User talk:Jenbooks13

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Welcome!

Hello, Jenbooks13, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  -Colin Kimbrell 04:35, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image on Jill Neimark

Just letting you know I've resized the image on your article: It's wonderful of you to supply it, though it was a tad larger than the article itself. This way, the focus is on your information, not the image itself.

As far as the article goes, you might want to take a peek at that of Stephen King. The information box template on that article is easy to add, though if you'd like assistance with setting it up, I'd be happy to help.

Also of note is the guideline page, Wikipedia:Autobiography. This explains more about working on your own article, common pitfalls, and steps you can take in making sure that your article continues to uphold the virtues that we hold dear.

Oh, lastly, for laughs, if you'd like to see other notable Wikipedians who help with our project, see Category:Notable Wikipedians. I've had the opportunity to chat with more than a couple of them, and quite frankly it can be a blast! :) ~Kylu (u|t) 03:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jill Neimark

I can certainly help you in adding the sources, but could you give me some idea as to what they are? :) If they're online, a link would be great, if they're a book, magazine article, or the like, you'll want the basic reference information (author, publisher, year published [if a periodical, also the month or issue]), and the like. We do have a special markup for references, the preferred way is usually to do them inline. To use that, you'd want to use a tag like:

<ref>Doe, John. "An article about something." The Somewhere Times, January 2, 2003.</ref>

Then at the bottom of the article, add a section entitled "References", and put the tag <references /> in that section. The references will then be automagically be converted to superscript footnote links in the article body, and clicking on them will bring the reader to that reference in the references section.

Also, not entirely on the topic, but when you make a post to a talk page, it makes it easier to follow if you sign with four tildes (~~~~). That will convert into your username and a timestamp, like you'll see at the end of this post. It keeps threads easier to follow as to who posted what. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:33, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi! I see someone has posted in support of me on the original "deletion" comment to keep my bio and why, which makes me feel good and gratified. Okay, I posted to you on the other page, but will repeat it here: Thank you so much for helping btw. Anyway, I have looked at the web just now and there is reportage that I can find online links for you on me/my work by 1) David Kirby, a NY Times bestselling au., in a column in The Huffington Post; 2) a PhD psychologist in the Columbia Tribune reviewing my autism article 3) A book review in Entertainment Weekly online for Bloodsong my novel, 4) commentary on Autism Speaks website, a $100 million research foundation on my aticle 4) commentary on Generation Rescue website, another autism foundation 5) further commentary at the Autism Society of America by their communications director on their website (they are the largest such foundation in the country). Someone else noted not to do plain old regular blogs as they aren't reliable sources. Would it be useful to put these in discreetly just as footnotes at the end of a sentence? Or are they supposed to be references? Or both? Thanks so much. jenbooks13 15:32, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Whoever told you blogs aren't very reliable sources is indeed correct—blogs generally don't undergo any type of editorial control or fact-checking, so anyone can publish anything at all on a blog and there's little more indication that it's true than if you heard it from a stranger on a street corner. On the other hand, it sounds like the sources you list are quite reliable. Could you please send me those links? (To link to an external site, you can use a single square bracket on either side, so for example [http://www.google.com] will turn into [1].) As to references vs. footnotes, you don't even have to choose! If you use the <ref> ref tagging system I described earlier, the software will automatically turn each reference into a numbered footnote. (If you want to use a reference more than once, for example in different paragraphs, and have them all point to the same one, that's possible too. But we'll stick to the basics for now, you can let me know if you need help with something like that.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Just a tip that's helped me a lot: if you see something somewhere (formatting, say, or refs) on Wikipedia that you'd like to emulate, you can edit the page to see the code behind it. There's also an article about basic Wiki-markup. You can use the main Sandbox to experiment, or create your own by clicking the red link in this sentence fragment.

Also, read the Wikipedia guideline on autobiographies, which effectively describes why they are discouraged (but not forbidden). Articles created (or primarily contributed to) by their subjects run a very high risk of being deleted. Familiarizing yourself with the guideline may help you remain one of the exceptions. — Demong talk 22:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


Hi--thank you both for your help. Demong, that is a very good idea to look at the formatting on another page. Seraphimblade, I will try to send my references to your Talk to me page later today. I am more than willing to try to input them myself :) hoping I don't make some ridiculous errors. Even when I first started my stub, someone came in and put my ISBN's for me. Everybody on this community has been very helpful and that is one reason I want to remain on it. I think the whole idea of wikipedia is cool. jenbooks13 15:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit/Add later the same day: I tried to put in some reliable source footnotes. If anybody wants to check it or fix it or let me know if I did it correctly, much appreciated! jenbooks13 17:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

You can certainly use offline sources. (I converted the online ones into reference-style footnotes, so you can hit "edit this page" and look at the wikitext in that article to see how it was done.) For an offline source, you can do it like this, obviously replacing the names/dates as appropriate: <ref>Doe, John. A Book About Something. Somewhere Publishers, 2000. pg. 5-15.</ref>. Whatever you include between the <ref> and </ref> tags will be set up as a footnote automatically. Another way you can do it, since the sources listed currently are probably more than sufficient for an article of that length, is just to list them on the talk page. That way, other editors can look them up and use them to expand the article. (I don't think there's anyone around here without a library card. :) )

On an unrelated subject, you seem to have quite a range of experience. Might I be able to talk you into helping out with a few other articles? Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I think I did it myself! :) A few better reliable sources up there as refs. And I answered on your talk page, but yes I can help, especially add some useful information to current autism articles. jenbooks13 02:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)