User talk:BPSWebmaster

Speedy deletion nomination of British Pteridological Society


A tag has been placed on British Pteridological Society, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article that does not provide sufficient context to identify its subject. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template   to the article and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. If you want to continue to work on it, please do so quickly and remove the tag. Bearian (talk) 22:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You were very quick! Article now extended.BPSWebmaster (talk) 23:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Your User Name
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because it appears to be connected to a company or organisation. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may file for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account and use that for editing. --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 22:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Just looked at the Username policy - don't see a problem as written, as there's no company or product involved. BPSWebmaster (talk) 23:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Can you assure me that this account will only be used by *one* editor, and that no one other than yourself will have the password? You are obviously the Webmaster for the BPS - the sections of the User Name policy I was thinking of were Company/Group names (the BPS is a group, even if not a company or product) and Sharing Accounts. If you can provide assurance that you (and only you) will use this account for editing, then there is no problem - but I think it is necessary for you to give that reassurance!


 * It's just me, no one else has access to this account. I thought it would be more transparent if I used something explicit. BPSWebmaster (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Possible Conflict of Interest
If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
 * 1) editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
 * 2) participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 00:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I've looked at the references - I don't see too much of a problem - I've tried to stick to factual information and hopefully the BPS's activities are uncontroversial. My aim was to just get a basic stub in place and then leave it to others. BPSWebmaster (talk) 10:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Potential Problem with British Pteridological Society article
Ignoring any problems of Conflict of interest, I am more concerned that it is hard to show the notability of the BPS.

Wikipedia has General Notability Guidelines and specifically Notability Guidelines for Companies and organisations.

To quote from the latter (see "Non-commercial organizations"):

Organizations are usually notable if they meet both of the following standards:
 * 1) The scope of their activities is national or international in scale.
 * 2) Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by third-party, independent, reliable sources.  (In other words, they must satisfy the primary criterion for all organizations as described above.) 

Additional criteria are:
 * Organizations whose activities are local in scope may be notable where there is verifiable information from reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area. Where coverage is only local in scope, the organization may be included as a section in an article on the organization's local area instead.
 * The organization’s longevity, size of membership, or major achievements, or other factors specific to the organization may be considered. This list is not exhaustive and not conclusive.

Obviously, the BPS meet criteria 1 (and the longevity helps as well, at 119 years old!). The problem is the second criteria.

I spent a while looking for sources to show notability, with the following results:
 * Google Search - 3520 hits. I obviously didn't check all of them, but the 300 or so I did check were either from 'non-reliable' sites (as Wikipedia defines it), or minor mentions (such as a single mention in one sentence). I failed to find significant coverage of the BPS
 * Google News - no hits
 * Google News Archive - 22 hits - all minor mentions (i.e. a single sentence)
 * Google Books - 628 hits - either published by the PBS (so not independent) or minor mentions in a single sentence
 * Google Scholar - 229 hits - either published by the PBS (so not independent) or minor mentions in a single sentence

I know that Google searches are not the only criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia - but to justify the BPS having an article, it will be necessary to find evidence of notability.

The guidelines for organisations being notable says:
 * An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability.  All content must be verifiable.

If you can find coverage of the BPS in books, newspapers, etc, then these can be used. Obviously, at this time of night, I cannot pop down to my library to research this. However, I would be surprised if I could find significant coverage there either.

If the BPS features in books, they cannot be published by the BPS themselves (as these would not be independent), not "vanity press" type affairs. If newspapers, etc, feature information about the BPS, these must be significant coverage - no a minor mention in a sentence or two.

My advice would be to find such references showing the notability of the BPS, and use these as citations in the article (see Citing sources on this). I will also leave a "reference to references" guide below this message!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about any of this! Regards, --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 00:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Reference about References
--  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 00:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I've added some non-BPS references. I'll look for more. I suppose that by the nature of things, there tend not to be a lot of publications that make extensive reference to specialist societies and they tend to publish a lot about the subject themselves - they usually exist to fill a niche not otherwise filled. Thanks for your advice. BPSWebmaster (talk) 10:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Potential copyright issues
Hi, there appears to be a copyright problem between British Pteridological Society and this web page. Can you rewrite urgently please? --HighKing (talk) 00:25, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright
Hello BPSWebmaster, and welcome to Wikipedia. Your addition to British Pteridological Society has had to be removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.


 * You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
 * Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
 * Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Copyrights. You may also want to review Copy-paste.
 * If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Donating copyrighted materials.
 * In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
 * Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied without attribution. If you want to copy from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Widefox ; talk 00:29, 1 August 2014 (UTC)