StevieBassBoy

November 2007

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Exmoor Singers of London Chamber Choir, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors,
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);

   and you must always:

4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 14:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Who defines when a choir is notable? What is notable about Exmoor Singers of London is that it is responsible for promoting an awful lot of music by living composers, unlike many others choirs, and composers are regularly sending the choir their compositions in the hope that they will be performed. The commissioning of two 40-part works is a major contribution to choral music, and the Tallis Festival was referred to as an 'autumn institution' on BBC Radio 3.

Yes, there is a conflict of interest in the article, but we have tried hard to limit it to reflecting the genuine contribution to the choral world and not just "Hey, here is another choir that claims to be good". We totally accept that you cannot have every choir putting its details on Wikipedia (we see that you have today removed some that were more dubious), but where there is substantial new contribution to choral music then it deserves to be highlighted.

It may deserve to be highlighted, but you can understand my concerns about you promoting yourselves! Wikipedia is not for self-promotion, and we get hundreds - if not thousands - of people promoting themselves every day via Wikipedia. Your articles are notable - as you've demonstrated, so I'm not worried about that - but I am concerned that you've got a vested interest in the articles. I'm sure you understand this! This is just a friendly notice - be extremely careful when editing articles about your organisation. Editors proposing to write about themselves, their own organizations, or matters they have very close ties to, are strongly advised not to edit or create such articles at all, but to instead use the talk page to request help from neutral editors. Finally - and again,I don't mean to seem rude or unwelcome - there are problems with your username - it goes against our username guide. Wikipedia:Changing username will help you change it officially to somethign a bit more neutral! Thanks for your contributions, however - and Welcome to Wikipedia! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 18:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely understand. In my own review of the choir listings I did wonder how come some of them were there. I know it is really important that you police this vociferously, and I am really happy to have been challenged as I hope I have managed to develop an article that is rigorous and fits the bill. I also entirely understand the issue of vested interest and will be very careful. Please excuse me for my initial naivety.

It is a fascinating learning process and I am delighted to have been welcomed in. And I will sort out the user name.

Thanks very much indeed and cheers!

Exmoor Singers 18:14, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry! Any questions just leave a note on my talk page and I'll be along to help. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 18:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Defra survey results cited

I have removed again the references to some Defra Survey results that I had removed back on 16 June. My deletion of the results was not wanton vandalism to try to suggest that the take up of veganism is not as high as the survey reported. I commissioned the Defra survey and we now believe the high percentage claiming to be vegan was as a result of false positive responses from some respondents.

For us it was not a result that had any bearing on any of our work and hence we were not concerned to investigate it further, but the Vegan Society were surprised by the high figure, and a follow up was commissioned to see what was going on. The 2.24% claiming to be vegan was resoundingly an overclaim and only shows that some people do not know what vegan means at all. Unfortunately owing to some technical problems we have not yet been able to amend the results in the pdf on our website.

To whom it may concern, please do not reinstate the reference, and apologies for any frustrations caused.

StevieBassBoy (talk) 12:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, sorry for the long time in responding; I've been away from the internets. Is there some way you can verify through some more "official" means that the study was flawed/produced false positives/whatever? Best would be commentary on the DEFRA site, next a press release or something similar from the Vegan Society or Vegetarian Society, or possibly also a posting on your personal website which indicates your relationship to DEFRA and to the study. Without something citable, we can omit to mention the study, but better would be to say "in the 2007 DEFRA environment study xx% self-described as vegan, but XXXX, the commissioner of the study, has indicated that flaws in the questions led to an overestimation of the number of vegans...." Kellen^T 14:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)