NatureBag

There needs to be an addition made to the article on Kudzu. Another important use of Kudzu has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years but is not included in the existing article. We are attempting to correct that omission by adding this to the article:

Fiber

The indigenous people of Northern Laos, the Khmu, strip the filament from inside the vine stem and twist it into cord (marketed as JungleVine™) to make stretchable bags. For centuries the bags have been used for gathering medicine, food and fiber from the forest on steep mountainsides. The cord also is used to tie the umbilical cord of home-born infants and until recently was used to make fish nets. The special characteristics of the bags have resulted in their being sold worldwide as a reusable bag that is versatile, sustainable, organic, stylish and durable. The traditional Khmu bag is marketed as "Nature Bag." Crafting and distributing it is the focus of a poverty reduction project based in Luang Prabang,Laos. {{Cite web|url=[1]|title=Welcome to Nature Bag|2009|Publisher=Newbrough Associates Inc. A video showing its production is at [2]

The system is rejecting our attempts because of the obvious COI. Perhaps another user would help us (and Wikipedia) by posting the addition for us. It has been written carefully so that it expresses no opinions, although it offers as its primary reference a website designed to promote the poverty reduction projection. The information on the website is essentially verified by videos that are a part of the website.

Let me try to say this nicely, but it is pretty far from "written carefully so that it expresses no opinions". If you want chapter and verse I can point to WP:NOTADVERTISING and WP:Peacock regarding the language and WP:RS regarding what is a valid source (probably not a promotional video). As for your request, I have added something about fiber uses to Kudzu (which was indeed missing). I could tell (from search hits for paywalled books/journals) there is more that could be written about fiber, but given WP:COI I would recommend that you just stay away from editing anything which mentions NatureBag or the fiber (with the exception of this page and perhaps other talk pages). If you want to edit wikipedia in ways that are consistent with wikipedia policies, there's lots more at WP:WELCOME (you will need to change your username, though, per WP:ORGNAME). Kingdon (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I only want to be helpful, and I apologize for having to learn about using Wikipedia (I did read all of the guidelines you cited while I was attempting the post), but your effort to "say it nicely" instead comes across as rude by its sarcasm. However, let us put that behind us. The intent of my post on this discussion page clearly was to bring a response from someone like you experienced with Wikipedia so that among the oldest and most successful uses of Kudzu by man was at least mentioned in the article. Who could argue with the importance of such inclusion? Thank you for what you have done, although I think it is incomplete not to mention the Khmu's traditional bag because arguably it has been the most important tool enabling their subsistence AND they are the indigenous people of Northern Laos who some say have been there for 5,000 years. Until recent decades, without the Kudzu bag, they would not have had a viable means to carry their harvest of basic needs gathered in the forests. Disregarding the documentation flaw, which I acknowledged previously in asking for assistance, the only opinion I see in what I attempted to post is the use of the adjective "stylish." All of the other statements are proved by captured non-rehearsed images in the video cited, which, if you would watch it, clearly is a documentary. There are 2 other videos at NatureBag.ORG, which also provide supporting material. One of those, "Nature Bag 2010," has many "promotional" elements mixed with entertainment and information and for that reason was not cited. The other, produced by the United Nations with support from the Canada Fund, is undeniably entirely documentary, but is more relevant to understanding the Khmu culture in general than specifically its use of Kudzu. By the way, if you would care to make another important improvement to the article on Kudzu, science has classified the Kudzu in Laos (commonly called "tropical kudzu") as Puerana phaseoloides Unlike the variety of Kudzu that is the primary but too narrow focus of the existing Wikipedia article, the Lao variety prefers to spread horizontally rather than climb, and thus does not present some of the problems Kudzu is causing elsewhere.

January 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Kudzu has been reverted.
Your edit here was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline from Wikipedia. The external link you added or changed is on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. I removed the following link(s): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Ers6ouWJ04 (matching the regex rule \byoutube\.com). If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. a sound or video file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy and therefore probably should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file. Video links are also strongly deprecated by our guidelines for external links, partly because they're useless to people with slow internet connections.
If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 08:20, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

April 2011

Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions. However, I noticed that your username (NatureBag) may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because your username appears to reflect and promote http://www.naturebag.org and organization that your user page indicates you may have organized. As such, your username violates WP policy and should be changed. The links in this note should help you with doing that. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account and use that for editing. Thank you. Scray (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)