User talk:Waikato Wordwizard

Conflict of interest

Hi Waikato Wordwizard - Thanks for noting your conflict of interest. Take a look at WP:COIN, which might be helpful. If you are editing the Waikato University or associated articles you should note they need to avoid being self-promotional and must be encyclopedic. The current article does not meet that standard. It needs extensive re-writing and removal of external links to the varsity website in the text. Virtually all the references are self published by the University and not independent. Some will need replacing to meet WP:RS and WP:V. Also, you may run into difficulty if for some reason critical comment is made in the article - under such circumstances I would recommend, if you disagree with the statements made, you refer them to an appropriate project for peer review/discussion, probably WP:New Zealand. Sorry to be a bit negative, but hope it is helpful for you and feel free to post any questions either here, on my talk page, or the New Zealand project page. There is a helpful bunch of Kiwi Wikipedians. NealeFamily (talk) 11:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Response to NealeFamily

Hi NealeFamily,

Thank you for your message. I think you'll find that all other New Zealand universities face similar challenges in necessarily being self-referential in their Wikipedia pages. Our page follows very similar format to theirs. Some of the information included in the page is not available anywhere but in publications from university sources, such as student numbers, institution history, faculty information, etc. If there are specific self-promotional elements that you can identify I'd be happy to look at them again.

Waikato Wordwizard (talk) 23:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'll tag the items that need independent referencing and let you know which area's may need a shift in tone. I appreciate that it is quite difficult to find secondary sources for some of the information and in those cases primary source referencing is okay. You are correct in saying that a number of University's have articles that need working on and as time permits so they will be. NealeFamily (talk) 23:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have found that our local library has Paul Day's book From the Ground Up, so I will have a read to better familiarize myself with the history. It is mainly within the History section that some rework is needed, but it is more a word here and there - so I'll see if I can rephrase them slightly without loosing the general thrust. Also, you might like to replace a few of the links to the book with other sources such as national media outlets, which will strengthen the reliable source rating for the history. See WP:RS for some guidelines. NealeFamily (talk) 09:27, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]