Samuel Madson

Please add new comments at the end of pages - I've moved your help request down there.  Chzz  ►  10:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Welcome

Hello, Samuel Madson, 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:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
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• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Top Jim (talk) 11:10, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Help re Richard Woolley (Filmmaker)

{{help me}} Hello Top Jim, This is Sam Madson. By mistake yesterday I allowed a page in progress on Richard Woolley (Filmmaker) to go 'live'. I thought I had saved it in my 'pending' pages but when I couldn't find those pages(I have now relocated them!) I started a new one and by mistake pressed a button that I thought would just save and store but actually 'published' the piece! I now see that first of all you changed the title of my article to Richard Woolley (Filmmaker) - something I quite agree with as that is his primary claim to notability - but that then you removed the whole piece for 'self-advertising', As this article was still in draft format to submit for comment (and pruning) I accept that you may have read it like that, but I must stress that 'advertsing' was very much NOT the intention of doing a piece on this filmmaker, who should, I think have a mention on Wikipedia. I am currently researching an academic piece around his work with his cooperation, which was probably why I put a bit of everything in that I could find out about him in. I would therefore welcome your comments on how I can bring it back to a more modest and informational scale - or alternatively I can have a go at doing that myself and re-submit for your comments before trying to 'publish' it. Either way I am feeling a little mortified that your comment is showing up for all to see, when (a) my intentions were honourable and (b) I had not intended to publish that version. I will also try and do the references in the proper format before submitting next time - and on a much more modest scale than in the draft where I had just done a prelimray listing of all references I had found. Hopefully we can then get something more modest and approiate up and showing for Richard Woolley(Filmmaker) Samuel Madson (talk) 10:19, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi there.

This page, here, is your own 'user talk' page - where people leave messages for you. The user called "Top Jim" left you the welcome; if you want to get in touch with them, you'd leave a note on their talk page - User talk:Top Jim.

When you use 'helpme' like this, you can get help from anyone.

Regarding the deleted article, "Richard Woolley (Filmmaker)" - I see from the log file here that it was deleted by a user called Jimfbleak, with the reasoning G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion: vanity page.

So, that is the person you should contact to discuss this, to ask if they might be able to give you a copy of the deleted page; you should write a message on User talk:Jimfbleak.

I think you might also want to read about conflict of interest, and the problems explained in that link.

Best,  Chzz  ►  10:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Chzz posted the above comment while I was writing the following rather longer reply, but you may as see both of them.

I will try to help below, but first some advice for future use on how to ask for help. The {{help me}} tag is an invitation for any Wikipedian who monitors these tags to help, whereas your request for help seems to be aimed at a particular editor. Maybe you are hoping for anyone to help, but if so your wording, specifically addressing Top Jim is likely to send them away. Only a tiny minority of Wikipedia editors monitor {{help me}} tags, so the chances of the message being seen by the editor you aimed it at are very low. A better way of contacting an individual editor is via their talk page. You can simply post a message there. however, many of us find it more helpful to keep a discussion in one place, so you can leave a message her (as you have done) and add {{Talkback|Samuel Madson}} to the other user's talk page (in this case User talk:Top Jim). This will let them know there is a message here for them. I did think of putting a "Talkback" on Top Jim's talk page for you, but I decided to let you decide whether to do so. I don't know much about Top Jim, but I see he is a fairly new Wikipedia editor (the account was created 8 days ago) and so may or may not be the best person to ask for help. Possibly better may be to rewrite your request for help to make it look as if it is for anyone to answer, or to try posting at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests.

Having said all that, here is my own attempt to help you on this issue. I have looked at the article. My feeling is that the article is written in a somewhat promotional way, making rather too much use of quotations of glowing praise, rather than sticking to the facts, though I would not myself have deleted it as promotion, as it is at worst borderline. However, the tone of the article is perhaps a little more like slightly chatty journalism than the objective tone of an encyclopaedia article. A more important issue in my view is the lack of suitable sources to indicate notability of the subject. I know nothing about Richard Woolley, but a quick Google search gives me the impression that he is probably notable enough for a Wikipedia article, but you need to demonstrate it. There is a bewildering range of guidelines on notability, but for your purposes I think the most important are the general notability guideline and the guideline on notability of people. You should also have a look at the guideline on reliable sources. Don't think that you have to become an expert on every detail of the guidelines before you start writing, but do try to understand at least the broad outline of what they say. You have jumped in at the deep end by starting straight out on creating an article: it is probably easier to start by making little edits to existing articles. That way you learn how things work, and when you make mistakes it is only a little detail, rather than the disheartening experience of having a substantial amount of work thrown away. Finally, please do feel welcome to contact me on my talk page if you wish to ask any more questions. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello James and thankyou for taking the time to give a detailed and informative response to my 'help' plea. I have now placed a slightly shorter version of my 'help' plea on the talk page of the person (Jimfbleak) who deleted the page; it wasn't TopJim - I had misunderstood that. Hopefully, through dialogue with him - and taking on board comments and advice from you (and Chzz above) - we can get the article in an acceptable state so that it won't be deleted a second time.

More

I'm sorry if you feel let-down by the process, I get things wrong too, and everything on Wikipedia is public. I know you already have your text sandboxed, so I won't copy it to you, but some further comments:

• Although the article had references, many were not to independent verifiable sources. Commercial sites like Amazon are not appropriate.
• Because the refs were bare urls, it made them difficult to identify. [url description] is better, so your first ref would be [http://www.richardwoolley.com Official website], and show as Official website
• Because the refs are bundled at the end instead of in-line, it's difficult to see what they are supporting in your text
• There were few wikilinks to other articles
• capitalising his works is very spammy: Bothers and Sister etc please (also italicise other people's films and books)
• Deke Dusinberre said: "A serious and thorough artist... this and other glowing reviews, whether quoted or paraphrased, need inline refs so we can verify. Incidentally, that sentence as written doesn't make sense
• Too much of the text is taken up with positive reviews, and not enough with facts. About half of each paragraph is taken up with reviews. Did this guy never receive any negative reviews or criticism?
• Rebutting a report in the Yorkshire Post of 13th July 1979 (later taken up by the Sun newspaper) that the film was exploitative, Richard Woolley, who at the time lived close to where the real life murders had occurred, said the film was an attempt to show how all men were complicit in such atrocities. — needs in-line refs for the reports and the rebuttal. Rest of para is more review spam
• two successful Dutch feature films —ref to show they were successful
• SELECTION OF PRINT REFERENCES — what's the point of these? none are linked to the articles so we can read them, and there are more than enough reviews already

You really need a lead section summarising the article, a life and work history, a balanced critical reception section, and a bilbliography/filmology.

If you are not familiar with in-line refs, you put your source between <ref> text </ref> at the appropriate place in the text, and have {{reflist}} in a references section at the end of the text. It looks like this

Richard Wooley worked at York University.

References

Hope this helps, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Minor comment

A small point. What you should have put on my talk page was {{Talkback|Samuel Madson}}, not {{Talkback/Samuel Madson}}. While I'm here I would also like to say that Jimfbleak has done a very good job of advising you. He has put a good deal more work into a detailed study of the article than I had done. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

New version

It might be just as well to let me have a look before you go live, just to check that it's viable. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks much better. I made these changes, mainly to standardise formatting. You can recreate with the original title, the article space isn't protected against recreation Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:09, 14 October 2010 (UTC)