Claptonpond1

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia!

I hope not to seem unfriendly or make you feel unwelcome, but I noticed your username, and I am concerned that it might not meet Wikipedia's username policy. After you look over that policy, could we discuss that concern here?

I'd appreciate learning your own views, for instance your reasons for wanting this particular name, and what alternative username you might accept that avoids raising this concern.

You have several options freely available to you:

• If you can relieve my concern through discussing it here, I can stop worrying about it.
• If the two of us can't agree here, we can ask for help through Wikipedia's dispute resolution process, such as requesting comments from other Wikipedians. Wikipedia administrators usually abide by agreements reached through this process.
• You can keep your contributions history under a new username. Visit Wikipedia:Changing username and follow the guidelines there.

Thank you. See Lemn Sissay User Dœ _αT^ΩC 18:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

May 2008

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Lemn Sissay, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);

   and you must always:

4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you. Welcome!

Hello, Lemnsissay, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of your edits have not conformed to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (NPOV), and have been reverted. Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations that have been stated in print or on reputable websites or other forms of media.

There's a page about the NPOV policy that has tips on how to effectively write about disparate points of view without compromising the NPOV status of the article as a whole. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

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 have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  User Dœ _αT^ΩC 18:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Changing username

Your request to change your username appears malformed. Please correct it. All the best. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Lemn Sissay

Hi Lemn, I see you have been doing some work on the article, Lemn Sissay. I appreciate it must be frustating to see an article about yourself that doesn't match your expectations, but Wikipedia does have pretty clear guidelines on editing ones own article - as mentioned by another editor above. It represents a conflict of interest and is strongly discouraged. Please see the 'Writing about yourself' policy. I reverted your edits yesterday, partly because you had removing existing references, including citations from the BBC. WP works by verifying text with inline citations from given reliable sources. At WP this includes newspapers, books, academic journals, organisational websites etc. As much detail as possible needs to be given, that is ISBN, publication dates, authors, weblinks etc. so that readers can track and examine the sources for themselves. We are especially keen to give accurate citations for biographies of living people (BLPs) so that given information can be checked for accuracy. Although all articles are works in progress, and collaborative, we aim for an encyclopaedic tone, such as you might find in Britannica. Editing here can seem arcane, if not Byzantine at times and it can take a while to learn your way around, but there is method and reasoning behind it all. You might find *this page* useful as a guide to the basic method and purpose we work by. Articles such as Chinua Achebe, Harold Pinter, J. K. Rowling and Maya Angelou may help to get a sense of referencing, style and layout. I hope this all makes sense to you. Please let me know if you have further questions or feel strongly about certain content, especially regarding accuracy. Formal complaints or formal requests for content removal can be made (info here) by the subject of an article if all else fails. Best wishes Span (talk) 15:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

By the way, we do not rely on primary sources such as personal websites or blogs. Secondary sources, such as newspapers, journals and biographies are much better. Cheers Span (talk) 15:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me. The WP site holds the BBC documentary broadcast in 1995. There are three key sources 1. BBC2 TV Documentary 1995 on Lemn Sissay 2. BBC radio four documentary Child of The State 2010 3. Something Dark a play about the life story published by Oberon Books and for that matter broadcast on BBC radio four. The life story is complicated and covered by many national newspapers since pre-internet. I am trying to show the sources the story particularly of the early years so it is authoritative. I haven't even got on to the career. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Claptonpond1 (talk • contribs) 15:51, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message. You can reply on this page by clicking 'edit' at the top of this page. I understand that it is frustrating when sources are inaccurate. I'll go through and wikify the sources that you add. You can add photos at The Commons if you own some and want to release them into the public domain. Best wishes Span (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Many many thanks. Best Wishes Claptonpond1