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Proposed deletion of George Sernack

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The article George Sernack has been proposed for deletion because under Wikipedia policy, all biographies of living persons created after March 18, 2010, must have at least one source that directly supports material in the article.

If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners or ask at Wikipedia:Help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within ten days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. ttonyb (talk) 03:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as George Sernack, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to be a copy from http://rwmma.com/home/instructors, and therefore a copyright violation. The copyrighted text has been or will soon be deleted. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators are liable to be blocked from editing.

If you believe that the article is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under license allowed by Wikipedia, then you should do one of the following:

It may also be necessary for the text be modified to have an encyclopedic tone and to follow Wikipedia article layout. For more information on Wikipedia's policies, see Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

If you would like to begin working on a new version of the article you may do so at this temporary page. Leave a note at Talk:George Sernack saying you have done so and an administrator will move the new article into place once the issue is resolved. Thank you, and please feel welcome to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Happy editing! Acather96 (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Since we do not yet have verification of permission by the processes set out above and sufficient time has passed since the placement of the notice, the article has been deleted for copyright concerns. This deletion is not necessarily permanent. If you have already sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) and GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (if you are not the copyright holder or have co-authored the material, release under CC-BY-SA-compatible license alone is sufficient), the article will be restored when that letter is received and processed by the Wikimedia Communications committee. Likewise, if you have not yet sent a letter, you still may (or resend it, if you believe your original may have been lost), and the article will be restored when that letter is received and processed.

As Wikipedia does not require proof of identity on account creation, it is essential that we receive external proof of authorization in order to ensure that we remain compliant with US Copyright law. It is also essential that we verify that copyright holders understand the extent of the release they are authorizing, in that our licenses permit modification and reuse in any forum, even commercial publication, as long as authorship credit is maintained and future copies are compatibly licensed.

Please note that once permission is verified, the material may be evaluated and altered to meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Although we appreciate donations, we cannot guarantee that material donated will be retained.

Thank you. Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:09, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Response to your note

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Hi. You left your note exactly right. :) Ordinarily I would respond at my talk page, but that page is archived frequently because it sees a lot of volume. I thought doing it here would increase your chances of finding your response, since you indicated some concern about that.

I'll try to address all of your questions and provide a little more information. Please let me know if I miss something.

  • No apologies are needed for good faith errors, and I'm sure that any errors you've made are in good faith. There's a learning curve on Wikipedia, and we expect new contributors to need some time to learn. For that matter, I'm an administrator here, and I still have things to learn.
  • Articles tagged for copyright permissions are processed after a week. This one was tagged by bot on the 30th, so I'm afraid that the period did expire. That doesn't mean we can't access it again, though; as I noted above, it can be restored if permission is received.
  • In regards to references, because Wikipedia is a website that can be edited by anyone, we have developed specific standards for inclusion and strict referencing standards to help us avoid inaccurate information. When it comes to human beings, our inclusion standards can be read at Wikipedia:Notability (people). If a person meets these standards, a neutral article about the person is appropriate. But to avoid bias, we have to demonstrate that a person meets those inclusion standards by referencing independent sources, not sources that have a direct interest in the individual. (We can't, for instance, use the individual's own website or press releases or material released by companies sponsoring him in some way.) You can read more about this at Wikipedia:Verifiability (one of our core content policies) and Wikipedia:Reliable sources (a guideline created to support it). Good independent sources for an individual like this might include newspaper articles or magazine profiles. Independent, respected industry websites can also be used, though I gather from what you have said that there may not currently be usable web material. If there are not sufficient independent sources currently to confirm that Mr. Sernack meets the inclusion guidelines, it would be better to wait to propose an article on Mr. Sernack when there are. If he is found to not meet those inclusion guidelines through a community debate (a specific deletion process called "Articles for Deletion"), it will be much harder to establish an article for him later, when he does. Typically, once a subject has been excluded, the bar for proving "notability" becomes that much higher.
  • Because you handle marketing for Mr. Sernack, we would prefer that you not create a biography about him; we would even more strongly prefer that Mr. Sernack not do so himself. Please see Wikipedia:Autobiography and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. It is strongly recommended that you do not edit or create an article on a subject with which you are personally or professionally connected, but instead consider proposing its creation at requested articles or at a related article or relevant WikiProject. (I would still wait on that until you can demonstrate notability, because a request that demonstrates notability is far more likely to succeed.)
  • Addressing me as Moonriddengirl is perfectly appropriate. Many Wikipedians have usenames to help avoid mixing our real life activities with our Wikipedia volunteerism. Administrators are often subject to harassment, and I'd prefer it not affect my family. :)

At this point, there are several options with this text. You can follow through with the permission procedure, and it will be restored, but it will inevitably be evaluated by the community to make sure that it meets those notability requirements and that it verifies that it does through proper sourcing. It'll also be evaluated for neutrality (another of our core policies) and "original research" (the final core content policy: kind of complex policy forbidding the publication of our own ideas or unpublished information). If it is found not to meet these policies, it may be modified or tagged for cleanup.

Alternatively, you can write a new version of the article that does not include the text from his website. I would strongly recommend that you read over "your first article". Given your connection, I would also recommend that you write it in your user subspace (I see you know how to do this already) and ask for neutral feedback at either the conflict of interest noticeboard (COIN) or the drawing board before moving it into article space. Ideally, I'd ask at COIN for somebody else to move it to article space if they think it is neutral and well sourced. If I were in your position, I'd want to avoid having the article tagged like this one, so I would do my best to get the community to approve of it. (I'd also be very careful of what we call the Law of Unintended Consequences. This term and warning were not created just to discourage people from "COI" editing. As I also handle e-mail for the Wikimedia Foundation, I have seen time and time again how unhappy people can become with their biographies on Wikipedia, and as long as the content meets policies and guidelines, our hands are tied. Wikipedia is not like personal webhosts that allow people to post their profiles and keep them unchanged; content here will be altered. It's the basic point of our encyclopedia. See also Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Help for the steps that are necessary to repair a biography gone "bad".)

Finally, you do have the option as I said above of proposing the article's creation at requested articles or at a related article or relevant WikiProject.

I apologize for the wall of text here, but the project is complex, and I would like to be sure you know all aspects that may relate to your goals. I do not meant to discourage you, but I would hope to leave you fully informed. :) If I have not covered something or you have additional questions, please come back to my talk page. I'll be happy to discuss this with you further. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Rich. :) You certainly can paraphrase, but in order to avoid copyright problems, you have to paraphrase very well. While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. If you paraphrase too closely, you create a derivative work, and we would still need you to verify permission for that. The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid the need for permission. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism".
I don't doubt that the information you've included is factual, but you really do need to prove it by sources other than his website; if it makes you feel any better, Wikipedia is an equal opportunity sceptic. A few years back, there was a bit of a scandal when one of our finders, Jimmy Wales, uploaded an article that was deleted for not meeting standards. The press was a bit amused. :) It highlights the point, though, that it's very important to meet the policies WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV and especially to demonstrate "notability". Articles that don't meet these policies can be rather ruthlessly treated. Or not. We have millions of articles, and there's no way to predict what standard of scrutiny will be brought to bear on any given one.
I can't in good conscience recommend that you create an article for Mr. Sernack under any circumstances, because (a) the community would rather you didn't (per WP:COI) and (b) I know that this might be a decision you regret later. (It might not, mind you, but I've seen it happen often enough to know there's a real risk.) But if you do, your first and best bet as his marketing agent would be to get the kind of sources that we rely on to write about him. If his notability is documented in a few online newspapers, you're going to find your path a whole lot easier.
Good luck with it in any event, and I hope that those links will be useful to you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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