User talk:RexItczak

Welcome

Hello, RexItczak and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears you are participating in a class project. If you haven't done so already, we encourage you to go through our training for students. Go through our online training for students

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. Please also read this helpful advice for students.

Before you create an article, make sure you understand what kind of articles are accepted here. Remember: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and while many topics are encyclopedic, some things are not.

Your instructor or professor may wish to set up a course page, and if your class doesn't already have one please tell your instructor about that. It is highly recommended that you place this text: {{Educational assignment}} on the talk page of any articles you are working on as part of your Wikipedia-related course assignment. This will let other editors know this article is a subject of an educational assignment and aid your communication with them.

We hope you like it here and encourage you to stay even after your assignment is finished! John from Idegon (talk) 02:26, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lowell High School (Lowell, Indiana)

Hi Rex. I'm John from Idegon and I'm one of the coordinators of Wikiproject Schools. I see you've chosen the above article to work on for your EDU project. I'm curious as to why. I don't know what the criteria for grading your work is, but a small town school strikes me as an incredibly difficult article to improve much. It's been my past experience that one reason a person might choose a high school article to work on is that they are an alumni of the school. If so, that's ok. Just please realize a couple things. First, what may be an improvement in the eyes of an alumni might not be an improvement in the eyes of Wikipedia. Second, and of greater importance, what you know is totally irrelevant in an encyclopedia. Remember this: We do not write about the subject, we write about what has been written about the subject. This should be true for any article in any encyclopedia, not just Wikipedia. Alas, that isn't always the case. The downside of having over 5 million articles and less than 10,000 active editors.

Not every little thing needs to have a reference, and some very mundane things can be referenced to the school. However, some things absolutely must have reliable independent sources. These include: Statistics, anything about a living person, any "wow" factor (achievement, any claim of first, best, largest, or even smallest or worst). There are guidelines for school articles at WP:SCH/AG. Among things we never include in school articles are: names (except the head of the school and anyone notable enough to have a biography on Wikipedia), individual achievement of either staff or students, class listings (except AP classes and anything unusual enough to be sourced to national or at least out of town media), schedules, grading standards (altho the school's state rating grade can be discussed), and things that do not have any interest beyond the school community (that being staff, students, alumni and the town). Examples of the latter might include listings of plays produced, names of the annual marching band's productions, lyrics of school songs, and listing of clubs (although highest level achievement by competitive groups can be mentioned with independent sourcing). Athletic rivalries can be discussed, but details should be avoided and appropriate secondary sources are needed. In other words, if you want to say Crown Point is Lowell's rival, you will need to attach a source like the Post Tribune or the NWI Times describing a contest between the two as a rivalry. Whom the school considers its rival is simply not relevant.

As you can guess from the above, I'm familiar with Lake County. I grew up in Hobart a loooong time ago. That's how I noticed your involvement with this article. Every school in NW Indiana is on my watchlist. I wish you well and if I can assist you in any way, leave me a note on my talk page. BTW, it's been my experience that the research librarians at the Lake County Library Systems main branch on US 30 in Merrillville are incredibly helpful and happy to work with you via phone or email. I'll leave you some resources on how to edit Wikipedia here which you are of course welcome to share with your classmates and a link to a help forum for new editors. I encourage you to ask questions. Most of us crusty old Wikipedians are actually glad to help when asked. Good luck. John from Idegon (talk) 03:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Adding references can be easy

Hello! Here's how to add references from reliable sources for the content you add to Wikipedia. This helps maintain the Wikipedia policy of verifiability.

Adding well formatted references is actually quite easy:

While editing any article or a wikipage, on the top of the edit window you will see a toolbar which says "Cite". Click on it.
Then click on "Templates".
Choose the most appropriate template and fill in as many details as you can. This will add a well formatted reference that is helpful in case the web URL (or "website link") becomes inactive in the future.
Click on Preview when you're done filling out the 'Cite (web/news/book/journal)' to make sure that the reference is correct.
Click on Insert to insert the reference into your editing window content.
Click on Show preview to Preview all your editing changes.

Before clicking on Save page, check that a References header ==References== is near the end of the article.
And check that {{Reflist}} is directly underneath that header.

7. Click on Save page. ...and you've just added a complete reference to a Wikipedia article.

You can read more about this on Help:Edit toolbar or see this video File:RefTools.ogv.
Hope this helps, --John from Idegon (talk) 03:20, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To use this message, place {{subst:User:Shearonink/ref}} on User:talk pages when needed.

Welcome to Wikipedia: check out the Teahouse!

Hello! RexItczak, you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us! John from Idegon (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]