User talk:Lucashammill

Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy
Hi! Welcome to Wikipedia! I'm afraid I have some concerns about your edits to Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. I'm not convinced that the Baldy Center meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines|, which say that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article". As far as I can see, none of the references you've added to the article are independent of the subject: they're all published by the Baldy Center itself or the University of which it's a part. Do you think references exist that are written and published independently and could show the article satisfies the guidelines? If no independent references exist, it might be best for the article to be redirected again to the University at Buffalo article, which could be expanded to include more information on the Baldy Center.

My other concern relates to Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline, which says that editors should generally avoid contributing to articles about their friends, family, employers, etc. Editors who are being paid for their contributions are required to disclose who they're being paid by (see Paid-contribution disclosure). One of your edit summaries suggests that you have a connection to the Baldy Center and that you've been employed by the Center in the past. If this is the case, you should probably refrain from directly editing the article in the future (and disclose any financial relationships if need be); you should feel free though to suggest changes at Talk:Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy (or, if there are no other sources and you agree that redirecting would be appropriate, at Talk:University at Buffalo). I hope this all makes sense and isn't too discouraging – let me know here or at my talk page if you have any questions. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi -- that all makes perfect sense. I am currently being paid by the Center, and was asked to compose a Wikipedia article. So I suppose that violates Wikipedia's guidelines. I'm sorry -- I wasn't aware. As far as other sources, the Baldy Center is well known across academia, and its work has been highly cited in the academic literature, but there hasn't been much, if any, coverage of the nature and breadth of its activities in the mainstream press. -- LH
 * Firstly, no need to apologise. Wikipedia has lots of complicated policies and guidelines, but we don't require editors to familiarise themselves with them before editing – just to abide by them once they know about them. If you plan on editing that article or related articles in future you should be sure to disclose that you're being paid, which you can do by adding paid to your user page (User:Lucashammill). As far as the sources, academic and scholarly sources are just as welcome as journalistic sources, but they'd have to contain substantial discussion of the Center – just citing work produced by the Center or its scholars isn't enough to demonstrate notability. I'll try to have another look at the article in the next couple of days and think about how it might be merged into the University at Buffalo Law School article (not the University at Buffalo article as I mistakenly suggested above) while preserving some of the content you've added. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:08, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

That all sounds good. Thank you. Lucashammill (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2018 (UTC)