Talk:Oregon Water Trust

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[edit] Copyvio

Most of this looks like a copy and paste from the organization's website, and needs to be rewritten or else the article may be deleted. Let me know if you need help. Katr67 20:05, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Katr67-- Thanks for taking the time to edit our shiznit & for making sure that our entry is certified Kosher and in keeping with Wiki Standards. Of course you're correct that this entry was a cut&paste special. I noticed initially that I had left in a "we" and an "us" or two-- a dead giveaway. However, having removed them (and your tag) I got retagged & I'm not sure why. Anyway, we'll be happy to rewrite the page more appropriately when we can figure what's still wrong w/ it.

BTW, I noticed that your have a penchant for ghost towns. A couple of weeks ago, several of us were in the John Day Basin checking streamflow and meeting with water users and regulators. We traveled through several ghosttowns and got pix, so I'll add what I can to the list of USA ghost towns & maybe DL a photo or two. --Michael Mintz, Project Analyst, Oregon Water Trust 69.88.124.4 19:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Michael--I responded to your post on the WP:ORE talk page. I just cleaned this up, I think it should be OK now, but we do have to be careful about copyvio, so though I don't plan to follow up on that, someone else may. What this really needs now is some sources outside your organization that can back up the claims made in the article. Please see our guidelines about reliable sources. If OWT has been written up in say, The Oregonian or something similar, that would be ideal. I'm sure y'all have press clippings. See WP:CITE and let me know if you need help with the citations. Thanks! Katr67 20:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article improvement

Hi, Katr67.

I read this & your other post on the WP:ORE talk page & we thank you for your time & advice. Sorry about changing stuff back that you had already edited-- I didn't understand who made those changes or why. I will find some information about OWT from some outside sources as you've suggested and read our policy about ownership of articles, our policy on neutral point-of-view and What Wikipedia is Not as I attempt to get the {{advert}} removed from the page & create a well-rounded article. -MichaelMichael Mintz 19:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I already removed the advert tag but please do continue to improve the article! As far as not knowing who did what or why, have you figured out how to check the page history yet? Let me know if not and I'll explain. Gotta run... Katr67 19:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Katr, et al. Well, we're augmenting this article with its first two references. The first, from a Law Journal was a slam-dunk using your nifty reference generator (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php).

On the other hand, I do not see an option in the Generator to reference Books!? Is that hiding on another page perhaps? We'd like to support the claim that the Oregon Water Trust was the first Water Trust in accordance w/ the above /* Copyvio */. We have quoted from a new book published by the Property & Environment Research Center (PERC) called "Saving Our Streams; Harnessing Water Markets, A Practical Guide" by Brandon Scarborough & H.L. Lund, ISBN 0-9760244-4-6, 2007. However, since this guide is not yet available online from PERC (http://www.perc.org/publications.php?subsection=3), I'm not sure how to Wiki-Reference it.

Also, when both references are in place, would it be appropriate to upgrade the article status from "Start-level" to "B" & low importance to High Importance? Considering that the org is a pioneer in the utilization of instream water rights to restore threatened ecosystems and species, we believe the work OWT performs is important & should be highly valued. Thanks much. Michael Mintz 21:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been asked to field your assessment/importance question. You are well on your way to getting this to B class, but you need to better source the info as there are only two footnotes as of yet. B class doesn't require everything to be referenced, but more than two is needed to show that it is not original research. As to importance, if you click on the "rated" link to the right of either the rating or importance you will get a better idea of the importance factor. I know it is important to you, but this is not very important to WikiProject Oregon. And that is all the importance factor is, a prioritization of articles for the project, not the overall importance of a topic to the world. Besides being obscure to most Oregonians, the daily impact or long term impact is not there (the thing has only been around since 1993). High importance are limited to the high profile items or people like Tom McCall and Eugene. And most importantly, importance has not correlation to the quality of an article.

As to your question about a citation: click here and you will find templates and guides. One other bit of concern, please read about conflicts of interest as it appears you are involved with or work for the group. The above concern about importance and quality is a key reason for disinterested parties editing a topics. Please let us know if you have any further questions. Aboutmovies 21:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Michael, I hope you don't mind I asked our resident assessment expert to answer your questions. As far as citations, I don't use tools for that, I just rely on these citation templates, which I think include the format for just about any media. Hope that helps, Latr, Katr 22:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all for the clarification & tips. While I am clearly not a disinterested party (I work for the Water Trust), I do appreciate the need for objective points of view. I think Wiki's conflicts of interest policy makes sense and will use that as a guideline as we develop this article. Not sure who else I might get to look over the content here, but meantime you guys are doing a good job. Thanks again for your efforts & for lending your experience to Wiki. Re: Citation #2: I'd like to embed the publisher(The Property & Environment Research Center)with a link to www.perc.org rather than just list the link in parenthesis. Not sure how to code that although the citation templates is quite helpful.Michael Mintz 18:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)