Harrygatt

Hello, Harrygatt, and Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{Help me}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking if shown; this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field with your edits. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! --Animalparty-- (talk) 22:44, 29 May 2014 (UTC) Getting started A tutorial • Our five pillars • Getting mentored How to: Edit a page • Upload and use images • Create your first article Intuitive guide to Wikipedia • Article Creation Wizard Getting help Frequently asked questions • Tips Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Help desk: A Wiki Styled page to ask questions on Help directory: A comprehensive list-style help contents page Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • No original research Verifiability • Reliable sources • Citing sources What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons List of policies • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism • List of guidelines Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Build consensus • Resolve disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Writing articles Be bold in editing • Develop an article The perfect article • Simplified manual of style Stubs • Categories • Disambiguation Peer review • Featured content Miscellaneous User pages • Talk pages Awards a registered contributor can achieve and award Clean up: General • Spam • Vandalism Join a WikiProject • Translation Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

On notability and affiliated sources

Please note that reliable, independent sources are needed to assert the notability of an organization, per WP:GROUP and the General notability guidelines. Furthermore, using affiliated sources (e.g. the website of the subject, or press releases written by them), may introduce positive bias an article and appear to be promotional (see WP:SPAM). Your contribution history suggests you may have an affiliation with SeriousFun Children's Network, which may represent a conflict of interest. Please work to write fair and neutral articles using unbiased sources. If you have additional questions, you can notify me by placing {{reply to|Animalparty}} before your comment. Cheers, --Animalparty-- (talk) 22:44, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much @Animalparty:. I am working to replace affiliated sources with more neutral ones. I have volunteered with one of the charities within SeriousFun Children's network but have never been paid by them or any organisation related to them and have not been paid or asked to write any articles about the organisation. As a volunteer I am not a part of the charities, and believe that I am able to right impartially about them. However, by having a link to the organisation I do realise that I am at risk of appearing (or even being) impartial but I am conscious of this and it is my aim to make my articles fair, neutral, factual and throughly researched. Please let me know if you think that it would be appropriate for me to continue to edit these pages, it is my aim to create stubs for the North American and European SeriousFun charities that do not currently have articles, but then leave them to be expanded by others as they see fit. Thanks very much, especially for the set of links they look very helpful! --Harrygatt (talk) 23:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I realize you are not the creator of most existing Serious Fun articles, and I commend your effort to improve any or all of them. As long as you maximize transparency and demonstrate neutrality, I don't see a problem with your involvement, but keep in mind there may be a reason why certain articles don't exist. The problem of creating stubs without establishing independent notability is that sooner or later they may be nominated for deletion, which wastes the time and energy of both article creators and the community of editors. And if an organization isn't notable (i.e. has been covered by reliable sources), you can't expect other people to flesh out the stubs. As a volunteer, you may have access to non-affiliated media coverage that is not online (e.g. magazine or newspaper articles), which are just as acceptable to cite per WP:OFFLINE. However, in-depth coverage of the routine or non-noteworthy activities may also be considered inappropriately promotional if sourced solely from affiliated sources (imagine what you'd expect to read in a printed encyclopedia). One option, if reliable sources cannot be found or don't exist yet, might be merge several articles into a parent article, such as SeriousFun Children's Network. Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) covers much of what I've said and more, and may provide you with additional resources. --Animalparty-- (talk) 00:00, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

@Animalparty: good point, I'll research which camps may warrant their own article by looking into coverage into their activities and their inclusion in research papers and journal articles. However my primary reason for starting to edit was frustration at seeing so many broken links in all of the references of the existing pages so I'll work on improving the quality of referencing in the existing articles (working links and verifiable, neutral sources) before making any additional articles, as well as removing the excessive external links from the SeriousFun article! All the best and thanks again. --Harrygatt (talk) 00:52, 30 May 2014 (UTC)