User talk:BHFeller

Welcome

Hello, BHFeller, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on your user talk page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --D -Day ^{I'm all ears} 23:14, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Images

Hi BH,

To upload pictures, first look on the left-hand side of the screen, then click on the link that says "Upload file." That'll take you to the upload screen. Scroll down to the blank where it says, "Source Filename", and click the "Browse" button to find the images on your computer and upload them.

Now for the tricky part. Fortunately, because you took them on your own, their should be a minimal chance of your images causing any sort of copyright controversy. It just gets tricky finding the right liscense to use them for. By the sounds of it, you may want to go with {{No rights reserved}}, but if you want people to say who took them (but freely), you could go with {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}}. It's difficult, as I'm not as up on these as I should be. These change from day to day it seems like, and it's sort of infuriating. But I think either of those two will work. If not, let me know. Cheers! --D -Day ^{I'm all ears} 17:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't showing up, but I fixed it. For some reason "jpg" was capitalized. I find the best way to avoid typos like that is to cut & paste the image name when I insert it into an article. Other than that, it was perfect. Good job! --D -Day ^{I'm all ears} 19:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those pics are absolutely SWEET! Thanks for your contributions. I use the {{Cc-by-sa-2.5}} on all my pics, and I suggest you do the same in the future. I have uploaded over 300 of my pics to Wikipedia, and that's the license I use. You can read about it here. CC let you keep the copyright, which you should do on such great pics. Someone could sell your pics to a magazine. You can drop me a line too if you have questions. I contribute to WikiProject NASCAR too, but lately I have mainly concentrated on other lesser known forms of racing in the U.S. Cheers, and happy contributing! Royalbroil^T : C 05:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

External links

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did in Jennifer Connelly. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. --Yamla 15:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help mold a newbie

You said: "I appreciate your recent advice. I am new to Wiki and am trying to learn all I can because I want to contribute in the future. I added the citation to the Jennifer Connely page because I felt that the statement that the Hulk was a box-office disappointment needed sourcing. I am trying to learn more and more about Wiki policies, so can you please direct me to a Wiki policy page with more information about the types of statements that need sourcing and to a policy that would exclude the source I cited. I can assure you that I have no connection to the site I linked to, I just thought it explained the opinion the statement expressed. I would also be interested in knowing why you would assume I have a connection to that site because if I choose to contribute something in the future, I don't want to be labeled a spammer. Thanks again for your help."

Hello. I'll add the 'welcome' template to the top of your talk page if it isn't there already. As to the specific questions you have raised here, I urge you to check out WP:V, WP:CITE, and in particular, WP:RS. WP:SPAM and WP:EL are worth reading as well but don't specifically apply here if I remember correctly. If you have any questions after reading these, please let me know. And once again, welcome to the Wikipedia! --Yamla 18:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that we expect new contributors to mess up from time to time. Almost every contributor here gets warned occasionally. The warnings are meant to point you toward policies you are not aware of. The only time it becomes an issue is if you keep on violating the policies over and over again after being warned. In other words, please don't think that just because you have been warned about a policy, suddenly people will think you aren't a good contributor. The only purpose of the level-1 warnings is to inform you of something you may not be familiar with. Have a good day! --Yamla 19:01, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You said: "Thanks for the info. That really helps. I read all the stuff you told me too and it clears up a lot of my q's. Hopefully I'll make it around the learning curve soon. Maybe as a rule of thumb for myself, should I only add potential sources to the discussion pages of topics? Or can I feel confident adding stuff right to pages knowing that I may get reverted or reprimanded? I'm just trying to get a sense of where the boundary of getting blocked lies. I am so pumped right now to have found out about Wikipedia and found out how fun it is to edit stuff and contribute and I would be very saddened if I was cut off from it by my own ignorance. I'm basically home bound with health issues (except for the occasional Nascar trip with my dad -check out a few of my picture contributions) and was getting so sick of surfing useless, spammy crap online. That all changed a few days ago when I read an article about Wikipedia. I feel now that I can contribute something meaningful to the world."

Well, you can never go wrong adding the sources to the discussion page first. :) But you should be safe adding them to the main article, particularly if you say in the edit summary to please remove source if not reliable. In general, people get a number of warnings before being blocked and we try not to block people who are legitimately trying hard to adhere to Wikipedia policies. Even if you are blocked, the first block is almost always for 24 hours, after which you are once again welcome to contribute. Heck, some of our best contributors violated a number of policies and were blocked several times and then turned things around. But in reality, we try only to block editors who are wilfully disregarding Wikipedia policies. --Yamla 15:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You said: "If you don't mind and if you have the time, I would really appreciate if you could explain something to me just to help me in the future. After reading through the policies I want to make sure I understand why I have been reprimanded by you for my contribution to the Jennifer Connelly page. I think I read in one of the policy pages that you told me to read that online pages which are peer reviewed can be considered reliable when other experts are the editors (or something to that effect -I could be misquoting the policy). I can't remember the source I cited off the top of my head, but I think it was a movie industry site that had a lot of experts listed as contributors. What was it about that citation that caused you to label it as spam and unreliable in under 30 seconds. I am not trying to be critical of you at all, I'm just trying to learn. After reading the Jennifer Connelly article and being suprised that The Hulk was considered a box-office disappointment (I liked The Hulk), I searched for a good source for an hour to back that statement up. I'm just trying to figure out how I could have been so wrong with the source I cited that I almost got kicked off Wikipedia. Is there some type of an automated newcomer skepticism that I should be prepared for, or was my source just so bad that it set off some type of alarm at your house or something. I was stunned with how quick I was smacked. That's great that it happens so fast, but I just want to avoid it in the future cause it stung. Maybe I just need to develop thicker skin cause reprimands, accusations and threats of being kicked out happen all the time here at Wiki. I just don't want to spend a ton more time researching how to be a good editor if I am already on thin ice of getting thrown out. Can you speak to this issue for me if I'm making any sense? I'm just trying to get a sense of the culture here to see if I even want to contribute any more stuff. Thanks in advance for any help."

You certainly weren't almost blocked, you got only the first-level warning. Even if you had totally ignored that, you'd still get another warning or three before being blocked. As to the specific citation that you added (this one, I believe), I rejected it because it is clearly a blog. The article makes unverifiable claims. Now, if this was the New York Times, we'd know that even though the sources weren't spelled out, the reporter relied on two independent sources or whatever. But it's a blog. It's also inherently point-of-view. Now, WP:RS gives information on how to determine what is a good source and what is not. But in general, blogs are not. An exception would be made, though, if, say, Bill Gates had a blog and made a claim. In that case, the blog may serve to cite that Gates's claim, though not necessarily on the accuracy of the claim itself. Please let me know if you have any more questions or if I missed one of your questions. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. --Yamla 15:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Thanks for uploading those images! We particularly appreciate that you note where and when you took them. Just to let you know, you are releasing these to the public domain. This is great and we are more than happy to accept them, but you may also choose to release the images under the terms of the GFDL. This is a slightly more restrictive license which gives you slightly more rights. If you haven't already read the GFDL, you may want to do so, just so you are aware of your options for future image uploads. I'm not trying to suggest that you shouldn't release the images to the public domain; in most cases, releasing to the public domain makes the most sense. I'm only pointing out that it is not your only option. --Yamla 15:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]