User talk:Johnny Petro

Welcome!

Hello, Johnny Petro, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines for page creation, and may soon be deleted.

You may also wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 20:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC) JohnCD (talk) 20:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of Johnny Petro

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Thank you.

The article Johnny Petro has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done because the article, which appeared to be about a real person, individual animal, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, did not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the notability of the subject may be deleted at any time. If you can indicate why the subject is really notable, you are free to re-create the article, making sure to cite any verifiable sources.

Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and for specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for musicians, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. JohnCD (talk) 20:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your article

Sorry, I'm out of time tonight, I will reply tomorrow. Meanwhile, read WP:Your first article carefully, because it will answer a lot of your questions. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Advice

I apologise if I seemed snappish in pointing out that Wikipedia is not a directory, as you called it; it's a sore point because so many new users approach it as if it were a notice-board, a sort of super-Myspace, where they can just pin up a copy of their resume or their advertisement.

There are two main areas you need to address, reflected in the two reasons given when your article was speedy-deleted by two different admins:

Notability, a requirement to have a Wikipedia article, which is not a matter of opinion but needs to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Significant means more than just listing-type mentions; reliable excludes Myspace, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and anything based on press releases. All the sources you cite are from Khan himself - we need independent ones. You think he's important, no doubt he thinks he's important - what you have to establish is that other people, independent of him, have thought him interesting and important enough to write about.

These links might help: Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL. I'm surprised not to see anything in the "News" search: I would have expected anyone notable in this field to have turned up something there.

Promotional tone - the great danger for an anyone-can-edit encyclopedia is that it degenerates into a mass of advertising and propaganda, and Wikipedia is extremely sensitive about being used to try to sell anything. One of our key content policies is neutral point of view. Anything that reads like advertising gets speedy-deleted, and spammers get blocked. Your article reads like a plug for Khan and his methods. I actually ran a check to see if it was copied from his website; it doesn't seem to be, but it reads like that. It needs a complete rewrite: you need a dry, factual tone, just stating verifiable facts about what he has achieved. Expect, for any statement, to be challenged - who says so? Is it verifiable? "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—what counts is whether readers can verify that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." Don't use peacock terms like "world-renowned" and "acclaimed", unless you can show a reliable independent source that says so. Forget all the guff about his youthful dreams. Think of your audience not as eager young men anxious to know where to spend their money to be taught chat-up lines, but as encyclopedia readers thinking, who is this man? Is he interesting? What has he achieved?

If such an article would seem disappointing to you, or to him, because you were hoping for an advertisement: tough, that's not what Wikipedia is for.

Side remark: the argument What about article X? is not accepted - we know that there are many existing substandard articles, but that is not a good reason for allowing more.

Article title - why did you title it "Johnny Petro"? Are you Khan? If so, read WP:Autobiography and WP:Conflict of interest. I see the article has been in before as "McMaax", last November, and was speedy-deleted as advertising then. That doesn't stop you using that title, though it may mean it is checked more carefully. Decide what your title is to be, and then work on a draft in your user space. When you start to create the page, after the screen where it says "You may create the page.. " you come to one headed "Editing (pagename)", which has a box of advice at the top. The fifth bullet-point down starts "You can also start your new article at Special:MyPage/... " Click on that link, and it will open a page where you can develop the article without so much risk of it getting speedy-deleted. When you think it is ready, post a request at WP:Requests for feedback - you will probably get a quicker response than from me, and anyway it will not hurt to have more eyes on it.

Another side remark: realise that if the article goes in, other users can and will edit it - nobody owns a Wikipedia article, and neither you nor Khan will be able to control it. See WP:LUC.

If you have any questions, post them below here - I will watch this talk page. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:09, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]