreciate it. Again, I will continue to work on it, but please continue to let me know however I can work to make it better and able to stay up on Wikipedia. Thanks! [User: Groovyist|Groovyist]] ^Eh? 13:17, 24 April 2011

Great, thanks for clarifying this. Anyway, wikification can be somewhat complex at times, so the first few pointers to get the work going:

relevant terms should be linked to existing articles explaining those terms - see the intro where there are a couple made already, more is at Help:Link#Wikilinks.
references should be formatted so that they are clickable. There are already two from the old version of the article there, so you might want to see how they are made - they're inside the infobox at the beginning. The technicalities are thoroughly explained at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes), but feel free to ask if there's something you don't understand.
the habitat table should be formatted correctly to appear - this is perhaps the most difficult to understand (especially if you don't know HTML), but if you'd like to try, the instructions are at Help:Wikitable. If not, I'll do it tomorrow.

Hope this helps. — Yerpo ^Eh? 20:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think I have the relevant terms and references down. I attempted to work on the table, but with no success- so I would greatly appreciate any help with that part! Thanks again! Groovyist

Done. — Yerpo ^Eh? 11:37, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PS: you can sign your comments on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~). This produces a link to your user page and a timestamp which makes it easier to follow discussions.

Science lovers wanted!

Hi! I'm serving as the wikipedian-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution Archives until June! One of my goals as resident, is to work with Wikipedians and staff to improve content on Wikipedia about people who have collections held in the Archives - most of these are scientists who held roles within the Smithsonian and/or federal government. I thought you might like to participate since you are interested in the sciences! Sign up to participate here and dive into articles needing expansion and creation on our to-do list. Feel free to make a request for images or materials at the request page, and of course, if you share your successes at the outcomes page you will receive the SIA barnstar! Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to your participation! Sarah (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]