User talk:ASchutz

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[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, ASchutz, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome!

Wikipedia has some special ways to deal with references, you can find more information on WP:CITE. If I can help you out with your references on the article your working on, let me know, and I can give you a hand. Happy editing! Martijn Hoekstra 16:33, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Note, that if you disagree with any of my edits, you can allways undo them. Martijn Hoekstra 21:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] references

Hi, I'll try to quickly explain how references work in Wikipedia. First thing to note: You have been using Harvard referencing. That is fine, in principle, but because Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and jumping about in the text is easier, as is quickly looking something up, many prefer the use of footnotes. footnotes work with the <ref> element. Everything between a <ref> and a </ref> element is taken as a reference, and replaced in the text with a number, that refers to that note. The notes themselves then appear where the element <references /> is.

It is easy to repeat a reference by naming references. That works as follows:

this is some text we have a reference for.<ref name=myreference>This is the content of the reference. This will appear at the <references /> tag</ref> This is some more text, and coincidently, the same source can be used to source this statement aswell.<ref name=myreference />

Another usefull 'trick' of Wikipedia are templates. Templates are some formatted information, that with a few parameters that you put into the template, make some sort of output. One example is the {{referencelist}} template. This template contains the <references /> elements, and markup elements to format the list of references (which explains why you don't see the <references /> element anywhere in the source of the text). Another one you have seen is the [[template:cite book|{{cite book}} template]]. This template ordens and formats information about a book in a neat fashion.

The standard practice of using references (although not strictly neccecairy) is using templates like the {{cite book}} template, or for example the {{cite web}} template between the reference tags. A full reference will then look something like this in wikimarkup: <ref name=theNameOfTheRef>{{cite book|isbn=the isbn number|autor=the author|title=the title|publisher= the publisher etc.}}</ref>

here is what it will look like on the page:[1] This is the text following the referenced sentence. The references tag is below this line. I am first going to repeat the referene though, by calling it by its name.[1]

  1. ^ a b the title. the publisher etc.. ISBN the isbn number. 

Take a look at the source with edit this page to see it for yourself. There are nowiki tags too, you can ignore those, they are here to prevent the tags I have just typed to actualy be expanded. If you have any more questions, just ask. Martijn Hoekstra 10:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)