User talk:Britside

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[edit] Welcome!

Hello, Britside, 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:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Leebo T/C 21:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mike Stowell

I see you've added information about another individual to an existing biography. This is not how persons sharing names are handled on Wikipedia. If the individual you are writing about satisfies our notability criteria, then he would receive a separate page with a qualifier next to his name in parentheses. I'll move the content to a page in your user space for now until you have a chance to review this. Leebo T/C 21:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The information you added to Mike Stowell is now at User:Britside/Mike Stowell. You may work on it at that location until you feel it meets our policies and guidelines. After your account has been registered for 4 days, you will have the ability to move the page into the encyclopedia with a name like I described above, or you can ask me to do it before then. Leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions. Leebo T/C 21:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I received the note you left on my talk page. Please review the page Wikipedia:Notability (people), which describes our generally accepted guidelines for the notability of biographies. It sounds like Mr. Stowell is a wonderful person, and is dedicated to his work, but the bio doesn't currently assert how he meets our guidelines. Review them and let me know if he meets them. Leebo T/C 21:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The article as it exists at User:Britside/Mike Stowell is not an acceptable encyclopedia article. As I said, please review our policies and guidelines. I cannot move the article now, as it does not meet them, particularly the one regarding notability. Leebo T/C 21:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for not responding sooner. It's not a matter of any kind of descrimination, and I'm quite open-minded. Keep in mind, though, that my opinion is not important. What matters is if you can provide reliable sources to assert that Mike Stowell meets the notability criteria. The English Mike Stowell meets them because he has competed at the highest levels of his sport, soccer. Your statement that "no one has heard of the English Mike Stowell" is patently false. A cursory Google search reveals several reliable sources discussing him. That aside, please provide sources, not just sentimental and subjective accomplishments, for why Mr. Stowell meets the criteria. If it helps, identify the actual criterion he meets with proof he meets it. Thanks. Leebo T/C 19:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Also, I was curious about how you are familiar with Mr. Stowell. You listed many personal details of his accomplishments without having to cite any sources, so I assume you know him personally. Also, your name User:Britside seems to be related to the Brightside Church Mr. Stowell founded. Leebo T/C 19:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Britside, welcome to Wikipedia. I've been watching the whole Mike Stowell situation (having created the original article myself, and reverted your edits to this article (with due deference to the fact that it may not have been you who made the edits I reverted)) with interest. I'd like to give you some advice in addition to Leebo's comments, as he is not alone in is opinion.

Now, I can't speak for every Wikipedian, but I believe that almost every editor has something valuable to contribute. However, we Wikipedians are discriminating, in that we want Wikipedia to be of the highest quality! If indeed 'your' Mike Stowell deserves a place in Wikipedia, then we value your contributions.

In order to ensure that 'your' Mike Stowell has an article in Wikipedia, there are a couple of things which you must do. There are two main policies, which affect the inclusion of this article, which are notability, and verifiablity. I am certainly not questioning the former, as I've no knowledge of they guy, but you must apply the latter to ensure the rest of use can ascertain the former.

To illustrate this point, let us examine the current Mike Stowell article. The notability guidelines allow for articles on "Competitors who have played in a fully professional league." This is asserted and established in the article by the very first sentence. Now whilst his status as a professional competitor is not specifically cited (something which is lacking in the article, and I have requested editors extend), the subsequent citations for his coaching and managerial career clearly establish his notabilty in accordance with the guidelines. Further, this is verifiable, by virtue of the links to articles (mostly to BBC News Online articles, which are generally considered credible sources in Wikipedia).

Therefore, if you wish to include this article, you should begin it by saying: "Mike Stowell is a (insert details of notabilty here)," and go on to ensure that this is verifiable by, for example, including links to appropriate references. I urge you to read the verifiablity guidelines to understand how to do this. Finally, as Leebo has pointed out, subjects which have similar titles must have separate articles. Therefore your new article should be called Mike Stowell (pastor) or something similar. If and when there is a consensus that this article has a proper place in Wikipedia, we can easily include disambiguation link at the top of the current Mike Stowell article to allow users to find 'your' Mike Stowell.

Happy Editing. Guinness 23:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mike Stowell (Pastor)

Thank you both for your comments.

Leebo... to answer your question, Pastor Mike is the pastor of the church I attend and a close personal friend and mentor. This would enable me to know his accomplishments.

Guiness... I have included websites that were created for the church and the business Mike leads. I am not sure how to include some type of link to newspaper articles or his education accomplishments. Any advice? His status as a trainer for psychologists is listed on a website, I could include that.

First up, let me address the church and business websites. These sound like they are directly or closely connected to the person in question, would be very likely be considered as "Primary sources" which are not considered sufficient to establish notability (as with everything in Wikipedia, there are sometimes exceptions to the rules but I wouldn't expect it likely in this case). You would need to use "Secondary sources" to establish this. See this guideline for more information.
If there are newspaper articles, then these would be considered secondary sources, and would be given much more weight by the Wikipedia community, although they would still have to establish that he is notable for some reason (simply acknowledging his existence is not sufficient itself to support inclusion).
The proper way to cite a web page is to include the following immediately after the relevant article text (note that the 'date' is the date from the article (if it has one) and the 'accessdate' is the date on which you actually looked at the article:-
<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.example.com/example_url/article.html|title=The Title or Headline from the webpage|publisher=The article's publisher|accessdate=2007-06-25|date=2007-06-26}}</ref>
Include as many of these as you like (the more the better, but each must contain some information which is used in the article). For these to appear correctly, add the following near the bottom of the article:-
==References==
{{reflist|2}}
Hope this helps. Guinness 23:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I had tagged Mike Stowell (pastor) for deletion before seeing this discussion, as he still appears to fail the notability guidelines, and the article is still lacking in independent references. --Finngall talk 18:42, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Please do not remove speedy deletion notices from articles you have created yourself, as you did with Mike Stowell (pastor). Please use the {{hangon}} template on the page instead if you disagree with the deletion. Thank you. --Finngall talk 18:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance of person

I have given you more references to Mike Stowell. I hope you are not implying that a persons importance is based on how many internet hits you can find on them. That would be pretty pathetic. Pastor Mike's accomplishments proceed him. His reputation is huge in West Michigan and in other parts of our country -- mostly in Christian circles.

As an encyclopedia, the highest priority is verifiability. How important he is doesn't mean anything if we don't have references to independent reliable sources to verify the facts. However many Google hits one has isn't the be-all and end-all of determining noatbility, but if there aren't any, you'd better be prepared to dig up some published references from elsewhere. --Finngall talk 19:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Documentation

Do you want me to get copies of his degrees, and the newspaper articles written on him and scan them -- and then send them to you to go along with the references I already have provided? Whatever it takes to get this guy on there.

[edit] Conflict of interest

Britside, it sounds like you have a conflict of interest in writing about Mr. Stowell. I would recommend that you read the page Wikipedia:Conflict of interest to see why it is strongly discouraged to write about subjects to which you are too close to remain neutral. Leebo T/C 17:03, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Leebo

Leebo, I don't think so. That sounded kind of like an attack.

It's not an attack. As the subject is close to you personally, you have a conflict of interest in writing about him. I would have a conflict of interest if I were to write about my employer or if a close acquaintance of mine were notable and I wrote about them. Leebo T/C 18:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Leebo

So are you saying that most people who wrote articles about other people or subjects were not close to them?

I'm saying it's strongly discouraged. I'm not estimating at how many people get away with it. I can speak for myself when I say that most regular contributors I am familiar with understand and agree with this editing guideline. It's not difficult to find subjects to edit that aren't close to you. Leebo T/C 00:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
E.g. I've just updated the Guano page, as somebody asked for references, when there was already one in the page. However, it could certainly do with some more. Perhaps you might consider having a go at improving that. Guinness 12:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

I have four on there right now. How many are necessary?

It is not about quantity, it is about quality. You must demonstrate that the person satisfies the criteria for notability specifically the criteria for people. Check this page for details of the criteria. If this person does not meet those criteria, then the article will not appear in Wikipedia. Guinness 20:08, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] notability

Mike meets a couple of the guidelines for notability. The articles in the newspapers are intellectually independent. He and his entrepeneurial pursuits (five churches, and his mental health clinic) are well known in Christian circles. The websites reinforce the newspaper articles.

All you have to do is properly cite the sources. There are citation templates for nicely organizing the name of the author, the publisher, the publication date, ect. You keep saying things exist like newspaper articles, but then I don't see the name of the newspaper, the author or anything like that that allows us to verify what you're saying. Leebo T/C 16:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

I will work on it some more this week.

Check out the changes per your recommendation. Hope those look good.

First up, I've just read the article again (having not looked closely at the current version), and it does attempt to assert notability, which is good. I'm not entirely convinced that the wp community will think that the article deserves a place, but conversely I'm no longer convinced that it doesn't (although it doesn't meet any of the specific individual criteria in WP:BIO, that guideline states clearly "Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included").
The references are better, but still a little weak. They are all from the same newspaper, which appears to be a 'local' newspaper, judging by the 500k circulation claimed by its website, and naturally because it is a print only paper, I can't check this myself (although that doesn't make it unverifiable). The third web link is to a search page. You should provide links to specific articles in this case to reference specific information, and use the inline citation format I gave an example of above, to link specific facts to specific sources/articles.
Again, from WP:BIO, "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may need to be cited to establish notability." (my emphasis). You really need to try and find "multiple independent sources" to give your article a better chance of acceptance by the community. This I think will be the key to its inclusion. Guinness 23:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OK

I will work on it some more.

[edit] Check out additions

check out the additions

Is there a reason you are creating the article as your user page and not as the subpage I created for you? Your user page is not meant to host drafts of work. Also, consider simply editing the page rather than creating a new header for every comment you leave and signing your comments so we can see when you left them. Leebo T/C 14:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought that was what I was doing when I edited the pages. I go up to the top next to "edit this page" and hit the plus sign. I guess I did not know that you had a protocol for doing these a certain way. I am sure that I am not as computer savvy as you are. Trying my best here on this end.

I wasn't trying to imply that you were breaking some kind of ediquette. It's your talk page after all. If you just click the "Edit this page" tab, it will open up all of the info on the page, and you can use colons to indent your comments. Alternatively, you can click the "[edit]" links under individual headers to see just that thread. Using 4 tildes (~~~~) signs your name and dates it. Leebo T/C 17:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Is their anything else that is required from me to get our pastor's page listed in Wikipedia? Britside 15:16, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anything else required?

Can this page be posted now?


Has the page that I have edited on Britside for Pastor Mike Stowell met the criteria so that it can be posted in Wikipedia? Britside 14:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that this whole issue needs to be re-opened. Mr. Stowell is no longer the Pastor of Brightside Church. Also, the mental health clinic (which was not a clinic) closed, without notice, in February of this year. He did not employee psychologists; the therapists were independent contractors, most of which left the practice soon after it opened. The remaining four hung in for Mike, hoping he was a man of integrity. Those that stayed were not even given the benefit of a notice. The training of psychologists is also questionable, as he does not give the full six hour seminar, which is required by Life Innovations. He uses a 3-4 (max) version, collects the same fee, and acts as if the remainder of time required by Life Innovations is not necessary. For verification, please go to the Brightside Church web site and also The Counseling Group LLC, which no longer exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jarnigin (talk • contribs) 01:09, 14 June 2008 (UTC)