User talk:Paulavdw

Welcome!
Hello, JohnCD, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 22:15, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
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Solarstone
Copyright text can only be used if a formal copyright release is made, as described in WP:Donating copyrighted materials. Just asserting permission to use text is not enough, because we have to be certain that the person giving a release has the authority to do so, and that the actual copyright holder understands and agrees to Wikipedia's license terms, which allow any reader to copy, modify and re-use material for any purpose including commercial.

However, it is almost never worth doing that, because material written for other purposes usually has a promotional tone quite unsuitable for an encyclopedia article, which requires a neutral point of view. Certainly the text I deleted in 2011 would not be acceptable even if the copyright issue were resolved.

Although we don't explain it as well as we should (or indeed at all) at sign-on time, Wikipedia is not a "notice-board" site like Myspace or Facebook for people to tell the world about themselves and their clients. It is something quite different: a project to build an encyclopedia. I have this conversation so often that I have written User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard to explain some of the background.

As Solarstone's manager, you have, in writing about him, a WP:Conflict of interest. As a general rule, a suitable page will be best written by someone without Conflict of Interest. It's not impossible to do it properly with a COI, but it's more difficult: you are automatically thinking in terms of what you want to communicate to the public, but an uninvolved person will think in terms of what the public might wish to know. Keep in mind also that the goal of an encyclopedia is to say things in a concise manner - not the style of press releases or web sites, which are usually more expansive.

An article will need to demonstrate Notability, which is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by references showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." See WP:MUSICBIO for the notability standard for musical performers.

If you want to go ahead,


 * Read WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
 * Read WP:Your first article
 * Find the independent sources you will need
 * Click on Help:Userspace draft and fill in the title. That will start a draft page in your "user space" where you can work on the article, with a link to good advice and a "Submit" button which will send the article, when it is ready, to WP:Articles for creation, where an experienced user will look at it, and either accept it or give you feedback.
 * When writing, make a strong effort to think of yourself, not as writing for Solarstone, but as writing for Wikipedia about him, from outside. You are not addressing a potential customer for his records or gigs, but a general encyclopedia reader. Bear in mind the WP:Verifiability policy that: "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source", and when writing any glowing adjective, or indeed any claim, imagine a hostile critic saying "Who says? Can you prove that?" Don't talk about his aims and hopes for the future, but about what he has achieved. No opinions, only facts, neutrally stated and cited to reliable sources. Write in your own words, without copying from the website.

By now you are thinking "This is much harder than I thought, all I wanted to do was post a copy of his web-site to tell the world about him!" I apologise again that (because we are anxious not to put new contributors off by making them read a lot of advice) Wikipedia does not make clear at sign-up time that it is not a site like Myspace or Facebook, which are set up for people to do exactly that; but if Wikipedia is a more valuable resource than Myspace, it is only because we have standards and rules on notability, verifiability and conflict of interest.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:15, 12 April 2013 (UTC)