User talk:Andybasil

Welcome!
Hello, Andybasil, and welcome to Wikipedia!&#32;Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was EIFA International School London, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article.&#32;Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * Contributing to 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)
 * Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! — Jeff G. ツ 10:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. — Jeff G. ツ 01:56, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

From a long-time Wikipedian
Andybasil, I'm sorry to see you got off on the wrong foot. Thank you for volunteering to help us with the encyclopaedia, and I hope you change your mind and stick around. I have met a lot of kind and friendly people here, and it can also become addictive :-) In any case, I'm going to drop a second welcome template below, with links to more of our policies and ways of doing things, as well as places to ask for help, so that if you do decide to stay (or return), you have the links to hand.

I've no idea if writing to you will spur a positive or negative response, but I thank you for your post, it's hugely more helpful than the stream of abuse I've received from Jeff and John. I'm really shocked I'm being treated like a cross between a child and a petty criminal. I'm used to online abuse at the hands of Twitter trolls whenever I express a contrary opinion but here..at wiki? For heavens sake I realised I'd made a mistake and asked for help, nothing more. I only chose the school page to edit because I wanted to try editing 'something' and found the page and realised it was out of date. I have decided wiki is not for me, I frankly do not need the likes of Jeff and Johns pedanticism - Jeff has today threatened to block me for 'personal attacks' whilst failing to see the irony of his threat bearing in mind every single one of his responses to me. So thanks again for your post but I won't be continuing on. I have been well and truly put off. (Andybasil (talk) 18:51, 1 March 2020 (UTC))


 * Well, I'm sorry to hear it. We have a lot of rules and established practices and while copyright is a serious matter, I think some of us could use a bit of thought about how much there is for a new editor to take on board. (I'm actually a former admin, so I've seen a large number of flummoxed people and this isn't the first time I've tried to explain things.) Anyway, thanks for giving it a try. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:09, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

..and now I feel conflicted! Thanks so much for your response, very much appreciated. I was hoping to make a side hobby of wiki and your response is what I've always thought Wiki is about. Maybe I'll let the dust settle and take another look at some point in the future. Thanks again. Best. (Andybasil (talk) 19:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC))

Two notes. One is that verifiability is one of our core policies. Articles should be written based on reliable sources, and cite them so the reader can look them up (and find out more!), and for that reason plus netrality, which is another core policy, we try to use primary sources like people's cv's and organisations' websites and brochures as little as possible. So the problem wasn't that your edits weren't factual (I'm sure they were), it was that they didn't have the independent citations to support them. Secondly, you seem to have been signing your posts on talk pages at the start of the comment, rather than the end, so whatever you did at the start, that's how to sign! As it says in the stuff at the top of the template, there are two ways to do it: if your keyboard allows, type 4 tildes ( ~ ) (3 or 5 tildes do something different); if tildes are too hard, there should be a button on top of the edit window with some kind of squiggle symbol, click on that and the software will make the 4 tildes. (You are probably using Vector, the default skin, and possibly the mobile interface, so you may have to find a pull-down menu to see the button, but that should be all.) Hoping to see you around. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:26, 29 February 2020 (UTC)