User talk:Markatty

Welcome!

Hello, Markatty, 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, like Machrie golf course, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines for page creation, and may soon be deleted.

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! Vicenarian (talk) 07:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Machrie golf course

A tag has been placed on Machrie golf course, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the guidelines on spam as well as Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Vicenarian (talk) 07:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've just come across your vent on Talk:Machrie golf course. Don't let the speedy deleters get you down - they mean well even if they're over-officious pains in the neck. They do keep a lot of crud out of the system - we really don't want an article on every pitch-and-putt in the world, so there's got to be a bit of quality control. Obviously something like Machrie is towards the "good" end of the scale - but it's up to the initiator of an article to fight its corner, to justify its existence on Wikipedia.

Just for future reference, appeals to Google hits or the fact that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS won't cut much ice - what Wikipedia looks for is verifiability (see WP:VERIFIABLE). Stuff like a third-party website putting it in its Top 20 courses in Scotland is OK - better still are books or a magazine article discussing it. The basic thinking is that if someone in the mainstream "paper" publishing world thinks that it's worth writing about something, then it's worth having a Wikipedia article about it, and vice versa. The people over at WP:WikiProject Golf or WP:WikiProject Scotland will be happy to help you out with any specifics.

Incidentally, I tend to write any long articles offline, in a text file that I save at regular intervals; if you do get the "timed out" message again, you usually haven't lost your contribution, you just need to reload the page in your browser and it should reappear, or press the back button and press the "Show preview" button to un-time-out yourself. Oh, and one other thing - it helps work out who said what if you sign your Talk page messages with ~~~~ which magicly converts to your name and a timestamp. Cheers. FlagSteward (talk) 11:06, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]