User talk:JoelWhy/sandbox

Sources

(I always look at reliability in sourcing first, then move on to text.)

Femina

Does:

Dream Made True!". Femina. 2000-12-12.

refer to

http://www.femina.in/ ?

I can't find anything on that site to indicate reliability, the text isn't available online, and it's unclear if that was user-submitted text or what? Who authored it? See query below for same.

Yes, it's from femina.in (actually, from the magazine, can't say for sure whether it was on the website in 2000.) I've added the author's name, but I don't have much else. If this isn't enough, it's not exactly a critical piece of information, so I can find a substitution for it.JoelWhy (talk) 15:09, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are sure it's from the hard-print magazine, not just the website? If so, the publisher should be italicized Femina magazine, and including a location (is it India or UK) would help verifiability. I found info about them at http://www.femina.in/terms-of-use-new ... If not, does your printout include a URL at the bottom of the page? ~~I could search for it in archive.org.~~ hmmm ... it appears the website is new, and it used to be only a hard-print magazine ??? http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.femina.in/ You could also write to femina.in and ask them to release the copyright for you to upload on the firm website. I am encouraged that they are BBC/The Times (reliable), but they do accept user submissions, so authorship is important, and we need to know if this was a user submission by someone related in some capacity to Murtha (who is Lalitha Shridhar-- is she a Femina reporter, or was that a user submission)? In either case, we need to know attribution of the statements. The text being sourced there is the sort of information that would come from Murtha herself (her father's position on her career and how many hours a day she worked), but unless those facts have been independently stated/verified by a reporter somewhere, the text should attribute it inline to Murtha herself (Murtha said, according to Murtha, etc). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I googled Lalitha Shridhar and discovered she is a journalist, so that's good -- we still may want to attribute those statements (according to ... etc) depending on what the articles say. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:27, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Super Lawyers

What kind of article is this?

Changing the Face of America". Maryland Super Lawyers. 12 Oct 2008.

My concern about such sources is they are sometimes based only on user-submitted information, which would mean we're using her self to source her. Who authored that and where is it published? Where can one track it down for verification? We don't have to have a link, but we do have to give enough info that if someone was determined to find the source for verification, they could.

Maryland Super Lawyers is a magazine; not user submitted content. They evaluate lawyers in different cities and then publish their list of 'Super Lawyers' each year based on a set of criteria which is detailed in the annual issue. They also do profiles on some of the lawyers who make the cut (which is where this info is from.) In any case, I deleted that Super Lawyers citation, but I added another one (with much more info, so I think that should suffice.)JoelWhy (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, since it's a magazine not widely known (compared to, for example, Time or Newsweek), it's helpful in those cases to use the "Location" parameter for location of the publisher-- anything you can do to make it easier for readers to locate the source for verification). Fill out as much as you can in the citation templates (authors date publisher location etc). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Other

~~Similar concerns here:~~

~~Bowden, Michael (1997-12-15). "World's Best Lawyer Website?". Lawyers Weekly USA.~~
It says website, so where is it? Can it be found in archive.org? Is the info user submitted? If it's not a website, where is that published and what is it?

Same here-- what is this source and where can one find it? Book, magazine, website, what ? Location of publisher? We need to have enough info to find the source for verification if we want to.
~~Patton, Georgia (May 2010). "The Gift of Giving". SmartCEO.~~
~~Missing publisher (Ernst and Young):~~

~~Entrepreneur Of The Year 2009 Road to Palm Springs". Retrieved 10 May 2012.~~

Citation inconsistencies everywhere, which confuse. Journals, periodicals and hard-print newspapers should be italicized (see WP:ITALICS), while websites are not. When reading your sources, I can't tell what's hard print and what's a website. For example:

Girl Scouts of Central Maryland Reappoints Sheela Murthy as Chair of Its Board of Directors". Citybizlist. 6 Jan 2012. Retrieved 9 May 2012.

Citybizlist is a website, but it's italicized (shouldn't be). ~~:Same for http://mycity4her.com/about-us/ ... I can't establish reliability for that source-- is that text not available elsewhere? It appears to be a personal website run by one individual.~~

Same for Sheela Murthy, Esq.". Girl Scouts of Central Maryland. Retrieved 9 May 2012. Girl Scouts of Central Maryland is a web link, not a periodical, shouldn't be in italics. Using italics correctly helps reviewers understand what kind of sources are used (hard print vs websites).

You also have inconsistent date formatting in citations. Are you using ISO dates (yyyy-mm-dd) or Day Month year? Pick one.

That's my first pass ... I see other things, but will let you deal with sourcing and citation cleanup first. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Joel, on some of those articles you have clippings of, it occurs to me that you might write to the original publisher, asking for copyright release to put them on the company website. Gotta dash, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming that was done by the people who handle our website. I'll check with them, but they tend to be very by-the-book.JoelWhy (talk) 15:13, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Headings

Moving on to WP:MSH issues before looking at prose. See MSH on when to use uppercase.

3 Early Years of Law Practice
4 Murthy Law Firm
5 Philanthropy
6 Awards and Honors

Starting from the bottom, it should be "Awards and honors"; Philanthropy is fine; unless the name of her firm is the proper noun "Murthy Law Firm", that heading is incorrect-- should be either Murthy law firm, or Murthy private practice, or the actual name of the firm (in which case it would be uppercase), or something more generic like "Law practice"; OK, Early Years of Law Practice should not be all uppercase, and could probably better be shortened to something like "Early career". Take a look at MSH. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:04, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]