User talk:MercyBreeze

This user may have left Wikipedia. MercyBreeze has not edited Wikipedia since 29 August 2011. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.

Welcome[edit]

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising. For more information on this, see:

If you still have questions, there is a new contributor's help page, or you can write {{helpme}} below this message along with a question and someone will be along to answer it shortly. You may also find the following pages useful for a general introduction to Wikipedia:

I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of my talk page if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! Them From Space 02:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Subconscious rhetoric[edit]

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A tag has been placed on Subconscious rhetoric 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.

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 this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button that looks like this: which appears inside of the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate). Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. SQGibbon (talk) 05:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your edits[edit]

Hello, I've noticed that almost all of your edits are links to http://libraryofrhetoric.org. Generally when the only edits a user makes is to one site that raises an alarm. It appears that you are using Wikipedia to promote that site. See WP:SPAM for our guidelines against that. Further, I'm wondering if you might be associated with that site? If so this would probably be a conflict of interest WP:COI. This does not mean that you cannot contribute articles or links to subjects you are associated with at that site but that you need to disclose your connection and proceed cautiously with your edits in order to avoid the perception that you are promoting yourself. If you have any questions or comments you can reach me at my talk page. Thanks. SQGibbon (talk) 05:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Your message[edit]

Thanks for the message you left at my page. I applaud your goals, both in your website and in wanting to make that information readily available to readers of Wikipedia. What drives most of the best editors here is a desire to share knowledge freely with the world. Wikipedia would not exist without this kind of generosity.

It was unfortunate that your edits ran afoul of Wikipedia guidelines and policy. But don't worry too much about it, Wikipedia is a very complex system of rules that tend to discourage the idea of "an encyclopedia anyone can edit". This is unfortunate but most likely unavoidable as the years go on and the standards we maintain here become higher.

So let's look at your edits in more detail so we can see how we might move forward from here.

Subconscious Rhetoric copyright issue: As you can imagine we have very strict policy about copyright violations. It seems a constant battle against editors who just copy text from books or other sites into Wikipedia articles which is not only unethical but can get the Wikimedia Foundation into legal trouble. Not only are we careful about what gets in but it goes further than that. The license we use allows anyone to copy the text and alter it as long as the original attribution to Wikipedia is made and that these same rights are granted to anyone else who comes across the text. This is known as "copyleft" and you can read more about it here. The point is that if you want the text from your website to be used in an article on Wikipedia then you have to expressly license it as such with the appropriate copyright notice on the page and at the least a link to the license you are using. The problem is that you might not want to give so much freedom away to readers. As it stands now (and I am not a lawyer, etc.), your writings are copyrighted and cannot be copied by anyone (except under certain fair use situations) which gives you a certain amount of legal control over your work. If you're willing to give up that level of control then we can use the text in Wikipedia.

Notability: A problem that I didn't address previously is that it does not appear that your website is "notable" by Wikipedia standards. This in no way is an insult directed at you or your site or the quality/usefulness of the information therein, but is a technical requirement of Wikipedia. Generally speaking, in order for a website to have its own article on WP, it must be written about in depth (i.e., a listing won't do) by secondary, independent, and reliable sources (who are "notable" by Wikipedia standards). There are several reasons for this, one is that we want any future readers to be able to verify the claims made in any article by looking into the sources for the claims and being able to trust (to some degree at least) those sources and thus the information on Wikipedia. This is called "verifiability" (which you can read about here). This is not to imply that you would mislead readers about your website but is a standard we have in place for all Wikipedia articles. The upshot of all this is that if you can show that your site is a significant and respected source within the academic rhetoric community then we can have an article about it.

Conflict of interest: I already linked to that above. Writing about yourself or your organization/website is generally considered bad form here. I'm sure you can see why as there is an inherent (and unconscious) bias involved whenever we talk about ourselves (which is not to say that the rest of us are free from bias but that when writing about ourselves the blind-spot is probably more pronounced). This doesn't mean you cannot contribute, only that you must do so carefully and with full disclosure. What you can do is discuss issues directly with other editors (like we're doing) or on the talk pages of various articles and if other editors agree with you then they can make those edits. It can be cumbersome and slow but it avoids any suspicion of impropriety.

As for adding the links back in, there are several things to consider. Is there actual content that is not/cannot be part of the article itself (ideally we would include that information in the article itself with appropriate citations)? Does the link go to a page that contains a well-chosen set of links to other material? We can link to sites that don't pass the requirement for being a "reliable source" (WP:RS) but it's usually taken on a case-by-case basis. I tend to be rather conservative about external links so as to avoid clutter and bias but it's possible that some of your links might be OK. See WP:ELMAYBE for some more information about that.

Specifically, in my mind you'll want to propose which links you want to insert into which articles on the talk pages of those articles and see if other editors agree that the information would be useful. If you keep me informed about it then I will participate in the process as well. On low volume articles this will be a painfully slow process and frustrating but like I said, I'll be available to help expedite matters. One thing I know I would like to see is some kind of secondary endorsement from other academics which would go a very long way to establishing that your site is a reliable source that should be linked to.

Finally, after reading all this you might be wondering why there's so much stuff on Wikipedia that doesn't meet these standards or the way forward I proposed above. Yes, there are all sorts of problems scattered throughout Wikipedia; the approach that most of us try to take is to fix problems as we see them and not make things worse by lowering our standards. If we fix things as we go along and not introduce more problems then we slowly, but surely, are improving the overall quality of Wikipedia.

I hope this is helpful and not too discouraging. Sometimes the way forward can be daunting with respect to Wikipedia but once you get into the swing of things it turns out to be not so bad. SQGibbon (talk) 20:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to respond to the rest of your message in a little while but in the meantime I thought I'd let you know that I fixed your citation at the American Civil War article. I used a handy template called "cite web" that makes it easy to create a nicely formatted citation. SQGibbon (talk) 01:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of more notes before the lengthier response. When you leave a message for an editor you should do it on their Talk page (mine is User talk:SQGibbon) instead of their User page (like you have been doing with me). The former is for discussions and the latter is for editors to talk about themselves (a little) or leave notes for themselves and so on. But the biggest reason is that if you leave a message on the User Talk page the next time that person logs in to Wikipedia there will be a big banner across the top of the page informing them that they have a message (you've seen several of those now because of me). Leaving a message on the User page will not print such a message so it could be days, weeks, months, etc. before the editor even notices the message.

As you surmised you were not blocked from editing. I am not an admin so I cannot block anyone (I can suggest people for blocking which is something you can do as well). Also, in most cases we use an escalating system of warnings and only after the person has been warned four times and then vandalizes for the fifth time will they get blocked (exceptions are made all the time for particularly offensive edits). In your case you didn't even receive one warning (if you do it'll have a little graphic icon to the side) as I just left a friendly (I hope) message pointing out what you were doing that I thought suspicious. Basically I was assuming good faith (which we're all supposed to do, see WP:AGF) on your part and that you just weren't familiar with the policies and guidelines on Wikipedia. Like I said, I'll be responding to the rest later as I'm very hungry right now and need to eat. (Oops, one last thing, whenever you do leave a message, put four tilde marks (like: ~~~~ ) at the end which is the shorthand way to sign your comment). SQGibbon (talk) 02:19, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Responses[edit]

Hey, hope the Easter candy did you right.

Your contributions to articles so far look good. However, I'm still a little uncomfortable with the links to your website. I've taken a longer look at your site and it looks to be a really good source. Still, there is the conflict of interest issue. In my wall of text I mentioned what I thought would be the preferred method of dealing with your links. Since then I found a Wikipedia essay that states essentially the same thing here. The gist is that for every article where you want to add your external link you begin a discussion on the relevant article's talk page disclosing your conflict of interest and explain why your link would benefit the article. If after, say, a week no one objects then you'd be free to add the link. Besides Wikipedia policy and guidelines about conflicts of interest there's another really good reason for going about it this way. If someone were to put together the pattern of external links and come to the conclusion that there is a conflict of interest (which, if you recall, is exactly what I did) then your problems could escalate quickly, admins might get involved, and there's a chance you'd get reprimanded. If instead every time you add a link to your site (or use it as a citation) you've already discussed doing so on the talk page then everyone will see you are not hiding anything and are editing in good faith.

Another concern has to do with what is contained on your site. If there's just a basic definition for the subject (kind of like with Pro-war rhetoric) that is basically the same as what the article has already then the link isn't really needed. If your content substantially expands on what the article states then the best thing to do would be to try to use your website as a source to expand the article (again, going through the process outlined above) instead of just supplying an external link. This way the article gets improved which is the most important thing.

You also provide links to relevant books and articles on your site but those you could just add directly to the articles instead of having the reader go to your site first (which would look like self-promotion on your part). Not all your links are appropriate as external links on Wikipedia (for instance you link to examples of certain kinds of rhetoric being used in the wild) so in that case providing the external link to your site might be justified. Again, you'd want to discuss it on the talk page first.

I liked your line: "As a published author, I have always enjoyed the editing process because it demanded accountability... something that also makes Wikipedia so successful. If we don't hold one another's feet up to the fire of information-integrity, then we're just creating echo chambers of our own consent. That's not what I'm about, so your direction and advice is eagerly welcomed." and I hope you still feel that way in light of what I've said above. My first priority when I'm on Wikipedia is to Wikipedia and the standards it tries to live by. Sometimes that conflicts with my personal feelings but I still defer to Wikipedia policy.

Finally, you mentioned the cumbersomeness of this discussion and wanting to work on the Subconscious Rhetoric article again. The solution to those two problems is the same. Wikipedia allows editors to create subpages. For instance if you go to my user page here you'll see a link to a Rick Schmidlin page which I used as sandbox to create a new version of that article to replace a version that was basically a poorly written resume by the subject of the article (I had no idea who that person was at the time but creating stub articles ain't so tough if you can find sources online). You can read about subpages here and how to create them here. It's easy and fairly similar to how you create a new article. On this subpage you can work on your article and allow other people to see it and comment on it. You can also copy all of our discussions (since they are long), properly threaded, to their own subpage.

I think that covers most of what was left to respond to. Cheers! SQGibbon (talk) 04:36, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]