User talk:Rdgifford

Welcome

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Autobiographical article
You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved, instead of writing it yourself. This applies to articles about you, your achievements, your band, your business, your publications, your website, your relatives, and any other possible conflict of interest.

Creating an article about yourself is strongly discouraged. If you create such an article, it might be listed on articles for deletion. Deletion is not certain, but many feel strongly that you should not start articles about yourself. This is because independent creation encourages independent validation of both significance and verifiability. All edits to articles must conform to No original research, Neutral point of view, and Verifiability.

If you are not "notable" under Wikipedia guidelines, creating an article about yourself may violate the policy that Wikipedia is not a personal webspace provider and would thus qualify for speedy deletion. If your achievements, etc., are verifiable and genuinely notable, and thus suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later. (See Wikipedians with articles.) Thank you. 69.181.249.92 (talk) 06:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

August 2010
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, but at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Robert Gifford, did not appear to be constructive and has been automatically reverted by ClueBot.
 * Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Note that human editors do monitor recent changes to Wikipedia articles, and administrators have the ability to block users from editing if they repeatedly engage in vandalism.
 * Cluebot produces very few false positives, but it does happen. If you believe the change you made should not have been detected as unconstructive, please report it here, remove this warning from your talk page, and then make the edit again.
 * The following is the log entry regarding this warning: Robert Gifford was changed by Rdgifford (u) (t) blanking the page on 2010-08-03T06:37:51+00:00 . Thank you. ClueBot (talk) 06:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest
It appears you have a clear conflict of interest in relation to edits you are making. Please read the policy about conflict of interest - it is inappropriate to be feathering your own biographical page - you should be making suggestions on the talk page. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 04:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Re your note on the articles for deletion page, there are two issues at stake - the first is the notability of the biography (which is discussed and decided on the deletion page). The second is your use of the page as autobiography.  The user page warnings are in relation to this second issue, as autobiographical editing is in clear breach of the principles of wikipedia.  (See Autobiography).  In short, editors should not edit articles that they have a conflict of interest with, and editing must be undertaken with the neutral point of view.  As it is impossible to have a wholly objective view of your own self, the solution is not to allow any autobiographical editing.  As stated in the WP:Autobiog page, you are entitled to remove vandalism or unsubstantiated slander from your own page, but not to add material.  If you have material you think belongs on the page, you use the discussion page to suggest it, and an independent editor can assess it and include it if it is relevant. (This was suggested by Crusio on the deletion page).  I hope this clarifies things. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 05:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * In short summary - A biography may or may not belong on wikipedia, but autobiographies unquestionably do not belong on wikipedia (Unless on your own private user page). Clovis Sangrail (talk) 05:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, Clovis Sangrail is not completely correct. Creating an autobiography is discouraged, it is not against the rules and it is not explicitly forbidden. As for the tags on the article, the AfD will run for 7 days and at the end of it the article will be deleted or it will be kept and in the latter case the tags will be removed by the closing admin. To avoid the article being re-tagged with COI and autobio tags, the best way to handle this is as I said and as Clovis repeated here, post the requested edits on the talk page for another editor to review or post them on the talkpage of another editor willing to help with this. --Crusio (talk) 06:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * An additional comment about conflict of interest: writing about yourself is discouraged but is not totally against the rules. I see that the notability and autobiography tags have been removed and I think that's appropriate. I have already commented "Keep" at the deletion discussion because I think you clearly qualify for a page here under the usual guidelines. One thing: I notice that recent edits to the article have been done anonymously. If those edits were by you, using an anonymous IP address, I advise you not to do that any more. Writing about yourself frankly and openly is one thing. Writing about yourself, but trying to conceal the fact that you are the one doing the writing, would be much more frowned on. And in case you have ever been tempted to create another Wikipedia account under another name, so as to edit this article without admitting it is you, I would strongly warn against doing that; such an account is called a WP:SOCKPUPPET and is a violation of the rules here. I assume you would not do that but I just wanted to be sure you are aware it would be a problem.
 * I do want to welcome you to Wikipedia and hope you have not found the debate too frustrating. Wikipedia is a community of volunteers who work things out by discussion and consensus, and it can be bruising to be the subject of such a discussion. However, we are all here because we care about keeping Wikipedia as a high-quality resource for the world, and I would encourage you to join us in that effort. Up to now you have only edited your own article, but please consider adding information or corrections to other articles within your areas of interest or expertise. --MelanieN (talk) 14:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Appropedia
Your most recent edit to Wikipedia under this account was on 4 August 2010. You may also be interested in editing on Appropedia, another wiki which specializes in sustainability and appropriate technology topics. Appropedia is not strictly limited to encyclopedic content; several academics use it in conjunction with coursework and research. See for example appropedia:User:J.M.Pearce. You can write first-person accounts and autobiographical material on Appropedia as long as it relates to sustainability or appropriate technology. Wikipedia, in contrast, is purely encyclopedic, and has a neutral rather than sympathetic point of view, which takes some getting used to as it is different than the way most people tend to approach writing. --Teratornis (talk) 07:12, 6 April 2011 (UTC)