User talk:FireHorse

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Welcome to Wikipedia!

Hello, FireHorse, I'm Kafziel. I noticed you were new, or at least that nobody has officially welcomed you yet, so let me be the first to say hello, give you some tips, and share a few useful links.

Here are some links you might find helpful:

I know they're a little boring (okay... a lot boring) but they may come in handy someday.

I give every newcomer two tips for adding content: cite references whenever possible, and try to set aside any personal points of view. Aside from that, just be patient and receptive, ask questions whenever you need to, and have a good time. If you want to experiment with coding or see how articles will look before you post them, you can use your own private sandbox (at User:FireHorse/sandbox) for any tests you want to do.

Now that you have your own user name, you can sign your comments on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). This will automatically stamp your user name, the time, and the date. That will help other users reply to your posts. You may also want to fill out your user page to tell others a bit about yourself.

I hope this information is useful to you, and I'm looking forward to seeing your contributions. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me for help. Good luck, and happy editing! Kafziel Talk 11:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings & Thanks, Kafziel!

Thank you very much for the welcome message, and for all the helpful links.

I'm actually not entirely new on Wikipedia, though… I've been registered for quite a long time, but have very rarely made any edits or contributions, and today was the first time I've ever uploaded anything — there was a glaring error in the Jericho TV Series trivia which I felt obliged to correct, and I thought an illustration would be helpful, so I made one in Photoshop.

Unfortunately, someone appears to have removed my image now, along with the entire trivia entry for which I inserted it. I wish I knew why, since it didn't violate any copyrights at all… Can you tell me what "OR>" means? That's the notation on the edit that removed my image… and the edit that removed the whole trivia entry says "rm some more OR" — which means nothing to me of course, so it's rather annoying.

Anyway, I think I've gotten the hang of making edits, and now I know how to use images correctly — so now all I need to do is find something I know about that doesn't already have an entry, and I can make a real contribution! ;-)

OR means original research, i.e. information you came up with on your own through investigation, deduction, etc. Wikipedia policy states that all information needs to be verifiable from a reliable source. The map you made, although it's definitely cool, falls into the domain of original research.
Sometimes it's hard to watch out for original research and respect copyrights at the same time. In this situation, it's kind of a catch-22: if the map had a reliable source, like TV Guide or something, then it wouldn't be original research. But if it was in TV Guide, that would mean it was copyrighted and it couldn't be included here anyway. It takes some practice to be able to tell what people will allow and what they won't. Just stick with the "original research", "verifiability", and "reliable sources" guidelines I linked to here and they will always point you in the right direction. Good luck! Kafziel Talk 13:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation of "OR." I understand now why my map image (and the trivia facts related to it) constitute Original Research, and cannot be included; but I must confess that Wikipedia's definition of "verifiable" as being "previously published by a 'reliable source'" seems more than a little arbitrary to me. What could be more "verifiable" than the simple logic of geometry? In the normal sense of the word, the trivia information I provided was perfectly "verifiable" — and was demonstrated to be indisputably true, right there in the map image for everyone to see. Removing it seems (to me) as silly as removing a remark that says "2 + 2 = 4" on the basis that no citation is given, and therfore it's Original Research.

I do understand Wikipedia's more rigid and exclusive use of "verifiable" now, though — even if I don't particularly like it, or agree with it — and I shall make sure that I don't use any Original Research anymore.

Anyway, thanks again for your advice and help! FireHorse 04:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)