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User:DocWatson42/Help

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Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I have been editing Wikipedia for some time, so if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out the new user tutorial, Wikipedia:Questions, or type {{help me}} at the bottom of another Talk page. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your user name and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

(Original: Template:Welcome-citationunderkill, now at Template:Welcome-citation, with "Wikipedia:Civility" added.)

(Personal opinion: When you start editing, it looks better if your user name is not a red link (which, in a user name, tends to be the sign of a spammer). Your user homepage doesn't have to be complex—as an example, see my German Wikipedia user page, which has a simple greeting.)
Personal opinions on best practices:
  • I find notification of a reply to a comment to be the polite thing to do, as I do not (and I imagine many other editors do not) check my Watchlist very often. I try remember to subscribe to all of my comments on talk pages, but I do sometimes forget.
  • Reverting/undoing (of edits) is blunt instrument, and should be used with caution. Unless it is to eliminate vandalism or spam, I prefer to edit the usual way, especially since many of my own edits are for more than one reason, and are fixing more than one problem.
  • References should also be completed as fully as possible, while keeping in line with the style in which they are written. E.g., include identifying numbers, but not the ultimate owners of standalone Web sites, especially prominent ones, as their publishers (to me it is unnecessary to identify the owner of, for example, the Internet Movie Database as Amazon.com) or the locations of periodicals which already include that information in their titles (when the locations are clear. E.g., The New York Times, but not the Woodville Republican (Woodville, Miss.)). Similarly, wikilinking to book and newspaper publishers and their locations is, while allowed, unnecessary (see overlinking).
  • I prefer the full title of a publication be given as written, with addition information placed elsewhere. E.g., the Daily News (New York), not the New York Daily News, and Time magazine, not Time Magazine.
  • I find that it is easier to read an article in edit mode if there are spaces and carriage returns separating the wiki markup, though too many of either impedes that editing (similar to references, below).
  • CS1 and CS2 (not my preference) references' fields should be formatted in the order in which they are displayed in the articles, as this makes editing them simpler. Similarly, references are easier to read/parse if there is a space before the pipe character (|), but any more spacing than that is overkill. E.g.,
{{cite journal |last1=Guzman |first1=JA |date=October 2012 |title=Carbon Monoxide Poisoning |journal=Critical Care Clinics |volume=28 |issue=4 |pages=537–48 |doi=10.1016/j.ccc.2012.07.007 |pmid=22998990}}
not
{{cite journal | last1 = Guzman | first1 = JA | title = Carbon monoxide poisoning | journal = Critical Care Clinics | date = October 2012 | volume = 28 | issue=4 | pages = 537–48 | pmid = 22998990 | doi = 10.1016/j.ccc.2012.07.007}}
As for formatting a reference vertically, it does make the reference easier to discern, but makes the surrounding article text all but impossible to read (try to find the phrase in the in between the references).
<ref>{{cite journal
|last1=Guzman
|first1=JA
|title=Carbon monoxide poisoning
|journal=Critical Care Clinics
|date=October 2012
|volume=28
|issue=4
|pages=537–48
|pmid=22998990
|doi=10.1016/j.ccc.2012.07.007
}}</ref> that is, Davies states thus<ref>{{cite journal
{{cite book
|last1=Bleecker
|first1=ML
|title=Occupational Neurology
|chapter=Carbon monoxide intoxication
|date=2015
|series=Handbook of Clinical Neurology
|volume=131
|pages=191–203
|pmid=26563790
|doi=10.1016/B978-0-444-62627-1.00024-X
|isbn=978-0444626271}}</ref>
  • Use the title as written, even if it contains a spelling error, so that the reference can be located again (replicated), though I include a "[sic]" after the mistake to acknowledge the mistake. (This is in opposition to MOS:SIC in the case of references.)
  • IMHO a link to a WorldCat, JSTOR, PMID, PMC, or DOI record/page should be represented as such and not as a link to the item itself—use their respective templates (Template:WorldCat; Template:JSTOR; Template:PMID; Template:doi) or the named fields in the citation templates.
  • Do not use the field |website= for domains' and organizations' names unless they are also the title of publication or other work, as this renders the text in italic type (see MOS:MAJORWORK). If the title of the Wikipedia article for the entity in question is not italicized, I feel that it should not be italicized in references. It there is no article, then I prefer to err on the side of roman type.
  • If a reference appears more than once in an article, unless it is in done in the appendices and linked to in the body, the full reference should be at its first appearance in order to ease editing. References should also be cited in the order in which they appear in the article overall. E.g., [1][2], not [2][1].
  • Use the full date for an article. (Citations of academic articles often leave out the journal issue's season or month, which I find irksome when there is more than one issue of that journal in a particular year.)
  • While MOS:REFERENCES states that "Editors may use any reasonable section title that they choose", I prefer clarity, e.g., "Explanatory notes", "Citations", and "General references"/"General sources". "Notes"/"Footnotes" can mean either explanatory notes or inline citations, while "References" and "Sources" are synonymous, and cannot be distinguished by the casual reader, so I recommend avoiding them. "Literature" similarly ambiguous—it can mean cited references, general references, or further reading.
  • Regarding images and set-off quotations (in <blockquote></blockquote> tags and equivalent templates), though they generate their own, I feel that it is best if they are separated from the surrounding text by actual double carriage returns both above and below, in order that they be easily found and to otherwise ease editing. E.g.

The relevant section of Cicero as printed in the source is reproduced below with fragments used in ''Lorem ipsum'' underlined. Letters in brackets were added to ''Lorem ipsum'' and were not present in the source text:{{quote |[32] Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium}}Yadda yadda

as opposed to:

The relevant section of Cicero as printed in the source is reproduced below with fragments used in ''Lorem ipsum'' underlined. Letters in brackets were added to ''Lorem ipsum'' and were not present in the source text:
{{quote |[32] Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium}}

and

Yadda yadda
[[File:Picture|thumb|Caption]]
Yadda yadda

versus

Yadda yadda[[File:Picture|thumb|Caption]]Yadda yadda
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