User:Siroxo/Your professional profile
 | This is an essay on what Wikipedia is not. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | At times in this essay I am going to refer to "you". I mean the editorial "you", the people whom this essay is directed at. The people who are putting up professional profiles whether in good faith or otherwise, whether the profile is of you or someone else. |
Wikipedia is not LinkedIn, not a place to put your CV or resume, nor a place to put your portfolio. It's not a place to put your professional profile.
What is a professional profile
[edit]A professional profile is something designed to get someone to see you in a specific way, in a professional context. It may be used to seek jobs, or to represent you or your organization, to introduce you at conference, or any number of other capacities.
A professional profile is intentionally not written from a neutral point of view. It's meant to promote you, often using peacock langauge to do so, sometimes subtly.
It often does not cover any aspect of the individual in depth. It does not establish notability. It does not speak for itself.
Spotting it on Wikipedia
[edit]On first pass, it can be easy to miss a professional profile. It is often structured similarly to a Wikipedia article, sometimes a good faith misunderstanding of Wikipedia's purpose, other times deceitfully designed to look like articles.
It might have an early life or education section of various depth, often focusing on education. It will almost always have a section dedicated to the career. Some will put education after career, like a resume/cv, others will match Wikipedia standards more closesly putting it before.
It will almost always mention jobs held and employers, often mentioning projects or roles within those jobs. Sometimes the project descriptions will be short and specific, think resume language. It will rarely establish notability.
It might include a professional headshot or other similar photograph you might use on a website like LinkedIn, and often includes an infobox.
Common reference styles
[edit]Some professional profiles will include many weak references, ones that mention the individual in passing (such as a quote from them), or are not reliable in some way. Often times each of these references will be used exactly once, perhaps as a WP:REFBOMB. In some egregious cases, they will be sprinkled through the article without a close correspondence to the relevant text in the article.
Even some good faith attempts at articles about notable subject will reference in this way, sometimes using churnalism sources over higher quality biographical sources available.
Why not?
[edit]Wikipedia's five pillars can explain why professional profiles don't belong.
- Your professional profile may violate the first pillar by acting in a promotional capacity, by including indiscriminate information, and in the vast majority of cases, even by including the article at all.
- Your professional profile may violate the second pillar, by not being written in a neutral point of view. To be clear, there is no way to write a professional profile in a neutral point of view, that's why a biography reads differently from a professional profile. You may also have included information that is impossible to verify.
- Your professional profile may violate the third pillar. You may feel some ownership over your profile, and that's not okay. Even if you feel good about Wikipedia editors editing it, understand what you're authorizing. You probably don't expect for someone to abide by the terms of the GFDL or CC-BY-SA licenses and remix your profile into something you don't approve of, and post it elsewhere on the web without recourse to take it down.
- Your professional profile may violate the fourth pillar. Wikipedians dedicate their time and energy and large chunks of their lives to creating an encyclopedia. We do it for different reasons. But we don't do it to curate your professional profile. Your professonal profile also shows a lack of respect for Wikipedia's policies and guidelines that reflect the consensus of Wikipedia's editors, and a lack of respect for us.
- Your professional profile may violate the fifth pillar. Wikipedia has no firm rules. But you hoped to host your profile here by following the rules as closely as you could. You added inline citations. You formatted it as if it were an article. You might have even put a claim to notability in the lead, and an infobox, so a casual reader might not notice. By dishonestly trying to meet the letter of the rules, you violated the most important one.
Help, my profile keeps getting deleted
[edit]There's policy behind this: WP:DEL-REASON#14 says WP:NOT constitutes a reason for deletion. See, in that page, WP:NOTCV and WP:NOTPROMO for specifics.
So, don't want this article deleted? First make sure you don't have a conflict of interest. Ok, is the individual notable? If so, determine what makes them notable. Check WP:N again if you need. Find some reliable sources (start with 3 or 4) that ideally do not contain interviews and start by summarizing the notable aspects from those sources, as the basis for your article. Fill in remaining details with other sources. Yes, sources with interviews can be used in articles, but if you're already here, best to stay away from them for a bit.