User talk:JohnAntonGoldsmith

Welcome!

Hello, JohnAntonGoldsmith, 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:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk 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 {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 16:00, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia and academia

Hello, and very nice to have you on the site! I see from your post on WikiProject Linguistics that you've taken an interest in the Morphology (linguistics) - please feel free to be bold and update it. I'm sure it would be a lot better as a result of your insights. As an academic coming to Wikipedia, the main thing you should be aware of is that Wikipedians cite everything. You will find a citation after most sentences, and everything that could be challenged has to be cited per the verifiability policy.

There is also an important difference with the types of citations we are encouraged to use; the use of primary sources is discouraged in many situations on Wikipedia, as drawing comparisons between primary sources is a kind of original research, which is outlawed by our no original research policy. The idea here is that Wikipedia is supposed to follow the sources that already exist, so any comparisons drawn between primary sources should only be sourced to secondary sources which have already made those comparisons.

Other than this things tend to be more or less the same between Wikipedia and academia, so you shouldn't have such a hard time. If you have any questions about anything on Wikipedia, just let me know and I'll do my best to help you out. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 16:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)