User talk:Starr1595

Norman Reedus edit

Hi Starr1595. The only "technical" suggestions I have for the way you made your edit are as follows: (1) Fill out the citation template for the WW page a little more by adding more information per Wp:CS#Web pages and Template:Cite web#Description because more information about the source might help other editors later on if the link goes dead some day; (2) Change the "accessdate" parameter for the NYT page to the date you viewed/verified the source; and (3) Possibly make dummy edit to add the correct link to the talk page discussion. It should be Talk: Norman Reedus#Correct first and middle name?. Other than that it seems OK to me. There's nothing to do now, but wait and see what others do. If nobody reverts immediately then it's probably OK. If somebody does revert, then try to engage them in discussion to see what their concerns might be. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the tips. I was actually unsure about what information to include for the WW citation, so I went with the very basics. But I really wanted something more detailed, so I've used the links you provided to come up with this: "Norman Reedus, Daryl Dixon, "The Walking Dead," Coming to Sacramento & Chicago!"". wizardworld.com (Guest Profile). Wizard World Comic Con Official Website. Retrieved 2015-05-14.

Would 'Wizard World Comic Con Official Website' be correct to use for publisher?

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I'd like to make the changes you've suggested (but all at the same time). And once I make the changes, would it be correct to mark them as "This is a minor edit"? Starr1595 (talk) 03:47, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I would be a little careful with minor edits. Simple mistakes like spelling, grammar, mark-up, errors are probably OK to mark as minor because they are obvious and unlikely to be challenged. Anything that changes the format (e.g., citation style, layout) or adds/removes content, etc. should probably not be marked as minor. It's kind of subjective, but sometimes its better to be safe than sorry. I've come across editors who mark all of their edits as minor regardless. This kind of thing can quickly create problems with other editors and could be considered disruptive.

When I use citation templates like "cite web", etc. I try to stick with the basics. For example, author name(s) (if known), url, title, date (if known), website, publisher (if not obvious from the website), and access date. Even though the last parameter is technically optional if you can provide a date for the source (it's mandatory if there's no "date"), I always add an access date because I think it provides useful info. Occasionally, you may encounter someone who thinks they are meaningless, but for the most it pretty standard thing to add when citing online sources.

There are lots of citation templates besides cite web such as {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite episode}}, etc. and each may have slightly different parameters and display information in a slightly different way. One other minor thing is that the template automatically places titles in quotations so I always change double quotes to single quotes when the title uses such punctuation. Some sources also use all caps, bold, or italics for emphasis, but this is not really consistent with MOS:ALLCAPS, MOS:BOLD and MOS:ITALICS. In such cases I use single quotes for italics and normal sentence case text for the rest of the stuff. MOS:DATEUNIFY, WP:CITESTYLE, WP:CITEVAR and MOS:DATETIES are also helpful pages regarding citation formats.

Regarding the WW citation template format you chose. Obviously you can use it for "website", but you can also use it for "publisher" since at the very bottom of the page it says "Copyright@2015 WizardWorld.com". There is, however, no need to use both since that's repetitive and provides no new information for the reader. There is a slight difference though between how "website" and "publisher" are displayed: the former uses italics and the latter does not. You don't really need to add the ".com" part since "Wizard World" is more than sufficient in either case. You can also wikilink it if you want because there's an article titled Wizard Entertainment. Wizard World is a redirect to that article so you don't need to pipe it per WP:NOTBROKEN, but if you want to really be precise you can pipe it as [[Wizard Entertainment|Wizard World]].

Editing style differs per editor. Some people like to make lots of little incremental changes while others prefer to do everything at once. It's a matter of feel. Some think editors who make tons of small edits are just trying to up their edit count stats so you may get some comments if every edit you make one character at a time. On the other hand, trying to do too much at once might make it hard to write a proper edit sum (there is a limit on the number of characters you can enter for an edit sum) and increase the possibility of an edit conflict. This kind of thing frequently happens on popular articles or articles about current events. For those articles, smaller less time consuming edits might be better. FWIW, when I am going to be extensively editing an article for a certain period of time, I sometimes use Template:In use to let others know.

If I've overloaded you with too much info, then my bad. If you have any questions at all about editing, then you can always ask them at WP:Teahouse/Questions. The editors there are really friendly and there's almost always somebody around who knows exactly what you want to know and can fill you in without writing a wall of text like I tend to do. - Marchjuly (talk) 05:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that's really good to know about the minor edit. I definitely will NOT use it for this edit. And no problem about all the information. It is a lot to take in, but I usually write long paragraphs too, so it's definitely something I can handle and will be very useful. Thank you again. Starr1595 (talk) 05:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)