User:Seattle Skier/AfD Advice


 * This page lists some advice I've given on WP:AFD discussions (saved here so I can use it easily again in the future):


 * Reply: I'll try to address all three of your main points. First of all, in WP:COI it states "you should avoid or exercise great caution when editing articles related to you, your organization,...". The entire article can be viewed as an advertisement to increase membership in your club.  In addition, listing yourself in the "Committee" names can be viewed as self-aggrandizement.  Secondly, you state "there are few, if any at all, secondary sources available for this club", which almost automatically implies that it is not notable enough for inclusion.  In Notability, it states "A topic is generally notable if it has been the subject of coverage that is independent of the subject, reliable, and attributable." If your club were notable, there'd be numerous newspaper and magazine stories about it, but there are none and so your club is not notable either.  The article thus fails to meet the official policy (WP:A or WP:V), which state '"Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources."  Third of all, you wonder why your club was targeted for deletion versus all the other UWA clubs.  Please see WP:INN, which although not a policy or guideline, states "The presence of similar articles does not necessarily validate the existence of other articles, and may instead point to the possibility that those articles also ought to be deleted."  It is likely that all non-notable clubs at UWA will show up here at AfD in time, and you can help improve Wikipedia by nominating for deletion any other club articles which you are aware of and which fail to meet the notability criteria.  I hope this clarifies why the UWA Mahjong Club article is likely to fail this AfD and be deleted.  It is simply not notable enough for inclusion in WP, unless you are able to find reliable secondary sources which discuss it.  Thanks.  --Seattle Skier (talk) 13:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Reply: I think you may still be misunderstanding what Wikipedia is all about (see Five pillars for that), and also misunderstanding what needs to be done to save these articles, so I will try to clarify the main problems. First of all, in Notability it states "A topic is generally notable if it has been the subject of coverage that is independent of the subject, reliable, and attributable." If the subjects of your articles were notable, there would be numerous newspaper and independent magazine stories (like BusinessWeek, not solely ad agency mags) about them, but apparently there are none and so this company and its executives are not notable either. Secondly, you say "My main mistake was taking a lot of information from their website rather than coming up with something totally original", but Wikipedia is not the place for original research either.  Please review the official policies (WP:A or WP:V), which state '"Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources."  The articles completely fail to follow this policy.  They are simply not notable enough for inclusion in WP, unless you are able to find reliable, independent secondary sources which discuss them and cite their notability.  If you wish to temporarily save the content of these articles you have worked on, you need to go through the history of each one and save the most complete version to pages in your userspace (e.g. User:qweqdfadw45, along with subpages of it such as User:qweqdfadw45/Test), but do note that anyone can see and edit all pages in your userspace, and inappropriate content, blatant advertising, etc. will still be deleted from there.  As it stands, all three articles appear certain to fail this AfD, and they will be deleted within days unless reliable, independent secondary sources are found.  Quoting from Attribution, "The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material."  It is up to you to find such sources in order to forestall deletion.  Information on properly citing printed and online materials can be found at WP:CITE.  Thanks. --Seattle Skier (talk) 19:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: It is possible that in the future, this company and its execs may become notable enough to merit inclusion in Wikipedia, e.g. if they are featured in major newspapers or magazines like Fortune. In that case, you may re-create the articles anew, or ask an administrator to undelete them, see Undeletion policy.  --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Reply: Please do not add photos in these discussions again. The proper way to refer to images is to put a ":" in the tag, like this Image:Sky_The_Sunday_Times_3_Dec_06.jpg, so that they display as inline links (I have now fixed them).  Also, please do not use  tags here, it breaks the formatting; use * instead.  When in doubt, please look around to see what others have done in this and other AfD discussions and either follow or copy their examples.  Also, all of your scanned images constitute possible (certain?) copyright violations and will be deleted.  See Uploading images and WP:COPYVIO for more info.  The proper way to provide references is NOT by scanning and posting chunks of copyrighted material.  As I mentioned above, information on properly citing printed and online materials can be found at WP:CITE.  PLEASE make more of an effort to read and abide by our policies if you wish to contribute to Wikipedia.  The serious peril of deletion now facing your 3 articles could have been avoided by doing so, and deletion may yet be averted if you manage to bring the articles up to an acceptable standard meeting WP:A and WP:V.  We have no desire to delete legitimate contributions which meet notability standards, but the burden of evidence (and proper citation thereof) lies with you.  We don't have to know anything about "the European advertising industry" in order to comment upon (and delete, if necessary) articles which fail to meet Wikipedia policies.  --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Reply: Thanks for taking the time to read and understand WP policies. Regarding your statement, "the only way you can dare to question the notability of an entry is because you know very well that field", that's not true in this context.  The issue here on WP is that (obviously) not everyone can be an expert on every subject.  So it is up to the article's creator to provide references that establish and confirm any article subject's notability, be it a scientist or band or school or whatever.  Any article which fails to do so is likely to end up with either a speedy deletion notice on it, or prod, or be listed here at AfD (these are the 3 primary avenues for deletion).  Many editors (though not me) patrol the list of new articles created, looking for just such articles which fail to meet policy and establish notability.  So your hypothetical physicist's article, if it had no references, would probably end up with a deletion notice (or maybe even a hoax notice if someone thought it looked fishy).  Then the article's creator (or anyone else, too) would need to provide references and make sure to assert the subject's notability in the text, preferably in the first paragraph.  If the subject were truly notable, someone would easily find plenty of published references (some of us are physicists and have extensive online/print access to scientific journals, which would certainly have many papers written by any notable physicist).  Even if the article got deleted initially, it's no big deal since it could be undeleted upon proper request or simply recreated in proper form.  Subjects which are notable enough will eventually get a proper WP article, someone will write it.  That's one of the basic principles of this entire project.  The proper way to write a new article (and avoid deletion notices) is to make a small stub with basic info, save it, then add some solid references (which you've already collected beforehand), save again, and then expand the text with further relevant info and details.  There you have it, a soild article started in less than an hour. I've created about 50 Wikipedia articles, always followed this plan, and never received a deletion notice.  The solid references are the absolute key, I've never started a WP article without refs, and I go around adding refs to 100s of other articles which need them.  See WP:MOS and WP:BETTER for many tips and guidelines on writing a good article.  --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:09, 28 March 2007 (UTC)