User talk:LeslieMertz

Conflict of interest
Hello, LeslieMertz. 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.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   18:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I wanted to let you know that I've removed your name from the list of Michigan writers. All writers must have an article that establishes that they pass WP:AUTHOR. Please do not take this personally, as this was not done arbitrarily. If you can write an article that shows that you pass notability guidelines as an author then please do so, but I'd recommend soliciting the help of one of members of the Books WikiProject. Just be aware that establishing notability on Wikipedia is very hard, especially if you're writing something that wouldn't grab a lot of mainstream attention. I did a little search on you and while I've seen at least one of your books floating around out there, having books published isn't enough to pass notability guidelines. You have to show that you've received coverage from multiple sources that Wikipedia considers to be notable. Something like this is a good start, although some would argue that it's local coverage and not really something that would pass notability guidelines. I'll admit that it's pretty tough and sometimes near impossible for non-mainstream authors to get enough coverage to pass notability guidelines. I've seen authors that have published multiple books for mainstream publishers like Harlequin, Penguin, or Simon & Schuster, yet neither they nor their books pass notability guidelines. As for how hard it is for books to pass, we've had multiple NYT bestsellers that had to be deleted or redirected to the author's article because they didn't get any other coverage. It's pretty frustrating, to say the least.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   18:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)