Hello, I'm
Excirial. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a
neutral point of view. Your recent edit to
Shattuck-Saint Mary's seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on
my talk page. Thanks.
Excirial (
Contact me,
Contribs) 21:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Hello. I have been asked to update the information on our school's page (Shattuck-St. Mary's School). I have attempted to do so several times and each time, the information is removed. I am confused as to how I can improve the information if it keeps being flagged, then removed? Please advise me. Thanks, Jesse — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jessewfortney ( talk • contribs) 21:08, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
- Hello Jesse,
- I think there are several issues i should comment on in this particular case. Since you're an employee or at least closely related to the Shattuck-St. Mary's School (To be fair: i already suspected this to be the case) you have a clear conflict of interest with the topic of the article. It is strongly discouraged (bordering not allowed in severity) to edit an article you have a conflict as interest with, as writing a neutral, encyclopedic article may be difficult or even near impossible when one has such. Just ask yourself: If the school would ever receive negative publicity, would you add this to the article? And if another editor would add a sourced section containing this criticism, would you delete it? Even if it is not intentional it often proves to be difficult to keep an article overall neutral in tone. Exceptions to the rule exist of course, but the added text is quite the polar opposite of expected article content.
- Now, it might also help if i offer a few specific examples:
- In this edit you added a large amount of external links to the article. External links should always go in a separate "External Links" section, and not in the main article body. That said, the sheer amount of added links amounts to link spamming; generally taken only the main website should be linked, and not every single subpage / subsite.
- The other edit you made has similar issues. Try re-reading the added content yourself; If i were to place a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica on the table and a Brochure made by the Shattuck-St. Mary's School and told you the content of the page was copied verbatim et literatim from either of those, which one would you choose as the most likely candidate?
- The above is pretty much as rhetorical question but it should illustrate the issue with the edit. As opposed to being neutral in tone it is highly promotional in nature which is not allowed. In normal circumstances i can quote a few lines in an edit, but in this particular instance pretty much every single line suffers from this problem: recognized as a rich and engaging , SSM’s determination and drive , student-centered creative experiential learning and i can quote many, many more examples in the text.
- Seeing these edits and the edits made by other accounts related to the school i would very strongly advice against editing the article, except for menial corrections such as typo's or factual errors (Locations, dates and so on). I hope this helps, and kind regards, Excirial ( Contact me, Contribs) 22:34, 29 January 2014 (UTC)