User talk:Reelpolitik

Welcome[edit]

Hello, Reelpolitik, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Policy regarding conflict of interest[edit]

Hello, Reelpolitik. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, please read our plain and simple conflict of interest guide.

Everyone must follow our conflict of interest (COI) and neutral point of view policies. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to accidentally add overly-flattering or overly-disparaging content. If you have a close connection to a subject, you are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject. But you must make sure that your edits are verified by reliable sources and are unbiased.

Here's a partial summary of our plain and simple conflict of interest guide:

Be transparent about your conflict of interest.
Do not edit articles about yourself, your business, or your competitors.
Post suggestions and sources on the article's talk page, or create a draft in your user space.
Your role is to summarize, inform and reference, not promote, whitewash, or sell.
If writing a draft, write without bias, as if you don't work for the company or personally know the subject.
Get us to review your draft.
Work with us and we'll work with you.

Please read the whole guide. Please see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Autobiography.

 Thank you. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for being transparent about your conflict of interest. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

the article[edit]

You asked for some feedback. Almost the entire section you added, "3 Speaker of the California Assembly" is not appropriate content. A little of 3.1 and 3.2 is appropriate, but the wording needs to be changed, and the entire section reduced to perhaps a paragraph. To highlight individual bills, you need reliable sources showing that he as an individual has the personal principal responsibility for devising, initiating, and adopting the legislation. I note that the actual articles for some of these specifically give the major responsibility to others. That many of these bills were defeated emphasizes this all the more strongly: all this is campaign literature , not encyclopedic content. the most you can justly say in an encyclopedia is that during his tenure as speaker, several notable bills were passed, including.... (actually, I think the only one notable enough was " Healthcare exchange (Covered California)" I'm aware that the role of speaker is often pivotal in a legislature--it is even more so in my own state of NY than in California. But this has to be shown by statements from third parties. That he introduced a bill when he was one of a dozen or so cosigners is a courtesy or perhaps a stratagem due to his position, not his primary responsibility. Obviously in his campaign he will take credit for everything good that happened during his tenure, and for everything good that should have happened. but that's promotionalism, not encyclopedic content.

some of 3.3, by contrast, is relevant. but even here there is a difference between "announced" and personally arranged for, despite the fact that for most of this obviously his consent was very necessary. And I see no reason to include grants he stage-managed for a few hundred thousand dollars.

3.3.3, International relations starts off with a totally irrelevant sentence "If California’s GDP were compared to those of leading nations, it would rank as the ninth largest economy in the world" People wanting information on California will read the article on that state. His activities as head of delegations etc. are purely routine and ceremonial. I don't think there's anything here that is usable. Please make a revised version of the section you wish to add, and let me know so I can look at it. As you are being so forthright and cooperative I will help you as much as I can to make an appropriate encyclopedia article. DGG ( talk ) 03:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

California assembly-person bios[edit]

I'd guess that every California state assembly-person (I assume that's what state legislators are called in CA) could be considered notable on Wikipedia (quick rule of thumb: Are there 3 articles on the person - not just a mention in passing - in independent reliable sources such as newspapers?)

You could do both Wikipedia and the assembly members a favor by asking them to do the following.

1. Ask them to upload a freely licensed photo of themselves to Commons or here. Commons is better and freely licensed is e.g. CC-BY-SA

2. Ask them to post a biography on their official website, that is also licensed CC-BY-SA (it only needs to be a single page or so). Listing a few references/news articles there would also help.

That way independent editors here can copy some of the material directly to articles here without fear of copyright violation (but attribution is required) at the same time considering the material to be from a more-or-less reliable source - the person him/herself. It would likely work like: "According to his official website, John Doe graduated from JQ Adams High School in 1992 and was selected there as 'Most likely to become a state legislator'," where everything after "official website" might be copied directly from the website (if the independent Wikipedia editor believes it).

This would be a good start to have every assembly member having an article and an up to date photo on Wikipedia.

Thanks for considering this. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 12:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]