User talk:Julievanv

Your submission at Articles for creation
 Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.
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 * Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! - Happysailor  (Talk) 22:00, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation
 Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.
 * If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at Wikipedia&.
 * To edit the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
 * If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the help desk, via live help, or on the [ reviewer's talk page]
 * Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Dalisays (talk) 20:51, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Help with new article
I saw your request for help on the IRC help channel. Thanks for adding content. If you rewrite the article to have a neutral tone and only content that is notable, it will have much less problem being approved.

Take a look at the ANSI article. That organization is much larger and more significant, but it doesn't include:
 * 1) Principles (which are very promotional)
 * 2) List of individual members
 * 3) Officers, committee chairs

Also:
 * Description of laminate floors is at the Laminate flooring page. There should be a link to that page, and I would think no more than a sentence or so of description (such as benefits).
 * I think details of the trainings offered should at most be a sentence or two for each cert. Again, refer to ANSI page.
 * The section 'VALUE OF THE NALFA SEAL' needs to be retitled, and rewritten to be neutral. Maybe the title should be 'Criteria evaluated'.  Get rid of words like 'rigorous'.  Include links to wikipedia pages for all the terms/criteria that come up.

I would suggest that you add the article to a WP:USERSUBPAGE if you need a place to work on it. If you'd like me to take a look before you try to get approval again, let me know on my talk page: User talk:LaTeeDa. Good luck! LaTeeDa (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, your references are not so great. Although most of them point to outside organization web sites, the outside orgs appear self interested in your promotion.  For example, the NCSU ref (#3) is a testing lab that sells testing services using your standards.  Others may be sites of your members.  A good source would be a trade journal article that describes NALFA.  LaTeeDa (talk) 14:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Review notes April 4th
I did a major rewrite to make this conform to the sites policies. As you have seen, folks here are very prickly about not allowing self promotion (it comes up a thousand times a day) and so it is possible that your material could be challenged again. The root of the problem is that there is not a single real news or magazine article describing the organization and what it does, which is a problem for two key policies: WP:NOTABILITY and WP:VERIFIABILITY. Some of the sources you found are press releases clearly republished verbatim by trade newsletters, which doesn't count here. I did find the official ANSI certifier list - so that adds a lot of weight to that section. Overall, I can't guarantee that this will fly, but adding the info box, and generally showing effort on the formatting and on neutrality will help. So, I'd give it another shot.

Here are some specific notes:


 * 1) All material in sections 'what is laminate flooring' and 'environmental benefits' is either covered by Laminate flooring, or should be added to that article. I deleted it all.  Feel free to add it back in if you disagree.
 * 2) I changed the citations to the normal style. Raw links are discouraged. In the future, see WP:CIT.
 * 3) The 'Floor Covering Weekly' citation is just a reprint of a press release. As discussed, try to find a real news article about this organization that isn't just a press release reprint.
 * 4) I did try to use an ehow.com article, but this was rejected as spam. Which is probably correct.
 * 5) You might want to add a logo. See Resilient Floor Covering Institute.  See also Help:Files.   The logo would be added to the info box on the top right.  Look at the ANSI wiki site for an example.
 * 6) I added single sentences about research, marketing and lobbying, as it seems likely that NALFA does these. I think including them helps show the article is neutral.

BTW, best tip on wikipedia is to copy things other folks do. You can click 'edit' on any page, and take a look the underlying markup. For example, for the info box on your page, I just went to the ANSI site, and copied what someone else had done, then customized.

Good luck! LaTeeDa (talk) 20:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Still needs submitted
Julie, When you moved the revised article over the the Articles for Creation (AfC) page, you appear to have deleted the AfC headers. I just replaced them (look at the history on that page to see what I mean). Go back to that page, and click 'Submit' from the box immediately above your text, then 'Save'. It is located here: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/North American Laminate Flooring Association. I think that will get it submitted. LaTeeDa (talk) 20:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It is now submitted and is in the queue. See Category:Pending AfC submissions, which is in order, with the oldest listed first.  If you don't see your article, it may be on the next page.  LaTeeDa (talk) 14:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Declined again
Julie, the issue is that there are no reliable sources to establish notability. We don't have an article that independently discusses it. Only reprints of press releases written by the org itself and published in what seem to be non-notable trade weeklies. ANSI lists it as a certifier, but this in and of itself doesn't meet the requirements for notability. Here is the relevant polciy: WP:CORP. If Consumer Reports or a major magazine or newspaper were to discuss NALFA and its seal, that would help. Sorry this hasn't worked out. LaTeeDa (talk) 18:07, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

LaTeeDa, I'm not giving up yet! I have found two new sources of some note. One from eHow and one from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/garden/07fix.html?_r=1). They both talk about NALFA's certification seal. Would you recommend I resubmit with these new sources? Julievanv (talk) 17:33, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

May 2012
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, adding or significantly changing content without citing a reliable source is not consistent with our policy of verifiability. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you are familiar with Citing sources, please take this opportunity to add references to the article. Jay Σεβαστός discuss  14:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)