User talk:Sophioman

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[edit] Welcome

Welcome to Wikipedia. To find out more about how to make useful contributions, take a look at the welcome page. To stay in Wikipedia, an article has to be about something notable, that is, of general interest. Click on Notability for an explanation of what that means. Also, it must cite independently verifiable sources. Articles that don't meet these requirements are deleted. Follow the links below to learn more:

  1. To find out more about creating articles, read the introduction, tutorial, and the guide to creating your first article.
  2. Do not write articles about yourself, your company, your band, or your best friend - that's a conflict of interest.
  3. As a matter of policy, Wikipedia does not publish original research.
  4. For experiments, please use the sandbox.

JohnCD (talk) 19:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy article quality

Hi Sophioman, This feels like a nasty introduction to Wikipedia, but I have some concerns about the new articles you have started.

The quality of articles matters. Wikipedia has a reputation among philosophers for being just about the least reliable source of information you can find. I am among those who are horrified by the quality of the philosophy articles and the ways in which students use them. The science articles, on the other hand, are generally excellent. Those of us who care about philosophy, and from your name, I assume that you do, need to tidy this place up!

Important steps for improving quality:

  • Always abide by the WP:OR rule, and do not write about your own ideas on topics. I don't even wrote about ideas I have had published.
  • Reference your claims using reliable sources WP:RS. Other wikipedia articles are not reliable sources, nor are blogs or (generally) interest group websites. If you can't reference a non-obvious claim, don't make it.
There are lots of different ways of referencing. To be honest, I found looking at articles that other people had referenced and copying what they did worked better than reading the 'how to' instructions, but that is probably just me. Check out the difference between my referencing in Deontological ethics and in Universal value. There are other systems too.
  • The fact that another Wikpedia has an article on a topic does not make the topic notable. There are definitely non-notable articles on the English wikipedia, so I would be surprised if there were none on other wikipeidas. Check out the notability guidelines: WP:NOTE
  • Before you begin a new article, put some thought into whether the information you have included could be best included in some other article - even of this means creating the new page as a redirect to a section in the old article.
  • Make sure that explanations will be able to be understood by the appropriate audience. Avoid excessively complex language. Make sure that the ideas are explained in sufficient detail that someone with little or no background in the subject will be able to make sense of them.

Given your interest in philosophy, I hope that you will not be put off by my comments, and that you will put in the time to learn how to write great articles, and join those of us at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy who are trying to improve the quality of the philosophy articles. Anarchia (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)