User talk:Neilturok

Welcome
Hello, Neilturok, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers: We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  01:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Editing tutorial
 * Picture tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Simplified Manual of Style

potential conflict of interest / user name issue
based on your user name:

Hello, Neilturok. 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.

or

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "Neilturok", may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because your name is the name of a person for whom you have been editing its article. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account for editing. Thank you. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  01:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi
Dr. Turok, I may be able to help you a little with this WP:COI problem. I am a physicist & astronomer, lately retired Caltech/JPL staff, who has done some editing at Wikipedia, so at least I know the rules, more or less. By pure chance, a dear old friend of mine, a retired organic chemist, called me a few minutes ago from Canada, and said I must Google the Massey Lectures and read about you and your work with students in South Africa. I am interested, having taught refugees in (then) Tanganyika in 1962-63 with a college group. Of course I would need to maintain some "appropriate distance" re the COI issue, but I think we can probably manage that in a way that will be satisfactory to the gatekeepers here. You can reach me on my WP talk page, or by email at bill@wwheaton.com. Cheers, Bill Wheaton Wwheaton (talk) 00:21, 4 November 2012 (UTC)