User talk:Colette work

Welcome!

Hello, Colette work, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion 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! JohnCD (talk) 23:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The five pillars of 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)
 * Manual of Style

Wikipedia adoption
I hate to turn down a request for assistance, but I am really short of time at the moment, and in particular I am about to go away for three weeks. If you look at Adopt-a-user you will find a list of users willing to adopt who you can approach, and as an alternative a "template" message you can put on your user page which will put you on a list so that interested adopters can approach you.

I am not sure that Freakyclown is a very promising article for you to start on - I will explain tomorrow the problems I see with it. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 23:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Freakyclown
Deletion debates like that run for seven days, normally, at the end of which an uninvolved administrator decides what the consensus is. They don't normally get suspended in the hope of improvement, but if, as I think likely, the result is delete, you can ask the closing administrator to "userfy" the page for you - move it into a sub-page in your user space where you can work on it. Then the way back for it would be, first to ask the closing admin whether s/he agrees that you have improved it so that the reasons for deletion no longer apply. If not, you could apply at WP:Deletion review.

The deleting administrator may not agree to userfy unless s/he thinks there is a realistic prospect of the article becoming acceptable, and I have to say that I don't think this is a promising case. The criterion for admission is called WP:Notability, and is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Significant means more than just listing-type mentions; reliable excludes Myspace, Facebook, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and anything based on press releases.

The point is that decisions are made not on the basis of subjective opinions about whether a subject is good, useful, worthy, etc, but on the more objective test of whether people independent of the subject have thought it significant enough to write substantial comment about. More detail at WP:Notability (people) and WP:42.

The WP:Verifiability policy requires that "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source." The claim to be co-author of Hackers' Tales does not seem to be borne out by the reference supplied, but even if they were fully verified, the claims in the article - to have been arrested, to be co-author of some books, to have made some presentations, to be "the inspiration" of a character in a book - do not add up to notability. Adding up a lot of non-notable activities does not help - see No amount of editing can overcome a lack of notability.

I am sorry to be discouraging, but I am afraid you might be more discouraged if you put a lot of effort into trying to save this and get nowhere. If you think you can show notability, by all means carry on; if not, there is plenty else to do.

WP:Your first article has useful advice, and A Primer for newcomers is a recently-written, more general guide. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 11:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with everything above, including the probability of the article on Freakyclown remaining at the end of the deletion discussion. It seems unlikely that sufficient notability can be asserted and verified. I hope that is an incorrect analysis of the prospects, but I base it on experience here. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 18:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)