User talk:Rod miner

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added to the page Recumbent bicycle do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. -AndrewDressel (talk) 00:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Recumbent bicycle. Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been reverted or removed.

If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor then please discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
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Please ensure you are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and please do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive, until the dispute is resolved through consensus. Continuing to edit disruptively could result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. -AndrewDressel (talk) 23:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Rod miner. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Recumbent bicycle, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about following the reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

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Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Ebikeguy (talk) 17:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lightfoot Cycles[edit]

Andrew, We do not understand why our additions to the Recumbent Bicycle page are being removed. Perhaps you could help us understand; your credentials certainly suggest that you have your finger on the pulse of this subject and Wikipedia itself. We have tried to follow Wikipedia protocol. We have not attempted to add links. The information we have put forward is credible and relevant. Lightfoot Cycles is an innovator, with a definite place in recumbent cycle history. My assistant Erica has followed protocol, as far as I can tell. Please clarify what might be the problem. Thank you. Rod Miner — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rod miner (talk • contribs) 16:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your difficulty, and here are some points, in no particular order, I've noticed that you should be aware of:

When writing about your own product, you automatically have the real potential of conflict of interest, which is a big taboo here. Your inside knowledge can be a big help, but you have to be extra careful to supply independent references to back up your details. If "Lightfoot Cycles [truly] is an innovator, with a definite place in recumbent cycle history," then there should be plenty of independent sources that can attest to those claims.
When editing, especially when changing a lot of text, it is very helpful to include an edit summary so that other editors can better understand what you have done. Without your guiding comments, they may simply glance at the changes you've made and make a snap judgement.
In your most recent edit, you completely deleted the section on Hand-and-foot recumbent tricycles. I can't tell if that was just a mistake or not, and it was far easier to undo everything than deal with that one issue. A promoter of Sky Wheel attempts to insert their url directly into the article, but has been content with a single, though not especially unbiased, reference for a while.
In your first pair of edits, you inserted the name of your company or product 3 separate times. Cruzbike, Flevo Bike, and RANS, are each mentioned once (though RANS also appears in an image caption, and Cruzbike is pushing things with two image captions). Subsequent edits, attributed to the same user account, did not appear to be substantially different, and so were treated the same way.
Statements such as "Lightfoot Cycles pioneered", "first demonstrated commercially on the Lightfoot Ranger", and "four wheels can offer greater side-hill stability for off-road recumbents" all need references from reliable sources such as an article in a magazine.
Finally, the fact that other flaws exist in an article is not a license to duplicate those flaws or add new ones.

If your goal is merely to level the playing field, thinking not-unreasonably that if other brands get a shout-out, why can't yours, I suggest you carefully work instead to remove other unnecessary brand mentions. For example, I don't see how "such as the RANS Dynamik" really helps make the point that "crank-forward designs that facilitate climbing out of the saddle also can be used off-road." Another approach, though no-less fraught with potential problems, is to write a new, separate article about your company. A link to it would certainly be appropriate in the recumbent bicycle see also section. Bicycle tire and others even has a section listing notable manufactures, meaning manufacturers that have their own articles. I have written several articles about companies and can't think of the last time I heard a complaint. Examples include: Wippermann, Hutchinson SA, SRAM Double Tap, and Santana Cycles. Note especially the use of non-corporate sources: nationally or internationally known news sources. Melon Bicycles is one that I helped clean up. Be forewarned, though that if it only contains links to the corporate web site, copies existing text from another web site, or reads like marketing copy, it is likely to be quickly deleted. If your company simply does not have the necessary notability, then that is where you should focus your efforts, and Wikipedia could have an article about it when it does.

I hope some of this helps. -AndrewDressel (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello My name is Erica and I am trying to add some information that we feel is important to the recumbent cycle page. Would you help me? You seem to know how to site the information correctly. Thank you, -EricA — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rod miner (talk • contribs) 20:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Which of the options I outlined above would you like to pursue? -AndrewDressel (talk) 20:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]