User talk:Taxbax

A tag has been placed on "artists' liberation movement", requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

advertising page

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet very basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as an appropriate article, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is appropriate, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add  on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Ford MF 18:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Liberation of expression, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

advertising page with no outside sources; exact copy of http://taxbax.net/libofexp taxbax.net/libofexp

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet very basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as an appropriate article, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is appropriate, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add  on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Ford MF 18:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

A brief explanation
In order to follow along my explanation, I must make one thing very clear from the beginning: Wikipedia is not the kind of an art project you think it is. It is an exercise in creating a factual, useful encyclopaedia, with all parts of that rather traditional, hidebound, and non-expressive craft considered - and I'm not saying any of those qualities are bad things, they're extremely good for the task at hand. We're scholars, not prosaists. We're concerned about communication and conveying facts, not creativity. Who we are doesn't matter and we must not care. I'm a rather verbose prosaist so this is, of course, a personal challenge. We have very specific kind of commonly agreed rules here, and we don't interpret them too creatively. We're allowed to bend them if needed but even so we're expected to reflect on their spirit.

That said, I'll address some of the points you made...

I'll comment on your last comment first, because that explains a lot. No one finds it problematic in itself that you're writing about yourself. However, it's the way people write about themselves that's the problem. Actually, the problem is how one goes to present anything at all: You have to consider all of the relevant rules of the house, the style, the applicability of sources, the wording, the method of writing - now that you mention, everything that has to do with creating articles.

It's not something one learns overnight; I really recommend looking at other articles and seeing how they look. As said above, we're not creating Kewl Artikuls that stand out; we're creating articles that are uniform, accessible and informative.

I had a little bit of difficulty following what you actually referred to; I only deleted the article "artists' liberation movement". The reason I deleted it was that it was basically empty. Wikipedia articles have to stand alone and external links are only meant to give sources and supplemental information; article that only says "see this web page" isn't helpful at all. I discerned that you were actually referring to Liberation of expression; I purged the material you wrote from that article's history for a few reasons. So here goes:

You're interpreting the definition of "advertising" here pretty broadly, while we have a rather strict definition - even if it's just "I know it when I see it". The idea is not to curb the promotion of ideas; it's to curb promotion of ideas for their own sake. Nikola Tesla stood on his own merits, so we tell the world about what he did. A hypothetical company Bob's VCR Repair Shop isn't known for its own merits, has no records of ever being a notable company, and the article was created by the owner of the company for the purpose of generating the said notability - well, that doesn't bode well.

Which brings me to the conclusion of that one: We need a priori notability which must be demonstrated through reliable sources. If the article doesn't explain why the subject is notable and have sources to back it up, we're easily lead to the conclusion that the article is purely promotional - an attempt to get the notability a posteriori.

Then, the freedom of expression. This is an age-old dilemma: You have every right to say things and spread the word. Regrettably, freedom of expression entails neither a requirement to listen, nor requirement to convey. In other words, say what you want, but don't expect that people will help you spread the word and don't expect to be heard. Expect that people set the terms on how you may spread word on their communication channels.

Then, the website. We're not objecting on taking information from the website. We're objecting on the fact that it's a direct copy of the content and there's absolutely no indication on whether or not we're allowed to use the content in first place under the copyright constraints we have. Wikipedia is not a place to present original material anyway: Consider, for example, Dada - the article explains in its own words where the movement came from, and the Dada Manifestos only appear in the external links. And while it is true that you do get the best information from people directly involved, that doesn't necessarily work in a scholarly work. We require attributability and reliable sources, self-published material may not be the best when you consider reliability. We also have to consider problems raised by conflicts of interest if you are writing about yourself.

Now, you probably want to look at notability and see whether or not the subject qualifies. I also recommend looking at manual of style to see how articles are put together in the first place.

Sorry if I'm long-winded, but this is how things work here. Also, please don't be disappointed - life is always hard at first, so very confusing for all of us all the time, and no one can be a genius all the time. Happy editing and welcome to Wikipedia! --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 09:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)