Dr.shkazmi
Welcome! edit
Hello, Dr.shkazmi, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
- Introduction to Wikipedia
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- How to edit a page and How to develop articles
- How to create your first article
- Simplified Manual of Style
Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome!
I will give you more detailed advice tomorrow, but if you are connected with the Forum, you should read Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. JohnCD (talk) 21:49, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Reply to your request for advice edit
Wikipedia does not explain as well as it should what it is for and what it is not for.
The first thing to say is that Wikipedia is not a "noticeboard" site like Myspace or Facebook for people and organizations to tell the world about themselves. It is a project to build an encyclopedia, which is quite different. Some of the differences are explained at User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard.
The next thing to explain is that Wikipedia is selective about subjects for articles. It does not expect to have articles about every organization, any more than about every person or every book. The criterion used is called Wikipedia:Notability, and is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Significant means more than just listing-type mentions; reliable excludes Myspace, Facebook, blogs, places where anyone can post anything; independent excludes the subject's own website, affiliated ones and anything based on press releases. The test is, have people not connected with the subject thought it significant enough to write substantial comment about?
That has the advantage of being a more objective test than "Do we think it's important?" and also of ensuring that there are independent sources for the article. It is quite a tough test, and many worthy organizations, especially new ones, cannot pass it. That is not at all to their discredit, but it means they are not suitable subjects for a global encyclopedia. The test applies to non-commercial organizations and good causes, too - we have an explanatory essay entitled Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause.
As you are the Chairman of the Forum, you have from Wikipedia's point of view a WP:Conflict of interest in writing about it. As a general rule, a suitable page will be best written by someone without Conflict of Interest; it's not impossible to do it properly with a COI, but it's more difficult: you are automatically thinking in terms of what you want to communicate to the public, but an uninvolved person will think in terms of what the public might wish to know. Keep in mind that the goal of an encyclopedia is to say things in a concise manner, which is not the style of press releases or web sites, which are usually more expansive.
Think hard about notability. See WP:Notability (summary) for what it means. If you cannot find independent sources to establish it, you will be wasting your time and effort. If you want to go ahead,
- Read WP:Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
- Read WP:Your first article
- Click on Help:Userspace draft and fill in the title. That will start a draft page in your "user space" where you can work on the article, with a link to good advice and a "Submit" button which will send the article, when it is ready, to WP:Articles for creation, where an experienced user will look at it, and either accept it or give you feedback.
- When writing, make a strong effort to think of yourself, not as writing for the organization, but as writing for Wikipedia about the organization, from outside. You are not addressing a potential member or donor, but a general encyclopedia reader. Bear in mind the WP:Verifiability policy: "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source", and when writing any glowing adjective, or indeed any claim, imagine a hostile critic saying "Who says? Can you prove that?" Don't talk about the organization's aims and hopes for the future, or its mission statement, but about what is has achieved. No opinions, only facts, neutrally stated and cited to reliable sources. Write in your own words, without copying from the website.
By now you are thinking "This is much harder than I thought, all I wanted to do was post a copy of our web-site to tell the world about us!" I apologise that (because we are anxious not to put new contributors off by making them read a lot of advice) Wikipedia does not make clear at sign-up time that it is not a "notice-board" site like Myspace or Facebook, which are set up for people to do exactly that; but if Wikipedia is a more valuable resource than Myspace, it is only because we have standards and rules on notability, verifiability and conflict of interest.
I have gone into all this at length not because I wish to discourage you, but to help you understand what is involved, and to avoid the common situation where a new contributor expends a lot of time, energy and emotion on what was always a hopeless cause. If you decide to go ahead, you will find many people willing to advise and assist you. There is a WP:Tutorial and a WP:New contributors' help page, and you can also ask for help by putting {{helpme}} (two curly brackets each side) at the bottom of your talk page with your question below it.
March 2015 edit
Your recent edit to List of people from Lucknow appears to have added the name of a non-notable entity to a list that normally includes only notable entries. In general, a person or organization added to a list should have a pre-existing article before being added to most lists. If you wish to create such an article, please first confirm that the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article according to Wikipedia's notability guideline. Thank you. NeilN talk to me 16:40, 28 March 2015 (UTC)