DelmarvaScribe

August 2024

Hello, DelmarvaScribe. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, 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 article subjects for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
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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, publicizing, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. The draft you have created is unmistakably promotional in tone. JBW (talk) 22:24, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Greetings JBW, Please tell me more about your conclusion that the draft is "unmistakably promotional in tone." In creating the draft, I followed the format and tone of other two other symphony orchestras, i.e., the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I adhered to Wiki guidance to create an article that is written in an academic fashion and not in a promotional fashion. I would appreciate details and your review of the aforementioned orchestras to make sure that the article meets the standards provided in the guidance documents. Thanks in advance, Delmarva Scribe DelmarvaScribe (talk) 22:29, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I've had a quick look at the article Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. It is far from perfect, and could certainly benefit from some significant rewriting. However, it contains nothing remotely like the kind of promotional language that you have used, such as "inspire, enrich, educate and entertain a diverse audience" and "enrich the lives of audiences". JBW (talk) 21:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at the BSO page, which I used as a model. Don't understand why the MSO mission statement is considered promotional, however, I want the cleanest draft possible. I read the WP:Promotion section in 'Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.' Based on your initial feedback, I removed certain phrases, and now I'll remove more. After reading this guidance, I feel good about using "Grammy-award winning" to describe the current music director because it's a fact with attribution ... instead of 'award-winning' without attribution, which would be considered "puffery."

I also reviewed many other orchestra articles and found them uneven one to the other (e.g., a few had little or no attribution, some included names of board members). Confusing to me is that The London Symphony Orchestra Talk:London Symphony Orchestra is considered a 'good music article' even though the first four paragraphs have no attribution.

I appreciate your feedback because it strengthens the MSO article and has already improved my knowledge as someone new to generating/editing content on Wikipedia. DelmarvaScribe (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

It's important not to confuse the issue of the article's tone and neutrality with its sourcing. The tone and the sourcing of the article are two totally separate things. For what it's worth, the reason there are no references in the first paragraphs London Symphony Orchestra is because the lede summarizes the body of the article, which does have references. With regard to the promotional tone of your draft, please have a look at WP:PUFFERY. It needs a lot of revision to get it to the point where it could be accepted.

Before you continue editing, please answer this question: Do you have any connection to the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra? ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 20:06, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the continued feedback. In answer to your question, I began to volunteer with the MSO in my local area last month. I wasn't connected to the group until then. I read the Conflict of Interest policy and my (non-paid) volunteering doesn't fit under the policy, which seems more about editors receiving some type of compensation, or paid professionals whose interest is more about money than about the subject itself. Do you think I should declare my volunteering? If so, where would be the best place?

I now understand that even though there's a source for the assertions and quotations in the narrative, anything that smacks of promotion is off-limits. I can do that. DelmarvaScribe (talk) 20:36, 17 August 2024 (UTC)