User talk:Japonismus

Welcome!
Hello, Japonismus, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: 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 ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Introduction to Wikipedia
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 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
 * Simplified Manual of Style

Hello, Japonismus. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may need to consider our guidance on conflicts of interest.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.

Copyright problems with NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva
Hello. Concerning your contribution, NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva, please note that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images obtained from other web sites or printed material, without the permission of the author(s). This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://www.ngocsw-geneva.ch/introduction/. As a copyright violation, NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva appears to qualify for deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message. If you believe that the article or image is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) then you should do one of the following:


 * If you have permission from the author, leave a message explaining the details at Talk:NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva and send an email with the message to . See Requesting copyright permission for instructions.
 * If a note on the original website states that it is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, leave a note at Talk:NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva with a link to where we can find that note.
 * If you hold the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL, and note that you have done so on Talk:NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva.

However, for textual content, you may simply consider rewriting the content in your own words. While contributions are appreciated, Wikipedia must require all contributors to understand and comply with its copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright concerns very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Advice: copyright and notability
Wikipedia cannot hold copyright material, not even in sandboxes or user pages, not even temporarily. Please read Copy-paste.

Please note that assertion of permission to use text is not enough; we have to be certain that the person giving a release has the authority to do so, and that the actual copyright holder understands and agrees to Wikipedia's license terms, which allow any reader to copy, modify and re-use material for any purpose including commercial. For those reasons, a formal copyright release, as described above, is required.

It is very seldom worth making a copyright release, because a company or personal website is likely to be quite unsuitable, because of promotional tone or unencyclopedic detail, for an encyclopedia article, which requires a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopedia, not a notice-board for pinning up promotional material, or for people or organizations to "tell the world" about themselves.

Article subjects need to have notability, which 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." There is more detail at WP:ANS, WP:Notability (organizations and companies) and the WP:FAQ/Organizations. The test is, have people unconnected with the subject thought it important and significant enough to write substantial comment about it? Many worthy organizations, particularly new ones, cannot meet that test; that is not at all to their discredit, but it means they are not suitable subjects for an encyclopedia.

The rules on notability and promotion apply also to non-commercial organizations: Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause.

People are strongly discouraged from editing about themselves, or their own organizations, or any subject on which they have a Conflict of interest, because experience shows that they find it hard to maintain the neutral point of view which is one of Wikipedia's fundamental principles. For advice, see WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 16:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

More advice as promised
I am sorry to give you "pre-packaged" replies, but I have conversations like this so frequently that I made general versions rather than write it all out again each time. I apologise that Wikipedia does not do more to explain at account creation time that an encyclopedia project is not a place for people or organizations to "tell the world" about themselves: we are so keen to encourage everyone to edit that it is feared even half a page of advance reading would put people off.
 * User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard
 * User:JohnCD/Advice

Background documents:
 * General notability guideline
 * FAQ/Organizations
 * Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
 * Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause

I looked at the page about your sister organization, and I am rather surprised that it has not been challenged. It does not give any independent references to show notability, and it reads like the organization's manifesto. A problem with people writing about their own institutions is that they put what the organization wants to tell the world, rather than what a general encyclopedia reader might want to know.

If you have any questions, you can ask them below here: I will watch this talk page. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 00:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you
very much JohnCD for taking the time to explain things! I really appreciate (Although at first I must admit that I was really disappointed to see my work gone juste a couple of hours after I painfully created an article!). And I fully understand hat you use pre-packaged answers; it is certainly a time saver!

I also now fully understand the Copyright issue, and I'll certainly be more careful in the future.

On the other hand, I am still unconvinced that organizations cannot openly write about themselves, especially non commercial ones. It is exactly the strength of Wikipedia to allow correction by anybody and redress any bias an organization may have about itself! In addition, I feel such a policy encourages people to write articles under cover, under an anonymous ID. How can you know if the user X who writes an article about an organization is not directly involved in this org?

Regarding the notability of our sister organization in New York, would a reference like http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/ngo/index.html which explains that UN Women works closely with this committee be enough? (I now feel bad that I put attention to the NGO CSW NY as well... ;-) ). Am I allowed to add such reference? Like the NGO CSW Geneva, this is an old organization that has a long history... it should stay in wikipedia!

Best regards, Japonismus (talk) 14:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be slow to reply - I will try to get to it within a couple of days. JohnCD (talk) 00:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Renewed apologies for delay - once something drops off my "must do today" list it sometimes gets forgotten.


 * Your point about organizations writing about themselves is an interesting one. The problem is that they always want to promote themselves, to tell the world how wonderful and important they are, and people writing about themselves and their employers often do not seem able to see that they are writing promotionally: they protest "no promotional intent" while writing stuff like:
 * "We have products such as eMpower, e-Ontime as well as Payroll... Our Products are fully customizable, extendible and work with any Hardware OEMs.. "
 * "newly established and dynamic travel company dedicated exclusively to you... "
 * "our aim is to impart all round quality education to meritorious children... "
 * "Our photo editing services breathes life into bland and lifeless images to deliver quality artwork... "
 * "We offer premium service features to help consumers truly extend the life of their laptops... "
 * Those are all real quotes from today's input. On a typical morning I deal with a dozen or so like that, and there are other admins at work too - probably fifty-plus new promotional organization "articles" every day. There simply are not enough uninvolved editors to rewrite them all in neutral terms; they are all volunteers and would rather write about the things that interest them.


 * That is one reason why we insist that accounts are for individuals; there is then some hope that the individual can understand that he is writing for Wikipedia, not for his employer, which will never be the case for someone writing under his employer's name. COI editing is not absolutely ruled out (though the brutal response could be: if no-one outside your organization is interested enough to write about it, it is probably not notable). I agree there is a risk of driving spammers underground, though the tone of what they write is usually unmistakable; and the guideline WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest includes: "'If no article exists and you believe one should, you can make a request for someone else to post one at Wikipedia:Requested articles. You may make a draft in your userspace (e.g. a page like User:yourname/yourcompany) to mention in your request, but be aware that material that looks like it belongs on a company's web page, or advertising, will be deleted even in user space. As an alternative to this, consider compiling a list of usable reliable sources for others to use, instead of a draft.'" But there again, the backlog in the Articles for Creation queue is typically 1,000 or so. The problem is, what is intended to be an encyclopedia project has become so popular that it is being overwhelmed by the people who see it as a noticeboard to tell the world their message.


 * In summary, if we let organizations write about themselves, we would become a site like Myspace, but we are trying to do something different from that.


 * If you want to have another go, first think hard about notability. Unless you can find references that show "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", you will get nowhere. That approach probably makes things unduly hard for behind-the-scenes organization like NGOs (compared with, say, a pop group), but it means that Wikipedia is not making subjective judgements about what is important but rather using the more objective test, is there evidence that other people think it important? The reference you give is something but (as far as I understand the relationships) UN Women is at least affiliated.


 * Regarding your sister organization: I should let sleeping articles lie. If you add a reference, it will pop up on recent-changes lists and may draw attention.


 * Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you again!
The point is well made and I understand! Maybe it would have been easier for wikipedia to reject ALL entries on non institutional organizations? Because right now you have a whole bunch of organizations on Wikipedia (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-governmental_organizations !), and this indeed encourages other organizations to want to be on wikipedia! (it gives visibility, credibility and is good for SEO!). Anyway, this is a wider debate indeed!

So thank you again for all the advices and openness : I'll probably make another try in the future...

Best regards and bonne continuité (How do you say that in English?!?), Japonismus (talk) 14:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)