User talk:Gandydancer/Archive 2

WikiProject Editor Retention

Sorry for the delay in responding at the subproject talk page. Like I said there just now, things have been a bit hectic trying to deal with the ArbCom, the editor who retired during it, and a proposed idea I have about developing some of the more useful material related to the subject of that ArbCom. Anyway, if you look at the WP:911 talk page, you will see I did, finally get around to responding. Sorry again for the delay. John Carter (talk) 14:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Angelou reviews

Hi Gandydancer, thought you might be interested, since you peer reviewed Maya Angelou: it and List of Maya Angelou works are up for FAC and FLC currently. I inform you because both haven't received the reviews they need as of yet. Could you go to both--Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Maya Angelou works/archive1 and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Maya Angelou/archive1‎--and do what you can? It would be muchly appreciated. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 21:23, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Occupy movement

I understand that you are an active editor on the above article. I would be grateful if you could take a look at an addition made today ([1]), which in my view is a wholly inappropriate and undue. I have already reverted the addition twice. Thanks.Rangoon11 (talk) 17:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I would have thought that perhaps a note on the talk page and/or a note on the talk page of the editor that was involved would have been appropriate before a message on my talk page. As it was, this matter was handled by a third editor within minutes. Gandydancer (talk) 14:34, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Message

Hello. You have a new message at Anna Frodesiak's talk page. 23:57, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

The Twin Lakes are loaded with sharks.

I can't seem to access the page. I get a "time-out" message. I tried to view other images, but they are blocked for me because of my location. The site in general, however, is not blocked. I don't know about the copyright status of the images, and can't find the page telling about it. But, it's a US federal government site, so maybe they are okay to upload to Wikicommons. Try asking at Try asking at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, or http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikimedia-commons or http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#wikipedia-en-help Good luck. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:09, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Message

Hello. You have a new message at Anna Frodesiak's talk page. 02:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

AN/I notice

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Beagel (talk) 05:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Blue moon

I do not understand why you think that a year cannot have 13 full moons, since you did not explain yourself. Given that there are more than 12 lunations in a year, it seems obvious that some years will have 13 full moons. Any month (except most Februarys) that has a full moon on the first of the month will have a second full moon, like this month did. Some months that have a full moon on the second of the month will have a second full moon. I believe that a year in which one month has two full moons will have 13 full moons. This year has 13 full moons, and so did 2009, for two recent examples. I which you had checked your facts before editing. I also wish you had respected my {{In use}} template, and posted a message on my Talk page instead of editing. Your edit cost me about 10 minutes work.—Finell 03:28, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, your template was not up when I did my edit - it was not up again till I was done so I had no way to know that you were again working on the article. As for my edit, I did not say that a year cannot have 13 full moons. I said that it is not possible for most years to have 13 full moons. I won't delete it again but the math is not at all hard: A lunar month is about 29.5 days long and a calendar month is about 30.5 days, so actually a year with 13 full moons only happens about every 2 and 1/2 years because in each year only about 12 days are "saved up" for the next blue moon (when using that method to calculate it). Gandydancer (talk) 04:34, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for responding. The passage you deleted dealt with the alternate definition of blue moon, which is the second moon in a month. Does that occur more frequently? If not, you are right. Your math does look right. As for the {{In use}}, if you look at your diff you will see that it was on the article when you edited it.—Finell 16:11, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when I check the time I see that my edit is ten minutes later than the time you put the notice up. It took me that long to make my edit since I did the math a couple of times to be sure I was correct. I see that you refuse to change your edit even though you now realize that it would not be possible to have a blue moon occur once a year, on average. Gandydancer (talk) 01:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

BP

Hi. Just to be clear, are you actually disagreeing that the list of undue weight items should be tidied up, or were you just objecting to what you (unfairly, I think) took as a violation of procedure? So far, no one actually seems to have disagreed that any item on the list would improve the article, they just have "other" issues? --BozMo talk 14:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way do the quantities need updating at Oil_spills#Largest_oil_spills? They look a bit small for DW?

I prefer to keep the discussion on the BP talk page. Gandydancer (talk) 11:46, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

BP mediation

Hi there, Did you happen to see the section at BP talk "mediation"? The group is being asked to respond as to whether they are willing to participate. Your name was mentioned. petrarchan47tc 22:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I will respond. Gandydancer (talk) 22:56, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

BP History

Hi Gandydancer, I saw that you spent some time working on improvements to the BP History section and when I was reading through it I noticed a couple of things that you could also update to improve it, if you're interested:

The first item I noticed is a typo in the 2010 to present subsection: "Guld of Mexico"

The second is repetition of the agreement to sell the Carson refinery, also in that subsection. With regard to this, the first instance is incorrect in that it says the refinery was sold. An agreement has been reached to sell it, but the company hasn't actually sold it yet. I'll quote here the full text with the two mentions of the refinery:

In August 2012, BP sold its Carson Refinery in southern California to Tesoro and Sunray and Hemphill gas processing plants in Texas, together with their associated gas gathering system, to Eagle Rock Energy Partners. In September 2012, BP agreed to sell the Guld of Mexico located Marlin, Dorado, King, Horn Mountain, and Holstein fields as also its stake in non-operated Diana Hoover and Ram Powell fields to Plains Exploration & Production for $5.55 billion. In August 2012, BP announced it had reached an agreement to sell its Carson refinery and related assets. The company also plans to sell its Texas City refinery in 2012. In the United Kingdom, BP agreed to sell its liquefied petroleum gas distribution business to DCC.

Just a couple of suggestions if you're working on cleaning up the History section some more. Thanks. Arturo at BP (talk) 14:30, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Arrests

It seems POV to me to have a one sentence summary of a day of protests, but to single out the number of arrests as the only thing worth noting. A couple of editors keep edit warring it in. B^e——C_ritical 05:53, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey there Be! Long time no see. Hope all is well with you. :) Gandydancer (talk) 19:29, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, doing great, just busy over the summer. Hope your sister's doing well too! B^e——C_ritical 15:11, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Removal of my post

I wonder why you removed my Talk page post on Occupy Wall Street. Could you explain please.(olive (talk) 15:39, 30 September 2012 (UTC))

Sorry - it was some sort of edit conflict glitch and not intentional. I replied on the talk page as well. Gandydancer (talk) 19:27, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

No worries, thanks. It did take me by surprise. I kept reading my post to see if I'd said something offensive:O) (olive (talk) 15:52, 2 October 2012 (UTC))

Notice of Discussion at WP:ANI

Already done: Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive818#Edit warring regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Trackinfo (talk) 20:19, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

ALEC Task Forces

Your most recent edit cites Common Cause as a source for ALEC Task Forces. That could also be self-sourced from the ALEC website, thus not needing to source to an organization that is suing ALEC. Looking does lead to a little more curiosity. The Public Safety and Elections Task Force is not mentioned on that page (a secondary link off the home page). You have do search to find mention of it in less public meeting notes. Are they hiding the existence of the committee? They aren't doing a very good job, its not that big of a secret. Also, the task forces are not numbered there. And the one you called 6) Telecommunications and Information Technology is called a simpler Communications and Technology on their website. Later on, your added content might deviate from the ALEC public presentation. So I think all of these factors can be incorporated, it will just take a little reworking. I'll let you have first crack at it. Trackinfo (talk) 23:18, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

No, please go ahead and redo what I did since you have such a good grasp of all the info. It would be good to keep all the references. Right now I am reading this: [2] Gandydancer (talk) 23:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Interesting

Curious reference to Dualus is curious. Centrify (f / k / a FCAYS) (talk) (contribs) 17:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it was almost enough to make me want to go back and review all that old stuff... You know Factchecker, both sides think we are dopes - the "insiders" and the right-wingers. (Dualus may have got the boot for having socks...) BTW, if you want to read something really funny, read the Conservative version of Wikipedia's OWS article. LOL Gandydancer (talk) 18:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Is that on "Conservapedia"? I checked that site out once, and found it... well, let's just say, "interesting". Sorry I haven't been more proactive on the OWS article, especially after you prodded me with suggestions. I guess I never really feel inspired to edit WP until I see something that seems broken. A bad habit, most likely. But I hold out hope that it can be useful to try to sort out the dueling banjos and get people on the same page, or at least playing the same song ... :) Centrify (f / k / a FCAYS) (talk) (contribs) 21:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Hey-- here's how Dualus came up, just FTR: Gandy suggested (2x) I go read the 99 Declaration talk pages for context on our convo over at OWS Talk; I went there -> archives -> "convo with michael pollok" (or something). That's all. And I don't think you guys are dopes at all. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the power dynamics of the whole thing, but just because something feels Not Quite Right™ doesn't mean I'm possessed with contempt! I actually again really appreciate the way y'all helped out. Thanks. --Diceytroop (talk) 21:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Duluth, Minnesota (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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Jay Cooke State Park (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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No offense meant

Sorry if it sounded like I was coming down on you at WoW. Not my intention.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  17:35, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I have no respect or desire to speak privately with an editor that goes out of their way to be a ******* *******. Gandydancer (talk) 17:55, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Good day to you too sir. Say hi to Aunt Rose.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  18:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

LGR, there's nothing productive you can accomplish with a two-faced apology. Binksternet (talk) 20:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

With all due respect, the apology was sincere. Go troll elsewhere.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  21:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

To me, a "sincere" apology is one that is somewhat longer than momentary. Binksternet (talk) 21:29, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Rosetta, you are the sort of editor that takes all the fun out of editing here. Please go bother other people. Bink, save the last tango for me! Gandydancer (talk) 21:39, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

I had trouble tying the fine to any specific litigation, but it does seem this should go somewhere. I just can't figure out where. And to be fair, if it's not litigation it shouldn't go in the Deepwater Horizon litigation article either, right?— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi there Vchimpanzee! The litigation seems to be the people that are suing BP whereas the investigation has been done by the gov't. That is the section at the bottom of the page. I put some info down there. Gandydancer (talk) 20:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I see. Looks good. I fixed the date to match how it has been done before.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe my addition works in the other article.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Archiving

Please read-up on WP:Archiving, the conversations on the Talk:Cracker Barrel page were over 60 days old. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 20:31, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, according to WP guidelines, "it is customary to periodically archive old discussions on a talk page when that page becomes too large". The CB page has not become too large and there is no good reason to blank the page. I will restore the talk page. Gandydancer (talk) 21:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

All the material can still be found at Talk:Cracker Barrel/Archive 2. There is no value in cluttering the primary talk page with discussions that are no longer active. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

It is best to follow usual archiving customs as done on other article talk pages. I note that you work on many fast food articles and it could appear to some that you may have a COI and want to hide the CB talk page because it contains a considerable amount of discussion that could be seen as unfavorable for the image of CB. Gandydancer (talk) 22:13, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I work on very few fast food articles, and do not work in the food services industry. It is customary to archive old discussions that are no longer active. If you have concerns, I suggest you bring it up at WT:ARCHIVE or at WP:ANI. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not note the name change and thought that I was still speaking with Jerem43, who does work exclusively and extensively on fast food articles. Sad to say, but it seems that soon I may need to add corporations to my list of articles that I need not bother to work on. C'est la vie. Gandydancer (talk) 22:43, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The information was not hidden, and as Barek stated it is available for review on the archive page. As the discussions were all inactive, I chose to archive them to un-clutter the talk page. Nothing has been deleted or hidden. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 04:19, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh sure. ;-) Gandydancer (talk) 14:55, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Alternative medicine

Agree the sentiment, Gandydancer, and can you give sources for "more than one in four U.S. hospitals offer alternative and complementary therapies...."?[[3]] What would Aunt Rose have done? Qexigator (talk) 00:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

--PS This [[4]] may explain something?Qexigator (talk) 01:04, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure, it is from the existing article. [5] Gandydancer (talk) 14:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, now seen it (report by CBS news, July 20, 2006) [6] It refers to a "survey, conducted and published by the American Hospital Association every two years", so has there been an update for sourcing, which clarifies the information and presenation of the article? I see at [7] "AHA Annual Survey Database™ is recognized as a principle reference database on United States hospitals. The primary data source is the American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals (conducted each year since 1946). Secondary sources include information from the AHA business and membership database, accrediting organizations, and United States Census Bureau identifiers."... and at [8] this snippet AHA Survey on Drug Shortages, July 2011 "With drug shortages becoming increasingly frequent, the American Hospital Association (AHA) surveyed its members to find out how the shortages have impacted day-to-day patient care. The AHA survey of 820 hospitals revealed that almost 100 percent of hospitals reported a shortage in the last six months and nearly half of the hospitals reported 21 or more drug shortages." So there may be a motivation for mainstream to disparage alternative in the competition for public funding raging in USA and elsewhere too, and could be some editors (all in good faith) are unwittingly influenced by that major controversy throughout that great republic? Qexigator (talk) 17:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have my own ideas of why some editors are hell bent on painting all of CAM with one brush and a very evil one at that. Everybody in my circle of friends uses it from time to time--with the same amount of skepticism that we hold for mainstream medicine. A lot of mainstream meds and treatments are a waste of time and money too, and some are pretty dangerous as well. I could give plenty of examples, but for a recent one, I have been working on the New England Compounding Center meningitis outbreak article and here is a quote from a recent BJM article:

Fungal contamination at NECC has sickened more than 400 patients and killed at least 29. But it's important to note that many patients received these sterile injections for back and joint pain, a procedure that lacks high-quality evidence of efficacy.4,5 These problems cannot be laid entirely at the feet of compounders when clinicians persist in clinical practices despite weak evidence of efficacy. The Cochrane review is here: [9] .

For years I have urged that the article use the Cochrane definition. It is very troubling that a bunch of wikipedia editors get so full of themselves that they think they are smarter than top professionals in the field of medicine. But I have been watching that article long enough to know that there is a circle of editors that own the article and will sit by and let any sort of crap in the article as long as it is a critcism of alt med. I've given up any attempts to edit there as it is a total waste of energy. This Cochrane source is great! [10] This study was helpful as well. [11] Gandydancer (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

About info. and links, thanks. About mainstream, agreed. About editors, confirms my recent experience. About motivation, perhaps more than one. About favourite books from the great republic, Arrowsmith (novel) and Elmer Gantry. Thanks for refreshing sanity. Qexigator (talk) 17:43, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Yup. I've read Arrowsmith but not Elmer Gantry. Of course I've heard the name numerous times but had no idea what it was about. Now I'm curious... Gandydancer (talk) 17:53, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

...and as a bonus it was made into a great movie Elmer Gantry (film) with Burt Lancaster as Elmer.Qexigator (talk) 18:24, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I looked it up on Wikipedia :-) and then I did have a vague memory of the great job that Burt Lancaster did with the preacher role, so I must have seen the film. But that's all I remember is him preaching... I'm not sure how that brings it into our current discussion...? But our brains are very weird, no doubt about that. Years ago I was involved in the global warming debate both here and on another forum. When I proved that a denier had been word for word quoting his denials from a little known blog, rather than admit the obvious truth the posters that had been supporting him said that it was somehow possible that his words were similar (actually exactly the same) as the site that I provided. Same thing with religion, and the Mormon church is a good example. Though any of the "born agains" are the same thing. Quite by accident I was drawn to the cognitive dissonance article, which enters into our discussion as well. Gandydancer (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

---The medical researcher and the preacher had come to mind when looking at the Wallace Sampson article (Talk:Wallace Sampson). Cognitive dissonance-- similarly drawn to the article by accident a while back, almost a re-telling of the second Genesis story, a deep-rooted tendency universally inherited, needing the exercise of the imaginative intuition to reach beyond pretense or persistent error such as denialism, or a denialism which could be hiding in positivism. Qexigator (talk) 20:54, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Haha Q, and I doubt you are still watching my talk page, but... I came here today for a new discussion (below) and took the time to read some of my old stuff. I must admit that when I read your post I was sorta, "huh???". I think I don't have one drop of philosopher's blood in my body. All I could think when I read your post was of an old Steve Martin piece where he explains Socrates, or as he calls him, "Soc-rates". Or maybe it was Plato...or not. At any rate, my brain will just not take those twists and turns to follow that sort of argument/discussion. I loved my college chemistry courses, but philosophy? - I had no idea what they were talking about. Not that your post is necessarily philosophical, it just reminds me...I guess? :-) Gandydancer (talk) 17:42, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello again. Now you mention it, Philosophy of chemistry / Chemistry of philosophy-- could be topics with typical instances of "Induced-compliance paradigm" per Cognitive dissonance. Perhaps, philosophically considered (per the likes of Pla-to and Soc-rates), and methodically observed (per the likes of Dal-ton), cog.dis. is pandemic as suggested by the saying "(twice?) as many opinions as there are people". John Dalton seems to have been something of a philosopher-chemist: "In 1794, shortly after his arrival in Manchester, Dalton was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society", and his eyeball has attained posthumous fame in our lifetime. Qexigator (talk) 19:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Smoke gets in your eyes

Re cigar smoke and fat cats: how about supporting Wikipedia's one and only cigar-smoking fat fish for adminship? darwinbish ^BITE 21:53, 28 November 2012 (UTC).

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IP at the Gender role article

Since the IP currently thinks that you and I are one and the same, you might want to see this. 220.255.2.166 (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope that this does not turn out to be too difficult... Gandydancer (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

GM controversies edit

howdy!

you recently deleted the statement "Unlike many other studies, this work separated the yield contribution of the engineered gene from that of the many naturally occurring yield genes in crops, but it did not take into account the closer row-spacing that herbicide-resistant crops permit" from the article, with the comment that it is not true. I added that comment... can you please tell me where in the article you find that they do take row spacing into account? http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf

They do not. Example - here is an article that they discuss as follows: "One study not included in the USDA report deserves special mention, however, because it controlled for variables other than the GT gene that could affect yield. This research shows that when comparing several sets of GT and non-GT NI varieties, those with GT yielded about 5 percent less than conventional NI varieties (Elmore et al. 2001). The study concluded that the presence of the glyphosate tolerance gene was responsible for the yield reduction—an effect called yield drag. This work, conducted over a two-year period at several sites using several NI varieties and their counterparts, is probably among the best available for determining the effect of the GT gene on yield. Because special efforts were made to keep fields weed-free (hand weeding in addition to herbicides), these experiments do not necessarily reveal how different varieties of soybeans would respond to typical herbicide treatments on commercial farms." (page 15)

I added the emphasis. If you look at the Elmore study, you will see that the investigators spaced all experimental versions evenly http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=agronomyfacpub In other words, they exactly did not use these crops as they are actually employed by farmers. For farmers, the biggest benefit of RR crops is the closer row spacing it lets them use so this study doesn't really tell the story. but it is useful for UCS so of course they emphasize this study...

Which leads to my next topic. I debated whether to include this study at all in the article. The UCS is biased against GM - from their website (http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/): "Genetic engineering in agriculture has failed to deliver on many of its promised benefits, and has produced some serious unintended consequences. Yet the USDA seems determined to regulate GMOs as little as possible." Their website reads like Greenpeace. so maybe we should just delete this whole paragraph.

So what do you think?Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! It is good to hear from you as I have been following your edits for some time. Looking at the article page I find that you have made over 300 edits in about 3 months while I have made only 17 in about 3 years. So clearly, you are much more familiar with the information and more up to date than I am. It has been my impression that we are on different sides of the opinion fence but that your edits are well sourced and fair. Please give me some time to respond. Gandydancer (talk) 00:06, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, I've had a little time and yes, the UCS is anti nuke and anti GMO, but that does not necessarily mean that they are biased. I'm anti nuke and undecided about GMOs, but that does not necessarily mean that I an unable to be fair in my editing. They state , "the best data (which were not included in previous widely cited reviews on yield) show that transgenic herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn have not increased operational yields, whether on a per-acre or national basis, compared to conventional methods that rely on other available herbicides." It really does not matter if the rows are close or far apart, it's the yield per acre that matters. Gandydancer (talk) 01:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Cognitive dissonance

Thanks for the explanation on the talk page about the parameters regarding peer-reviewed journals. Yobi831 (talk) 16:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Good to hear from you and I would enjoy sharing impressions of Wikipedia. Gandydancer (talk) 19:28, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Heads up

Hello, Gandydancer. You have new messages at Fuhghettaboutit's talk page. --13:24, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Help with references

For example, if I wanted to post somewhere a link to my talk page, I would type [[User talk:Fuhghettaboutit]], which would then appear when I saved as User talk:Fuhghettaboutit. I did look at your contributions a bit, and your talk page, but didn't see where this issue came up. Anyway, without that context, you might find some general help by looking at Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners. There are also other automated tools to be explored at Help:Citation tools. Best regards.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:20, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Could I use these?

• DOI Wikipedia reference generator: Converts a digital object identifier (DOI) into {{cite journal}}.
• New York Times Wikipedia reference generator: Converts a NYT URL into a {{cite news}}.
• Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books: Converts a Google Books URL into {{cite book}}. Gandydancer (talk) 02:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

You might use all three, but the problem comes up when you are inserting something you don't really understand, so you don't tailor it and thus you get these artifacts like "auto generated title" and the like. These programs can be very useful and time savers, but their output almost always requires tweaking because they can't pass a Turing test. I think helping you understand citing and citation templates would help, and so I am going to try to simplify and break it down below in short bites. Feel free to ask as many follow-up questions as you'd like:

• Many html tags work in this form: <some command> some text being formatted by that tag and then to end it, the same thing again but with a forward slash ("/") before it (</same command>)

• Example: if you want to make something boldface in html, the command is simply a "b" and so you would type <b>text you want boldfaced</b>. Remember that format < > then </ > with the command in between the code.

• For footnoted citations the command is "ref" and anything you want to appear in the References section at the bottom of a page is placed in the text between the ref tags, using the grammar <ref>text></ref>. So, if you wanted to say, cite to "Hamlet", Act 1, Scene 1, you would place in the text where you wanted to cite to it <ref>Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1</ref>

• Example: if you typed "Horatio's ghost says "Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!"<ref>Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1</ref>", when you save it will appear like this:

  Horatio's ghost says "Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!"^[1]

  ==References==

  1. ^ Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.

• Citation templates just supply code to place between the ref tags so that citations format consistently; they supply punctuation, formatting like italics and the ordering of the information automatically. Again, they go between the ref tags (<ref> here </ref>), just like something as simple as "Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1."
• Templates are a piece of code that always start with {{ and end with }} The citation templates are just paint by numbers: go to the template page grab the text and fill in the parameters. Each part is separated by a pipe ("|") and is something to fill in after an equal sign. So, if you see for example the paramter |year=, you just need to supply the relevant year for your citation.

• Example: {{cite book}} (click on that to copy and paste the code) has many parameters one can use but most you won't need; just use what you want and delete or leave parameters you don't use blank. Typical information to supply is title, author's first name and last name, page number, publisher, maybe location, and isbn if there is one. So for Hamlet, you might use {{cite book|title=Hamlet|first=William|last=Shakespeare|publisher=Avon Press|location=Stratford|year=1609}} <--That's what you would place between the ref tags. That would format like this:

              Shakespeare, William (1609). Hamlet. Stratford: Avon Press.

  and if between ref tags, would appear in the references section.

• Example: {{cite news}} is the same thing. Click on the template, copy and paste the code between the ref tags, fill in the parameters you wish to use, delete or leave blank others, e.g., {{cite news|newspaper=The New York Times|title=Hamlet is a Great Play|last=Friedman|first=Thomas|date=December 10, 2012}} which formats like this:

              Friedman, Thomas (December 10, 2012). "Hamlet is a Great Play". The New York Times.

  and if placed between ref tags, would appear in the references section.

• Okay, let's put it all together. You want to use the citation template cite book for Hamlet and make that a reference. Add where you want the footnote to appear in the text:

  <ref>{{cite book|title=Hamlet|first=William|last=Shakespeare|publisher=Avon Press|location=Stratford|year=1609}}</ref>

Does that help at all?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:58, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

• Gandydancer, you can use ProveIt which is easily enabled under Preferences ==> Gadgets (Editing section). I believe that should help you also and it is very easy to use.
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 03:04, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The NYTimes helper looks like a good one for me and I'm going to try the Google books helper tool as well. I am trying this one:

<ref>{{Citation
 | url = http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/November/12-ag-1369.html
 | accessdate = 2012-12-12
}}</ref>

Is this all I'd have to do? The best way for me to learn this is to try it a few times. I (mostly) wrote the Jay Cooke State Park article and tried to enter my MN geology book as a source but was unable to figure it out, so I'd like to try that. Would it be OK if I'd go to your talk page for help in the future?

Thanks for your patient help so far. Gandydancer (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, anytime. I can't guarantee I will get to your question immediately of course--especially lately I have been somewhat inactive, but we can have a slow motion conversation. Did you read over my explanation at the Teahouse and could you make sense of it? It's fine if it was too much. The above reference format you ask about (which I've placed in a certain type of tag so it can be seen in saved mode) is not a good citation because it does not provide most of the basic identifying material one would expect, that leads to easy verification. A web citation should ideally provide the name of the publisher, the title of whatever it is, the author and the date of the source. Sometimes not all of these are available, but a naked link with an access date is not enough information; a person cannot look at that citation and immediately know what it is and, in fact, the citation template you used will break because the field for "title=" must be supplied, but is missing. You could use {{citation}} or {{cite web}} here. This would be the format I would use, which you can copy and paste:

<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/November/12-ag-1369.html|title=BP Exploration and Production Inc. Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Manslaughter, Environmental Crimes and Obstruction of Congress Surrounding Deepwater Horizon Incident|publisher=U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs|date=November 15, 2012|accessdate=December 12, 2012}}</ref>

The above is the compacted citation format (no spacing), but it is exactly the same as:

<ref>{{cite web
 |url=http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/November/12-ag-1369.html
 |title=BP Exploration and Production Inc. Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Manslaughter, Environmental Crimes and Obstruction of Congress Surrounding Deepwater Horizon Incident
 |publisher=U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
 |date=November 15, 2012
 |accessdate=December 12, 2012
}}</ref>

<ref>{{cite web
 |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/12/mps-insecticide-regulators-bees
 |title="Insecticide regulators ignoring risk to bees, say MPs"
 |publisher=''The Guardian''
 |city of publication=
 |byline=Damian Carrington
 |date=December 12, 2012
 |accessdate=December 15, 2012
}}</ref>

I found this: Here is an easy way to cite newspaper sources. Simply copy and paste the following immediately after what you want to reference:[12]

The Google text book tool worked perfectly! [13]

I didn't even know that page existed (the citation template page for beginners). Neat. The above citation you added is close but there are a few issues. First, citation templates automatically supply formatting. They automatically places quotation marks around title, for example, so you need to remove them from what you added because now they will appear twice--the title will appear like this if you keep them in: ""Insecticide regulators ignoring risk to bees, say MPs"".

The second thing is that this is a newspaper citation, not a web only source, so it's better to use {{cite news}} since it supplies the formatting specific to newspapers (so the title of the newspaper, which would go next to "newspaper=" rather than "publisher=" will automatically take italics.)

The third is that you have used a field that does not exist. Neither cite news nor cite web has a field for "byline=" so the template will just ignore that and there will be no display of the author. To display the author you can use two different formats (choose one): "author=NAME", or split it into last name, first name, using: "last=LAST NAME" and "first=FIRST NAME". Also, though you kept it empty, so it would not affect the output, there is no field for "city of publication" (though there is one for "location=").

So, putting it all together:

<ref>{{cite news
 |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/12/mps-insecticide-regulators-bees
 |title=Insecticide regulators ignoring risk to bees, say MPs
 |newspaper=The Guardian
 |last=Carrington
 |first=Damian
 |date=December 12, 2012
 |accessdate=December 15, 2012
}}</ref>

which will format in the reference section as

1. ^ Carrington, Damian (December 12, 2012). "Insecticide regulators ignoring risk to bees, say MPs". The Guardian. Retrieved December 15, 2012.

Finally, I use the Google Books tool (actually the isbn field was fixed at my prompting) but it does have some problems you should be aware of. First, very minor but it automatically supplies an accessdate but you should not supply an accessdate for a paper source so remove that (accessdate is for things that might change; a specific publication run of a book never changes). Second, it often doesn't supply a page number or gets it wrong when it does, so you should supply the information for that field--a page number is crucial for verification, and there's some other issues with it I won't get into. Hope this helps.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:01, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:01, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	At least one editor in the Wikipedia Education Program identified you specifically as being a helpful editor! Thanks for being so welcoming to a newbie! JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 18 December 2012 (UTC)