User talk:Markoxbrow

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Markoxbrow, 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, such as Faith2Share, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines, 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:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Swimnteach (talk) 23:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Faith2Share

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.
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A tag has been placed on Faith2Share, 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 and Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), 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. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Swimnteach (talk) 23:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FYI conflict of interest guideline

see also: Wikipedia is not a soapbox and Wikipedia:User pages#What may I not have in my user pages?

Welcome to Wikipedia. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia in Faith2Share or other articles, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and
linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. – Athaenara ✉ 22:33, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Faith2Share

I am sorry to have been slow to keep my promise of more advice; and this first is mainly addressing the issue raised above by Athaenara, that it is clear that you are closely involved with Faith"Share and so have from Wikipedia's point of view a conflict of interest. The rest of this message is an explanation I have just written (because this situation occurs constantly) which I hope explains things better than the rather curt warning above. I should be interested in your comments on it from that point of view. I will try tomorrow to give some more specific advice about your article.

Many people approach Wikipedia as a notice-board onto which to pin the manifesto of their company, group, band or whatever, probably copied from a website or Facebook page; but this is a mistake. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which is something quite different.

Wikipedia has three key content policies:

WP:Verifiability (it's not whether you think it's true, or know it's true; it's whether you can cite a reliable source for it)
WP:No original research (this is not a place for first publication of new ideas, or even new conclusions from old ideas)
WP:Neutral point of view (we are not here to promote anything)

There is also an important guideline used to decide what articles shall be admitted:

WP:Notability, which is not a matter of opinion but must be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." The test is, have other people, independent of the subject, thought it important and significant enough to write about?

It is preferred that users writing about a subject are not closely involved with it. Close involvement obviously gives them personal knowledge, but the No original research policy means that contributions should not be based only on personal knowledge; and experience shows that people closely involved with a subject find it very hard to write about it in a neutral way. The problem is that their interest, to present the best view of their subject and expound its virtues, conflicts with Wikipedia's interest in a neutral view. This situation is known as a WP:Conflict of interest.

It is impossible to prevent people with a conflict of interest from editing, but a code of practice has been worked out which helps to avoid the dangers: see Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest. The basic idea is that rather than make directly any but the most uncontroversial changes, you should propose them and let other, uninvolved editors decide. ("Editor" means the same as "user" - there is no separate class of "editors".)

There is excellent advice for editors in this situation, which addresses both the COI issue and any doubts about notability, at User:Uncle G/On notability#Writing about subjects close to you:

When writing about subjects that are close to you, don't use your own personal knowledge of the subject, and don't cite yourself, your web site, or the subject's web site. Instead, use what is written about the subject by other people, independently, as your sources. Cite those sources in your very first edit. If you don't have such sources, don't write.

The same idea is described at WP:Amnesia test. It may then be possible to add material based on primary sources, but if an article cannot be written on the basis described, there must be serious doubts about notability.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 23:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What to do next

Given that as Coordinator of the Faith2Share network you are clearly in a conflict-of-interest situation:

Read WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
See whether you can find more independent references, to help with notability. This may help:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Ask for comment on your draft at WP:Requests for feedback. You don't need to copy it there, just give a link to your draft at User:Markoxbrow/Faith2Share, but declare your interest
Then propose it at WP:Articles for creation, once again declaring your interest, where it will be accepted or you will be given more feedback.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 14:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More advice

I have written a long screed but, looking up this page, I see that I have already said most of it three years ago. So there will be some duplication: as the Duke of Wellington once said "I am sorry to write such a long letter, but I did not have time to make it shorter."

The first thing to make clear is that Wikipedia is not intended as a place for people, or organizations, to tell the world about themselves. We don't make that as clear as we should to new users, and as a result are over-run with people who think Wikipedia is another Facebook or LinkedIn or a free advertising platform. In response, Wikipedia is extremely resistant to anything that looks remotely like promotion. As you will see from WP:PSCOI, you should not edit directly about your organization, but may submit a draft for uninvolved users to review.

The next thing is that Wikipedia is quite selective about article subjects. The inclusion criterion is called Wikipedia:Notability, and is not a matter of opinion but has 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, Facebook, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and anything based on press releases. The test is, have people not connected with the subject thought it significant enough to write substantial comment about?

That has the advantage of being a more objective test than "Do we think it's important?" and also of ensuring that there are independent sources for the article. It is quite a tough test, and many worthy organizations, especially new ones, cannot pass it. That is not at all to their discredit, but it means they are not suitable subjects for a global encyclopedia. The test applies to non-commercial organizations and good causes, too - we have an explanatory essay entitled Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause.

Of the three references in your present draft, two are written by you and the third is a book dated 2001 which, if it covers the organization at all, can only cover its very earliest days. You need better references, both to establish notability and because of the WP:Verifiability policy that: " any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source."

When writing, make a strong effort to think of yourself not as writing for your organization, but as writing for Wikipedia about it, from outside. One reason why COI editing is discouraged is that with the best intentions people close to an organization find it hard to write in a detached way. Do not write about the organization's aims, vision, mission statement etc, but about what it has actually achieved - no opinions, just plan facts neutrally stated and cited to reliable sources.

When you are ready, click the "Submit" button which will send the draft for review, and another user will either accept it or gve you feedback. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]