BlakeTheGhost

Welcome!

Hello, BlakeTheGhost, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, your edit to Simon Mainwaring does not conform to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (NPOV). Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations that have been stated in print or on reputable websites or other forms of media.

There's a page about the NPOV policy that has tips on how to effectively write about disparate points of view without compromising the NPOV status of the article as a whole. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Questions page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Below are a few other good links for newcomers:

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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!  I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 23:50, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Tips on article

Hi, I noticed that you made a number of edits to Simon Mainwaring that were reverted. I took a look at them, and there are number of issues with them that you need to correct before adding any of the information back in.

• Promotional language. Encyclopedia articles are not puff-pieces to "sell" a person or product. They should be dry and factual. Any adjectives should be reliably sourced, and in many cases, both attributed and quoted.
• Reliable sources. Amazon is not a reliable source. Snippets on the publisher's page are not reliable sources. The article should summarize book reviews, meaning you need to cite the actual review and provide a fair summary of it, not cherry-pick the most favorable lines. Best-seller lists should be cited directly. You can learn more about reliable sourcing at WP:RS and WP:RSPS.
• Independent sources. The article should summarize what sources independent of Mainwaring (or his publishers) say about him and his books. You should cite independent sources to describe his podcast.
• No external URLs except between reference tags or in a separate External links section at the end of the article. (You can learn which links are appropriate for External links at WP:EL.)

I hope that helps you get started. Happy editing! Schazjmd (talk) 01:34, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Schazjmd I was mainly concerned about the language. I kind of skipped over the sources, which is probably more important. Thank you for noticing that. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 01:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Schazjmd I really appreciate the specific counsel, thank you! I plan to begin to carefully re-inserting, starting with the stuff that's obviously neutral and correct, such as place of birth, the fact there's a new book, and the factual errors, etc. Then I'll review the sources and reword the other stuff. If you say something was a bestseller in the NYT, you have to cite that, right? So, Amazon best-seller? It's either them or a third-party ... Or is it just not notable enough? One other thing I really need help with, please: quoting from actual books. In this case, I couldn't find that stuff anywhere but directly on Amazon's page ... Suggestions? Thanks again so much for helping a newbie with his first project! Want to get this one right before I move on to the next ... BlakeTheGhost (talk) 21:28, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Glad to help, Blake. For best-seller status, my first choice is to cite the actual list. My second choice is to cite a review in a reliable source that makes the claim. For We First, it ranked #4 on the New York Times best seller list in the "Advice, How-to, and Misc. (hardcover)" category. We First was #8 in the "Hardcover nonfiction" category of Publishers Weekly best seller list. I've written several articles on books and I don't bother mentioning Amazon rankings as they are dubious and don't really tell you anything about a book's reputation.

I'm not sure what you mean about quoting from actual books. Do you mean the blurbs? I would only quote review blurbs from the actual review, because you need to read the review to get the full context. Publishers are notorious for careful cherry-picking quotes to cast books in the best possible light. Blurbs from other authors are a marketing tool, useless for an encyclopedia article. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any reviews of We First.

You can include a brief summary (factual, not promotional) of the book, as the book itself can be the source. If you come across any other questions, feel free to ping me here or ask on my talk page. (Btw, I formatted the refs for the NYT and PW best sellers so you can reuse them in the article.) Cheers! Schazjmd (talk) 22:05, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses:Thank you for aiming me in the right direction about the kind of the language that got my edits flagged. Appreciate it greatly. And the note about the long list of clients (guess I got carried away; I'll restrict it). Those two notes give me plenty of direction to start over. Thanks for your editorial eye!BlakeTheGhost (talk) 21:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

References

@Schazjmd Thank you so much!BlakeTheGhost (talk) 22:13, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, BlakeTheGhost. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Simon Mainwaring, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Schazjmd (talk) 16:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The reasons that I suspect that you have a conflict-of-interest is that your only edits have been to that article, and you continue to include details that are not available in reliable sources, indicating that you have personal knowledge. If you are being paid to edit Simon Mainwaring, you must declare it. If you are not being paid but have a relationship of any kind with Mainwaring, please use edit requests on the talk page to suggest future edits. Schazjmd (talk) 16:56, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Schazjmd As I mentioned several times to another editor here, I have a bunch of nonfiction authors I'd like to tackle.

But given that ALL of my edits here (including just fixing names and adding birthplaces) on this ONE are getting reverted/questioned, would it not be best for me to get this one right first, assuming that's possible?

See above where I suggested that I would start reinserting the more obviously safe edits a few at a time.

Boy, I'm really getting discouraged about this Wiki project in general. I feel like at least 90 percent of my initial edits that got reverted were OK, and was planning to reinsert material based on your helpful counsel --also see above -- about what might have caused the initial rejection, i.e. particular language, etc.

I'm not seeing where most Wiki pages cite things like birth places ... where do I footnote that?

Do you think I should just give up on Mainwaring and move on to another one (I want to do Paul Hawken and Paul Polman next; I just feel like maybe they're higher profile, and I obviously have no idea how this works, given EVERYTHING I do gets flagged ...) please advise.

Thanks for the help.

--About to give up here forever in the absence of some encouragement. BlakeTheGhost (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Blake, it's actually pretty simple: content must be verifiable. Where did you get his wife's name and that they have two daughters? Where did you learn he was born in 1967 in Sydney? Where did you learn what he majored in and which college he attended? Cite those sources. If they aren't reliable sources acceptable to Wikipedia, don't include that information in the article.

I have doubts about Mainwaring's notability. You might be able to justify a stand-alone article for We First under WP:NBOOK, but Mainwaring himself doesn't seem to meet WP:NAUTHOR or WP:BASIC. Schazjmd (talk) 18:03, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Also, creating a new Wikipedia article can be extremely challenging (as you found). It might be better if you tried just general edits for awhile as you learn how things work. Read through nominations at WP:AFD and learn from the discussions how editors evaluate the notability of articles. Schazjmd (talk) 18:07, 21 March 2022 (UTC)