User talk:Keith Tomlinson

Keith Tomlinson, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi Keith Tomlinson! 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 experienced editors like Samwalton9 (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 20:05, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Meadowlark Gardens

Hey there - my name is J. P. Case. As a native of Fairfax County and the author behind the Korean Bell Garden section of Wikipedia's article on Meadowlark Botanical Gardens , I'm excited to see someone else taking an interest in this topic. I see that you're a new editor, so first of all, let me say welcome! I hope that you've enjoyed your experience contributing to the website so far and decide to stay! Unfortunately though, I've had to revert your edits, as they don't comply with Wikipedia policy. I appreciate your use of references, but inline citations must be included as well. It's not enough to simply list all of your sources in a "References" section down at the bottom of the page - the rest of us need to know which exact source each specific piece of information is coming from. Wikipedia has a variety of templates to help you format references - see Template:Cite web and Template:Cite book for two of the most common examples. Another issue is the tone of your writing. While I'm impressed with your prose, and the content that you've added appears to be very well-researched, Wikipedia requires everything to be written in a formal tone. Many of your sentences are excellent, but others would certainly need to rephrased.

Given that you appear to be the author of many of the included references, I have to ask - are you in any way affiliated with Meadowlark Gardens? If so, I don't think that there's any explicit policy banning you from editing the article, but Wikipedia does strongly advise against doing so. That said, while I can't speak for the editing community at large, I don't personally see any issue with you continuing to make edits on this topic, so long as you comply with policy. Make sure that you at least glance through this policy page, especially these two section - WP:Forum and WP:Advertising. I also have to point out - copyrighted text is absolutely verboten on Wikipedia, unless you are quoting someone. I'm not sure where all of the text that you've added originated from, but I have come across this webpage [1], which contains much of the same content. I realize that in at least some cases, you may personally be the copyright holder of this text (although I would imagine that the various publishing outlets that you've used may also have some stake in this). Nonetheless, Wikipedia requires that all text added to articles be released under specific licensing terms, allowing for free redistribution. So unless you are wanting to relinquish your rights over the material (supposing that you would even be able to do so, without the consent of additional parties) I would advise that you rewrite everything that has been previously published (of course, as mentioned above, rewriting would be necessary anyway, so as to comply with Wikipedia's standards on writing style).

Finally, I would request that you add an edit summary, upon making any future edits. I and other editors have made contributions to the article on Meadowlark Gardens and continue to watch changes that occur to it. If you suspect that the purpose of any of your edits won't be immediately apparent to others, then it's best to give a quick explanation of what changes are being made. Even when making small revisions, it's often worth keeping up this practice, that way curious editors don't have to spend time trying to discern your intent. Of course, there's no requirement to leave an edit summary, and if you become a prolific editor, you'll likely skip over this step from time to time. But it's always a good courtesy to consider.

If you are interested in giving it another go, then I'd be happy to offer further guidance (to whatever extent my limited free-time allows). Although be careful in the future not to delete all of an article's existing content indiscriminately. I couldn't help but notice that quite a bit information about the Korean Bell Garden (that I had added) was missing after your revisions. I don't know whether you were planning to go back and replace this content, or if you simply skipped over it. By all means, if you feel that you could improve the structure or prose of anything that I added, then feel free! But make sure not to lose the information entirely. --Jpcase (talk) 00:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Mr. Case,

I hope this reaches you. Please call me 703-255-3631 X 102. I am indeed the long time manager of MBG. Obviously, I'm not up to speed on the Wikipedia process, but I'm concerned that the content is both lacking, partly inaccurate and out of date.

Thank you,

Keith — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith Tomlinson (talk • contribs) 17:16, 8 March 2016

Mr. Tomlinson - Thank you for the fast response! If it's all the same to you, I would prefer to keep our correspondence relegated to Wikipedia for the time being, although I'm not necessarily opposed to a more direct form of communication if you feel that such a step would be beneficial. You're welcome to e-mail me, by going to my own talk page and selecting the "e-mail this user" option under tools. I appreciate your desire to see the article on your organization improved and corrected. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring things up to par. --Jpcase (talk) 13:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I've taken the liberty of moving your comment to the proper location, directly under my own. I've also corrected some minor formatting issues and a typo in my name (no worries about any of this). For future reference though, it's common practice to indent each new comment (see here if you need guidance on how to do so) and add your signature at the end (see here). --Jpcase (talk) 13:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)