User talk:Joephiladelphia

Welcome
Hello, Joephiladelphia, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: Introduction The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Help How to write a great article Manual of Style

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place on your talk page and ask your question there.

Thanks for your work on Alan Butkovitz. That is an article that has been in need of work for a while. One thing though: you removed a "reference" (which are things that create footnotes. They are coded like this ). You changed it to an external link. That's an honest mistake on your part, but it generally frowned upon, because links as "references" appear at the bottom of the page as a footnote. For more information, check out Citing sources. Again, welcome.--Blargh29 (talk) 20:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to create an infobox for Alan Butkovitz that will stand above the current infobox of State Represenative. I have tried, but am new to Wikipedia editing and haven't figured it out. I am also having difficulty inserting a picture. I work for city government and thus have many pictures that I have permission to use. I'd like it to look something like this:

Alan L. Butkovitz Philadelphia City Controller Incumbent Assumed Office January 2006 ______________________

Thank you, Joephiladelphia (talk) 14:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Response
If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
 * 1) editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
 * 2) participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant 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 conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. &mdash; Deontalk 14:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, please see WP:UPLOAD for information on uploading images. Cheers, &mdash; Deontalk 14:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Helpme 2
Thank you for the response, and I will be sensitive to the facts you mention. At this point, I am merely trying to add an official's infobox as describd above to City Controller Alan Butkovitz's page. I have tried to insert the appropriate template, but if you look at the page, you will see that it's not showing up correctly. I have searched wikipedia for help but to no avail. What can I type into the edit page to make it look like the standard Wikipedia infobox? Thank you. Joephiladelphia (talk) 15:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Normally, we use standard template infoboxes; we have ones for almost every possible role.


 * Also, normally, an article would only have one infobox in an article.


 * If you check the parameters available for template:Infobox State Representative, it's likely that it can do what you want.


 * Another infoboxes is, for example, Template:Infobox Person.


 * A list is in Category:Infobox templates.


 * For guidance on their use and style, see Manual of Style (infoboxes).


 * I hope this helps,  Chzz  ►  15:13, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

P.S. For more help, you could talk to us live, with this or this.  Chzz  ►  15:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Welcome and introduction
Hi, Joephiladelphia. This is NOT some automated message...it's from a real person. You can talk to me right now. Welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed you've just joined, and wanted to give you a few tips to get you started. If you have any questions, please talk to us. The tips below should help you to get started. Best of luck!  Chzz  ►  15:19, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Infobox and images
Joephiladelphia, I went ahead and fixed the Alan Butkovitz infobox thing for you. Here's what I did: If you go to Infobox officeholder, you can see the code for all kinds of different types of infoboxes for political office holders. There are basic parameters, like name and birth, and also parameters for various offices, like precedessor, successor, start, and end. To stack these within the infobox, you simply add a number to the end, so it becomes precedessor2, successor2,...etc.

Here's another thing about uploading pictures that you should be aware of. (Here's a guide for Image use policy.)
 * First, Wikipedia only allows for "free" images, with few exceptions. What that means is when you upload a photo, it becomes available for anyone to use in pretty much any way, including for commercial purposes. If you are going to upload an image from the City of Philadelphia, you should check with a supervisor (unless are the supervisor) before doing so, because it is essentially giving away the copyright to City-owned photos. Some governments have no problem with that, and some do not allow it.
 * Second, lots of people take photos from government websites and upload them without permission. Since Wikipedia is pseudonymous, it is almost impossible to determine if someone actually has the authority to upload these images, and many are eventually deleted. But, there is a solution to that problem:OTRS
 * OTRS is a system that securely and privately logs emails from individuals to Wikipedia. This can be used to prove that you have permission to upload these images. If you want to do this, I can walk you through it. Just let me know.--Blargh29 (talk) 16:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I see that someone above has directed you to the Conflict of Interest guideline. It is OK, as long as you are editing "as yourself" and not "as an employee of the City." Also, make sure that you cite everything that you write in articles.--Blargh29 (talk) 16:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)