Hello, Qwyrxian and SwisterTwister,
Forgive my cutting and pasting, but I did so with full permission of the copyright owner Homewise and will be happy to provide you with verification from them if you will let me know how to do that.
Qwyrxian, given that what I submitted was not a copyright violation, I would appreciate if you would post it back in my sandbox so I can rewrite it to suit Wikipedia's criteria. I spent a long time learning how to code the entry - I am not very savvy with markup language - and so I'd hate to have to do it again.
To answer some of your concerns, you will note that I supplied footnotes to newspaper articles about Homewise and a Harvard University white paper citing its successful business model. This is a non-profit - not a commercial - enterprise, and its work is being emulated by other similar organizations. I believe it is notable and deserves a WP page.
JimZBrewer JimZBrewer (talk) 17:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
- No, because I cannot just take your word that it's okay. And, for that matter, even if it is, you still can't post it on Wikipedia, because everything posted to Wikipedia is automatically licensed under the Creative Commons license. So, if Homewise wants to donate the material (keep in mind that this means that anyone can use it in the future, for any reason, publicly or privately, including putting it in a book and selling it if they want), there is a way to do that. Please check with them and let me know if they are interested in doing so; there's a process they have to go through (basically, some emails have to be exchanged between the org and some special Wikipedia volunteers called OTRS to verify that the person "giving permission" actually has the authority to do so). But, keep in mind, that we still would not include the vast majority of that in a WP article, because our articles shouldn't sound like they were written by the organization itself--the previous tone was a bit promotional; that they are a non-profit doesn't change the requirement that articles be neutral and non-promotional. As one specific example, we would not include that list of awards; we might include description of individual awards if they are important and they could be verified in reliable sources.
- As to the references you included before, I just took a look. The Sante Fe New Mexican articles are clearly written by the organization (i.e., slightly glorified press releases), so they don't establish notability. The first New Mexico Business weekly article seems good, but the second one is about Loftin, not the company, so it doesn't help establish the org's notability (we often say that "notability is not inherited", so the org can't "inherit" notability from its director). White papers aren't reliable sources, and the tax form is a primary source (which we probably shouldn't link to anyway). So, even with that info, it's borderline as to whether or not the article would be kept in a deletion discussion. However, it may be worth trying.
- As I implied before, the easiest thing may be to simply start over again. I know that, as you said, the markup is irritating and difficult. But easily half of the last version wouldn't be in a good version of the article anyway. What you want to start with is a simple paragraph describing who the group is (neutrally) and what makes the group notable. Other information can be added over time. If I have time in the next few days, in fact, I'll even try to do that for you. Then we can work on adding stuff later. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:05, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Qwyrxian,
Thank you very much for your guidance. I appreciate the extra efforts you are making to help me out, and am learning much from our dialogue. I have a letter from Homewise granting permission for use of their copyrighted material (unfortunately a .pdf). Can you tell me how to get a conversation started with OTRS?
JimZBrewer