Cassie Conklin

Hi Cassie, considering you work for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I recommend you read WP:COI before you start editing. Welcome! -Drdisque (talk) 20:44, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I notice that you added external links to the Greatest 33 Indy 500 drivers. This is definite a problem with conflict of interest like Drdisque commented to you about. You probably should have consulted WP:EL or even more importantly discussed it first. Usually external links are exclusively for the official websites for people. See WP:ELYES. This website isn't official. To an average Wikipedia editor and a non-involved reader it reads like promotion to IMS. For example, just imagine if Wikipedia had an external link in Mario Andretti's article for every place that honor's him? Should there be a link to NASCAR.com, Formula One, IndyCar, USAC sprint cars, sports cars, NHRA, ...? The external links section for him would be unusable. Besides your recent addition, every other link is official to him, his family, his winery, etc. While I'm very excited to see that IMS is interested to work with us here at Wikipedia (and especially WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing), I hope that you will spend the time to ask on things like this before diving in. There are pitfalls that you likely will not foresee. Some mentoring from experienced Wikipedian(s) is extremely helpful at your stage as a new contributor with COI issues. Royalbroil 05:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing this information with me. I had read the COI page thoroughly but I didn't realize I was creating a problem. However, when I added the Greatest 33 links I made sure to link to the exact video of the driver who's Wikipedia page I was on, is this still a problem? If so, what do you suggest I do now? Do I delete the links? Or do I leave them and avoid this problem in the future? Thanks again for informing me of this. (Cassie Conklin (talk) 12:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC))

Hey Cassie! I would go to the American Open Wheel Racing WikiProject and touch base with them on their talk page, if you haven't already. Post your blog, let them know that you'd like to add useful content in the way of external links to expert information about this topic. You will likely find a group that are willing to help you with posting the links and updating the articles. If article improvement is connected with sharing the links/information (not just posting the links alone), it will make more sense for the community and won't be seen as much as COI. There may be someone there willing to help you get started creating a Task Force where others will come, sign up, and help you to contribute the content in a less COI way. It will always be more difficult for for-profits to try to share their information than it will be for non-profits; so this is new for me, as well! Also, something you wouldn't have known to start off. If you reply to someone back on your talk page (which is fine), just add the {{talkback|Cassie Conklin}} template onto their talk page so that they know you've responded. LoriLee (talk) 11:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Lori! I've touched base with them, and will start keeping a better eye on the project discussion page. Is there a certain way to go about posting my blog? Or should I just join the conversation and add in the link in my comment? And thanks for the last bit of info about the talk page template - I had no idea. Any other advice you think of just send it my way. (Cassie Conklin (talk) 13:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC))

No problem! There are a lot of little quirks in Wikipedia, you just slowly come upon them the more you're back here. :) Yes I'd post the link in your comment to them. I was just going to tell you how to add links and then realized, oh yea, you've done that! : ) You can also add whatever you'd like on your own page. So if you want to keep track of links, or let people easily find the work that you've done, use your page as a sort of brag board (whenever you'd like to - it's not a requirement in Wiki-land, just a useful way for you to keep track of your stuff.)

Oh and also, I finally got my act together and revamped the "getting started" guide that I created for a particular program (The Children's Museum MAP students) and adapted it for general use. While I know you've gotten started a good bit, it may help to walk through it and use it to find Code Cheat Sheets and such. It's at WP:GLAM/BeginnersGuide. LoriLee (talk) 16:45, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

ohai

Hi Cassie, I noticed that you've recently added links to the 11 in '11 videos to the External Links section of the relevant drivers. I would like to advise that while YouTube videos in EL's are not explicitly banned, per WP:YOUTUBE, I do believe that the subject matter in the videos themselves - which I have watched being subbed to the channel - is not encyclopaedic, and should not be included in the external links. If the thing that the drivers mention in those interviews is better used as an inline citation for things in the articles themselvs, then they should be acceptable as sources, but I feel that at this rate, if you plan to add external links on every driver page to every small piece of media that IMS has created, then that is possible COI.

While I'm here too, one thing which I touched upon in the comments on the IndyCar blog post that you wrote, is image licencing of some of the IndyCar flickr photos, as there are some very good shots there that would really add to several articles, which may or may not include driver profile shots, defining on-track incidents (for example, User:Doctorindy took this photo of Hildebrand's crashed racecar after it came to a stop at the end of the race), or general reference pictures. One picture I in particular noticed was Marco's burnout at Iowa, which I feel would be a definite aid to his own article and/or 2011 IndyCar Series season/2011 Iowa Corn Indy 250.

If you are unsure about anything, or want some advice as to whether potential material may not be suitable, be sure to give any of us a buzz. I'd say most of us have the WikiProject talk on our watchlists, so bring up anything there :) TheChrisD ^{Rants•Edits} 16:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much for pointing that out. I should work on discussing things on the project talk page before moving forward even if I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. What should I do next? Delete the links? Try to avoid this in the future? Thanks for helping. Cassie Conklin (talk) 17:11, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Well put, Chris. Sorry that I didn't respond, I was on a weekend getaway. I hope that you weren't taken back by my comments above. We definitely want to work with you! I know it's overwhelming learning all of the nuances that the experienced people can rattle off the top of their heads. I promise you - it gets easier. The areas that we need help in are: 1) photographs that are freely licensed (like Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike - see Wikipedia:File copyright tags). 2) Use a reference as a reliable source to drivers' statistics on the series' official website and (such as adding this link to Mario Romancini's article. diff how I just did it) 3) Develop the text describing driver's careers. The best place to have this discussion is at WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing so that we will all work with you. Can the statistics on the official website be expanded to show the finishes for each race? I bet the fans are interested in that level of detail. NASCAR does it. Royalbroil 01:02, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Pictures would be great, especially driver photos (so we don't end up using the same headshot on every article like the NASCAR articles). They would have to be licensed as non-commercial, though, so if IndyCar has contracts with agencies like LAT, contracts could get in the way. What would be even better is older photos, from the 20s through the 90s especially. Maybe IMS has a collection of those, or maybe inherited some from USAC. —Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 21:26, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

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