User talk:Erik625

Welcome[edit]

Welcome!

Hello, Erik625, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 03:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you[edit]

Thank you for the welcome Aubrey. I have been though the links below before creating my account and am eager to add my first stub/article to wikipedia. It is about American Flag Rugby. I am making sure to keep it within Wikipedia's rules and am very open to any suggestions or criticisms (no matter how harsh).

Erik625 (talk) 04:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to meet you. Good luck with your first article. I've never heard of American Flag Rugby, so it should be an interesting read. As long as it's notable, which basically means other independent sources are talking about it, it's a good subject. Don't be too worried if someone tags it for a speedy deletion, at first, when you create the article. (And don't have any qualms about putting a {{hangon}} tag on the article if that does happen.) A lot of new articles get tagged by over-zealous (and sometimes not over-zealous) new page patrollers. This is especially true with articles by newer editors, since they don't always look like a typical stub at first. I'd say, though, with your subject, as long as you make sure to include in the article why it's notable, preferably with a link or two to some articles about it, you should be off to a good start. Everything else that might need fixing can be fixed. I wouldn't worry about the policies and rules to the point of letting that stop you from making edits that you feel make the encyclopedia better. After all, that's the spirit behind all the policies. And don't worry about getting chewed out. As long as you make a mistake in good faith, it shouldn't be a big deal -- and you will make mistakes. Everyone does. I sure did at first. That's why we have a policy called don't bite the newcommers. If anyone chews you out, rather than nicely points you to a particular policy you might have missed, let them know that's not okay. And, always, feel free to write me on my talk page with any questions or concerns you might have. Leaving me a message there is the fastest way to get my attention, and I'm always glad to help out. And, please, let me know when your article is up. I'd be glad to go over it and give you any pointers I can. With that, I'll wish you happy editing. Welcome again. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 05:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, one other little thing I should mention. I moved this section to the bottom of your talk page. Usually, each new section goes at the end, just to keep things in chronological order. That makes it easier for folks to see what's going on on your talk page, and eventually, when you've got a lot of conversations and messages, will help you out as well. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 05:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your first article American Flag Rugby[edit]

Erik: Hello. I've taken a look at the article, and first of all, I wanted to say that for a first article, it's spectacular. Don't be concerned about all the text below. I've tried to list everything I noticed that you might want to touch up, and I tried to be as thorough as I could.

Most of the criticisms I have are very minor. Most of the little tweaks are from WP:MOS, the Manual of Style.

First of all, the general rule for capitalization on wikipedia is to capitalize the first letter of the first word only, except where capitals would be required by sentence grammar (i.e. proper nouns). For instance, Rugby union and Rugby sevens follow this title capitalization rule.

Next, as a general rule, the first (and only the first) appearance of the page title should be as early as possible in the first sentence - which you did - but it should also be in boldface. You can put three single quotes around something to bold it. So, '''American Flag Rugby''' would show up as American Flag Rugby.

In the Overview section, since the grade levels aren't in paragraph/prose form, I would use an unnumbered list (also called a bulletted list) for them. You can do that by having them one per line, as you do now, but putting a star (*) at the beginning of each line. That will create a visual cue that it's a list, and make each entry/line stand out. The last sentence in the overview section is a bit awkward. I'd probably set off "while based off of Rugby Union" with commas, and split the sentence into two, with the part beginning "notably because of the..." being made the second sentence (after making it a complete sentence, of course).

In the History section, where you refer to Tom Feury as Tom, after first naming him, I would refer to him as Feury if you don't want to use his full name. Generally, referring so someone by last name is a more formal way of writing, and is common in encyclopedias and journalism.

For the section you called "Footnotes," wikipedia usually calls it "References" by convention. Your article is extremely well referenced, especially for a stub if its size. The only thing to watch out for is the format of the references. For that, I'd check out WP:CITET, the standard citation templates. They were built to make citing references in the wikipedia standard way very easy. You may also want to peruse WP:REFB, the reference guide for beginners. You may also want to put in a few blank lines at the end, before the stub template, so it's set off from the article a bit.

I would also put the {{underconstruction}} tag at the top of the article, while you're actively working on it, and when you're done (even for the day) to pull it off. It exists to mainly let other editors know a revamp is in progress so they don't go in and try to make major changes. It's also good when building an article in the first place with a number of edits, to make sure it doesn't get speedy tagged too fast. When the article isn't actively being updated a lot, it's best to pull that template off completely.

The last thing I noticed is that you didn't sign your comment on the article discussion page (Talk:American Flag Rugby). You should always sign everything you put on a talk or discussion page with four tildes, like this ~~~~, so folks can follow the conversation and know who said what. I added a template {{unsigned}} to that to sign your comment for you, but you may want to go back and sign it yourself.

That's about everything I can see/think of. With those changes, your article would go from very good to better. Of course, more content and information is also always a plus for growing stub articles. I hope my thoughts were helpful, and not too much criticism. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 23:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, also, I think you should consider submitting a fact from this article to the Did You Know project, WP:DYK. The project publicizes new articles by taking properly referenced factoids from them and posting them on the Main Page for six hours, in the "Did you Know..." box. Your article is a good one, and it's very well referenced, so once you get those citations formatted, I think it would be worth it to try a submission. Just come up with a fact that makes an interesting one-liner to submit. ⇔ ∫Æ_S dt @ 00:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]