Hi, Gerrickbrooke. This is NOT some automated message...it's from a real person. You can talk to me right now. Welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed you've just joined, and wanted to give you a few tips to get you started. If you have any questions, please talk to us. The tips below should help you to get started. Best of luck! Shearonink ( talk) 20:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC) reply

You don't need to read anything - anybody can edit; just go to an article and edit it. Be Bold, but please don't put silly stuff in - it will be removed very quickly, and will annoy people. Ask for help. Talk to us live, or edit this page, put {{helpme}} and describe what help you need. Someone will reply very quickly - usually within a few minutes. Play in your user area. For example, create User:Gerrickbrooke/test. Edit existing articles, before you make your own. Look at some subjects that you know about, and see if you can make them a bit better. For example, Wikipedia:Cleanup#2009. When you're ready, read about Your first article. It should be about something well-known, and it will need references. Good luck with editing; please drop me a line some time on my own talk page. There's lots of information below. Once again, welcome to the fantastic world of Wikipedia! -- Shearonink ( talk) 20:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC) reply Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: edit a page • upload and use images Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Grade sources • Cite sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists • Best articles Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Manual of style Pages needing attention • Peer review The missing manual

Here's that link I mentioned in Help: Referencing for beginners. Shearonink ( talk) 20:05, 7 December 2010 (UTC) reply

You seem to have many of the referencing problems I had. It took a bit of digging around to find out how to do these things. Anyhow, my comments are as follows:

• You should capitalize her last name.
• If you have no external references, you can delete the section. At least delete the specimen reference to 'example.com'
• For your web references you can profitably use the template given at Wikipedia:Citation_templates. Just copy and paste, and fill in the blanks. There's some important stuff in these templates, like access date.
• You use one of your references to stand behind three facts you list. For this you should use a 'named reference'. See, wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(footnotes). This looks complicated but isn't. Essentially you type '<ref name="somename">http: //someref.html</ref> the first time you list it, then simply <ref name="somename" /> in all later uses of that reference to back up a fact. It does start to look messy with the web template, so just remember the simple case.
• In your first reference, you forgot the 'html' thing at the beginning of the reference, so it didn't become a hyperlink.
• If you are going to use the reference method that labels the reference, consider using something more descriptive than "Source 1" "Source 2" etc. Maybe the title of the website and a date?
• When in doubt, the best way to figure out how to do a reference is to find another WP page with a web page reference and see how they did it.

Tkotc ( talk) 05:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC) reply