User talk:Amandapagliaro

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Amandapagliaro, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines, and may not be retained.

There's a page about creating articles you may want to read called Your first article. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! - Mr X 19:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa[edit]

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A tag has been placed on Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

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. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. - Mr X 19:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why I deleted your article, plus a general ramble[edit]

I see from your user page that you are editing as part of a course on "Theories of the media". That is interesting, because Wikipedia is a new kind of medium, and the Wikipedia community is basically making up the rules as it goes along, and having to educate new contributors.

Anyone proposing an anyone-can edit encyclopedia with no paid staff back in 2001 when Wikipedia started could be reasonably optimistic that there would be people prepared to contribute their knowledge and expertise, and they would have been right. They might also have been pessimistic about the amount of silly vandalism and the amount of promotion and advertising that people would try to add, and they would have been right again. What would not have been easy to predict is that there would be (just) enough people prepared to do the behind-the-scenes work to detect and revert vandalism, detect and filter out advertising, and generally keep the show running.

Vandalism of the schoolboy "poop" variety is relatively easy to deal with, and automatic systems do much of that work. Advertising is a more difficult problem, and needs human eyes. The reason your article was tagged for deletion, and as reviewing administrator I agreed with the tag and deleted it, is that it was written in promotional PR-speak: "famously known for their food, wine tours and private gardens... known for being Canada's number one hotel... highly regarded as one of the nicest hotels to stay at... ", evidently aimed at potential customers and designed to "sell" the hotel. Anything like that is deleted at sight. A Wikipedia article requires a WP:Neutral point of view, no opinions, no glowing adjectives (see WP:PEACOCK) or "weasel words" like "it is rumoured that... ", just plain facts neutrally stated and backed by reliable sources. Somebody writing about a hotel needs to think of themselves not as writing for the hotel, but writing for Wikipedia about the hotel, from outside. What they write should not be aimed at potential customers, but at general encyclopedia readers.

People writing about their own companies, and people have been long in the PR trade, seem to find it extremely difficult not to write promotionally, or even to realise that they are doing so. (I have been told that "phenomenally successful... obsessive and extensive knowledge of fashion design... revered for his rare ability... an arbiter of taste... his inventive images... " was written with "no promotional intent"). That is one reason why editing with a conflict of interest is strongly discouraged. If I may say so without seeming condescending, you are young enough not to have been corrupted in this way, and it's important to keep a clear view of the difference. By all means write promotionally when that is the task at hand, but be aware that you are doing it, and retain the ability to switch it off.

One way to look at it is to imagine yourself approaching the editor of, say, the New York Times and asking him to publish that text. He would refer you to his advertising manager, who would quote a price. If you said you wanted it in the editorial section, the editor would laugh and explain that the editorial section carries facts, and where it carries opinions they are those of the newspaper, with the paper's reputation and prestige behind them. Wikipedia differs from the NYT in not having advertisements, nor indeed do we express editorial opinions, we only have the "facts" section, underpinned by the WP:Verifiability policy that: "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source."

The links in the Welcome message will tell you more about Wikipedia. Best wishes, JohnCD (talk) 23:24, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]