User talk:FTatTDSB

Edits to redirect: Alpha II Alternative School
You should create a draft article (see Drafts) to expand the information available on Alpha II Alternative School. Right now, it is a redirect to ALPHA Alternative School, a subsection of the article on ALPHA Alternative School. This is because it has not yet been shown to be notable enough for an article of its own. As an alternative to creating a new article, you could add information to the main article, ALPHA Alternative School (make sure it's sourced, too). signed, Willondon (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * thank you for the suggestions. the "main article" is a completely different school, so we reasoned that Alpha II is at least as notable as Alpha, and merits its own article. FTatTDSB (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Ouch! I see (below) your first attempt has been proposed for deletion because of copyright infringement concerns. How discouraging. I've contacted the editor who proposed it, to see if that can be withdrawn. Hopefully, the draft doesn't get deleted too soon. If it does, you can try again. You can ask on my talk page for advice if you need.  signed, Willondon (talk)  19:10, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * The concern was that blocks of text had been copied from the school's website. All original writing is automatically protected under copyright law as soon as it is expressed. So everything original is presumed to be protected unless there is an explicit license. See Copyright violations. Otherwise, Wikipedia is in legal jeopardy if vigorous efforts are not maintained to prevent plagiarism.  signed, Willondon (talk)  19:21, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Draft:Alpha ii alternative school


A tag has been placed on Draft:Alpha ii alternative school requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from https://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/alpha2/Home/portalid/183. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Donating copyrighted materials. The same holds if you are not the owner but have their permission. If you are not the owner and do not have permission, see Requesting copyright permission for how you may obtain it. You might want to look at Wikipedia's copyright policy for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. DanCherek (talk) 18:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

March 2022
Hello FTatTDSB. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Alpha II Alternative School, gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely strongly discouraged from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.

Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are  required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at User:FTatTDSB. The template Paid can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form:. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message. DanCherek (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * it is a public school, not a for profit organization. I am a secretary, not a salesperson. I am not promoting the school, i am adding an article about the school that previously did not exist. Google search results for our school link to the Alpha Alternative School article, which-again-is a completely different school.
 * I am not an experienced editor, but I an astounded that my effort to correct an article that lists the wrong school has been undone so many times. FTatTDSB (talk) 19:10, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * You don't need to be a salesperson to have a conflict of interest. I appreciate your efforts to improve Wikipedia. I hope I can offer you guidance there. First off, I wonder in what sense the school is a completely different school than the one in the "Alpha II" subsection. Is it administered by the same organization as the "ALPHA Alternative School", or is there no connection at all?  signed, Willondon (talk)  19:24, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Alpha Alternative School is a school in the Toronto District School Board, serving students in Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6. Alpha II Alternative School is also a school in the Toronto District School Board, serving students in Grades 7-12. They are not affiliated in any other way. They are not in the same building or even the same neighborhood. Some students at Alpha may matriculate and choose to apply to Alpha II, while others will go elsewhere.
 * Students at Alpha II have recently formed a social media committee and have included adding an article on Wikipedia as their purview. I was attempting to remove the redirect and set up a starting point for them with minimal content. FTatTDSB (talk) 19:31, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, as you can tell, your efforts are going against the grain. My advice would be to wait a day and let some dust settle regarding the reversion of your efforts so far. Going forward, it will be important to realise that Wikipedia's purpose is not to offer a platform for people, places and things to publish information about themselves. Not to say that you can't contribute while having a conflict of interest, often Wikipedia's goals have some overlap with other entity's goals, but you will encounter a crowd-sourced group of editors, among them me, that will keep the gate to ensure that Wikipedia's goals are paramount, and that things are done in a way that reflect the policies in place to ensure its interests.  signed, Willondon (talk)  19:45, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Again, I value your input. If it seems inappropriate for me to advocate for my school, will my students' efforts meet the same resistance? If so, where do we turn? FTatTDSB (talk) 19:58, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
 * If you can let it sit for a day, in the meantime, I'll do some thinking and researching among Wikipedia's vast repository of guidelines, policies, etc.  signed, Willondon (talk)  20:47, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello. I think you should be made familiar with Wikipedia's concept of notability. A common misconception is that Wikipedia will accept an article about any person/organization/thing just because it exists; but this isn't true. A topic must be considered notable to merit inclusion here. In the most general sense, a topic must have first received significant coverage from multiple reliable and unaffiliated sources to be considered worthy of inclusion. In the case of schools, I have pasted a section of the page Notability (organizations and companies) below:

All universities, colleges and schools, including high schools, middle schools, primary (elementary) schools, and schools that only provide a support to mainstream education must either satisfy the notability guidelines for organizations, the general notability guideline, or both. For-profit educational organizations and institutions are considered commercial organizations and must satisfy those criteria. (See also WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES)

I would advise your students not to attempt to create a standalone article for the school. They have a conflict of interest as well; they are not disinterested third parties, even if they have good intentions. They will find it difficult to:
 * be objective judges of the school's notability
 * write from the required neutral point of view
 * use only information published in reliable, independent sources, and
 * omit any unpublished personal knowledge or experience

My recommendation is to make edit requests on the existing article's talk page, Talk:ALPHA Alternative School. There you can suggest revisions and give the sources which support them. They will then be reviewed by an uninvolved editor who can either publish them, or suggest revisions. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 22:47, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:FTatTDSB/sandbox


A tag has been placed on your user page, User:FTatTDSB/sandbox, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be advertising which only promotes or publicises someone or something. Promotional editing of any kind is not permitted, whether it be promotion of a person, company, product, group, service, belief, or anything else. This is a violation of our policies regarding acceptable use of user pages — user pages are intended for active editors of Wikipedia to communicate with one another as part of the process of creating encyclopedic content, and should not be mistaken for free webhosting resources or advertising space. Please read the guidelines on spam, the guidelines on user pages, and, especially, our FAQ for Organizations.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the. Lavalizard101 (talk) 11:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Draft:Alpha ii alternative school


A tag has been placed on Draft:Alpha ii alternative school, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, group, product, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the. Lavalizard101 (talk) 13:10, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Expanding on this notice: I tagged it as g11 given the history of both the draft and the redirect. Lavalizard101 (talk) 13:12, 11 March 2022 (UTC)