User talk:Hollyyacynych

October 2007
Welcome to Wikipedia. Please do not remove speedy deletion tags from articles that you have created yourself. If you do not believe the article should be deleted, then please place  on the page (please do not remove any existing speedy deletion tag) and make your case on the article's. Administrators will look at your reasoning before deciding what to do with the article. Kim Dent-Brown  (Talk to me)  18:19, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Article on your school
Hello there, thanks for your email reading: "Where is there commercial material? We are simply stating information about our school. Can you please indicate what part of the text is deemed commercial or advertising?"

I shall assume good faith and that you are a genuine Wikipedian interested in building an encyclopaedia, and not just a publicist interested in promoting your own business. That being the case, there were a number of problems with your article.

1) Conflict of interest. It was clear from the original user name that you were using that you had a close association with the Empire Education Group. Obviously this is an assumption on my part, but one you have confirmed. The difficulty is that another of Wikipedia's guiding principles is that articles must be written from a neutral point of view. It is very hard for someone with a personal interest (such as an owner, employee or shareholder) to write a neutral article about a business. Imagine a manager from Enron writing the article about that company!! The WP:COI policy says:


 * If you fit either of these descriptions:


 * you are receiving monetary or other benefits or considerations to edit Wikipedia as a representative of an organization (whether directly as an employee or contractor of that organization, or indirectly as an employee or contractor of a firm hired by that organization for public relations purposes); or,
 * you expect to derive monetary or other benefits or considerations from editing Wikipedia; for example, by being the owner, officer or other stakeholder of a company or other organisation about which you are writing;


 * then we very strongly encourage you to avoid editing Wikipedia in areas where there is a conflict of interest that would make your edits non-neutral (biased).

Under these circumstances I just don't think it's right for you to edit the article on your business.

2) Advertising. Your original edit had phrases such as:
 * "...Empire Education Group and its 70-year tradition of excellence in cosmetology education"
 * "...graduates from our Massage Therapy Program are in great demand"
 * "...When I moved to Massachusetts, I researched schools and Blaine seemed to stand out the most"
 * "...I would recommend Blaine. Everything you put into it, you’ll get out of it. It’ll prepare you if you have the right attitude. You’ll do really great here"

Now you may say that these are facts. But this just goes to prove the wisdom of the WP:COI policy: these are your own point of view and are not neutral. In fact they are advertising, and I am certain that they have simply been cut and pasted from your own promotional material. If this is NOT the case, I would very much like to hear so!

3) Verifiability. All facts or assertions in an article must be backed up by a reliable third-party source. You did not put in any citations even to your own website or materials (which would not have been acceptable) never mind to unbiased sources such as newspaper or magazine articles.

4) Style. The article you wrote was over 100k long, and if you look at the Manual of Style link you will see that 32k is a recommended upper limit. Because the article was a cut and paste job you made numerous other errors (including multiple copying of sections) and the article was in no way consistent with the style and format we expect here. On these grounds alone the article was, in my opinion, unsalvageable.

If you genuinely want to contribute to Wikipedia, find an article within your range of expertise and contribute to it. Do not make any references to Empire, and learn the basics of editing articles. If someone neutral finds Empire notable, he or she may write an article about it. If they ever do, you may contribute to it via the talk page, but it would be better never to directly edit the article yourself.

Please reply here if you would like to discuss this further. Good luck - Kim Dent-Brown   (Talk to me)  09:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC)