Conflict of interest

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  Hello, Johnratcliff. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the article A-ha, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, please:

  • avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
  • instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
  • when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
  • avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
  • exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. - SummerPhDv2.0 04:22, 24 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

February 2024

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  Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions; however, it appears you may have written a Wikipedia article, or a draft for a Wikipedia article, about yourself, at John Ratcliff (producer). Creating an autobiography is strongly discouraged – please see our guideline on writing autobiographies. If you create such an article, it may be deleted. If what you have done in life is genuinely notable and can be verified according to our policy for articles about living people, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later (see Notable people who have edited Wikipedia). If you wish to add to or change an existing article about yourself, you are welcome to propose the changes by visiting the article's talk page. Please understand that this is an encyclopedia and not a personal web space or social networking site. If your article has already been deleted, please see: Why was the page I created deleted?, and if you feel the deletion was an error, please discuss this with the deleting administrator. Thank you.   — Jeff G. ツ 00:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jeff. I discovered, produced and managed the band from 1983 to 1993. I know the band and their lives in this period better than anyone on this planet. I object to being questioned about content I add. It is only the truth and I have many witnesses to text that I have added, so that the public ‘know the truth’.I have made no additions other than to tell the truth of a situation. Just because the band are superstars now, the roots of their success should still be revealed and told.My reputation is as important as the members of ‘a-ha’.I only speak and write truths.As will be revealed in my autobiography - and my lawyers are ready for a Norwegian uprising! So Wikipedia is really getting an exclusive! Johnratcliff (talk) 02:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Welcome!

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Hello Johnratcliff! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking   or typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Yngvadottir (talk) 08:13, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
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Hi Johnratcliff. It looks as though nobody ever gave you a proper welcome, with links to our rules, guidelines, help pages, etc. I'm going to highlight some pages that I think you need to read.

  • WP:NBIO: guideline for notability of articles on people. ("Notability" is our shorthand term for "deserves a stand-alone article".) Notice that except for special cases like winning a Nobel Prize or an Olympic medal, this boils down to "has been covered at length in multiple independent sources". That can include TV programmes, magazine or newspaper articles, and multiple-page chunks of books, but the sources have to be independent (not, for example, a publicity website) and the coverage has to be more than a brief mention in each. A short summary page intended for new editors who want to create a new article is here.
  • WP:RS: Related to the requirements for notability, this page talks about reliable sources.
  • WP:COI: Guidelines for editors who want to edit articles relating to their job, their family, or themselves. Note that both the notability and the reliable sources pages discuss the need for sources to be independent to establish notability.
  • WP:NPOV: A fundamental rule, that Wikipedia articles are to be written neutrally (both in tone and in choice of what to include, and how much space to allot it, within the article). The basic reason for discouraging autobiographies or other COI editing is the near-impossibility of writing neutrally on topics with which one has a conflict of interest, whether financial or emotional. (That's also a reason to reflect what independent sources have written about the topic.)
  • WP:BLP: Stricter rules for articles about living people (this includes groups as well as individuals). Wikipedia strives to have everything in an article referenced (preferably footnoted); a fundamental rule, verifiability. In addition to avoiding misinformation, the intention is to make it possible for the reader to find out more about a particular aspect of teh topic. In an article on a living person, we're required to either reference or remove anything remotely doubtful, and to minimise use of self-references like the person's own website or articles they have written (WP:ABOUTSELF, a section of the Verifiability page).
  • WP:LOUTSOCK: at the AfD, I see an IP claiming to be John Ratcliff, and I also see you editing as John Ratcliff. If the IP was also you: please say so at the AfD. It's deceptive to edit in the same discussion as both an IP and a named account. If you accidentally edit logged out, claim the edits by saying that was you. If the IP was not you editing logged out, please explain.

Sorry about the wall of links and sternly worded advice. My intention is to help you navigate the system; however, I will now argue for the article to be merged, rather than deleted. Yngvadottir (talk) 08:13, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Blocked

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Hi - I've blocked your account from editing, on account of the legal threats you made through the IP address that you seem to have acknowledged you were editing through. WP:NLT makes it very clear that legal threats are prohibited - you are at liberty to take legal action over the editorial decisions our volunteers make (although I doubt whether it would be very successful), but you are not permitted to edit here while you are doing so, or threatening to do so. I recognise that you apologised for the way you made someone feel, but I do not see anywhere that you have explicitly withdrawn your legal threat - you will need to do so if you wish to be unblocked.

As for the deletion discussion - the threshold for determining whether we host an article about any subject is notability. There are various criteria, but the general rule is the existence of multiple independent, secondary sources giving the subject significant depth of coverage. I have no view on whether the subject of the article you wrote is notable, I have not looked into the sourcing, but be aware that the bar is much higher than just saying 'the information is true, and I can attest to that from personal experience'. Best wishes. Girth Summit (blether) 13:15, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Reply