User talk:Rafael popper

Welcome!

Hello, Rafael popper, 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:

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 ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am new user in Wikipedia too[edit]

Discussion transferred from q:User talk:Jeffq#I am new user in Wikipedia too by Jeff Q (talk):

A short article I posted to provide real and virtual students with some references to ongoing projects, publications and course in the field of Foresight has been apparantly considered for deletion (see message below). Could you please elaborate a bit more on the reasons? --Rafael popper 02:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. You may share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Please improve the article if possible, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the guide to deletion.

I'm afraid you have run afoul of some Wikipedia usage and editing restrictions. I'll address them separately.

First and foremost, it is very bad practice to edit articles about yourself. This is consider a conflict of interest. The Wikipedia philosophy is that, if a subject is sufficiently notable to earn a page in the main article space (as opposed to a user page, which everyone is entitled to), there will be some of the 3+ million editors not personally connected to the subject who will volunteer to dig up reliably sourced information about that subject. Since it is virtually impossible for a person to be objective about themselves, Wikipedians rarely allow any autobiographical editing to stand. See Wikipedia:Autobiography for more details.

Second, as suggested above, there is a loosely defined notability threshhold which subjects must exceed to be include in Wikipedia. Although we have over 1.6 million articles, not everything that exists or is true in the world is necessarily a reasonable subject for an article. Anyone wishing to write about a university professor (other than the professor himself, who should avoid the above conflict of interest) should review the pages on Wikipedia:Notability, Wikipedia:Notability (people), and especially Wikipedia:Notability (academics) (a very dynamic document). For living persons, there are some additional concerns that are addressed in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.

Third, based on your posts here and to me at Wikiquote, it sounds like you hope to use Wikipedia as a website to collect projects and student work. This is not the purpose of Wikipedia. It is not a general web hosting service, however worthy the project. In fact, Wikipedia explicitly disallows original research, relying instead on previously published information from multiple independent sources to help provide objective coverage of its topics. Wikipedia is solely an encyclopedia of (ideally) objectively worded, well-sourced information about the world, to which anyone can contribute. Even user pages are provided primarily to aid the work of the encyclopedia, and cannot be used for personal projects like extensions of classwork. Please review What Wikipedia is not for more information on this.

Don't worry too much if you were not aware of these restrictions. We encourage users to be bold in their editing, and such misapprehensions are a common side effect of this philosophy. Despite this initial faux pas, folks will welcome you to the community if you keep your further work here (as much or as little as you wish) in line with Wikipedia's goals. If you decide you just want to use Wikipedia as an initial source for information for yourself and your students (as many instructors do), that's fine, too. (As I mentioned at Wikiquote, see Wikipedia:School and university projects and Wikipedia:Schools' FAQ for some information on this.)

As far as your article on Rafael Popper goes, I would suggest that you explain, in the deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rafael Popper, that you are a new user and were not aware of the various policies I've mentioned. No reasonable person will hold this against you. We were all new editors once. ☺

Let me know if you have any other questions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]