Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 4 (section)

== Just Some Ideas ==

I work as a picturedesk employee for ZUMA Press. My job entails editing, color correcting, and captioning images. Most of my work is of archival in nature, or more easily put 'old news'. I recieve the images in 35mm slide format from one of our 600 or so photograhers, and I get to work on the process by beginning to scan the images. The most difficult part of my job is captioning, because the amount of information that a photographer can fit on a slide, even on the rare occassions of when they are not lazy, is very limited. Although a large portion of the information for celebrities that I need for captioning can be found on IMDb, I have found your site to be more thorough, and much more helpful for non celebrity material. I would like to thank you for your service, as well as to offer you some ideas towards your cause.

First, I would think that it would benefit you greatly in building your database if  you were able to add a feature to the 'Search Results' page of your site that would allow users to add 'Terms' (Search Field) that were not found when searched. For example:
I typed 'Cybill Shepard' into your search field and the results yielded no information. If instead of a dead end, you could allow a user like myself to contribute a request, or to share the info that I must find regardless of my results with your page, perhaps it would be of greater benefit , than painus glutimus maximus. 

Second, I was wonderring if you have a faq on how to begin the editting process, and information  about  the required computing competancy necesary to contribute. I do not doubt that there is such a document, however I thought that if you made a simple downloadable .pdf  that was easier to find, that  you might avoid alienating a large percentage of our population who suffer from attention defecit dissorder, or at least short attention spans.

Cheers,
            Damon

P.S. I have several great topics that do not yield results on your site, is there any method in which order you add new terms?

:There is an FAQ--check [[Wikipedia:FAQ]], as well as [[Wikipedia:Tutorial]] for how to edit.  As for making new articles, there's no official "order"--users just contribute them in any order they please.  To start a new article, you can create a link to it by surrounding the words with double brackets: for instance, this (<nowiki>[[Cybil Shepard]]</nowiki> turns into this ([[Cybil Shepard]]).  The best way to get recommendations, help, etc. without asking is to [[Special:Userlogin|create an account]]--most people who do so get welcomed by the Welcoming committee. I hope all this helps.  Best wishes, and happy editing. [[User:Meelar|[[User:Meelar|Meelar]] [[User talk:Meelar|(talk)]]]] 23:42, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

:There is a way to start a new article from the Search results page, but I realize that it's not obvious since it's not the first thing one looks at on the Search Results page. Right under the "Search results" heading, next to the "For query blahblah" thing, there's a link to edit the page that has the same title as the query you've typed, and if there's no page with that title, that link takes you to a blank "edit" form, where you can begin typing the article.

:However, in the case you mention, there already is an article on her, but her name's spelled [[Cybill Shepherd]]. [[User:LuckyWizard|Lucky Wizard]] 05:02, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---------------

Thanks for the help, I will look into your advice. I am a newb with java, c++, html, and most prgramming, etc. but I would like to help out. As for Cybill Shepherd, there is her official site that I found on yahoo that spells it 'Cybil Shepard'. However, many celebs are often creditted under multiple names. If for example Cybil was creditted as Cybill sometimes, would there be a way so that either entry in the search field yielded the same page? Again, I am just beginning so bare with me.  So that you don't take me for a complete newb, I have been using computers since around 85, but I only used DOS to install games, and to reformat when things got bad. I have built my last three computers, but have never learned the language.  Does anyone have some advice on where I should start, perhaps a book recomondation that would help me understand the programming language that you use, how it works, or should I be able to pick up what I need from reading the faqs?
               ]   ) / - \  /  V  \  (   )  |  \  |

:Hmmm. In theory, [[Wikipedia:Redirect|Redirect]]s should cover the problem with multiple names. However, not all of the needed redirects exist. I need to start creating redirects more often.

:As for learning the Wikipedia language, check out [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page]]. As far as I know, this markup language is peculiar to Wikipedia and a few other wikis, so there isn't really a book about it.  [[User:LuckyWizard|Lucky Wizard]] 04:29, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)