CRQ

December 2009

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to René Berthiaume, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Momo san ^Gespräch 21:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

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Hello, CRQ, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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René Berthiaume

I have restored the article on request, because it was deleted under the WP:Proposed deletion process intended for uncontroversial deletions; but I will notify user Bearcat (talk · contribs), who proposed it, in case he wishes to take it to the WP:Articles for deletion process. That involves a debate, normally lasting seven days, where any user can express a view, and at the end an administrator will decide what to do - based on the arguments put forward in terms of Wikipedia policies, rather than on the number of voices.

The reasons given for deletion involved two important Wikipedia terms

• "Unsourced" refers to Verifiability, where the policy includes: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true." In theory, any statement that might be challenged should be referenced to a reliable source; in practice most articles fall short of that, but it is a particular concern for biographies of living persons where the number of unsourced (and so possibly untrue and possibly libellous) ones is a major worry.

• Sources are also very relevant to Notability, a requirement to have a Wikipedia article, which is not a matter of opinion but needs to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Significant means more than just listing-type mentions; reliable excludes Myspace, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and press releases. More information in WP:Notability (people).

I am afraid I don't think you did the article any favours by your large expansion of it: the section of WP:BLP that you cited on "People who are relatively unknown" says: "In such cases, exercise restraint and include only material relevant to their notability, and omit information that is irrelevant to their notability." In other words, if the subject is marginally notable, keep it short and drily factual, don't go into unnecessary detail, don't make it look like the sort of vanity page that election candidates are always trying to post.

I am not Authority in this - Wikipedia doesn't work like that - but my advice would be:

• first and foremost, supply reliable sources to establish notability. You can use his own website, his company's etc as references for verifiability, but they don't count towards notability. Local sources count for less than national ones. WP:CITE tells you how to add references.
• cut it back to the essentials. I hate to say it, but I think something much more like this version, properly sourced, would have a better chance of being kept.
• tell Bearcat (talk · contribs), who PRODded it, that you are working on it, and ask his advice.
• Earl Andrew (talk · contribs), who wrote the original version four years ago, is still active and would probably be willing to help.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:02, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

As JohnCD pointed out, the key issue is the need for there to be sources present to confirm the information that's present in the article; it's not really okay for an article about a political figure to read like the kind of thing they might send out to voters as a campaign brochure. The thing to understand is that Wikipedia's notability and inclusion rules have evolved over time — four or five years ago when the article was first created, there was a sizeable contingent which felt that any electoral candidate should be seen as notable enough, but now we have to be much stricter about providing real sources. So a lot of articles that used to fly under the radar are going through (and frequently failing) much deeper scrutiny than they used to, because Wikipedia itself is going through (and sometimes failing) deeper scrutiny than it used to.

I don't mean to suggest that a person whose notability is primarily local rather than national can never be in an encyclopedia, because many people of primarily local notability are included here — but the less immediately obvious a person's notability is, the better the sources need to be to really demonstrate that they genuinely warrant an encyclopedia article. If it helps you to better understand what would make the article keepable, don't picture your audience as being somebody who lives in Hawkesbury or L'Orignal or Vankleek Hill — picture somebody who lives in Singapore, and then write an article that makes it clear why that person should be interested in René Berthiaume.

Hope that helps a bit. Bearcat (talk) 01:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of René Berthiaume

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is René Berthiaume. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/René Berthiaume. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:05, 9 May 2010 (UTC)