User talk:Johncollee

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Johncollee, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome!

Walking with Dinosaurs[edit]

Hello, John! At Walking with Dinosaurs (film), I am basing the miniseries description on what is at the main article Walking with Dinosaurs to be accurate and to avoid redundancy. I also had a question about a citation... this mentions that both John Collee (you, I presume) and Theodore Thomas were writing the film. What happened with that? I had left screenwriter mention from the article due to the inconsistency. (Similar thing happened to the directing credits.) Erik (talk | contribs) 12:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, for the lead section, I think "The feature-film features" is a bit clumsy. I think readers will understand what we mean by "The film features". Erik (talk | contribs) 12:57, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Erik, do I talk by editing this? just finding my way around.

You got the Walking With Dinosaurs Story pretty well right. Pierre de Lespinois started off as director with Neil Nightingale but we needed an experienced animation guy so Barry Cook was hired. Pierre left the project around the same time. in June 2010 Neil Nightingale asked documentary writer Theodore Thomas to revise my script. Theodore's name went on IMDb at that time, but was then taken off. I assume that means Theodore's contribution didn't qualify for a credit Johncollee (talk) 08:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The interesting thing about the miniseries is it was only six-half hour documentary episodes of which only one was in the late cretaceous and none set in what is now Alaska, so the only connection to the current film is the shared title Johncollee (talk) 08:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

John, thanks for your reply! And you're doing it right so far. :) I will see if I can revise the article to mention these changes. The problem is that without a reliable source, we can't report the reasons why changes happened. We would just say they did, like one of two directors was replaced by another, full stop. As for the title, you're right about the relationship with the miniseries; it really is just taking the name from the franchise.

By the way, I've actually worked on your article as well. Do you know of any sources you can share to expand it further? (On Wikipedia, content needs to be verifiable for readers to look up, which is why I might have been a stickler about changes to either article.) Also, if you are interested, you could release a photo of yourself under a Creative Commons license to have in that article. I did this at Alex Tse by making this kind of request who took a picture of that screenwriter at a convention.

If you have any questions at all about either article or Wikipedia in general, feel free to ask! I'd be happy to help. Erik (talk | contribs) 12:34, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Eric. I totally agree about only including objectively verifiable info. You'll find Pierre De Lespinois credited as director if you access IMDb and look up news articles about him eg Encore magazine 26th Jan 2011. Can't tell you exactly when he left or when Barry Cook joined, but there are refs to it, here and there - this blog for instance: http://picha.com.au/category/hollywood/ .

Can work out how to insert a photo

Theres on here [1] or here[2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johncollee (talk • contribs) 21:55, November 20, 2013‎

Hi, John. Sorry I haven't gotten back to you; I was mostly busy yesterday. FYI, regarding your edit to the synopsis, we have to take one of two approaches. We can either paraphrase the synopsis or quote it directly (attributing with quotation marks), both approaches with a reference to the source. We can't include the official synopsis as if we wrote it ourselves; it is a copyright violation. Erik (talk | contribs) 12:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Understood. But I wrote that synopsis I just put up! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johncollee (talk • contribs) 18:59, November 22, 2013

Ohhh, haha. I guess your creativity shows. It sounded like an official synopsis the studio would release. Well, the thing is, on Wikipedia, we're kind of boring. When we write the synopsis or a larger plot summary, we keep the descriptions basic. We have to follow WP:NPOV so we don't want to sound like we're marketing this topic. WP:TONE says to keep the writing formal. You could look at the reference at the end of the paraphrased synopsis and see if you can improve the wording based on the reference's passage. Erik (talk | contribs) 23:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Erik, probably better if you write it then, or revert to the old version.

Barry Cook[edit]

Hi, John. I created a Wikipedia article for Barry Cook, and I am wondering if you were in touch with him enough to see if you can request for him to provide a photo of himself under a CC license like you did for yourself. Let me know if that would be possible! Thanks, Erik (talk | contribs) 19:41, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links[edit]

Please don't insert external links in articles. The formal advice is at WP:ELPOINTS#2 but the point is obvious that articles would be overrun with promotional links if they weren't quickly reverted. By the way, you might like to review WP:REALNAME which suggests that a user implying they are a well-known person should put a statement on their user page (User:Johncollee), and it is best to do that in conjunction with an email to confirm identity, as mentioned at WP:REALNAME. It may take a while (days) to get a reply to an email, but they will explain how the confirmation process works. Another point to bear in mind is that a lot of people try to use Wikipedia to promote something, and many contributors here have become quite grumpy while trying to deal with it. I'm just letting you know about the possibility of somewhat brusque references to the WP:COI policy. Johnuniq (talk) 04:29, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest[edit]

Hello, Johncollee. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. People with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, see the conflict of interest guideline and frequently asked questions for organizations. In particular, please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, its competitors, or projects and products you or they are involved with;
instead, propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:57, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see that in a recent edit at John Collee you posted information about how to obtain your books. Whether it was your intention or not, that is likely to give the impression of being an attempt to use Wikipedia to promote your work, which is contrary to Wikipedia policy. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:04, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with JamesBWatson. Wikipedia's policy is that it is not a means of promotion. Policy states that "article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources", meaning that sources like LinkedIn cannot be used. If you have concerns about the article, see WP:BIOSELF for steps to follow. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:36, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK undrstood. thanks - John Collee — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.172.10.227 (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]