Hello, Selseywill, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Rob (talk) 21:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What an excellent first article - an interesting read about an author I wasn't aware of (I like M.R James and come from The Fens as well, so don't know how I missed him). Well done, I hope you decide to stay! Rob (talk) 21:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, don't worry about the "low importance" thing - it isn't casting an aspersion on him or anything. For novelists, it would be something like Top: Charles Dickens, High: Henry Fielding, Mid: M.R James, and so the "low" is simply a rating of how crucial it is to the particular wikiproject. So, for example, the March-born composer Martin Peerson is quite well-known if you're a fan of English Renaissance music, but when compared to J.S. Bach in the Western musical canon he wouldn't get a very high rating.
I imagine if you add the "children's literature" wikiproject instead, John Gordon might be rated "mid" in that respective genre (although "bear" in mind that authors like A. A. Milne and Philip Pullman are only rated 'mid' as well). With regards to improving it, as you're a relative, a free use image of the author might be nice (so it can't be a professionally-taken copyrighted picture). Also, if he has been adapted for radio, you may want to add a paragraph about that. You could also write a separate article about his most widely-read novel, which I'm guessing is The House on the Brink. So, that could include a little bit about the plot, the background, publishing history, etc, and if that's the novel read by Martin Jarvis, a little note about a radio adaptation. Rob (talk) 22:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[1][reply]
Oh, and the other thing is, cites on Wikipedia don't have to be online sources - in fact, books and other publications tend to be more reliable than websites, so if you can find out when the Guardian prize was awarded, that should be fine. Also, if he's been reviewed in journals/books/etc, that's just as valid as a website. Finally, you could always persuade him to start a website which could corroborate some of the details! Rob (talk) 23:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I created the article Meniscus Film Festival because I found an erroneous link to it on another page (linking to Meniscus: the liquid surface-tension phenomenon). Having an interest in British cinema and wanting to improve Wikipedia I took it upon myself to create a stub about the festival for the benefit of other users.
I am not a vandal, I have wholly honourable motives. I may be new to contributing and still learning though - e.g. creating a page, finding the title is slightly wrong (syntax, capitalisation etc) and then requesting a delete before starting a new page with the correct title (Is there an easier way of changing a title?).
Anyway, if you really deem it necessary to tag such articles for speedy deletion then go ahead. I will have wasted precious time and effort researching and compiling an entry, however small and basic it is now, that may be of use to many people and will no doubt grow in time. It's actions like that which discourage people from growing as editors and making valid and honest contributions in the future. Selseywill (talk) 12:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
