User talk:MSparling

Welcome!

Hello, MSparling! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Jauerbackdude?/dude. 16:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

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Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 16:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Your edit to New England Bible College and Seminary has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:11, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

In addition to the boilerplate warning I've left for you above, I'd like to add that Wikipedia would welcome your help in expanding the article on New England Bible College and Seminary, but there are some things that need to happen.

1. As the Chair of the Board of Trustees, you have a conflict of interest when it comes to the school. You are also considered a paid editor by our standards, which is a special type of conflict of interest. You are required to disclose your status as a paid editor on your userpage and on the article talk page.
2. As an editor with a conflict of interest, you should not edit the article on New England Bible College and Seminary directly. Instead, you should make edit requests on the article talk page. These requests should be specific, phrased as "change X to Y, per source".
3. Aside from the issue that your change added material copied from the school's website in violation of the school's copyright, another issue with your change was the absence of reliable sources that are independant of the school. Wikipedia articles are supposed to conform to a myraid of policies and guidelines, which can be confusing. We are aware that many articles do not currently conform to them, but they are a work in progress. All articles are subject to our General notability guidelines, which require that the topic of the article have "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." There is a more detailed criteria about organizations and companies, which includes schools. Schools used to be granted more leeway than other organizations and companies, but that changed recently, and a lot of school articles are in need of clean up and more robust sourcing as a result. We also have a policy on Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources. Basically, at least 75% of the material in an article should be based on independent secondary sources. Affiliated sources (like the school's website, or press releases, or material the school has published about itself) can be used, as can primary and tertiary sources, but they should be used with care and should not make up the majority of the content of the article.
4. A lot of people get confused thinking that sources have to be online and in English to be cited. This is not necessary. Offline sources are fine, so long as sufficient information is provided that they can be located and verified. As someone affiliated with an academic institution, you should be familiar with various citation styles like MLA, Chicago Manual, Blue Book, etc. Wikipedia has a house style using templates, but a citation in any style that would be accepted by a university is more than sufficient.

I hope this information helps. Feel free to ask me, or the help desk, or the teahouse for any help you need or any questions you have. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, MSparling. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page New England Bible College and Seminary, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Theroadislong (talk) 16:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Please use the request edit system

Please do not edit the article New England Bible College and Seminary further. You can submit suggestions on the article's talk page with the {{request edit}} template and a reliable source. Theroadislong (talk) 16:57, 1 February 2023 (UTC)