User talk:Trovb5

Hello Talia

Speedy deletion nomination of Jjwiki14/Sandbox

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Welcome!

Hello Talia and welcome to Wikipedia! I'd be happy to help you this semester. Lucy is a friend's cat I was minding at the same time as Kitty Kitty, but I have cats, too. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! If you need help, here are some options:

Ask me on my talk page
Check out Wikipedia:Questions
Ask your question on this, your talk page, and then place {{helpme}} before the question.
Get live assistance on IRC

I hope you like it here and encourage you to stay even after your assignment is finished! I see you have a wiki assignment due this Thursday. Do you have any ideas of an article to work on? --Geniac (talk) 01:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Talia!! See you Thursday. Hope you're having a good week! Dvpolicy11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dvpolicy11 (talk • contribs) 00:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help me

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can ask another question on your talk page, contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse.

can you look at these three articles and let me know what you think? I am considering these topics for my project.

Thanks! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texting_while_driving#Criticism_of_bans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnerships Trovb5 (talk) 03:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those are all interesting topics. All three articles are lengthy and detailed, though. If you make your topic a single section of an article, like Texting while driving#Criticism of bans, that would probably be fine. Suggestions for improving articles belong on talk pages, not in the article itself, so I've moved your suggestions to Talk:Texting while driving. Btw, you can make links to other Wikipedia pages instead of pasting the full URL using square brackets; see Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. --Geniac (talk) 04:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your help!!!! I really appreciate it! I ended up focusing on the Ban section. I will get back with you once I really delve into my page. Trovb5 (talk) 19:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help

I see that you mentioned needing help on my mentee's wall (User:Dvpolicy11). Have you found a mentor? I already have all the mentees that I'm willing to take, but others do not. If you need to find one, look for one in Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Online Ambassadors. If you need general help, let me know and I can try to help! – GorillaWarfare ^{talk • contribs} 18:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello

Hey Talia, just brushing up on my wiki editing skills and thought I'd let you know that I'm very interested in reading your article. Hmm drving and texting? I don't see how it couldn't be a good read. -Travis — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tdtallent1 (talk • contribs) 19:10, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mentor

I'll be glad to be your mentor. Just let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything; I look forward to working with you. Mike Christie (talk – library) 14:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Talia, User:GorillaWarfare said "I already have all the mentees that I'm willing to take", I didn't. I'm still willing to be your mentor, if you want. --Geniac (talk) 01:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Either way is fine with me, Talia; just let me know. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk – library) 01:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mike, Thank you for agreeing to be my mentor! I apologize for being slow to get back with you, I have put other assignments and studying as a priority over this project until now. After our midterm today, I am going to buckle down and make some progress on my page. Thanks again. Can you look over what I have so far in my sandbox and see what you think? It is a rough, rough, rough, rough draft! I am just learning how to reference within a site. Today we have to move our page to the main wiki site. Can I still move mine even though its a rough draft? Thanks, Talia Trovb5 (talk) 15:12, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Texting while driving

Since an article already exists (Texting while driving) on your topic, it's better to work on the existing article than in your sandbox. When working on an existing article, please be careful not to remove or replace information already in the article; it's better to work on rewording or adding to what's already there. Another option is to post to the article's talk page (Talk:Texting while driving) with your suggestions for changes, and see what other users think. --Geniac (talk) 01:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mentor

Talia, I'd be glad to help, but I think you already have another mentor, Geniac -- see the note just above. I am at work 8-6 Eastern time; I won't usually post during those hours but I thought I should leave a quick note here for you and Geniac. I'm more than happy to be involved along with Geniac but it sounds to me like maybe you misunderstood who is your mentor -- is that possible? Anyway, Geniac is probably watching this page too, so perhaps we can all sort this out. Any way it works out is fine with me. Geniac, I only have one other mentee now so I'm happy to take on Talia if you're busy. Just let me know. Mike Christie (talk – library) 16:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

mentor response

Geniac and Mike, I feel like i got caught cheating on my partner! haha! My confusion over my mentor situation has caused quite a stir. However, I have decided to ask you, Mike, to be my mentor if you would like to continue to do so. I sent Geniac a message stating that I was confused and my apologies and that I just wanted to keep things simple and go with you. I am in no way trying to offend anyone and Geniac was doing a great job. However, I would like to stick with Mike. Again, my sincere apologies for the confusion and thank you for agreeing to be my mentor. I understand you work during the day as do I, so whenever you have time to help I would appreciate it. I usually work on my project at night as well. Thanks again Geniac and Mike! Trovb5 (talk) 18:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Talia, hi; I'm back from work and will go take a look at your sandbox later tonight. I need to get Suzanne10's DYK nom sorted out, so I'm going to go work on that and then come back and leave you a note. Suzanne10 and I have also been emailing, which you can do by clicking on "Email this user" on my user page (it's a link on the left side) if you think emails would get to you faster. Later -- Mike Christie (talk – library) 00:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Texting while driving sandbox

Talia, I had a look at your sandbox, and I have a couple of comments and a question.

Your first paragraph uses two sources: a blog, and the "Decreasing Driver Distraction" source from the ITU. Blogs are frowned on as sources, because anyone can say anything they want in a blog; they're not "reliable sources", in Wikipedia parlance. So I don't think that first source will work. The second source looks likely to be better, but unfortunately you don't really give enough information for a reader to track that one down. The goal of a citation is for a reader to be able to go to a library and find that book, or journal article; or go to the web and find the web page. So is this a book or article, or is it a web page? If you can let me know I'll show you how to cite it.
The laws section already exists in the target article, and seems a bit more comprehensive than what you have, but there are some differences. For example, you list eight states that prohibit all handheld phones, but the article lists a lot more than that -- is your source out of date? More seriously, I'm concerned that what you've done isn't going to be helpful in your class assignment because that part of the existing article is fairly detailed and sourced already. You could add some material at the top of the laws section that summarizes the state of the laws, as you do here, but you have to have information that is new to the article (and well-sourced, of course).

The question is: what's the goal of your assignment? Are you supposed to be working on a new article, or on expanding an existing one? How are you going to be graded? If you can tell me that I can probably advise you better.

-- Mike Christie (talk – library) 01:17, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see you put your new text into the article -- nice work! I also see that another editor promptly started cleaning up some typos and copyediting the text -- that's one of the great things about Wikipedia; if you put your text out there, and it's worth keeping, someone else will come along and work on it too. So what's next -- do you need to nominate for DYK? If so, we have a problem, because DYK is only for either brand new articles, or very short articles that have been expanded to become five times as long as they used to be. If that's what you need to do, we will have to work on another article instead. Don't panic if that's the case, though; I'm sure we'll work something out. Mike Christie (talk – library) 04:13, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I spoke to a couple of other ambassadors and got a couple of ideas. How about focusing on a more specific area so you can create a more specific article? For example, History of texting while driving laws, or Social effects of texting while driving? It does have to be something for which there are real sources, and for which it's reasonable to have a separate article -- if we can only come up with a paragraph, other editors are just going to want to merge it back into the "texting while driving" article. See if you can think of a topic that would work.

In the meantime, I was looking at your references in the article and noticed that you pasted in your information without adding the relevant reference tags. I saw you did a good job in your sandbox of creating the references using the <ref> tags; can you do the same with the info you added to Texting while driving? If you're stuck, let me know and I'll fix them for you, but since you did it right in your sandbox I'm sure you can do it. Mike Christie (talk – library) 04:38, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No problem -- just drop me a note whenever you're ready. Mike Christie (talk – library) 01:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mentor note

Glad to see you're back -- I look forward to helping you out on this. I'll be out all afternoon and all tomorrow evening but I'm around this weekend other than that. Mike Christie (talk – library) 14:54, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]