User talk:Eyesofbabylon

Welcome
Hello, Eyesofbabylon, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I notice that one of the first articles you edited 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. Your recent contributions may have already been reverted for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of deletion, you might like to draft your article before submission, then ask me or any other editor to proofread it. To start creating a draft article, just click your user name at the top of the screen when you are logged in, and edit that page as you would any other. 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.

The one firm 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. It is also worth noting that Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which specifically link them to one company or corporation. If your username does have such a name, it would be advisable for you to request a change of username.

If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! You can also just type   on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! VQuakr (talk) 06:50, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
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Changing your username
Try forming a request at Changing_username/Simple. If this is too confusing, let me know and I can walk you through it. Please note that WP:COI will still apply if you change your name. VQuakr (talk) 18:33, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Feedback reply
. MatthewVanitas (talk) 20:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I "userified" your article, moving it to your personal Userspace. As such, it is at no risk of deletion while it remains in Userspace, barring blatant libel or copyright infringement. You can work on it at your own pace, and feel free to file a new Request for Feedback if you get to a certain point and aren't sure how to proceed. You just need to make sure you address the sourcing issue prior to publishing to articlespace, and leave it on userspace until it's cleared hot. Oh, and please message me on my Talk page vice sending an email; overall that's the best policy unless for some reason you just can't get a hold of someone. MatthewVanitas (talk) 21:41, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Interviews
Interviews with the subject are acceptable so long as the publisher (newspaper, magazine, radio station, etc) is itself a Reliable Source. So NPR interviews, yes. JohnsPlayBlog.com is generally not, though you can maybe put such a thing in the "Further reading" section. Don't forget, as you add footnotes, to write them as full WP:Citations rather than just WP:Bare URLs. Feel free to post back on this page, as I'll Watchlist it. MatthewVanitas (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Another question
So interviews that the entry writer does with the subject are not acceptable, correct? Except if they're already printed or aired somewhere. One cannot do any "original research" for an entry--correct? Thanks. hopefully posting here is okay since you said to feel free to post back on this page. Also, should I list in my References section all the places from which I've drawn my information, and these references will establish my subject's notability? Should I include links, for instance, to many different reviews? I used a link to a page on a site that has many links to reviews, that's why I only used that one link. Thanks again so much for answering my questions!Eyesofbabylon (talk) 23:34, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If you did the interview, the main question is who published it. If you're a staffer for Boston NPR, you can use it (though you should mention on Talk that you're citing your own interview), but if it's just you talking to the subject on AIM, or interviewing him for your non-professional blog, then that wouldn't really count since it hasn't gone through a formal review process. To put it bluntly, a lot of WP:Reliable sources boils down to "would somebody risk their job if they published unreliable stuff"? It's no knock on your interview skills, it's just that encyclopedias are trying to compile the most reliable material, so by their very nature they're not adventurous.


 * So far as refs, interviews, etc. The ideal (and certainly not that hard) is that everything be footnoted to a specific source. So if you have two sentences explaining how, say, he decided to enlist, then you would follow them up with, with the implication being that anyone reading Smith's interview would say "ah hah, here's the portion which proves that those two sentences are accurate." That's basically the goal of footnotes on WP; not "this is also an interesting point" but "here is a reputable info source validating what I wrote here."


 * If you have References that are simply redundant to what you already have, but give interesting coverage of the subject, you can add those in "Further reading", but ideally most stuff should be footnoted.


 * Yes, you can post back here and I'll see it on Watchlist. Once you get used to conventions here, usually conversations should stay on the page they were first started on, with the assumption that the other company will "Watchlist" the page (by hitting the little star icon up close to the search box) to alert them when something new was said. But you being new I thought it best to move the conversation to your own page.


 * Again, I have no doubt the subject overall will pass Notability, it's just that it needs clearer footnoting, the bio details may be hard to substantiate with RSs, etc. And the bio references thing isn't us being jerks, it's us trying to be fair to the subjects, who presumably would prefer that speculation/hearsay/conversations not be used to develop such a visible resource. You're on the right track, and I think you'll find it pretty easy once you get rolling on footnoting. Shoot back here with any questions. MatthewVanitas (talk) 00:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)