User talk:AlisonM321

Hi AlisonM321! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! Technical 13 (I'm a Teahouse host) Visit the Teahouse This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 16:08, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The page User:AlisonM321/sandbox has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because the content of the page appeared to be blatant advertising which only promoted something or someone, and which was unlikely to be suitable for an article (or at best would need a fundamental rewrite). Wikipedia is not a medium for promotion of anything, whether a company, product, group, service, person, religious or political belief, or anything else. Please read the general criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item G11, as well as the guidelines on spam. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:11, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article Tsogo Sun has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Somewhat promotional article without evidence of satisfying Wikipedia's notability guidelines.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:13, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, AlisonM321. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Tsogo Sun, you may have a conflict of interest.

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 ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• 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.
• 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. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, my apologies for not replying to your earlier message. It got left to do later when I would have enough time to look into it properly, and then disappeared from my mental list of things to do.

I have had a look at your draft of the article, and I will give you an indication of my impressions.

I have made a couple of minor changes, to correct the formatting of references.

The article, while far from being blatant spam, still gives the overall impression of being written for marketing purposes. One of the main reasons that Wikipedia's guidelines on conflict of interest discourage writing an article on a business one is involved in is that when writing about a subject one is closely involved in, even if one has the sincere intention of writing neutrally, it can be very difficult to see how one's writing will look to an outsider, and it can be very difficult indeed to avoid coming across in a promotional way. There is also the fact that anyone working in marketing, as you apparently do, becomes so used to reading and writing marketing language every day, that they can become somewhat desensitised to it, and are able to write and read prose which to other people looks like straight marketing-speak without recognising it as such. In such a situation, someone may sincerely believe that they are doing nothing other than giving a neutral, objective, presentation of facts, but both in their selection of what facts to present and in how they present them, they manage to give a promotional tone. Your draft, unlike many Wikipedia articles created by people in your situation, does not read as blatant spam, but it does look to me like the sort of thing which I would expect to read in copy written by the company's marketing department, rather than the sort of thing I would expect to be written by an uninvolved outsider writing an encyclopaedia article. For example, the content of the section "Rewards Programme" seems to me to be unlikely to be of much interest to a general reader of the encyclopaedia, while clearly being the sort of thing which would seem important and worth mentioning to anyone working in promoting or marketing the business.

A more fundamental issue, though, is the question of whether the subject of an article satisfies Wikipedia's notability guidelines. While promotional tone of an article can be corrected by rewriting, no amount of rewriting an article can ever change the notability of the subject of that article. I checked all the references in the article, and I also did my own searches for information about Tsogo Sun, to see how much evidence I could find that the company satisfies Wikipedia's notability standards.

One of the references is another Wikipedia article. That article does not mention Tsogo Sun, and even if it did, no Wikipedia article is of any value at all in establishing notability, as Wikipedia is a highly unreliable source, which anyone can edit. Several of the other references were clearly not independent sources, as they are on sites which serve businesses by posting material for them. Another one was an announcement of a business deal on the web site of a major shareholder in Tsogo Sun, so again not an independent source. Other references too were mere announcements of business deals, which do nothing at all to show notability, as any business is likely to publish such announcements, and send out press releases about them in the hope that others will write them up. Likewise, publishing an annual financial statement does not indicate notability. In fact, not one of the references was the kind of substantial coverage by an independent reliable source that is required by Wikipedia's notability guidelines.

That left me with question "are there no suitable sources, or are there plenty of sources, but Alison, lacking experience of how Wikipedia works, has failed to provide them?" so, as I have said already, I made my own searches for sources. Unfortunately, I found very little that was at all helpful. For example, in a Google search for "Tsogo Sun", the first couple of pages of hits included the following: 11 pages at www.tsogosunhotels.com (clearly not an independent source); Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (all of them not independent or not reliable or both); a page at www.bloomberg.com merely giving statistics relating to stocks and financial issue, not substantial coverage; a pdf file at www.discovery.co.za, which is clearly an advertising brochure; and so on... I had to search well down the list of hits before I found things such as http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/sabmiller-reviews-tsogo-sun-stake-1.1676630, which does appear to be an independent reliable source, but it is merely a news report that a business was "reviewing" its stake in Tsogo Sun, and could not possibly be regarded as substantial coverage of Tsogo Sun itself.

Wikipedia's notability criteria are often criticised, as many people see them as giving too much weight to subjects that are of trivial importance, but which receive a lot of popular attention, while giving too little weight to more solid subjects of a less popular kind. Many newcomers to editing Wikipedia are surprised to see that even quite a large and successful company may fail to satisfy Wikipedia's notability standards, while many people (including myself) think that Wikipedia gives a ridiculous amount of coverage to utter trivia, such as individual minor characters in cartoon series. However, assessing the subject according to what Wikipedia's guidelines are, rather than what you or I might think they should be, I'm afraid I really cannot see any evidence at all that Tsogo Sun comes anywhere near to satisfying those guidelines. That being so, any article on the subject, no matter how it might be written, would almost certainly be deleted. Saying such a negative thing may seem unfriendly, but in fact I think it would be much less friendly to give you false hope, by advising you on how to improve the article, thereby encouraging you to spend time and effort on it, which would be likely to be wasted time and effort, as the article would be likely to be deleted anyway. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:07, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Tsogo sun, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Revent^talk 01:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Tsogo sun is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tsogo sun until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Revent^talk 07:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]