Wikipedia talk:Co-op/Newrunner769

Welcome to the Co-op! We have a mentor for you.

Hello, Newrunner769! Thank you for your interest in the Co-op. You've been matched with Go Phightins!, who has listed "writing" in their mentorship profile. Your mentor will be contacting you soon to get things started. HostBot (talk) 17:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Newrunner769. Unfortunately, Go Phightins! isn't available to help you right now, so I am filling in. You say that you have been making small changes, and would like to try something more extensive. First of all, small improvements are great! Lots of people do them, and they add up over time to make the encyclopedia much better and more interesting.

Do you have an idea what you would like to do? There sure are a lot of articles on Wikipedia that could use some improvement. What subjects interest you?—Anne Delong (talk) 02:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for being my mentor, Anne! I'm mostly interested in technology, but some things like new discoveries (thus I look at all new pages and try to improve them). But what im really interested in is really one question. Is it good to take info off websites? Because if i could do that, that would be awesome! Also finnaly am i replying on the right page? Newrunner769 (talk) 21:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)newrunner769

Hi Newrunner769. Yes, new pages often need a lot of improvement, so any help there is appreciated. I like to read about new technology too, and I find that while improving a variety of articles I find out a lot of interesting information.

In answer to your question, in most cases it is not okay to copy text from web sites. The way copyright law works, as soon as a person writes something, he or she owns the copyright to that text, unless they legally assign the copyright to someone else, so copying it isn't acceptable. Of course, some web sites have material that is too old to be under copyright - for example, Shakespeare's plays or a book whose author has been dead for more than seventy years, or something like that. However, ideas and information aren't copyright, so you can read the material and rewrite it totally in your own words, and that's okay. It's important to make sure that the information you want to add is from a reliable source such as a published book or online newspaper or magazine, rather than from someone's personal website, blog, or facebook page.

And yes, if you post questions here, I will see them. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me that. I just wanted to make sure, just in case I wasn't supposed to do that and I did something wrong. I also thought of something new. Most stuff, since I'm not that old yet, I can't add info to. But from what you said, if the creator of the article missed some good info from the website, it would be OK to put that in the article, right? Finally, how many bytes would be a good start for an article? Lots of new articles come out every minute, some long some short. I want to find out what is a long article to review, or short(I like short ones). Newrunner769 (talk) 16:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)Newrunner769

Newrunner769:

About info from a website: It depends on what website you are talking about. Just because information is on a web site doesn't mean that it's true or that it's important. If it gets in the news, or is written about in an online magazine, or in a book, that's the kind of information should be added to an article, along with a reference to the place you found it. Do you know how to add these references to articles?

About the length of an article: Each article has to be about a "notable" topic. The article content itself doesn't have to be long, but it has to be enough to state the importance of the subject, and to have references to show that the content is true. Here's a short one that I made about a place I like to visit: The Gut (geological feature). Notice that each fact is referenced to a source. If I didn't add those, another editor might have decided that the article wasn't "notable", and deleted it.

About being young: This is one of the best things about Wikipedia - as long as you are old enough to read and understand newspapers and magazines, you can contribute to most articles. Even brainy people with advanced university degrees are not allowed to add in their own ideas and thoughts. All the information has to be gathered from published sources. I wrote that article about The Gut without knowing about geology - but the articles I looked up were written by people who did know. Another good thing is that if I did happen to write something incorrectly, someone else would fix it! On Wikipedia, people work together to make the articles better.—Anne Delong (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC)