User talk:BrendonPorter

Welcome!

Hello, BrendonPorter, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Nikkimaria (talk) 01:40, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Gender Inequality of Education in Saudi Arabia

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A tag has been placed on Gender Inequality of Education in Saudi Arabia requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article or image appears to be a clear copyright infringement. This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/saudiarabia0408/4.htm. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website or image but have permission from that owner, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. SFK2 (talk) 09:05, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Assignments and copyvio

Your post on the talk page of the gender equality page gives off the impression that you're editing as part of a student assignment. If so, then I'd like to welcome you to Wikipedia and give you a point in the basic direction of Wikipedia:School and university projects. This is the page for student projects and while it is set up partially for educators to set the entry up, it's also a very invaluable resource in general. Another place I'd recommend would be the various WikiProjects that brush upon the subjects you're trying to write about, both Wikipedia:WikiProject Saudi Arabia and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies. These are both excellent places to start asking around for help, as the users on these pages will likely be able to point out good places for sources and the like.

The most pressing issue is that of copyright violations. Just like in school, copying material directly from another source is not acceptable on Wikipedia. You can use some quotes here and there as long as you source the material and indicate that it's a quote, but by large the material should be written in your own words in a neutral and encyclopedic point of view. (WP:NPOV, Wikipedia:Writing better articles) Not only is this because you're posting someone else's work without their permission (the main reason) but in many instances the work that's copied is written with a specific point of view. For instance, someone who is a persimmon advocate can write an excellent article about the history of persimmons but the author's personal bias will show through. This doesn't mean that the person is bad or the work is invalid because of their bias, but it isn't appropriate for an encyclopedic article. Even if the person gives up all rights to their content as fair use, it should still be re-written. Even if you cite the work as belonging to a specific author, copyvio is still a big no-no on Wikipedia. Basically this is the equivalent of you copying multiple passages from a book and giving it to your professor as if it's your own work.

Oh- another thing is that you need to be careful that when you're writing a new article, that it expands on the subject matter enough to merit a new article. Sometimes something is already covered well enough at a pre-existing entry to where a new article isn't entirely necessary. The other thing to beware of is that the article doesn't read like a personal essay that you'd turn in for class. This is usually one of the biggest problems many new editors face, so it can be hard to adapt at times.

But no big harm done. I would recommend that your professor look into signing up with our school page and listing it, since not only can this help alert people that you're writing something for a project, but it can also help give you and any others working on the project some much needed guidance. I'll go and post in some of the various WikiProjects, alerting them that you could use some help. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you've asked for help at gender equality saying you're a student. I'm going to post some on the basic WikiProjects as well. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:31, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've posted in two WikiProjects. I see that you do have a page here for your group, which is excellent. I'll also post at Wikipedia:Teahouse for you. You can also request a mentor at Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area as well. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:42, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This topic is already somewhat covered at Women's_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia#Education, so I'd recommend working on expanding from there. You can always create a page in your userspace to start off with, which I recommend. I've posted about this on your class's page. Basically put, working in the userspace will allow you more time to edit without fear of it getting insta-deleted. Hmm... since there are some other pages on women's education such as Women's education in Pakistan, you could probably create it at User:BrendonPorter/Women's education in Saudi Arabia. I'd recommend this title, as it would enable you to write about the basics of the education of females in Saudi Arabia while also allowing you to write about the inequality. Hope this helps! Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's also some info at Education_in_Saudi_Arabia#Girls.27_and_women.27s_education. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help get you started

Hi BrendonPorter. I saw that Tokyogirl79 mentioned that you might be interested in having a mentor while you learn the ropes here. I'm happy to help out with the basics and I can point you to folks who know more than I do when you start getting beyond the basics. There are also several experienced editors who have more formal mentorships; if you've prefer something along those lines I can point you to a list of those users. I'll keep an eye on your page here, but the most certain way to reach me is to put a "shout out" in your reply, which looks like this: [[User:Lesser Cartographies|LC]] (I did exactly that for you at the beginning of this paragraph). Best, Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lesser YES!

Hi LC Right now I am trying to put together the body of an article without it being plagiarized. I have some really good sources that I want to add, and add them correctly into my article. I have some good guidelines as to how to not plagiarize, but if you have any other help I would greatly appreciate it. Also, I would like for someone and or multiple people to in a sense proof read the article before it get published on the main space. This way I can avoid the article being taken down for any reason. Do you know if this is something an editor does, or is it the mentor, or both? Thank you for your help and time into this experience with me.BrendonPorter (talk) 17:27, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, Brendon. Plagiarism is something we take very seriously around here, so I'm glad to hear you're taking extra care to make sure it's not a problem. I'd be happy to review your article before you publish it in mainspace. I do want to mention, though, writing a high-quality article (and why would you want to bother writing anything else?) takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you're not a professional writer. Think of this more as a semester-long project rather than something you can knock out in a weekend.

The first thing I'd like you to do is read about the criteria for good articles and featured articles. If you set out to write an article that's just barely good enough to not be deleted, that's probably where you'll end up. If you set your sights higher, you might not get to an FA but you'll have an article you can be proud of (and you'll avoid all of the newbie mistakes, too). If you don't mind a bit of reading, head over to WP:FACR and scroll down to "Advice from Wikipedians". That's a great collection of essays, both on how to write well and how to write a terrific article. I'm not going to insist you read them all, but the more of that material you're able to internalize the easier time you'll have here.

The second thing I'd like you to do is create a page for the draft article and list all of the sources you want to use. Just click here and start editing: User:BrendonPorter/Women's education in Saudi Arabia. These need to be sources that you have access to. If there's a particular journal article or news story that you know exists but you can't lay hands on, make a request for the item at WP:RX.

Once you've set down the initial list of sources and I've gone through and made sure there aren't any problems, we can start discussing the overall layout of the article.

Best,

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 18:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvio

Hey, I saw that someone tagged your article at Women's education in Saudi Arabia as copyvio, but they didn't say where it was copied from. You really need to be careful of copyvio, as it can cause instant deletion as a whole. I'll try to clean up what I can, but please be careful of this in the future, as repeated added copyvio can get you banned from Wikipedia. I know that you're new and that this is for an assignment, which is all the more reason to be careful of stuff like that because instructors have a way of checking to see if anything is directly copied from another source. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:03, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Template talk:Wikipedia Assignment Initial Contribution

Template talk:Wikipedia Assignment Initial Contribution, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template talk:Wikipedia Assignment Initial Contribution and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Template talk:Wikipedia Assignment Initial Contribution during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:35, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]