User talk:Luke-OSISA

Welcome!

Hello Luke-OSISA, welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page contains a lot of helpful material for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. AllyD (talk) 09:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

May 2012

Hello Luke-OSISA. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Sisonke Msimang, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content 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. AllyD (talk) 09:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Sisonke Msimang

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Sisonke Msimang requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be a clear copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. 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. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website but have permission from that owner, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 09:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Deprose Muchena

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Deprose Muchena requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be a clear copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. 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. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website but have permission from that owner, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. AllyD (talk) 09:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Please note that assertion of permission to use text is not enough - see Wikipedia:Copy-paste.

Also, even if the copyright issue were resolved, the promotional tone of a company or personal website is likely to be unsuitable for an encyclopedia article, which requires a neutral point of view. Article subjects need to have notability, which is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." There is more detail at WP:Notability (people), and good advice on how to write an acceptable article at WP:Your first article. JohnCD (talk) 10:14, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Conflict of interest guideline

Hello Luke-OSISA. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content 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. JohnCD (talk) 10:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa

I have undone your edits to this article because (a) they were copied from the organization's website, and we cannot accept copied material without a formal copyright release, and (b) even apart from the copyright issue, they were not appropriate in tone or content for an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is not for promotion of any kind, see also WP:Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause, and should not be approached as a notice-board on which to post copies of material written for other purposes. An encyclopedia article has a different purpose, and serves a different audience, from an organization's own web-site, which can be linked from the article for those who want more detail. See User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard.

As you are editing on behalf of the organization, you should observe the code of WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest. You should not edit the article directly except to correct errors of fact. JohnCD (talk) 10:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Please stop

I have explained above that your edits to Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa ‎ are unacceptable because (a) they are introducing copyright material, (b) they are unencyclopedic and promotional in tone - Wikipedia is not here to duplicate your own website, and (c) you have a conflict of interest so, in order to preserve Wikipedia's neutral point of view, you should not be editing the article directly. I have semi-protected it for a day to prevent you repeating these edits.

Please read WP:Edit-warring and WP:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. If your edits are reverted, you should not simply repeat them, but discuss the issue and try to reach WP:Consensus. Please read all the advice that has been given on this talk page. If, when the article's semi-protection lapses, you simply try to repeat these edits, you may be blocked from editing. JohnCD (talk) 10:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Explanation

Please read this carefully. If you are editing Wikipedia as part of your job, ask your supervisor to read it, too.

You referred to "our article". The first important thing to understand is that it is not your article, it is Wikipedia's article. Wikipedia is not a site like Myspace or Facebook where people and organizations come to write about themselves. It is a project to build an encyclopedia. One of its basic principles is that articles should be written from a WP:Neutral point of view. When people write about an organization they are associated, they naturally want to make it sound good and to stress how wonderful it is - they have an interest in doing that, but Wikipedia's interest is in having a neutral, factual encyclopedia with no advertising, promotion or "puffery". That situation is called a WP:Conflict of interest. That is still a concern, even when the organization is a "good cause" - see Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause.

What you want to do, like many people who think Wikipedia is like Myspace, is to copy into the article all the promotional material from your organization's website. That is not acceptable because (a) it is copyright - no doubt you could arrange a copyright release, but (b) it is unacceptably promotional in tone, and (c) it goes into more detail than is appropriate for an encyclopedia article, which has a different purpose and a different audience from your website, and can link to your website to let people who want more detail, and want to hear what the organization says about itself.

Please read WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest. You should not edit the article directly, except to make uncontroversial corrections of fact. You may make suggestions on the article talk page. I have arranged for the article to be listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Articles to be written or improved which I hope will bring someone to help with the article.

If you have any questions, ask them below here - I will watch this talk page. JohnCD (talk) 10:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi John, thank you for taking the time to help here and my apologies for not following the rules earlier. may I take the current content and edit and then show it to you and we can see if its legit content ?