User talk:Merl666in

St Stephen's Church, Moulton
On revisiting the St Stephen’s entry to add a thumbnail of the Millennium window, I was surprised to discover that you had deleted my contribution in its entirety. This seems entirely contradictory to the spirit of Wikipedia. Whilst you may have a point regarding its length I would point out that there many articles which are far longer. The project provided a new window which is now an integral feature of the church and which hopefully enhances John Douglas’ original design and as such it seems reasonable to include information about it on Wikipedia. Regarding your comments on cut and paste, well I suppose it was in a way as I took it from a much longer document, which I prepared as a member of the project committee. Regarding your comments on the links I accept your comment about the separate section but I would add that they either pertain to the design of the window or those groups which had a hand in the project, none are intended to advertise.Merl666in (talk) 11:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your recent edit to this article about the Millennium Window, which sounds an interesting project. However I do not think the edit is really suitable for a Wikipedia article. For a start, it is too long, and out of proportion to the rest of the article. It rather looks like a "cut and paste" job (forgive me if I am wrong) and as such would not be acceptable; WP articles should really be a precis of information which is "out there", properly referenced so that it leads the reader to where he can discover more about it. The external links within the article are not really appropriate - they should really be in a separate section - and at least one of them leads to a website which looks like an advertisement. And the reference at the end of the section does not verify the source of the material. I have therefore moved the section on to the talk page until something more appropriate can be written about the window. Good wishes. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry I did not respond to your reply above but by the time it was written I had deleted your talk page from my watch list. I have not deleted your contribution but moved it to the talk page of the article.  The main problem is not its length, but that it is not property referenced.  The reference you provided does not lead to the publication from which the information is taken; in other words it does not satisfy the basic Wikipedia principle that everything written must be verifiable - see Verifiability, especially this section.  Writing good material can be complicated but there is a lot of guidance here, and clicking on the "Help" link in the column on the left leads to even more.  There is nothing wrong with publishing the information about the window, but it must be verifiable from a reliable source.  Good luck in sorting this out. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 16:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)