User talk:Octave192

Sherman County articles

Nice to see your recent work on Sherman County-related articles. I see that you've been in the editing business for a week or so; hope you're not having any undue difficulties figuring things out. If you are, please feel free to drop me a line and I'll give you what help I can—we need more editors working in Nebraska, particularly outstate. (To drop me a line, click on the "Talk" after my username, then edit that page. Start a new section, and let me know if you'd like me to reply here or at my own page.)

If you don't mind, I'll call your attention to a few issues with your recent work. First, we're discouraged from putting external links in the bodies of articles: this is why I've repeatedly nuked your "For more information, see www.loupcity.com". (The city's website is in the infobox, which is the boxed business on the right side of the page.) It's also critical to avoid promotional language, even if it's in the source cited—phrases like "lush fairways" and "fun for the whole family" are verboten (unfortunately, I don't know the Polish word, which'd be more appropriate in talking about Sherman County).

Another and more serious issue cropped up in Charles H. Mohr, where you used a couple of paragraphs taken verbatim from the N.Y. Times obit. This is a copyright violation, even if you cite the source from which you took them. You can use the information, but you have to write it in your own words, and not use the phrasing of the Times scribe.

Also, could you try to format your citations a little more fully? For example, see what I've done at the Mohr article. The reasons for this are discussed at WP:BURL. Basically, the problem is that if you just give a bare URL and then the Times changes their website, there's no way to figure out what the source was. If we've got an author's name and a title and a date, it's possible to verify the information even if the link's gone bad.

Hope you continue working on Sherman County. Again, let me know if there's anything I can help you with. Ammodramus (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Embarrassment is mine. I didn't see the continuation of the NYT's Mohr obit. Ammodramus (talk) 22:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NP. Have not had much time using Wikipedia so just trying to feel my way around and flesh out some articles regarding my home area. I am trying to build them as quickly as possible and am unaware of all protocol. Thanks for the tips, and will keep plugging away Octave192 (talk) 22:45, 27 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hope you keep at it. Some of the policies and the protocols take a little getting used to, but you'll pick them up quickly enough.

If you're working much on Loup City/Sherman County history, I'd suggest hitting the Nebraska State Historical Society website. Among other things, they've got a subpage on the National Register of Historic Places sites in Sherman County, and online versions of the historical marker texts (useful if, for instance, you want to use the courthouse-lawn marker as a citation for the Mother Bloor riot).

Again, let me know if I can offer anything in the way of help or advice. Ammodramus (talk) 02:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

File permission problem with File:Sherman Lake Amenities.pdf

Thanks for uploading File:Sherman Lake Amenities.pdf. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file agreed to license it under the given license.

If you created this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either

make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.

If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:File copyright tags#Fair use, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See Wikipedia:File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read the Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilinking

Hi, and thanks for your work on the English Wikipedia. Just a short note to point out that we don’t normally link:

dates
years
commonly known geographical terms (including well-known country-names), and
common terms you’d look up in a dictionary (unless significantly technical).

Thanks and my best wishes.

Tony (talk) 10:22, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]