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Welcome!

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Hello, Ndla, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 click here to ask for help here on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you here shortly. Again, welcome!

Reference Errors on 3 August

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Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:23, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Re: I don't know what they want me to do with "The named reference $1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page)."

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Hello, Ndla. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by Marchjuly (talk) 02:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).[reply]

Welcome!

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Hello, Ndla, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Richard Jencks, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or any other editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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! - Marchjuly (talk) 02:36, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RE:Richard Jencks' article

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Hello, Ndla. You have new messages at Marchjuly's talk page.
Message added 01:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.[reply]

Edits to Richard Jencks

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Hi Ndla,

I've undone this edit and this edit that you recently made to Richard Jencks because they were problematic for both technical (i.e., software) and policy reasons. I tried to discuss these in my reply to your post on my talk page, but I am not sure if you've had the chance to read that yet. So, I am adding here as well. Please respond here if you wish to discuss.

The software program Wikipedia is running on requires edits be made in certain way to be processed properly. When an editor cites a source, they may do so by using what are called reference tags or "ref tag" for short. A reference tag looks like this "<ref>". It may help to think of a "ref tag" as being like a door. Ref tags are important because they tell the software that the information between them is "special", and is not simply another sentence being added to the article. The tag <ref> lets the software know that a reference is coming, so it a sense it is like opening a door for the software to see the reference. The ref tag </ref> tells the software that the door has been closed, so that what comes next should be treated as ordinary text. When you leave out a tag, the software is unable to tell what is going on and will display an appropriate error message like " Cite error: The named reference Ndla was invoked but never defined (see the help page)." Every time you add <ref name="Ndla" />" you are trying to close a door that the software did not know was open; therefore, it does not know what to do. That is why you got that error message and you would've have gotten another one if I had not undone your edit first. I think it would be a good idea to read Help:Referencing for beginners before trying to cite another source just to familiarize yourself with how it is done.

The next problem was with the category you added. Categories allow Wikipedia readers to quickly find related pages with a single click. Categories are just created at random by individual editors; they are discussed by the community and agreed upon via consensus. Please see Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization for a general outline as to what they are about. The problem with your edit was that you tried to add a category Category:Family middle names that does not exist. That is why the link for the category at the bottom of the page was in red; No such category existed so the software could not link to anything. There is a specific procedure to follow if you want to create a new category. I think it would be a good idea if you checked out the FAQ I linked to above before trying to re-add that category.

The policy problems have to do with the actual material you've added. You added middle names and step-grandchildren to the information already being cited by Marin Independent Journal piece. However, the information you're adding is not specifically mentioned at all in that source, so it should not be added. Please understand that I'm not trying to say that information you're adding is not true; I am sure that it is. It is, however, not something that can be verified by reading through the MIJ article. On Wikipedia, verifiability is considered "better" than truth. Information that can be verified by third-party sources such as the MIJ is considered more reliable than primary sources or the opinions or memories of an individual editor. The information you're adding may be indeed true, but no way is being provided for verifying it. You're trying to cite yourself by adding a ref tag, but that means nothing without an actual published source to back it up. If you know of a published source that gives each person's middle name and the names of the step-grandchildren, then it may be possible to add that information to the article. I am more than happy to help you do that if such a source exists.

The other problem is that you have a conflict of interest with the subject matter of the article. Editors with a COI are allowed to the articles they are connected to, but typically these only involve non-controversial things such as spelling/grammar errors, etc. It is better for a editor with a COI to discuss other types of edits on the article's talk page first and leave the editing to other editors; this ensures that the edit made will be in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policy, particularly "Wikipedia Neutral point of view and "Wikipedia:Verifiability". The information regarding the middle names and step-grandchildren is not something, in my opinion, that essentially improves a reader's understanding of Richard Jencks. Knowing that the letter "M" in "Martha M. Barrett" stands for "Magee" may slightly improve the reader's understand of who she is, but the article is not about here. Same goes for adding the step-grandchildren's names. Wikipedia pages of real people who have passed away are not meant to be memorial pages and written like a newspaper obituary. They are not meant to include every single thing about a person's private life. They are meant to include information that is related to their notability which has been published by by non-partisan reliable secondary sources. If you can find such a source, then I would be more than happy to help you add. But, just trying to add that information to what is cited by the MIJ is incorrect according to WP:UNSOURCED; It seems to me that you're combining your own knowledge to the what is actually written in the MIJ article and then stating it all together as a cited fact by the same article. This is something that an editor is not supposed to do according to WP:STICKTOSOURCE. - Marchjuly (talk) 02:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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