Talk:Pullman Memorial Universalist Church

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Please note this Wiki article has been posted by a person considered to have a conflict of interest. The majority of the material was researched by village and county historians. I have attempted to present their information in a neutral viewpoint but heartily welcome any edits that would improve either the tone or content. Information about complying with Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest can be found here: WP:SCOIC. Signed Pmucpastor (talk) 14:07, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I just wanted to say that the article looks great, especially for a new editor. I haven't read through much but the format and coding looks to only have a few small mistakes. Thanks for declaring that you're connected with the church. I'll try to read through the content in the next few days and see if there's anything that needs to be reworded or removed. My only question is, does anything that has been posted here belong to anyone else? You mentioned that the information was researched by village and county historians. To make sure that the article doesn't have any issues that would get it deleted, I'd like to make sure there's nothing promotional and that it's not violating anyone's copyrighted material.

Hope you're having a great day. OlYeller^Talktome 14:50, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I am an editor who has already started nit-picking this article. And will continue to do so. However I agree with the poster about that the piece seems to be clear of conflict of interest and the other sort of issues that can arise when someone close to the subject writes. The real test (opinion) is how the editor responds to changes that others might suggest or make. In my case my objections were replied to with solid sourcing. Fine. I would like to see a few more inline citations - 2 footnotes in a article this long seems like not enough. PS Pmucpastor, check out how the colons are used here. Carptrash (talk) 17:36, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Most of the information presented here was researched and accumulated in 1994 in preparation for celebrating the centennial of the church's construction. Sources included local town and village documents, as well as old board of trustees' minutes and minutes of annual congregational meetings. A special commemorative 4-page "newspaper" was printed for free distribution to the community. I spoke to one of the two historians involved when I started this article to get permission for reuse and he assured me that he considered all the material to be in the public domain since that was where it was gathered from originally. In fact, he was happy that it would published to the internet so all that work would not be lost (only a few of the printed papers still exist).

I hear the lament about lack of footnotes and struggled with that problem while I was writing the article. Since so much of it came from the one source (plus some websites) I thought it would be sufficient to just list the resources at the end. I can go back in and add more footnotes, and try to find some of those original documents, but it will take some time.

Just as an aside, I'm not only new to editing on Wiki but I'm also new to the church. I became their minister on June 1, and undertaking this project was a way for me to get a cram course in the history of the congregation and of the building so I'd have a better understanding of the people I serve. I didn't realize that it would be perceived as a conflict of interest until after posting the article. Pmucpastor (talk) 18:06, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, documents such as the "newspaper" you describe are often not written in an impartial, impersonal manner; and are not documented and footnoted to a scholarly standard, and thus may not be suitable for use here in Wikipedia. This is not to denigrate what is done in that kind of project, which is aimed at a different readership and edited to a different standard. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:23, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to note to anyone who may care that I've been watching the edits made and that they all seem to suggest that the conflict of interest is not an issue. I'm going to wait to remove the COI template until it looks like the article is done (at least at a stopping point) so that I can read through it all. As for the notability of the subject, I haven't made an attempt to check yet but I will do that at the same time that I read through the article to assess if the COI has negatively impacted the page. Keep up the good work. OlYeller^Talktome 15:36, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that a building designed by SS Beman for George Pullman loaded with Tiffany windows should have a problem with notability. Carptrash (talk) 17:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The article is looking better (and that's a beautiful church, by the way), I just wanted to leave a reminder that if people feel that the article has been cleaned up sufficiently to no longer suffer from WP:POV issues, you might want to consider removing the COI tag from the article. (The tag isn't meant to warn people that a person with a COI is editing the article, just to warn people that it needs to be cleaned up.) -- Atama頭 17:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

@Carp, that sounds interesting. I'm excited to read through it. I've only seen the pic at the top of the page so far but it is beautiful. @Atama, I hope to read through it soon. From the work I've seen done, I'm guessing there's no issue with the text as it stands but I'm going to put a third (I think) set of eyes on it so that there's no question that there's no unencyclopedic prose in the article. Not that I'm the last word on the article or anything like that. If anyone else wants to make a last run through and remove the tag, by all means. OlYeller^Talktome 18:05, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I am thrilled

to note that someone added sculptor Carl Rohl-Smith's name and I'll get together at least a stub on him on the next 3 or 4 days. life is a bit packed right now, but will clear up. Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 20:07, 30 July 2011 (UTC)