User talk:Rosemarylora

Welcome to Wikipedia. Please do not remove Articles for deletion notices from articles, or remove other people's comments in Articles for deletion debates, as you did with Stewart Rahr. Otherwise, it may be difficult to create consensus. If you oppose the deletion of an article, please comment at the respective page instead. Thank you. Hairhorn (talk) 18:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop. If you continue removing Articles for deletion notices, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Hairhorn (talk) 18:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see my comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stewart Rahr about your recent changes to the article. --MelanieN (talk) 16:09, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like to see this article remain on Wikipedia, I suggest you follow the link MelanieN gave you. Please note that even if you are affiliated with Mr. Rahr (or especially if you are), you do not own the article and your edits need to follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Thanks. 16:25, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Rosemary, thanks for your note on my talk page. I'm glad if you now understand that Wikipedia pages have to meet certain standards, and you agree to follow those standards in the future. I have changed my opinion back to "keep" based on your promise not to keep trying to turn the article into a rave notice about the man.

Since this was your first venture into Wikipedia, it's understandable that you didn't realize that you can't just post what you want and expect it to stay; Wikipedia editing is by consensus, and other editors will apply Wikipedia standards to your article. Here are some places to read more about Wikipedia's standards, you can click on any blue link to read more: The subject of an article here has to be notable, which means famous or important, not in our own opinion or in the opinion of the subject, but as supported by outside independent sources writing about them. Those sources have to be reliable, such as printed newspapers - not press releases or blogs. The tone of the article has to be neutral and free of peacockery and promotion. Also, it doesn't matter that the subject has important friends; Notability is not inherited. It can be hard to follow these guidelines if you are writing about yourself or someone you have a connection to; that's why people have warned you against WP:COI, conflict of interest. Those are the reasons why I and other editors have been removing things like "Rahr's life is a true American rags to riches fairy tale come true story" from the article. If you still don't understand, just ask me. --MelanieN (talk) 03:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to echo MelanieN's comments, and also thank you for reaching out. I understand it's not fun to see your contributions removed from Wikipedia, but that's why under the "save page" button, there's a disclaimer that says "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and not everything you want to say about a person will stay on the article. When your edits are removed, there's probably a good reason - you can ask the editor who made the edit, or post a question on the article's talk page.

If you have a relationship with the subject (and you seem to with Stewart Rahr), a good practice would be to leave a comment on a talk page and ask, "Stewart Rahr has done XYZ. Does this belong in the article?" You'll notice that once you engage other editors, they can be pretty helpful.

Anyway, there's a general style that's more or less standard with biographical articles. It might help you to look around and see how other articles are written, especially featured articles, which are considered especially well written articles meeting guidelines and policies. Mosmof (talk) 05:07, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]