User talk:Mkt324

Hi Wikipedia Editors!

Welcome!

Welcome to Wikipedia, Mkt324! Thank you for your contributions. I am SilkTork 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 {{helpme}} 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! SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Desserts

Hey SilkTork, my name is Mary Kate and I'm a college student at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. For my freshman English class we must write/edit a Wikipedia page. I chose to work on the Desserts page since Wikipedia suggested it needed some work. I was looking at the history of the page and saw you had made changes in the past. Since this is my very first experience editing a Wikipedia page my professor said it might be helpful to reach out to other more established editors. What I have so far is in my sandbox [[1]]. I plan on moving a good bit of content to the main article sometime today or tonight and hopefully the world of Wikipedia will approve. If you have time or just feeling like helping a novice Wikipedia editor then please let me know any thoughts or suggestions you have. Thank you so much!! Mkt324 (talk) 13:43, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

hi Mary Kate. I took a quick look and made a few notes which you can read in the edit summaries when you click on history. I am not actually a contributor to that article - I consulted that page for some information, and tidied up some formatting while I was there, but I have done no research on the topic. Research is key to writing articles for Wikipedia, and that's your starting point. You can research and make notes, and then edit after you have finished your research, or you can do as the majority of Wikipedians do and edit directly as you are researching, so other editors immediately get the benefit of your research and your sources, and can work collaboratively with you to improve the article. And you can also benefit from their research and amendments - they may tell you that your sources are inappropriate or out of date, etc. Your local library - your college library, and Google Books are a good resource - see history of desserts search result on Google Books. The main contributor on Dessert is User:Nick Michael, and it may be worth contacting him. I would suggest, given the embryonic state of Dessert, that you could start directly editing it. Don't worry about your additions not being perfect - it is understood that articles are not perfect, and that we are all working towards improving them. Be bold!. If you're uncertain about how to do something, or where to find a guideline or a rule, then you could try typing in a word or phrase in the search box that best fits your query, and put "WP:" in front of it. If you are not sure about the layout of an article - try WP:layout; if you're not sure about external links, try WP:external links; if you're not sure about punctuation, try WP:punctuation; etc. Have fun, and give me a ping if you have any other questions, or when you've made a bit more progress and want more feedback. Regards SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Mary Kate, looks like SilkTork's given you some good advice. When you're working with a very broad topic, subarticles are your friend: give an overview in your article and link to a more specific article from which readers can get more details if they want them. You might also consider consulting an entry for "Desserts" in another encyclopedia to see what kind of information you should be covering. I would think about combining History and Evolution, and Varieties and International Adaptations. The problem with "international" is that it assumes there's a "domestic", and for topics like this there's no clear point of origin. Your preliminary content is good, though you'll need citations for it. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]