User talk:Sellypaws

Graeme Danby
Hello, Sellypaws. We appreciate your contribution of this article but for legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material such as the material pasted in from Artist's Biography on www.1984theopera.com. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. I've now rephrased that and added the source to the article. Also when you use such sources, you must include them in the references. Otherwise it becomes plagiarism. The same applies to Sarah Fox. You need to go back over these articles, and remove any further instances of copy-paste or close paraphrase from other web sites. Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 11:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A bit of advice
Hi Sellypaws, I've left you a message on my talk page concerning your query about Graeme Danby and Sarah Fox. But this is more general advice and also pertains to some of the other articles you've added. A lot of artists' representatives think a Wikipedia article is a good way to raise their presence on the internet. But it can be a double-edged sword. Once you have chosen to create an article on Wikipedia, you no longer own it or have control over "the copy". It has to comply with all Wikipedia standards for formatting, referencing and neutral point of view. The latter two are particularly important. The article isn't and can't be used as an alternative (or substitute) website for an artist. For example, listing "future plans" is frowned on and usually removed unless the event is very notable, in the very near future and is verified by independent sources. Once the event has taken place, and has been reviewed by reliable sources, independent of the artist, that is the time to add it to Wikipedia.

Good articles can be written on the singers you've added to Wikipedia, but it's actually a lot of work. Just finding and formatting the references is very time-consuming. So is making sure the language is neutral and encyclopedic, and copy-editing to insure the right spellings, use of italics, and correct linking. But it's worth it. It gives the article much more credibility. Articles written in even the slightest promotional tone or look like they've come from straight from an artist's or their recording company's web site, actually do them a great disservice. They can be spotted a mile away as having been added by a publicist.

One thing you need to do, for example is to use proper references (footnotes) for the critics' quotes in the Liping Zhang article. I saw both her Liu and her Madame Butterfly at Covent Garden. I thought she was excellent and thoroughly deserving of the reviews. But you need the exact date the review was published. If the review is available on line, you should also provide a link to it. This is especially important, if only glowing extracts are added to the article. And under recordings it says:


 * Liping Zhang's debut disc was released by EMI Classics on 6 October in the UK, and on 11 November in the United States. The recording features arias by Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, and Donizetti.

6 October and 11 November in what year? What's the title of it and the catalogue number? Has it been reviewed? If so by whom? It's those details that make a credible article. All the best, Voceditenore (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2009 (UTC)