User talk:Mke4think

Answering request for feedback
Hi, Kathy.

1) One "point of order" as it were, is that editors do not need to ask for approval to post a new article. You simply create it and let others comment on it.

2) You've already created an article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Friends_School. I assume the idea is to replace it with this longer article? An editor has tagged that article for lack of notability. Since potentially that could cause the article to be deleted entirely, that would be the first issue to consider. What is "notable" can be difficult to pin down, but if the school has won awards, been written up in the national press, has famous graduates, famous teachers, etc., that would would probably do it. If that isn't the case, then have a look at the Wiki pages for other schools, perhaps in the Bay Area, that are NOT tagged for notability (or for any other problems). (How about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_College_Preparatory_School)

3) Are you K**** E****? If so, you want to read WP:CONFLICT carefully. People with vested interests in the article content need to be exceptionally careful to use neutral language.

4) Besides explaining the school's notability to a greater extent, what's the most important is to change the style so that it reads more like an article from the Encyclopedia Britannica. There's quite a lot of "peacock language" WP:PEACOCK. Getting rid of that will get you started in a good direction (and also help avoid having another editor put a WP:CONFLICT tag on the article.) Peacock terms are fine for advertising, but are discouraged in Wiki. The more there are, the more likely someone will tag your article. Here are examples that should all be removed:


 * "hope in times of despair"


 * "crucial to understand today"


 * "fundamentally changed institutions"


 * "renew their commitment"


 * "era of distortion and deception"


 * "or more accurately"

5) The more controversial a statement, the more it's likely to need a specific citation from a reliable third party source. (A generic link at the bottom of the article won't do it.) For example, I bet you wouldn't have to look far to find someone who strongly disagrees with this statement from the article: "the marginalization of black history in the public schools due to high-stakes testing."

One "space" you really do not want to be in with Wiki is having an article that has attracted the ire of editors. Once "discussions" get started about your article, they may go on indefinitely, and waste a lot of your emotional energy. Again, a good way to avoid this is, in a very literal sense, cut-and-paste material from well-polished Wiki articles.

I hope some of this is helpful. If you'd like specific ideas about wording changes, leave a comment here, and I'll see it within a couple days.

Regards, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 14:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)