User talk:Drew Kopf

some WP:SOURCES, plus some explanations
Hello Drew, saw your message to User:Stabila711, and figured I would leave you a note. Sorry wikipedia is such a byzantine place!

There are a few pertinent wiki-laws that will help you understand the way things work here: first of all, everything revolves around WP:SOURCES that are considered wiki-reliable per WP:RS. Note that wiki-reliable is only vaguely related to the real-world meaning of the term 'reliable' aka truthful and accurate. On wikipedia, usually what is needed is for the publisher to be bluelinked and journalistic, which is to say, has professional editorial oversight and a fact-checking department. For instance, here are some:


 * http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/19/nyregion/long-island-journal-220087.html, which is the New York Times bluelink.
 * http://blogs.yu.edu/news/yeshiva-university-alumni-honor-fencing-coach-arthur-tauber/, which is the Yeshiva University bluelink.

Now, I'm not sure that those particular mentions of Drew Kopf are actually *you* because sometimes there are multiple humans with the same name. But I am reasonably sure that the publishers are wiki-reliable and that therefore these two URLs count as WP:SOURCES by wikipedia standards.

The question then becomes, what article-topic do these wiki-reliable sources help with? It is true that there is some information about Drew Kopf in the material, but the pieces in question are mostly about Something Else, right? The NYT piece is multi-segment coverage, talking about the snakes bred by the high school science teacher, then about a new company for group-living elder care, next the high school marching band without a corresponding football team, and finally about some local jurists participating in a community play. As part of the last piece, Drew Kopf is quoted, and the job-title of cultural arts director at the Suffolk Y is given. Overall though, this is what is known in wikipedia-jargon as WP:NOTEWORTHY mention. It would be useful to back up a sentence in a hypothetical biographical article about Drew Kopf, something like this:


 * In 1987, Kopf was cultural arts director at the Y in Suffolk, New York, and helped put on a play (involving local judges and lawyers with non-speaking parts).

Then at the bottom of the hypothetical Drew Kopf article, this ref would appear:

However, just being mentioned in a couple WP:SOURCES is not enough for a dedicated article on wikipedia. See the rule of thumb at WP:42, which I'll go ahead and cut-n-paste since it is short: [wikipedia-]articles generally require [wiki-]significant coverage in [wiki-]reliable sources that are [wiki-]independent of the topic. The more long-winded stuff is at WP:N and WP:NPERSON, which I refer to in shorthand as wiki-notability. In order to have an article about Barack Obama or about George W. Bush, what is technically required by the wiki-laws is a bunch of press-coverage (wiki-significant && wiki-independent && wiki-reliable sources) specifically about those people. Newspapers, television, magazines, academia, government agencies, that sort of thing.

The NYT'87 is wiki-reliable, and also wiki-independent, but fails to be wiki-significant coverage of Drew Kopf, because there is not enough depth: a couple namedrops, a job-title, and some info about a play that Kopf was involved with. By way of contrast, if there was an article titled "Drew Kopf directs latest play to rave reviews" then that would be significant in-depth coverage, right? It is not necessary that Kopf be mentioned by name in the title of the piece, but for wiki-notability, Kopf has to be specifically talked about (in journalistic voice) for multiple paragraphs, and preferably for multiple printed pages. Make sense?

Now, because the NYT'87 piece was quoting Kopf for the most part (aside from the job-title portion), it also somewhat fails the wiki-independent requirement. Interviews and long quotations and (especially) pieces written *by* Kopf -- or equivalently by Kopf's employer/ancestors/employees/kids/friends/partners/PRagency/customers/etc -- is definitely not considered wiki-independent enough for use in demonstrating wiki-notability. There is a piece in The Jewish Post at this URL, http://www.jewishpost.com/news/jewish-turkey-israeli-relations.html, which would usually be considered wiki-reliable ... though since the topic is about the highly-controversial topic of Greater Middle East geopolitics there are pretty stringent requirements for *exceedingly* wiki-reliable sources in the wikipedia articles about those topics ... but for the hypothetical article on Drew Kopf, the JewishPost piece would not count towards wiki-notability of Drew Kopf, because although the publisher is wiki-reliable, the piece is not wiki-independent (since it was authored by Kopf).

Anyways, in a roundabout fashion, what I've been leading up to is the question of whether the Kopf'16 campaign, is suitable for being listed at the USPE, 2016 article about the POTUS race. As was pointed out by Stabila711, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of candidates. Wikipedia generally lists all FEC-form-two-registered candidates, but only after the election is complete (cuts down on article-clutter during the election-cycle and also cuts down on the work needed since the list only needs to be vetted once). During the election-cycle, which is to say between now in October 2015 and the final general election ballot in November 2016, wikipedia only lists presidential candidates which already have their own wikipedia article, in this case the Drew Kopf article. To get the biographical Drew Kopf article accepted into wikipedia, what is needed is roughly this:


 * at least three WP:SOURCES (newspapers/television/etc)
 * which are bluelinked wiki-reliable WP:RS publishers (not blogs/selfpublished/forums/fbook/twit/etc)
 * that are 100% wiki-independent of Drew Kopf (neither financially nor personally linked and not selfpublished)
 * which have published pieces that give detailed multi-paragraph journalistic-voice in-depth coverage specifically about Kopf

These refs can be online or offline (e.g. many newspapers from the 1980s are still not available on the web as yet), and they can be in English-language or non-English-language publications. But they have to be wiki-reliable, wiki-independent, and wiki-significant-depth. Once you have the sources in hand, getting the wikipedia article written and accepted is not instantaneous; so usually, it is better to start with Draft:Drew_Kopf, and incrementally revise that draftspace biographical article as time goes by. As long as you make *some* kind of edit to that draft-article every few months, it won't be removed from draftspace. (If it is removed and you want the contents back see WP:REFUND for instructions.) You can start the Draft:Drew_Kopf article at any time (just by clicking Draft:Drew_Kopf and following the instructions), then add more WP:SOURCES to it as the are discovered (or as they are written). Concentrate first and foremost on sourcing, not on prose: every sentence you write should be backed up explicitly by a wiki-reliable wiki-independent WP:SOURCE, see WP:REFB for syntax-helpdocs.

In other words, my best advice is to concentrate on digging up newspaper/television/book/magazine/radio/academia/governmental/similar coverage specifically about Drew Kopf, which already exists. Failing that, write a draftspace article that is WP:NotJustYet ready for mainspace... and at this point, I will fall back on the old chestnut: if you want to paint a beautiful picture, first begin by turning yourself into a beautiful person. :-)     In other words, if you want to have your presidential campaign listed in wikipedia, and an article about yourself which is a prerequisite thereof, the best way to accomplish that is to concentrate on running the best presidential campaign you can.

Get noticed by the voters, and you will get noticed by the press. Seek the publicity that goes along with getting noticed: get quoted by the newspapers, get soundbites onto television, get interviewed on talk radio, get profiled by magazines, and so on and so forth. Wikipedia is all about reflecting what the sources say; once you are being talked about in the sources, getting a wikipedia article will be a no-brainer. So, seize the day: put forth bold-yet-sensible policy planks, get out the word about your wise-yet-pragmatic governing philosophy, and in general act presidential and lead your citizens towards the light.

Point being, your main worry should not be getting wikipedia to mention you, your main worry should be overcoming the infrastructural biases that all non-anoited candidates must face. It will be an uphill battle, but the voters do tend to appreciate the underdog, sometimes. I hope this longer-winded explanation is helpful to you, and wish you good luck. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 13:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)