Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We appreciate your contributions to the Corporate identity article, but we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. Perhaps you would like to rewrite the article in your own words. For more information, take a look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Happy editing! — Saxifrage ✎ 19:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- We still cannot accept contributions of copyrighted material. If you are the original author and control the website, you must include licensing information compatible with Wikipedia's GFDL on the original, publicly-viewable copy to prove that the copyright holders are allowing its use in Wikipedia and elsewhere. Wikipedia cannot use material on a "permission granted for Wikipedia's use" basis, as Wikipedia's articles may be used by unaffiliated legal entities not covered by such grants of permission. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
My Talk page is the right place to get a hold of me. You can also contact me here for now, because I have placed your contact page on my Watchlist to make conversation easier. Unless conversation takes a private turn, communication at Wikipedia is done on Talk pages so that others can "listen in" and so improve communication within the project generally. Email is rarely used, though you can send email to editors who've enabled it with the "E-mail this user" link in the sidebar of their userpage.
You're right, I was mistaken about the regulations for copyright material. (That's how our image guidelines work, which I'm more familiar with, and I just assumed it was the same.) So, yes, reposting material that you've written elsewhere can simply be done. If there was substantial doubt as to your identity as the copyright holder, that would be an issue, but I'm satisfied that you are the holder.
This brings up a different issue, that of conflict of interest. Regarding the link to your project's page, you'll want to read over Wikipedia:External links on our editing guidelines for external links. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines are also relevant. Though those pages deal with disparate things, the intersection of them is the issue of adding links to sites in which the contributor has a vested interest.
Because Wikipedia is a collaborative effort and editors are expected to edit and maintain information in the encyclopedia in a neutral manner, having some editors treat their own sites preferentially is contrary (and in extreme cases, damaging) to the goals of the project. To mitigate this, most editors will undo a contribution that seems to be primarily about promoting a site on-sight. The article Corporate identity attracts this kind of site-promotion contributions a lot and your edit looked to me, at the time, like yet another of these.
So, that's all just to say where I was coming from. I'm satisfied you're not a common spammer now. The issue of conflict of interest is still there, though. How Wikipedia:External links suggests this be handled is that you (the one who has a potential conflict of interest in the link being included) place the link and your argument for its value to the article on the Talk page of the article (which is at Talk:Corporate identity, accessable from the article by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top), and then to recuse yourself from editing the actual article regarding the site. By allowing other editors who are neutral regarding your site to evaluate the site and come to a consensus regarding the inclusion or exclusion of the link, the neutrality of the encyclopedia's selection of links is maintained. People are naturally proud of their own work and so estimate the value of it highly, but this sometimes overrides or otherwise doesn't take into account our rather dispassionate standards for what should be linked to from an article. In particular, the fact that registration is required to access the material on your site is likely to be a roadblock to it being included, though that's just my guess as to what other editors will think upon being presented with the argument for its inclusion.
Regarding the material you added before, do re-add it, whether in that form or a rewritten form. I ask that you also include a complete "works cited" list at the end, though, since "Dichter (1985)" is an incomplete citation without this information and will just cause it to be removed for lack of verifiability. The material will have to be styled and otherwise edited to bring it in line with our editorial guidelines, but that can be taken care of later. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Hello Saxifrage and thanks for taking the time to present such a comprehensive and balanced reply. I may repost material on the page as planned, but will take the time to update it fully before doing so, but to be honest I may not as it seems this site has others than yourself that can just remove stuff without any reason given which seems a waste of our time to some extent and it is a bit of a lottery who gets to have their stuff left even if relevent or from people working in the area. Turning to the addition of links by those related to the site the link points towards and self interest risks etc... I now see your argument of course, although at no time before removing the link twice did you present this particualr argument for doing so... However once again I find the logic of the argument one that does not take into account the full benefits of allowing at least some of us to do that without having to go through a long winded defence for doing so on some other page before getting permission to add to main page (and anyway what is to stop others from removing it at a whim even if it had been agreed by some others ?). For example I have taken a look at the current sites linked from corporate identity and most either prominantly highlight the organisation that are sponsoring them (commercial orgs - hence a form of corporate promotion I would argue even if not charging money or directly selling on site, they are getting reputational repayment - no such thing as a free lunch etc) or is clearly self publicising site to some extent for a particluar individual rather than a group of individuals or community. In addition each site is practitioner orientated in the main if not totality. Our site is non commercial, academic based (but has info of use to practitioners and managers who are also very welcome) and offers a free sign up for a limited amount of the info i.e. full abstracts (rest is open access, in fact 80% is open access), for which we then use for a news letter to update those interested parties of issues in the area as we uncover them - we like to see that as a useful service which once again does not sell anything. That system is entirely opt-in and has automatic opt-out for each newsletter sent per individual so follows the full protocal for such matters. So my feeling about the free encyclopedia at this time is that a tendency to adopt a narrow minded following of the rules in 100% of cases without those editing out the links taking into account the usefullness of an addition (and I am not just talking about yourself), holds back access to useful and relevent info for users under that topic which can not be a good thing at least not always. And before anyone says the site I added is not useful, it is the only central resource I am aware of that has links to around 100 articles written by academics from around the world directly relating to corporate identity and branding that has been selected by a group of academics whom are experts in this field for their relevence and as far as am I am aware. In adition the site was launched before most if not all of the current links already at the site so is no copy cat or me-too site.
Overall I am not very impressed to date with this free encyclopedia site. It seems that just about anyone can delete a link we add and not even give a reason as someone else has recently done after your previous 2nd removal... yes yet again removed for a third time in less than 24 hours. If the encyclopedia site is this hard for academics who are experts in a particular topic to even add one single link for fear of it being removed by some unknown entity in less than an hour after its addition, with no written explanation or justification presented (and why is that allowed anyway?), why should we bother to get involved as that is a mockery of our efforts and time. I may as well spend my time with adding the link at google and yahoo to give others a fairer chance of finding it and benefiting from our free no fee based efforts and resources as I have in the past. Although they have their own problems at least I am not at the mercy of probable unqualified unknowns undoing the time and effort we give so freely and for genuine good will reasons for others to benfit from. Comments appreciated if you have time. Shaun.
- The thing is, that anyone can make changes, whether adding, removing, or changing information. The integrity of the encyclopedia then is constantly in flux as people push and pull articles into a "good" shape. It's not quite anarchy, nor democracy, but something subtly different. The "guarantee" that information won't be removed lives in the people who do the pushign and pulling—if material is generally considered good, then editors will work to make sure it stays in an article and their voices outweight those who want to remove material. If you look over the past discussion at Talk:Corporate identity, you'll see that this was the case with the links that are in the article now. Someone (I) removed the links for pretty much the reasons you gave above. Someone else contested the removal and we had a brief discussion about the value of the links. I was convinced of their value, and so the links are in the article. Your argument above (if you chose to engage at the Talk page), would be a new "note" in the ongoing consensus about what the article should look like and might well result in some or all of those links being removed.
- Regarding your site, the above argument is just the sort of thing that the external links guidelines suggest be made on the Talk page of an article. You've inadvertently convinced me that the site is likely of benefit to Wikipedia despite it requiring memberships. This kind of give and take changes the minds of the people who maintain the article and is the influence that gives an article dynamic stability despite "unknowns" being able to make changes at will. (Also note that we have a History for each article: every version ever made is recorded, so work that is removed against the collective consensus is very easy to restore.)
- I hope you'll reconsider the value of the encyclopedia. It does have its warts, but many of the worst ones on first impression get smoothed over as the dynamics of the Wikipedia system come into play over the medium- and long-term. I'm sorry for my part in this bad first impression. "Spam" is a constant problem at Wikipedia, and I (and others who patrol articles for self-promotional links) have a difficult time balancing the need to detect and remove real spam quickly to avoid articles from being overcome (there are a lot of articles), with the need to not turn off new users who aren't familiar with the way Wikipedia works. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks again Saxifrage, although time consuming for what I thought would be a simple post and link I now can see the advantages and disadvantages of the system as it stands more clearly now. I will not re add the link to www.corporate-id.com as it is tiring re adding it for others to keep removing over past 24 hours. Perhaps if you now feel it is worth adding you would like to add it (removing the self interest aspect with one stroke) and also monitor the link and re add it whenever the unknowns come out of the darkness to steal it away again as I feel sure they will which is a real shame I feel for your readers ? Best wishes if not :) Over and out.