User talk:Manoeuvre

For your information, the reason why Manoeuvre.org has been deleted (twice) is because you are blatantly using Wikipedia for self promotion purposes. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for you to advertise your own business or website, no matter how worthy it is. Please stop it. -- Francs2000 03:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The point is, as I pointed out above, it's blatant self-promotion. I asked you to stop, you didn't, so the article has been delete-protected. -- Francs2000 03:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Self promotion is more than just talking about yourself. You are advertising a website that gets just 6 unique google hits - this counts as self promotion. -- Francs2000 03:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Explanation

Hi there - I see you have written an article called Manoeuvre.org which has been deleted. In one of your edits, you mentioned that the organization is "non-profit" and "not a business". This in itself does not mean that Wikipedia is the proper forum for disseminating this information. Indeed, we have other guildlines that we use, such as Wikipedia:Notability (companies and corporations) and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not which may not explicitly apply to your article - as you have emphasized, you are a non-profit organization. In this article's case, the sprit of the guidelines are being used - in general, we do not have articles on Wikipedia for sites which are considered not notable.

We are primarily interested in encyclopedic content, and what would be reasonable to take into account is the impact, notability, and prevalence of awareness of your site. In this case, Francs2000 used what is called the Wikipedia:Google test to reasonably justify that your site is not notable under the general practises and guidelines followed on Wikipedia. This does not mean your site is not important - let me say that accessibility issues are very important, as is deaf culture, and disability culture. This simply means that at the moment, the article covers a topic that would not be considered something which would warrant an article. In the future, you are more than welcome to recreate the article - but of course, provided that at minimum, it passes the notability considerations.

From your edit history, I can see that you are a first time contributor, and I understand that it may come across as a bit harsh when your articles are deleted. I have been an administrator on this site for a while now, and your article as it stands would not have survived a deletion debate by the community. It would have been deleted as well, simply through a different deletion mechanism. Again, it is not to say that your topic is not important - it simply means that the format and context in which it was presented does not fit in with Wikipedia at the moment. For example, once the site reaches a reasonable level of awareness by the general public, an article on it would be more than welcome.

On the other hand, if you are an expert in accessibility issues, it might be best to share your expertise by writing about accessibility issues on Wikipedia, and contributing to articles which are important to the field. I hope this explains the actions taken here, and if you have any more concers, please feel free to visit me on my talk page. I would be happy to answer any other questions you might have. Regards, HappyCamper 04:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello Happy Camper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AfD

"Please be familiar with the policies of not biting the newcomers, Wikiquette, no personal attacks, civility, and assume good faith before making a recommendation as to whether the article should be deleted or not, or making a comment."

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my note. I am in an interesting position, sort of crammed in between two large cultural boulders if you would, trying to bridge the gap while at the same time tying not to get squashed.

Well, it has been an interesting evening for me a brand new wikipeidian. As Francs2000 has mentioned I think he is tired of me insisting that my page was not self promotion and was anticipating my lack of concern about the fact that the folks who use our site generally do not "show up" on the google radar cause it is difficult enough just to find readable content let alone create it when you can't see. The fact that something is unknown in the non-disabled world has not held back institutions like the Smithsonian's Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History who recently added one of the accessible technologies we provide access to information on (Emacspeak) from adding the software to it's permanent collection even though it is still one of the only options availible. It is not about quanity (wikipedia is not a democracy) it is about quality, and as Francs2000 first(?) mentioned notability. Google does not measure the quality of those things that are under the radar of it's hyperlink sniffers. If you want to get a good feeling for what I am talking about imagine for a moment that you are a law abiding blind person with lots and lots of ambition who has successfully installed the only affordable option availible, emacspeak, on his /her linux box with the help of a mess of computer geek friends. Are you the slightest bit worried about going to (or creating) a website that has only one google lisitng as a measure of notability?

Making information on the web accessible is very notable indeed, in fact I know of only one application that is availible at this time that allows blind individuals to use current, powerfull, CMS technology in the same manner that sighted individuals do and that is Plone, and it is not even close to being accessible out of the box. An oranization that is dedicated to access to one of humankinds greatest tools, the internet, computers.. that is run by and for individuals with disabilities, that does not rely on charity, grants or corporate donations, that does not discriminate against any one for any reason and that speaks the honest truth about the challanges that face us without fear is a very very very notable organization. The fact that it is unheard of accept in the smallest of circles makes it no less important.

I am going to persist in my attempts to list the organisation in wikipedia because I have dealt with a number of other notable non-profits (such as Greenpeace) in my life and this one is by far the most notable IMHO. If you have any individuals with wikipedia that are blind, deaf and so forth, I would welcome thier insight in this matter. In the mean time I will let you know that I am aware of a few attempts made by individuals with sight issues that have created pages on wikipedia only to have the same thing happen to them -> immediate deletion-> before they even got a chance to say what they wanted to say. While I happen to be able to see, it was still difficult for me to understand what happened and why it happened (I am still not quite sure) for them it was and improbable that they would even attempt a wiki entry, to have it erased before thier "eyes" with confusing tags and cut and paste explainations made it impossible. So let me say in closing that you need to make some policy changes because right now wiki is inaccessible even when undertaking heroic efforts. This too is notable, is it not?

Technology is the only place where all barriers are created, accidentally or not, they are all created. Yes we let off a little steam about this when composing our descriptions and such but thats what wiki is for, being bold and inovative new way of communicating, where everyone can speak up and risk having someone edit our words. Only this time the wiki god decided that we where not allowed to talk the way we talk and speak the way we speak and this is taking up way to much time.

Gee I feel better now. Anyway, whats the deal, can we put up a editible page or not.

if I leave my email address here will I get spam?

FYI - i would hardly call it an article, it was not even nearly completed and required a lot of editing and so forth but I never got the chance to even slightly edit it.

Response

Hi there!

Whatever you do, my recommendation is that you do not post your e-mail on Wikipedia - that is to say, do not put it on your talk page, do not put it on the article space, do not put it anywhere that would permit it to be publically broadcasted. Wikipedia pages are replicated all over the web.

What you do instead is to set your e-mail in "my preferences" at the top of the page. (I see that you have already done this?) You should be able to click on a button that authenticates your e-mail address. Once you do this, everything should be fine. I have enabled my e-mail on Wikipedia for quite some time now, and I never get spam. There is this problem that occasionally the mail is not delivered, or that when it is delivered, it is detected as spam, even though it is not.

You've mentioned something about the Smithsonian - is this reference available somewhere? It would be good information to add to the article. The bottom line is that the article at minimum:

1. needs to be written in third person;
2. it should not spend most of its content on differentiating itself from other organizations - if it is notable enough, its contributions to society should be evident
3. it needs to be sourced - and this is particularly important, especially when this organization has such a small internet prescence - otherwise, we will go through another one of these deletion cycles again...

Any editor is capable of nominating your article up for deletion, so it is quite important that you present your article content in a manner that meets a certain threshold of quality. It is possible to reverse this deletion decision by going through an "undeletion request", but I think for your sake that it is better to avoid all the "wikipolitics" and "wikibureaucracy". Write an article that is good from the beginning, and it will stay here for a long time.

Admittingly, I have yet to be convinced that your organization is "notable" under our Wikipedia guidelines, but I will let you edit the page again by unprotecting it. Spend your energy over the next few days to write something that will convince me otherwise, and after that we'll take it from there. How does this sound to you? Manoeuvre.org should be editable now.

Regarding accessibility issues on Wikipedia - we actually do have a small forum for addressing these issues - it was raised a few months ago, although I need to do another search to find out where it is. If I find it, I will get back to you. We also have an administrator who is blind and edits with a speech synthesizer, I believe. I hope this helps, and if you have any more questions, please feel free to come by my talk page. --HappyCamper 13:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Manoeuvre.org

I read your message to happycamper and i would like to say if you need any help creating the article i would be honored to help you ILovePlankton 13:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hugh Gallagher

I moved your content from Hugh Gallagher to Hugh Gallagher (advocate). The content you removed has been moved to Hugh Gallagher (humorist), and Hugh Gallagher is now a disambiguation page. Please don't delete content and replace it with other content, even if (as in this case), it is equally correct to what was there previously. --Myles Long 14:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason is that it disrupts the edit history for the article. By moving it to a different location, the edit history is kept intact, and not split over multiple pages. --HappyCamper 15:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi there!

Just trying to get back to you on this edit here - don't worry about having to rush those articles out. Take all the time you need - Wikipedia is going to be here to stay :-) The reality is that all the articles on Wikipedia are always work in progress - nothing is ever "done". Articles which have been edited more tend to be of higher quality though, so if you write an article for your organization, it's important that enough information is available so that other editors can follow up with the material. I have the page on my watchlist, so when you put it up, I will notice it - so not to worry. I know you want to share your expertise here, so I'll try my best to that end - hopefully these posts will help you feel that you're starting on the right foot.

One thing to remember is that Wikipedia isn't so much a forum for advocacy as it is a place to present factual information. As a Wikipedian, your primary concern is to present material that is balanced and neutral. The general rule of thumb is that this applies to all article edits. It is difficult to do this at first, but well worth it. This approach allows you to get along with more editors, and you will avoid many of the pitfalls that newcomers have. Sometimes passions do fly high around here, so if you do run into some abrasiveness, just give it a day or so and things do calm down. Sometimes as long time contributors we work too closely with the project and forget about balancing out other people's needs. As always, if you run into any problems, or if you have any questions, just let me know.

If you stay around for a while, you do tend to learn quite a bit. Wikipedia doesn't cover every subject out there, but you'd be surprised at how much you can learn just by browsing around :-) --HappyCamper 01:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)