User talk:Kai.sheffield

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Hello, Kai.sheffield, and welcome to Wikipedia! I am CTSWyneken. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Again, welcome! And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. --CTSWyneken 01:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)^(talk)[reply]

Neil Young

The 1980s, 1990s and 2000s sections in the Neil Young article are woefully short on citations. In the 2000s, for example, there were just two citations, one of which linked to a site that mirrored the Wiki article. The paragraph that included this link, on Young's brain aneurysm, contained several errors, which I straightened out after digging up two solid sources. Upon further review, I found similar errors and misconstrued "facts" throughout the article, as well as numerous statements that amount to little more than editors' opinions. The only solution to this is to require citations wherever possible, in accordance with WP:VER. If errors still remain, at least future editors will be able to sort things out. On that basis, I'm reinstating the ref tag for the 2000s section, and once that's cleaned up, I intend to do the same for the 1980s and 1990s, unless a groundswell of editors object.

An anecdote: This past Sunday, the New York Times crossword puzzle had the clue "1986 self-titled album whose cover was Andy Warhol's last work". Though I've never found an error in a Times puzzle, I know Warhol's work well enough to know this had to be wrong. Just on the surface it made no sense. Warhol died in February 1987, the album was released in November 1986, and therefore that would have meant he produced nothing in the last four months or so of his life. So I looked up the answer (Aretha) in Wikipedia. Sure enough, the article contained the statement, unsupported, of course, that the cover was Warhol's last work. Wrong! I then found a source that referred to the cover as one of the artist's last works; not entirely so either, but close enough. Though I don't have any proof, I strongly suspect that a fact checker for the Times didn't search any further than Wikipedia or one of its countless mirrors. Bringing that all back home to Neil Young, I'm very concerned that we're misleading fans, school kids and other readers - as well as major publications - with a soup of fact, half-truth, error and opinion. Citations won't cure that in the short term, but over the long haul, the reliability of articles can be brought up to 99% by simply requiring that editors provide a clue as to where they learned what they purport.

BTW, I was re-attracted to the Neil Young article by your recent edits, which with the exception of a couple POV words, were right on the money. Since you're obviously a wordsmith (a lover and crafter of the language), I'm certain you'll also have as much fun confirming what's right, correcting what's wrong, and fine tuning anything that falls in between. Fare well! Allreet (talk) 00:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Wiki standards, see WP:VER and WP:CIT, which set down guidelines for using sources and citations, as well as WP:CITE, which contains templates for different types of citations. Some suggestions: Use Notepad to create your citations, whether you use a blank template or copy an existing citation from elsewhere and replace its information with yours. I usually place a temporary reflist tag (the word reflist enclosed in double curly brackets) below the paragraph I'm editing, then view the resulting citation in Preview. Just be sure to remove the reflist tag before saving. I know WP prefers we do this kind of stuff in the sandbox, but if you're careful and use Preview repeatedly to check your results, you can get away with it. On the other hand, in many cases, I'll copy the original text from WP (and/or from a source) into Notepad and edit, re-write and add wikilinks there, then paste the sentence or section into WP in place of the original. Notepad, by the way, is preferable to Word, because apostrophes and parentheses copy properly, plus when you edit in Notepad, you can't harm or lose anything. However, final touches and light editing are standard practice in the article's edit window.

My understanding of WP:VER is that everything should be verifiable, so any statement of fact or opinion should be backed by a "published" source (web, paper, broadcast, etc.), with the exception of widely-known, general facts ("the earth is round" but not "Boston is the largest city in New England"). Obviously, few people adhere to this standard, which makes things difficult because not everything can be found on the web. You have to go to books in some cases, and in others, what you're trying to track down isn't anywhere to be found, because it's from an obscure source or a fairly unreliable one, such as a blog, fan site, commercial site or even worse, from the editor's "knowledge". Sorting that out is part of the fun. You develop a nose for nuance and a knack for nailing the truth. There are also the challenges of salvaging as much existing text as possible and turning to your own devices if the text doesn't fully jibe with the source.

All that may sound daunting, but understand I'm giving the crash course and that everything improves one edit at a time. Just start with things that are easy to pin down, meaning there are a plenty of sources available and the text pretty much has the story right. For examples of more thoroughly referenced articles, see Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. I also recommend registering so that your edits don't look suspect (thereby forcing other editors to double-check) and also so that you can use the Edit Summary box to indicate what you've changed and why. Anyway, I hope all this helps. If you have any other questions about mechanics or material, just post a message on either my Talk page or on the article's, where you'll be able to get feedback from other editors. Oh, and always live by WP:AGF. Some people can be difficult to deal with, some issues can get contentious, and assuming the best of others will always go a lot further than fighting the good fight. Allreet (talk) 06:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]