User talk:Steve Parish

Welcome!

Hello, Steve Parish, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

The five pillars of Wikipedia
Tutorial
How to edit a page and How to develop articles
How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! —C.Fred (talk) 00:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest

Hello Steve Parish. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Steve Parish, 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. —C.Fred (talk) 00:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've just discovered the "My talk" page, my apologies for taking so long, there's so much to learn. My name is Dwayne Smith and I'm an employee of Steve Parish Publishing. Initially we simply intended to add Steve's portrait to the bio that someone created. But it looks like I made a bit of a mess of it. Then we realised that we have a heap of information we could contribute to Wiki — but it looks like that's causing some issues too. I'll stop making contributions until I've had a chance to find out more about all the ins and outs of Wiki's protocols. Thanks for your patience. Steve Parish (talk) 03:44, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

May 2011

Please be careful not to delete references in articles. If you find a superior source, you can replace a reference with the newer one, but you should not simply delete a reference. —C.Fred (talk) 00:45, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

C.Fred, I think that might have been a formatting error. Sorry about all the automated messages Steve, wikipedia can be a tricky place to navigate. Just ask questions and we can try and answer them. Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:23, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

images

PS: What might be easier is images - alot of bird articles (for example) need photos - see Category:Bird articles needing photos Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

About your edits

You are welcome to participate in the discussion at User_talk:Hu12#Questions_about_a_users_edits_with_possible_COI. Snowman (talk) 11:33, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki is so confusing. I just posted this on the Hu12 page instead of here where, I guess, it is supposed to be..... Hi, I've just become aware of a COI issue with the Wikipedia entries I have been adding on behalf of Steve (my name is Dwayne Smith and I'm an employee of Steve Parish Publishing). My apologies for this, I've been trying to read as much as I can about contributing to Wiki but there's just so much to get through (this morning I realised there was a better way to cite material and I've been fixing things since). Is there a way that Steve can contribute the extensive information his publishing company has collected over the past 20 years without causing offense? Thanks for your help. Steve Parish (talk) 03:21, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have just reversed your latest edit about cane toads for this very reason. My first recommendation is that you read Wikipedia's three most important rules (verifiability (which links in with reliable sources), no original research, and neutrality), as well as the relevant conflict of interest page. If you feel you can tread carefully within those lines then its fine but since you have a username that matches the author you are adding, it will keep coming up as an issue. Therefore my second recommendation is that you should provide a link either on this talkpage or on your (redlinked) userpage (User:Steve Parish) so that other editors can look at the information, and add it as they see appropriate without any concerns about conflict of interest. Green Giant (talk) 04:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, the username you have chosen (Steve Parish) seems to imply that you are editing on behalf of a group, company or website.

There are two issues with this:

It is possible that you have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, you must exercise great caution when editing on topics related to your organization.
Your account cannot represent a group of people. You may wish to create a new account with a username that represents only you. Alternatively, you may consider changing your username to avoid giving the impression that your personal account is being used for promotional purposes.

Regardless of whether you change your name or create a new account, you are not exempted from the guidelines concerning editing where you have a conflict of interest. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. The article in question is Steve Parish. Thank you. Bidgee (talk) 06:07, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome from Cooktown!

Don't get discouraged - I had similar problems when I started on WP. It takes a while to get the hang of it - but it can be really fun and I find I keep learning lots of new things. You also meet some really great and interesting people (as well as some that are not). Just be very careful about conflict of interest and anything which could be taken as gross promotion - for this can be a real problem on WP. I would be thrilled if you could update and expand articles on Australian animals from the renowned and authoriative Parish series of books - but do learn how to reference and footnote articles properly and I suggest you not limit yourself to their books - great as they are. It may be preferable to start a new account with a different name as calling yourself "Steve Parish" is misleading and may be taken as a promotional gimmick. Also, do add some details about yourself on your User Page so we have some idea of who we are addressing. Cheers, and best wishes, John Hill (talk) 07:45, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to expand on the above comment: were Parish himself the user of this account, the username would be permissible. However, accounts are meant to represent the person who is using the account and not their affiliated organizations or employers—that's what makes the username inappropriate. Also, be advised that a change of username does not remove your conflict of interest with Parish and subjects pertaining to him. —C.Fred (talk) 12:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I really appreciate your time. I didn't realise that working as a representative of Steve (rather than actually BEING Steve) was a problem. We were intending on various employees just working through our files and filling in gaps wherever we found them — I'm just the first one with downtime this week (in retrospect, it seems clear now that the username should have been set up as 'Steve Parish Publishing' — although the boundary between SP the man and SP the company is often a bit blurred around here :-). But it sounds like this is not really going to work with the protocols that Wiki has set in place (and fair enough too — Wiki definitely has to protect its credibility — and I can see that the COI issue is problematic). So maybe we should just leave it to others to access this information from the stuff we've published instead. A bit more information please.... should I go through and remove the stuff that I've added so far or should I just leave it to the Wiki editors? Thanks again for your help. It's been a huge learning curve. Dwayne smith for Steve Parish (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The short answer is I would suggest leaving it to other editors (unfortunately, I am going overseas the day after tomorrow and will not be able to do anything of the sort for at least 2 months). I do, however, encourage other editors to make use of the Parish series of books on Australian fauna as references - there are a number of excellent and authoratative field guides in the series and I believe many WP articles on Australian fauna could improved by using them. Additionally, if you see an article which could really be improved this way, you could leave a note to other editors on the article's Talk Page asking them to check to see if they think the information would be worthwhile adding and referencing. Best wishes, John Hill (talk) 01:49, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]