Template talk:ConflictOfInterest

Isn't this now more a "Not 'Pedia Material" template? I thought it was supposed to be about Vanity.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 21:00, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Somewhat. It still talks about creating a user page for themselves instead of an article, which suggests that the article is about themselves, and you can write a vanity page about some subject which is not you but closely related to you.

I'm concerned about this template; I'd like to stress that it should only be placed after a decision has been reached on VfD, since it does prejudge the article. Moreover, others viewing the article really don't need to see it. A more appropriate template would be one that links an article and goes on the user's user page. Finally, I think there's a bit too much jargon — people who commit this sin are usually newbies. I'm going to take a stab at these issues. Deco 07:56, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I made some changes, I hope they seem good. I think it really needs a link to a good page about what Wikipedia considers notable, but the closest thing I could find is Wikipedia: Important. Deco 08:04, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Table[edit]

I'm concerned about the layout of theis template. Since it's very often given to newcomers making their very first article, I fear that the big red table will have a tendency to scare away potential contributors. For now, I'm de-table-izing this template on the grounds that it's counterproductive. If anybody prefers that it stay, then we'll figure something out. – Clockwork Soul 03:13, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted it to a table. I got a shock when I discovered articles that I'd tagged — the text becomes part of the article, and is very confusing. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Heya Mel. The table itself is fine, I think, but the color may be a little intimidating for a newcomer to get on his/her talk page. What do you say we make it, say, blue? – Clockwork Soul 13:12, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is a user talk page only template[edit]

As the wording of the template makes clear, it is meant to be used on user talk pages. We have about 2^34 different templates for labeling articles in need of cleanup, e.g. Template:Explain significance, Template:Cleanup-importance and even Template:Music-importance. Please do not turn this into yet another pastel colored box which people put on top of articles, it should be formatted as a comment and used as such, never on articles.--Eloquence * 16:22, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Copying article to talk page[edit]

I've just used this template on a couple of talk pages. Both times were for very short (one sentence or one paragraph) "articles" that I thought the user might wish to copy on to their user page. However, as both articles were tagged for speedy deletion as non-notable bios, I thought that it would be nice to copy the text of the article onto the talkpage so the user could copy it even if the article was deleted before they got the chance to do so. Here's the format I used both times (including the welcome template, as they were brand new talk pages):

{{subst:Welcome}}
:{{subst:Vanity|[[Article]]}}
::The contents of this article has been reproduced below in case 
you would like to copy it to [[User: (User)|your user page]]:
::(Contents of article)

What I'm wondering is if there's any good way to incorporate this into the template, or if perhaps a new template should/could be made to incorporate this (with or without the welcome message). It might not be a good idea if this template is ever used on longer articles that would seriously clutter up the talk page (one reason to have a separate template for when it is appropriate, rather than making it part of this template), and I don't know if it's even possible to duplicate an article onto another page like this, but I thought I'd at least throw the idea out there. Another possibility would be to make it some sort of invisible note  suggesting that the editor using the template make it un-invisible and alter it as necessary (with pipes? Like, {{subst:vanity|article|user}} or something? I'm not terribly familiar with template construction) but if it's invisible then there's a good chance that many editors wouldn't even know it existed.

Anyway, like I said, just throwing the idea out there. Any thoughts?

Link to policy[edit]

Should there be a link to Wikipedia:Deletion of vanity articles in the template? Nationalparks 04:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bothering me[edit]

I realize this template will often be put on the talk pages of users who aren't really interested in contributing to Wikipedia... but I don't like the way it implies that all subjects have to be notable to merit inclusion. WP:N is not policy, and it's been rejected as a guideline. Some of the more specific ones are, but they don't imply that all subjects must be notable. Is there a way to rewrite this so it doesn't look like notability is the official stance of wikipedia for everything? Mango juice^talk 14:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Parameterless form[edit]

I've modified the template code to work without being passed an article name as a parameter: [1]
It's pretty self-explanatory, and I don't think it will hurt anything. Let me know if it's a different story. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 05:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest[edit]

This template barely addresses the issue of conflict of interest. It is mostly about notability. We do not want them to write articles about notable people where they have a conflict of interest. —Centrx→talk • 13:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]