User talk:DavenportJuniorTheatre

Help me!
Please help me with my first Wikipedia page! Any tips you can give would be appreciated!

DavenportJuniorTheatre (talk) 18:18, 20 June 2016 (UTC) Helena

Welcome!
Hello, DavenportJuniorTheatre, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction and Getting started
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
 * Simplified Manual of Style

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 19:30, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Your username
I'm afraid the first thing you need to do is, apply at WP:Changing username for a new user name which will represent only you as an individual. The reason is that Wikipedia accounts are for individuals only, who are personally responsible for them, so shared accounts, or accounts whose name is the name of a group or organization. If more than one of you wishes to edit, all are welcome, but each needs to have his or her own account. JohnCD (talk) 19:30, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Advice
The links in the Welcome message above will tell you more about Wikipedia and how you can contribute. WP:Your first article is particularly useful.

I am guessing that your planned article may be about your theatre group. I have to warn you that that may be more difficult than you think. Although we do not make it as clear as we should to new users, Wikipedia is not a place for organizations or people to tell the world about themselves. It is quite selective about subjects for articles: the test for inclusion is called Notability and is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by references showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Significant means more than just listing-type mentions; reliable excludes Youtube, Facebook, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and anything based on press releases. The test is, have people not connected with the subject thought it significant enough to write substantial comment about? See also Notability (summary).

Also, if you write about your own group you would have, from Wikipedia's point of view, a WP:Conflict of interest, and should read that page and the Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. That need not be a problem, but you would have to be very careful not to be promotional, and rather than post an article directly you should use WP:Articles for creation, which will allow you to make a draft article and submit it to an experienced user for review. That is a good thing for a new user to do, anyway.

I have this conversation so often that I have written User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard to explain the issues.

Please do not be put off: I am not saying all this to discourage you, but you are more likely to succeed if you understand the problems that might trip you up.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 19:30, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Your page
When I wrote the reply above, I did not think to check your contributions, which was careless of me, so I did not see that you had already posted a page. I have moved it to Draft:Davenport Junior Theatre where you can work on it, and click the "submit" button to send it for review when it is ready. It is a good start, but it needs more independent references to establish notability. You can link to your own website, but shouldn't quote directly from it. You may be asked for a source for the claim to be the second oldest. JohnCD (talk) 19:51, 20 June 2016 (UTC)