User talk:Reaper021
Advice
[edit]Arguments based on other articles are not accepted, for reasons explained at WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Out of 4 million articles, many are sub-standard, but that is not a reason for allowing more. Threatening to go to the press will not help - you are welcome to try, but I don't think you'll find that "Wikipedia won't let me advertise, it's not fair!" is a hold-the-front-page story.
Wikipedia is not intended for people to write about themselves or their own companies. That's not what an encyclopedia is for. It's called WP:Conflict of interest because their interest is to promote but ours is a neutral, factual encyclopedia. It's best if people don't edit with a COI, but if they do they need to follow WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest - suggest articles or changes, don't make them directly.
The way to do that is to click on Help:Userspace draft and fill in a title. That will make a draft page, with a "Submit the page" button to send it, when it is ready, to WP:Articles for creation, where an experienced user will check it and either accept it or give you feedback.
First, you need to understand that Wikipedia is selective about subjects for articles. The criterion used is called Wikipedia:Notability, and is not a matter of saying so 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.
Think hard about notability. See WP:ANS for what it means. If you cannot find independent sources to establish it, you will be wasting your time and effort. You can write about your company on Facebook, or Myspace, or MyWikiBiz.
If you want to go ahead,
- Read WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest.
- Read WP:Your first article.
- Find your independent references.
- Click on Help:Userspace draft and fill in the title.
- When writing, make a strong effort to think of yourself, not as writing for the company, but as writing for Wikipedia about the organization, from outside. You are not addressing a potential customer, but a general encyclopedia reader. Bear in mind the WP:Verifiability policy: "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source", and when writing any glowing adjective, or indeed any claim, imagine a hostile critic saying "Who says? Can you prove that?" Don't talk about the organization's aims and hopes for the future, or its mission statement, or its friendly staff, but about what is has achieved. No opinions, only facts, neutrally stated and cited to reliable sources. Write in your own words, without copying from a website.
By now you are thinking "This is much harder than I thought, all I wanted to do was to tell the world about us!" I apologise that (because we are anxious not to put new contributors off by making them read a lot of advice) Wikipedia does not make clear at sign-up time that it is not a "notice-board" site like Myspace or Facebook, which are set up for people to do exactly that; but if Wikipedia is a more valuable resource than Myspace, it is only because we have standards and rules on notability, verifiability and conflict of interest.
I have taken the trouble to explain all this at length to help you understand what is involved, and to avoid the common situation where a new contributor expends a lot of time, energy and emotion on what was always a hopeless cause. If you decide to go ahead, there is a WP:Tutorial and a WP:New contributors' help page, and you can also ask for help by putting {{helpme}} (two curly brackets each side) at the bottom of your talk page with your question below it.
JohnCD (talk) 21:58, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Reaper021, you are invited to the Teahouse
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Hi Reaper021! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. |