User talk:Terry Flaxton

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Hello, Terry Flaxton. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by Hug^syrup 14:27, 14 February 2020 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).

Hi - I wrote on Teahouse and you kindly answered. I just wanted to say it wasn't just the first article that was taken down but also friends in different countries tried writing pages concerning the various initiatives I'd been involved in concurrent with the development with electronic media in the UK and those pages were taken down as well (one writer was a professor of history, writing about a piece of history).

So it follows me around. Whether or not one constitutes a valuable input is a judgement and I certainly won't write anything about myself because I was naive when I wrote the first article thinking that I was contributing to an alternative history. But I know many people involved with film and video who get someone else to write about them. This is not ego - I'm 67 and not 25 so I have stuff under my belt got awards and all the rest. But there's a deeper issue of which this taking down is symptomatic: video has systematically been given a false history - even the most recent BBC programme studiously ignored the greatest UK maker who's died in obscurity - fortunately wiki has an article on him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hopkins_(political_activist)

...but when you look at the person who has the greatest recorded history in the academic canon for being the 'father of this medium' they have many books about them (and the irony is he shot film rather than video - I know that's esoteric to anyone who is not in this sector, but across all human knowledge small inflections in the telling of histories contributes to the false histories generated - so Hopkins is systemically removed - airbrushed out...)

I shan't of course write something about myself - but I feel that if even someone who didn;t know me but knew about the history then put something on wiki with whatever I did, as a subject - it'll get taken down (if the prior moderator is still alive or he's automated a take down).

Thanks for your time.

Hello Terry Flaxton! I saw your thread at the Teahouse and thought I'd comment.

On the question on if a WP-article about you can be made that "sticks" (WP:N), there is guidance on that at WP:GNG, WP:BASIC and WP:NARTIST (and if you're interested in the topic check WP:Biographies of living persons as well).

In short, "we" want several good sources that are at the same time reliably published, independent of you and about you. They need not be online, but of course it helps if they are. If you know about such sources, feel free to mention them.

What I found that looks ok to me, are these books: [1][2][3][4]. The last one is a passing mention and doesn't really help. And of course since it's Google books what I can read is limited. There are also 2 hits on jstor [5], but I can't access those so I don't know if they help.

These, I think could have some use [6][7].

There's also something called Sedition (website) [8]. They sell your stuff, so they are not independent, but that does not mean they are useless as a source of info. So, all in all, I think an article about you based on these sources could survive. Of course, more/better sources would help.

Pinging Hugsyrup and art-something Vexations, if they wish to comment. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:36, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Note also that if an article is created, it's WP:s article about you, not your WP-article. More at WP:OWN and WP:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. FWIW, I see German WP has an article about you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:43, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

some history

Hello Terry Flaxton, from what I can tell, you have not been blocked or banned. An article about you was deleted because is was (almost) identical to a text that had been published elsewhere that didn't have the kind of license for re-use that Wikipedia requires. Here is the log file: [9] You may have written that text yourself after all, but we can't verify that we have the right ti use it unless you add a license to the published text. How to do that is explained here: Wikipedia:Donating_copyrighted_materials#Granting_us_permission_to_copy_material_already_online Vexations (talk) 13:35, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Gråbergs Gråa Sång I do appreciate all your hlp and all who've contributed. I didn't understand the original premise and also Wikipedia seems a difficult medium to deal with. I'm used to substantiating things since accomplishing a PhD recently and also had to substantiate arguments to very high level scientific communities. For me it's about understanding how something works - so with anew attitude and a bit of learning I'll rethink this. In fact my original article was supposed to be a kind of history...

Of course WP is difficult - it's full of other people! Easy stuff is easy, creating an article that doesn't get deleted is hard, if that article is a WP:BLP it's even harder, and more so than it was 2006-2008, since WP has become pickier about stuff like WP:N and what is an acceptable source. If, say, you'd like to edit WP-articles in your area of expertise, there is more advice at WP:EXPERT. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:29, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

The most successful strategy is probably to start with sources, summarize what they say, and put that together in a structure that makes sense. (If it's a biography, something like early life/childhood, education, career accomplishments, legacy etc.) If what you end up with doesn't resemble the story you'd like to tell, then you don't have enough sources, and you should try to find more. Telling a story first and then trying to find the sources to match is almost impossible. We are a tertiary source, so all we do is summarize and paraphrase what other people have said. It's very different from academic writing. It can be a messy process: If you want to see how this works in practice, you could look at the history of something I'm working on right now. It starts like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Marianna_Simnett&oldid=940758846 To see how it progresses, click on the diff link in Newer revision → (diff). This usually works for me. All the best, Vexations (talk) 19:39, 15 February 2020 (UTC)