Zacharymia

Welcome

Hello, Zacharymia! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Salvio Let's talk about it! 22:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC) Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Advice

Thank you for your note on my talk page. I would like to repeat my thanks for your taking the time to find out how Wikipedia works and how to request changes when you have a conflict of interest.

You said on my talk page that "a copywriter" is preparing new material. That word causes me a twinge of alarm, because Wikipedia is extremely sensitive about anything that looks like promotion. The sort of material appropriate for a company's website is not suitable for an encyclopedia article. Two of our fundamental principles are WP:Verifiability, which requires that "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source" and WP:Neutral point of view. When writing for Wikipedia one should be drily factual, and the reader should not be left with any idea of whether the author approves or disapproves of the subject. When about to write any glowing adjective, imagine a hostile critic looking over your shoulder saying "Who says so? Can you prove it?" See WP:PEACOCK.

Experience shows that people from a PR/Marketing background find this extraordinarily hard to grasp. I have recently had a user who wrote an article that included "friendly and knowledgeable staff... dedicated Customer Service team... unique refurbishing process... Benefits of Shopping with XYZ ... Earn XYZ Bucks with every purchase..." and protested when it was deleted that it was "not meant to be a form of advertisement by any means. I just took the information off of our About Us section of our website."

Material of that kind inserted directly is immediately deleted. If proposed on a talk page, it will at best be heavily edited before being posted, more likely rejected. To save trouble, it is important that your copywriter understands that s/he is not writing a statement from the company, but a neutral statement about the company, and should lay aside any trace of promotional intent.

You may find User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard helpful.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 10:06, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Stiefel Laboratories

Please see Talk:Stiefel Laboratories#Moved draft. Best,  Chzz  ►  23:58, 22 November 2011 (UTC)