User talk:Opsal.matt

October 2010
Welcome to Wikipedia. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Cinequest Film Festival, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
 * 1) editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
 * 2) participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant 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. -- Rrburke (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
The kind of edits you can make to an article on a subject to which you have a close connection is limited to those set out at Conflict of interest. If you have suggestions for more substantial changes to the article, consider proposing them on Talk:Cinequest Film Festival and leave them to someone else. Please also consider taking a moment to read Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest. -- Rrburke (talk) 21:36, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand the neutral nature of Wikipedia. I was simply trying to add references to our wikipedia information. Do we need to propose the addition of references for our article in Talk:Cinequest Film Festival? Opsal.matt (talk) 22:45, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * If there is any question that the references might not meet the standards set out at Identifying reliable sources, then the answer is certainly yes. But even if the sources clearly meet those standards, the problem is not completely eliminated, as closely-affiliated editors tend to select sources that praise and promote the subject and neglect those that might be critical of it, often resulting in a distorted presentation of the subject's merits or importance.  For this reason it is always a good idea for an editor with a conflict of interest to seek the consent of others before adding material or making changes other than the sort set out at Conflict of interest.


 * In order to comply with Wikipedia's policy requiring articles to maintain a neutral point of view, an article must fairly represent the variety of views on a given topic, in proportion to their prominence in reliable, published sources. For example, an author's citation of exclusively glowing assessments of his or her work is likely to be looked on as a violation of WP:NPOV, in particular the section entitled Due and undue weight, and may also be interpreted as an attempt to use Wikipedia as a vehicle for promotion.  Many (probably most) Wikipedians feel strongly that the author in such a case should really not be editing the article at all, except for non-controversial edits.


 * I note that in addition to citing sources, you also made substantial additions to the section 2008 and added two new sections, 2009 and 2010. Such editing by a closely-affiliated person is nearly always going to be seen as controversial. -- Rrburke (talk) 01:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)