Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:12, 3 March 2019

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Hello! Please leave new messages at the bottom of this page.

Don't forget to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~.

Thanks. Grayfell (talk)

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Grayfell, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

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 Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! --Elkman 04:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

TakiMag an acceptable source on Wiki?

Hi, I was looking over the Wiki page for Curtis Yarvin and noticed one of the sources cited is an article by Nicholas James Pell for Taki's Magazine, a tabloid-ish website that has published white nationalists such as Richard Spencer over the years. Is TakiMag an acceptable source in this particular context or should it be removed? My hunch is that it should be removed but maybe there's some extenuating circumstances which allow it to be used here, which is why I decided to ask. Thanks for your input ahead of time.

AbsoluteEgoist (talk) 12:19, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@AbsoluteEgoist: Hmm... It looks like it's being used for a single comment on Yarvin's own beliefs, and an infobox entry. I agree we should be very cautious of using Taki's Mag for anything controversial, but for the comment about his own self-description it seems fine in context. Well... I think the article should be restructured to more closely adhere to what reliable sources are saying about him. That would also trim-away a lot of the pretentious pseudo-intellectual nonsense. The Taki's ref might not belong after that, but that's a more ambitious project.

The infobox entry is also not a big deal, although it does raise a separate issue. The cite is used to support a link to "neocameralism" as a "notable idea", but neocameralism redirects to a subsection of Dark Enlightenment where the term is only given a single paragraph. The sources for that paragraph are very clear that this is Yarvin's idea, and do not mention anyone using the term except in reference to Yarvin. This makes me skeptical that it is independently noteworthy of Yarvin. These are the kinds of things that should be discussed on the article's talk page, however. Good luck Grayfell (talk) 19:31, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Wayne Dupree

Another editor advised me to move it to mainspace last week since no one wanted to make a decision on it in the refund area, with a heads up, it could be scrutinized for AFD, and let other users weigh in on it passing muster then to let the article set in WP Purgatory. So I didn't just move it unilaterally or without some type consensus. Cllgbksr (talk)

Okay, who advised you of that? Per my posts to the draft's talk page, you moved it to the wrong space. Articles that start with "Misplaced Pages:" are intended to be about Misplaced Pages itself, for example Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment. This is important because it differentiates internal matters from general articles about similar topics, such as conflict of interest compared to Misplaced Pages:conflict of interest. It's also much, much harder for people to find Misplaced Pages-space articles when searching for a topic.

I would've moved it to the proper space, but there are also some copyright concerns, per the draft's talk page. Since I am not confident these have been addressed, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to take responsibility for the article by moving it myself. Since the deleted articles have such a messy history, I think it's best to resolve this issues fully, first. Grayfell (talk) 03:11, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Another editor who was involved in the voting process for AFD in 2017, (who voted delete) recused themselves from weighing in on it now passing muster, we've been emailing each another over last few weeks regarding the draft, they wanted to read the updated 2018 WaPo article I just added, and it was his/her suggestion to move to mainspace with their disclaimer it could be nominated again for AFD, since no forward movement was happening yay/nay when it was in refund waiting a decision. I guess I can email them and ask if they want to join in this talk conversation to clarify. As to copyright concerns have no clue what you're talking about, since I'm the creator and every article was properly referenced. Cllgbksr (talk) 03:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I've tried to explain some of my concerns at Draft talk:Wayne Dupree, which is the appropriate place to continue this. Grayfell (talk) 03:46, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

You did explain your concerns, they are valid. Agree we re-direct to the Dupree talk page and not use your user page any longer. Thanks. Cllgbksr (talk) 03:58, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Credit to Seedfeeder

Since it's not practical to open discussions in 50 pages, I opened a discussion on the issue at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Captions. Seedfeeder Fan (talk) 23:34, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

GAB

See the editor's other edits. Doug Weller talk 18:53, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

discussion

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VeritasVox (talk • contribs) 07:52, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Spillover

 Note: I am posting this here to avoid pushing the incident report further off-topic and cluttering it with an even longer digression, and doing so before publishing my response there so that I can link this there for the sake of the noticeboard's archive. Feel free to refactor or even delete this at your discretion.

Continuing from that digression: Alas, Stirner died before Evola lived and his specter can now only be found haunting the minds of the more philosophically oriented anarchists and nihilists, but the prospect of works about Evola's interest in Stirner is very intriguing to me. Perhaps the lead at this definitely non-reliable source and its footnote will help. I may search around further when I have the time. Unfortunately, both Stirner and Evola are considered fringe and largely neglected. While many claim them (separately) as influences, few talk about them or how they were influential, especially at length. Stirner has fared slightly better in terms of (unsympathetic, non-anarchist) academic attention, but not by much and mainly due to Marxists wanting to contextualize Marx. It's ironic, too, since it was originally Marx's excessive polemic against "Sankt Max" (the censuring was longer than all of Stirner's published writings combined!) that arguably buried Stirner in the first place. This academic neglect and lack of at-length treatments seems even more the case with Evola, though, whose influence is obvious among (neo)reactionary intelligentsia but who seems to get more attention from Bannon name-dropping him than most of them ever provide.

I don't know if I will contribute to the Evola article anytime soon, since I have a lot on my immediate to-do list, but I might if I can find anything worthwhile to add. Sorry if I seemed excessively aggressive in my initial reply to you at the incident report, by the way. I could have, and should have, handled it more sensitively—or not have interjected at all. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 01:55, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate this, thank you. Yes, Stirner was long dead before Evola came along, I was obviously confused about who we were discussing. I think you hit on something worth exploring in depth. Much like the far-right's oft derided infatuation with Nietzsche, citing a name as an "influence" is empty. Anyone can claim anyone else as an influence, and Evola's work was written in a way that a sympathetic reader can rationalize away many of his glaring flaws. Reading some of Evola's later writings and interviews, it's pretty clear he had evasion down pat, so I think this was intentional. As I said before, he leaves so much open to interpretation that any solid criticism can be waved away. This is a mark of bad philosophy, but he invokes the unfalsifiable shield of "mysticism" to insulate himself even more. With Nietzsche, everybody who pays attention realizes he's dense and inconsistent, but Nietzsche was sincere, interesting, and topical. Evola is never more than one of those three at any given time. Grayfell (talk) 03:14, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

From what I have read of and about Evola, I am not very impressed, either. He has some interesting ideas and interpretations of prior ideas, but nothing very original it seems—at least, not much other than some of the occultism, which I guess has some originality that might excite a racist wizard. I am admittedly not very familiar with Evola's ideas, though, so perhaps it is just my unfamiliarity (though I doubt that). His contributions on idealism were new (as far as I'm aware), especially when considering how Stirner might have influenced that fantastic spectral display.However, what makes him so relevant (as relevant as a fringe philosopher can be) is that he provided a philosophy that consolidated certain variants of right-reactionary thought into a set of synthesized theses. His works, and himself as a new member of the pantheon, were then used to bolster a right-reactionary intelligentsia that I find has seldom ever been particularly robust or original, not least because their goals generally amount to justifying prior conditions and reinventing the wheel. Even if Evola was all just smoke and mirrors, it has been an impressive enough show to be used as a regular intellectual justification of far-right ideology among its ideologues.As for Nietzsche, I have found more substantial exposition on how influential he was among the radical left than the reactionary right, but that may just be a selection bias on my part. I know that Emma Goldman at least was explicit in her defenses of Nietzsche and Stirner (such as briefly in the preface of Anarchism and Other Essays), both major influences for her; and Gilles Deleuze wrote about both, even contending a clear relationship between the two. Stirner is, actually surprisingly, not mentioned once in the prose of the Featured article about Goldman. Perhaps that is worth changing, too. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 06:29, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

When I referred to the far-right's oft derided love of Nietsche, I was thinking of the several articles like this that have come out recently. Perhaps the overwhelming differences in worldviews among people who claim Nietzsche might say something against him. I think, instead, it speaks to how we have to build a scaffolding of assumptions to tackle things which are otherwise too complicated to digest. I guess that's my simplistic postmodernism showing through.

With Evola's work the mysticism and antimodern elitism both are in his favor. His mystical works are written like he's a fortune teller with a grudge, but his political stuff is not that different. He jumps from bold statements presented as though self-evident, to rapid-fire name-dropping quotes, to borderline non-sequiturs, all to reach conclusions that are either flimsy, wrong, or obvious. Every time I read his work, I'm bugged by his inability to get to the point. It's hard to put down for all the wrong reasons, which exploits the pattern-seeking instinct. Combined with his elitism, if anyone's assessment of his odd opinions didn't come out right... they must not have read him correctly. From this view, there is a correct interpretation of the world, and as a magical aristocrat, he knows it and we don't and everything he says is defensible.

So I don't think there's any value to Evola's occultism. He exploited people's willingness to assume he knew what he was talking about. His sympathetic readers have filled in the many gaps he left behind, much like the neo-Nazis have done with Nietzsche. If there's substance to Evola which can stand on its own, I haven't seen it yet, although I admit I'm not looking particularly hard. In this regard, Evola's history and writing style remind me more of L. Ron Hubbard than any philosopher I know of. Grayfell (talk) 08:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate the link to that article. It is definitely disappointing that Nietzsche is becoming trendy again among reactionaries and the alt-right, if only as an edgy name to invoke. I seriously doubt Nietzsche would spare them from his contempt, especially given how slavish he saw nationalism to be, as well.But yes, much of Evola's thought rests on his occultism; remove that and his politics and other writings can easily begin to seem ridiculous—that is, when it comes to whatever semblance of a message can be gleaned from them, opacity and obscurantism notwithstanding. Unless one is already steeped in occultism and an adherent of similar views, reading Evola may prove very interesting but not productive. That has at least been my experience, since occultism is among the spookiest of specters that I do not follow. Perhaps that is also why the only proponents of Evola I have ever met (off-Wiki) were also occultists and why even Mussolini did not seem to consider Evola enough a threat to be worth silencing.Your commentary on all this has been a great read. Lastly, lest anyone think this is mere forum discussion, I will note that it helped indicate some omissions in our articles that may be worth addressing, like the absence of any mention of Stirner in the prose of Goldman's featured article and the insufficient coverage on Stirner's apparent influence on Evola. Thank you for your time. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 15:23, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, likewise. Thanks for the discussion. Grayfell (talk) 03:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Reverts of deletions in Ben Shapiro article

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Dearest Grayfell, skimming through this lengthy talk page and the numerous editing incidents in which you have been involved helps me understand your intellectually bizarre reverts to my edits on the Ben Shapiro article. But sadly I suspect the only person who will read my comments herein will be you.

Nonetheless, for the record, let me point out that in neither of your reversions to my simple deletions did you bother to address my stated reasons for deleting two of the the editor retorts contained in the motley list of Mr. Shapiro's so-called "Views." You simply responded, in a hilariously pompous manner, "As an encyclopedia, we have an obligation to refute factual errors" and "Misplaced Pages doesn't propagate FRINGE theories or pseudoscience through pedantry." I actually did have to laugh.

Article sections on living persons entitled "Views" can't possibly be intended as the place for pompous editors to refute those particular views which some editor (not the subject) has chosen to delineate -- EVEN if a particular stated view is ACTUALLY factually wrong. Don't you get that? Otherwise one is simply setting up straw men. Why not change the section title to "Controversial views and public response." At least that would be intellectually honest. But of course all this is academic. Misplaced Pages loses again... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christian B Martin (talk • contribs) 05:46, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I know he's wrong about many things, but nobody cares about my opinion, just like nobody cares about your opinion. What Misplaced Pages is concerned with is reliable sources. If Shapiro's views are wrong (which they very often are), and reliable sources document that they are wrong, Misplaced Pages will also reflect this. It's not that complicated. Grayfell (talk) 05:52, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Reliable Sources

Hello, what is classed as a reliable source? Dennivich (talk) 01:27, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@Dennivich: Hello. Please see Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources. Keep in mind also that Misplaced Pages strongly favors independent sources, which means that for content like this, Benjamin's own videos are not particularly useful (you may find Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons#Using the subject as a self-published source helpful for this point). He's produced many, many videos, and obviously not every video he's made belongs in the article. We use independent sources to help us explain which ones are important, and which ones are not. Please take a look at Talk:Carl Benjamin, also. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 01:40, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the help. Dennivich (talk) 01:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

LiamTheFirst

Please explain why you allow others links on the same wiki page which you did not allow me? Why you decided that I "have an external relationship with the people, places or things" and why others who placed entries in the table about different Network Monitoring Software products do not? Why you did put me in the "spam" category? All I wanted to do is put one table entry about the product we use: there many other much less significant products in this table. Thank you, LiamTheFirst LiamTheFirst (talk) 01:27, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@LiamTheFirst: Hello. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for advertising. A pair of IP addresses from the LA area have been adding links to loudviewnms.com, which is an LA-based company. Those links appeared to be spam per WP:EL and common sense. After I warned those IP addresses, you created an account to continue adding the same link. You have created a flagrantly promotional copyright violation draft article for that same company. Your behavior strongly suggests your goal is to promote this company, and if you have a conflict of interest, you will need to familiarize yourself with Misplaced Pages's guidelines on editing with a conflict of interest. If you cannot be bothered to read what was posted to your talk, you're going to have a bad time editing Misplaced Pages.

When I notice someone who appears to be using Misplaced Pages for advertising, I do something about it. There are a lot of spammers, though, and Misplaced Pages has a lot of problems. That's not an excuse for you to add even more spam. If you want to discuss a specific issue on another article, do so on that article's talk page, not here. Grayfell (talk) 06:39, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@Grayfell  :@Grayfel: Well, thank you for answering. You did not remove OTHER products/links from the SAME TABLE in network monitoring software page . You removed only the entry I placed, so there is still no explanation except some kind of discrimination for unknown reasons. I do bother to read, I am just new to Misplaced Pages and do not always see WHERE to read. I removed the external link, though still there are other products external links. Somebody told me here:"no article" - no entry in the table, so I created an account to create an article draft. But you tagged it as "conflict of interest". I can rewrite it with my own words,but I suspect you would never let it go. Discrimination or somebody else has a conflict of interest? Please let me know what to do to put the entry in the table along with other products. LiamTheFirst (talk) 01:27, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

@LiamTheFirst: If you're brand new to a project, accusing everyone else of "discrimination" probably isn't going to get you very far.

Read WP:PAID. If you are an employee of this company or are otherwise compensated in any way, you must disclose this fact. This is required by Misplaced Pages (and the governments of many countries).

All of the entries at Comparison of network monitoring systems have articles. Your entry does not. There are no external links, only wikilinks to other articles. That's why the other links haven't been removed. Get it?

Draft:CloudView NMS was a copy/paste of the website, which would be a bad starting point even if it weren't a copyright violation. It will be deleted soon, because Misplaced Pages cannot host copyright violations. Further it's a draft, not an article, and you cannot link to drafts from real articles. If you want your draft to become a proper article, first read WP:PAID (yes really) and then read WP:PLAGIARISM and then Misplaced Pages:Your first article and then Misplaced Pages:Notability (organizations and companies). You're going to have to do your homework on this. You will need to find several reliable sources (not just blogs or press releases) which are independent of CloudView. These should not just be passing mentions, either. If you cannot find these sources, the article doesn't belong on Misplaced Pages.

Good luck. Grayfell (talk) 07:55, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@Grayfell  :@Grayfel: Well, thank you. I will try to remove the draft and possibly other things I did in Misplaced Pages with/without the account, BTW, now it is my opinion (after your explanations) that the whole page on comparison of network monitoring systems does not belong to Misplaced Pages. FYI: there are external links (to vendors sites) on this page in the references section. Thank you and sorry for the trouble LiamTheFirst (talk)

@Grayfell

Thank you! I am learning all this now... I promise acting by the rules from now on..., at least like others in the "table". Would it be too much to ask you to remove all the embarrassing "spam" info you put about cloudview in wikipedia. I've been punished enough :-) Thank you again

LiamTheFirst (talk) 15:36, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

This wasn't about punishment, this is about preventing spam. You can remove comments from your own page, if you want to, but they are still visible in the talk page's history. Removing comments is understood to mean you have read the comments and understood them. Few people are going to see the IP address comments unless those IP addresses start adding spam again, so there's no real point in editing those pages, and I do not intend to remove the warnings there. Grayfell (talk) 02:17, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

@Grayfell

Thank you! As I said I read the comments and I understood you. I will spend some time to understand the rules. LiamTheFirst (talk) 02:27, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the article- Identitarianism

Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidBailey (talk • contribs) 18:08, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Promotional Content

@Grayfall,

Hello, what do you mean by promotional content on the B. Kevin Turner wiki page? Can you please give me some examples? I am new to Misplaced Pages and would like to learn the right way. Thanks! skyyeee (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:26, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Skyyeee: Please see Talk:B. Kevin Turner where I already explained this, and your own talk page where I already requested that you discuss the issue. Since you have not indicated that you've read your talk page, I will remind you that you must disclose any editing for which you are paid or otherwise compensated, per Misplaced Pages's terms of service (see WP:PAID). This is not optional. Thank you. Grayfell (talk) 02:33, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Reliable Resources

Hey Grayfell,

Thanks for the heads up regarding resources. I will keep an eye out to make sure they are legit. I will look for submission guidelines like you did. Also thanks for the tip on overlapping fitness and Medically related wiki entries. Thanks again

--Brose7373 (talk) 03:18, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Concerning BRD

So concerning this edit. Why exactly did you revert? Content got added to the page, I reverted it as not WP:DUE and rather than discuss it per WP:BRD you just reverted again? WP:Consensus requires that we discuss this and not just edit war each other. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not sufficient to revert people. In fact if you look at the talk page, we are talking about it there already. Why don't you join in rather than just revert? -Obsidi (talk) 03:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I, too, know of many pages starting with "WP:"...

I did not "revert again". This was the first edit I have made to that page in weeks. The appropriate place to discuss changes to an article is the article's talk page. Grayfell (talk) 03:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Obsidi (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Posting this on my page, after I point out that it's required on the same talk page...

D- See me after class. Grayfell (talk) 03:14, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Gab (social network)". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 31 October 2018.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 01:44, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Misplaced Pages's policy on edit warring. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) 05:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Not edit warring

Please review the edits. You'll find all I'm doing is cleaning up citations and adding no new prose whatsoever. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 23:19, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Gab (social network), to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, User:TransporterMan (talk) 20:29, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

Redirects

Looking into it, in October 2016 the page was a redirect to White Supremacy - in August 2017 an editor WP:BOLDly repointed it to White Pride based on a brief conversation between some editors upset that Black Power didn't point to Black Supremacy. I have WP:BOLDly reverted this back to the original redirect destination and added the redirect page to my watch list. Simonm223 (talk) 16:50, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Sure, that's fine with me. Like I said, it's not that surprising to me, and I don't see a major problem with either. Neither article is a perfect fit for a redirect, but I really don't think yet another article on racist jargon is supported by sources (nor is it worth the hassle, tbh) so I'm not sure what the solution is.

I dimly remember that discussion, but they tend to blur together. There is a pretty steady trickle of whining about how "white ___" isn't treated the same as "black ___", which is why some of the talk pages have a FAQ about it. In this specific case, I don't think the redirects are necessarily an extension of that false-balance meme, though. "White power" and "white pride" were both created specifically to exploit their black counterparts, so there is a legitimate parallel, and there is a legitimate similarity. That doesn't mean they should be treated the same, necessarily, but it doesn't seem unreasonable by itself. *shrug*. Grayfell (talk) 22:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, compared to some of the things I've seen on talk pages, whinging about why white power isn't treated as analogous to black power is minor. Concur a redirect is fine, but I'd rather most of these slogans just point back to white supremacy anyway. After all - that's what they about enforcing. Simonm223 (talk) 22:36, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Isagenix International

Perhaps you might bother to read what references actually say before making false comments. Yahboo (talk) 00:50, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Yahboo: Read the article's talk page, where I just recently discussed exactly this reference. Assume good faith and use article talk pages. These are not optional. Grayfell (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

User has now been reported for edit warring. Rhode Island Red (talk) 01:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your edit on MKC!

I couldn't find the right words to describe that scum of a company, so thank you a lot. :] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fluorinated (talk • contribs) 18:04, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Spam at McCombs School of Business

Hi Grayfall. I am employed by the McCombs School of Business where I handle the school's institutional dating and rankings. I'm trying hard to include our current external media rankings (U.S. News etc.), objectively and with careful citations, as do all the other major business schools, who also use infoboxes. I'm trying hard not to "promote" the business school or use marketing language of any sort. I don't feel I have "an undisclosed financial stake in promoting" this topic, but am quite literally the school's best expert on this data. Do I simply need to disclose my employer on my user page and all is well? MSBDRMWT (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

As an employee, you have a clear conflict of interest and need to read WP:COI and follow its instructions. Since you are paid by the school, you are also a paid editor, and must declare your status as per WP:PAID. Your best bet is to put the information you want to have included in the article on the article talk page, along with all the references, and then allow another uninvolved and unconflicted editor to evaluate it and add it to the article if they choose to do so. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:01, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)@MSBDRMWT: No,this is unacceptably promotional regardless of how you personally choose to describe it. As was already explained multiple times, you should not be editing the article at all, you should be posting suggestions to the article's talk page. Have you bothered to read any of the links that have been posted on your talk page repeatedly for the past nine years? Did you bother to read the very first sentence of this talk page, telling you to post new comments to the bottom? Are you here to help build an encyclopedia? Misplaced Pages is not a platform for you to promote your employer, and presenting this information as neutral doesn't actually make it neutral. Further Misplaced Pages is based on reliable sources, with a strong preference for independent sources. Articles are not based individual expertise. As explained through links posted to your talk page, disclosure is a start. It is not a license for additional promotion. Read the links on your talk page and propose changes on the article's talk page. Grayfell (talk) 22:09, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Grayfell. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Misplaced Pages arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Please remove inviul.com from spam list. This is knowledge sharing blog.

Hello,

I am very sorry for this. Please remove inviul.com from the spam list. I will not follow this practice.

I didn't mean to promote it. Rather, I thought to help users. Anyways, I'm sorry.

Apologies.

Thanks, Avinash Avinashmishrainviul (talk) 18:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Third party needed

Hello

In this edit you added third-party inline template. My question is - what third party you expect? In link provided to page of unglobalcompact.org there is info about this presentation. You expect that some other page will provide the same program with the same info? I am asking, because this it makes me curious why for this specific information unglobalcompact.org is not enough. PMG (talk) 14:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello. As part of its core philosophy, Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Not all information belongs, even if it can be sourced. This source is a routine event listing which fails to demonstrate due weight.

A UN Global Compact presentation may sound impressive, but without an outside source, there is no way to tell if it's significant or merely run-of-the-mill. If other sources aren't talking about his appearance, than it was just another gig. For comparison, articles on famous music groups seldom list specific venues, even significant ones, without a very good reason supported by a reliable, third-party source. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for promotion, so we should use reliable, independent sources to indicate to readers why a piece of information is encyclopedically significant. Grayfell (talk) 19:40, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

episodes list

Hi, I started a discussion involving you here. Your input is welcome. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 09:01, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 3

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Paleoconservatism, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Traditionalism and European (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:27, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Question about protecting MK

Hi Grayfell, thanks for watching the Mary Kay page and monitoring the "not MLM" edits. I don't know much about page protection, but would these consistent unhelpful edits merit semi-protection? (happy to discuss on article talk page if you prefer). With many thanks for your advice! SunnyBoi (talk) 14:40, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Hello, @SunnyBoi:. For some strange reason, I like reading about, and talking about, MLM companies, so I'm always willing to offer my under-qualified advice.

Looking at the history, it seems like there's a batch of disruptive edits about once a month. That's similar to most big MLM companies. This seems pretty manageable to me, but some MLM articles with similar levels of activity are protected (World Financial Group) so I can see a case being made. WFG has had a more aggressive recent history of edit wars and similar, however, while Mary Kay's public log page is, surprisingly, empty. To me, this suggests it's not really worth protecting yet.

Page protection is a trade-off. The article needs a lot of work, and page protection can discourage good-faith new editors... at least, that's the theory. Misplaced Pages needs more new editors, so it's worth careful consideration. Page protection is also mostly temporary unless there is significant long-term disruption. Protecting the article for a few months probably won't change much.

There are several flavors of protection, but the most clear-cut applications are articles with either a lot of attention (Vandalism on Misplaced Pages#Stephen Colbert for example) or with a specific disruptive behavior associated (sock puppetry, or perhaps something like Church of Scientology editing on Misplaced Pages). While there are a lot of irritating edits for MLM articles, they're usually "drive-by" edits, or they are a single editor on a mission.

I hope that's helpful. Grayfell (talk) 23:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Grayfell, I appreciate your thoughtful response and the context of the other articles to show the spectrum of editing disruption! I understand, and it was good to learn the "drive-by" term! Thank you! SunnyBoi (talk) 12:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

Thanks for patrolling the MLM pages and giving considered advice! SunnyBoi (talk) 12:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Unreliable sources tag for the Microservices page

of the Microservices article by you, introduced the unreliable sources tag. Its not clear to me what was the problem that you were highlighting. I'd like to address them. Could you please clarify your intent? A really paranoid android (talk) 00:27, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Hello. I will post a comment about this on the article's talk page. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 04:08, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Seymour Itzkoff

Hello and thanks for your recent message. As far as the COI is concerned, I do not have any financial, familial or professional ties with Itzkoff and I have never met him or spoken to him. I have read most of his books and I think there is still much information to add. Sinuthius (talk) 22:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I accept that, and have removed the appropriate template from your talk page. The place to discuss specific changes to the article is the article's talk page. You may also want to keep in mind WP:BLPN if you would like additional input for outside editors. Grayfell (talk) 22:59, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Best wishes for this holiday season! Thank you for your Wiki contributions in 2018. May 2019 be prosperous and joyful. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:35, 22 December 2018 (UTC) Noël ~ καλά Χριστούγεννα ~ З Калядамі ~ חנוכה שמח ~ Gott nytt år!

Invitation to join WikiProject Brands

	Hello, Grayfell. You are invited to join WikiProject Brands, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Misplaced Pages's coverage of brands and brand-related topics. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. North America 20:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Mankind Quarterly

For the longest time, this has been described in the lead as a "peer-reviewed academic journal". That's not puffery, just as saying that it's printed on paper or published electronically is not puffery, but just a fact. It's peer-reviewed. Probably badly peer-reviewed, by reviewers that other journals will stay clear off, but that's a completely different matter. The same goes for it being an "academic journal". Sure it's crappy pseudoscience, but "academic", like "peer-review" is not a badge of honor but just a description. To get back to the edit warring: I'm afraid you got things backwards. This has been described as a peer-reviewed academic journal for years, until you changed that 2 weeks ago. Your edit has been reverted and challenged. Per WP:BOLD you should stop reverting and take this to the article talk page. I recommend that you self-revert and start a discussion on the article's talk page. This also goes, of course, for @Volunteer Marek:. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 22:40, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

PS: I do hope that you are aware of the fact that this article is under discretionary sanctions (see top of the talk page). --Randykitty (talk) 22:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter how long it has been described in the article as such. What matters is whether reliable sources refer to it as such. And bottomline is, I had trouble finding any non-MQ related source which says it's "academic" and/or "peer-reviewed". There was a previous discussion on the subject here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:28, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

• It does matter insofar as WP:BOLD was not followed at an article that is under discretionary sanctions... And we take MQs word for it that it is published quarterly, another NPOV non-puffery description. If there are sourced issues with the journal's peer review, we can add that to the article. That other sources don't use the words peer-review or academic is nothing unusual, I think that goes for 99% of the journals on which we have articles and still we describe them that way. The previous discussion rapidly veered off-topic to discussing how much criticism was in the article. --Randykitty (talk) 11:33, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Editathon: The Visibility Project - Saturday, January 19

Make+Think+Code and the Pacific Northwest College of Art are hosting a Misplaced Pages editathon at the Shipley Collins Mediatheque (511 NW Broadway) on Saturday, January 19 from 10am to 2:30pm. The purpose of the event is to make Misplaced Pages a more vibrant, representative, inclusive and diverse resource. Please visit Misplaced Pages:Meetup/MakeThinkCode/TheVisibilityProject for more information. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Jay B

Jay Bastille complained about you at Teahouse (and has been smitten by other editors). David notMD (talk) 16:50, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

@Greyfell: Jay Bastille has been banned as a sockmaster per Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Jay Bestille. Your engagement with them spurred the SPI filing, so job well done.--SamHolt6 (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I noticed the Teahouse comment, but figured it would be gratuitous to get involved at that point. Something about that sock farm makes me think there's a bit more to the story, but either we'll find out later or we won't so... Grayfell (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks For Your Thoughts On Multilevel Marketing Industry

Thanks for addressing my question about multi-level marketing industries in the Infoboxes. Your thoughts are helpful for future editing. Alweth (talk) 00:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for feedback

Thanks for your note about Company affiliation, did not know and easily fixed by creating user page (i thought it was pretty obvious for most editors writing about enterprises). I have also updated Draft:Sensu Core as per the notes for your review. JS —Preceding undated comment added 18:38, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Finding it impossible to add content

I am sooo confused at this point about how to create any content on Misplaced Pages. You said I have to declare affiliation - which I did. The Misplaced Pages page says remove the message after you fix the problem which I did. More importantly, it seems like you are saying that ALL the content in Misplaced Pages has to be written by people who have no knowledge about the content if they have any affiliation. If I am a researcher on cancer and write about cancer, then you will delete the content because i am affiliated with an organization of cancer. If I am a biologist who writes about biology you will flag the content because I have an affiliation with a Biology company (how else will anyone ever write about something if they are not affiliated with an organization or school about that subject?)

Is there something on my pages that is incorrect, not verifiable by the sources that i have provided, or outright offensive? It is a simple writeup about an open-source software being used by lots of users similar to all the other similar companies in Misplaced Pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsmith1108 (talk • contribs) 00:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Jsmith1108: Hello. I know this is a lot to take in, and Misplaced Pages doesn't do a great job of explaining all this, unfortunately. There were a lot of complicated policy pages I posted on your talk page, and even worse, they often tend to be vague or inconsistent.

It might help to understand why this is so messy. Part of the reason is that this is a volunteer project, and not all of us agree on exactly how to handle this. So why does that matter at all? Well, because COI editing causes a lot of problems in the long run, Misplaced Pages editor's attitudes have shifted with time from skeptical to cynical. I assume you like to use Misplaced Pages yourself, so take a look at Conflict-of-interest editing on Misplaced Pages. This isn't a policy page, like those that were posted to your talk page, this is just an article about the problem. It includes examples of lawsuits, FTC regulations, PR firms, Scientology, Burger King, hacking, doxxing, and more. COI editing is a mess, so it's not something experienced volunteers take lightly.

So when you discuss your own expertise, you're on the right track, but only addressing half of the problem. If I thought you were here to advertise your company, I would've suggested the article be deleted. I didn't, because I believe you are here in good faith, and I do appreciate your efforts to improve the project. That said, I don't think editors with a COI are qualified to act as impartial judges, and from what I've seen, the Misplaced Pages community mostly shares this position. There is a process, and it takes time. The article isn't even published yet, so the COI template is not a problem worth worrying about yet. If it's still there after the article is published and cleaned-up, I suggest using template:request edit to discuss it on the talk page. I don't think it will be a problem, though. Removing the template now will not increase the speed at which the article is published.

I think you must realize there is a difference between writing about your employer, and writing about cancer. Being for or against something is not the same as a conflict of interest. Even for information about cancer, we expect all information to be verifiable, because we don't publish original research. I think you already know this also, because you've added sources for your contributions. We rely on reliable sources, not personal expertise. Expert editors are very important, but not even our Nobel prize winners, of which we have several, get to published original research (usually they have other outlets, so perhaps that's not a great example, but you get what I'm saying).

So I sympathize, sincerely. It is confusing, and I don't know the solution to that. With that in mind, the simplest advice I can give you is to work on the draft to the best of your ability, and accept that these things take time and may not turn out to your satisfaction. Sorry, I know that must be frustrating to hear, but hopefully it's helpful anyway.

If you have specific questions, let me know. Grayfell (talk) 01:16, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Oregon State University Black History Month Misplaced Pages Edit-a-thon, Friday, February 8

To commemorate Black History Month, Oregon State University, Wikimedia Nigeria, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, and AfroCROWD are hosting a Misplaced Pages edit-a-thon at the Oregon State University Valley Library on Friday, February 8 from 2–5pm. The purpose of the event is to reduce Misplaced Pages's diversity gap by creating and improving articles about African American culture and history, as well as notable people of African descent and the African diaspora in general. Please visit here for more information. Remote participation is welcome! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Did you make this edit?

Hi Grayfell, re: - asking because it contains almost the same exact edit summary wording as your edit here a few hours ago ("This article is intended to be a neutral overview of Arora, not a trophy case, and not a place to promote his company") with a similar sort of TNTing on a similar topic a young Indian security specialist. -- GreenC 17:57, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: Hello. No, I did not make that edit. Their first edit summary was an exact copy of one I used a few hours before that, here: . Presumably that editor was copying that summary. Grayfell (talk) 20:32, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Didn't think it was you but needed to ask. Both articles are now confirmed user only, too much COI, SOCK, SPA, AFD, etc.. -- GreenC 15:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Of course, no worries. It is a weird thing. Grayfell (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Inappropriate edit

Dear Grayfell,

You recently deleted a handful of key sentences and references on the Mark-recapture Wiki page, justifying them with reference to conflict of interest. Unfortunately I think your actions are misguided, and I hope you will consider correcting them. Your remarks predominately relate to the peer-reviewed journal article "Estimating omissions from searches". First some background, ...

I have become an advocate for Misplaced Pages, taking great pleasure from knowning that the information I add becomes freely available to everyone. The reference to the footnote in Chapman's 1951 paper is a good example - few people will have read the paper, fewer still will have noticed the footnote. Your actions have taken me aback, and require me to point out some facts.

1. The authors have never been paid for any of their work, it was started as a hobby, completed outside of work, and I think also published without cost.
2. The authors do not work in the field of mark-recapture.
3. To my knowledge, the authors have never modified Wiki pages related to their paid research.
4. As a reader can confirm - the remarks you have removed were purely scientific, concise, fully referenced, and essential for a proper understanding and implementation of a Bayesian mark-recapture estimate.

In contrast, the remaining reference is to a non-peer-reviewed calculation (described by the author as "original research" - I've no reason to doubt this), but appeared after publication of the complete Bayesian analysis described in "Estimating omissions from searches". The former resembles an extra derivation given in the Supplementary Material of the latter; which also provides the essential information for how estimates should be modified under different search conditions, and is the key paper on these estimates.

According to Misplaced Pages's guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest , I can see no conflict of interest through the edits I have made, regardless of whether I were involved with the articles referred to or not - citations to material written by yourself is explicitly allowed.

Therefore having given your actions consideration, I think them unjustified, and that they have damaged the scientific content and usefulness of the page. I suspect they were taken without full knowledge of the situation and scientific issues discussed. I hope you will discuss with your colleagues if you feel necessary, and amend your actions.

Best wishes, P.R.Picasso (talk) 20:01, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

@P.R.Picasso: Hello. I understand that this must be frustrating, and I do think we can resolve this. I think, from your comments, that you may not fully understand the problem, so we should clarify that first. There are multiple problems here, and we would need to address all of them in order to restore the content:

Citing your own work is a conflict of interest in that you are suggesting that your own work is vitally significant to understanding a topic. You are correct that it is permissible to do so, but per WP:SELFCITE this needs to be handled carefully. Since most of your edits have been to emphasize a single academic's work, this is a sign that your goals are not entirely anodyne, even if your intentions are good. While you imply that you are this person, you do not directly state it. This is fine (we are not interested in "outing" anyone), but your behavior is, to be blunt, similar to spamming. Please try and see this from an outside volunteer's perspective. How do we know that this is important, and is the person who wrote it qualified to say that it's so important that it must be included? As an extension of Misplaced Pages's policies against original research, we generally rely on impartial editors to decide which perspectives should be included and which should not. The person who wrote a source is not an impartial judge of that source, obviously.

An additional problem, which also must be addressed, is that many of your additions were not written in an encyclopedic tone. Saying things are "important" and "essential", as you did here, is inappropriate, as this is a form of editorializing. Further, some of your additions conflate both COI and editorializing problems. This edit twice says that something "has been suggested" but it doesn't indicate to the readers that you are the one who's "suggesting" it. This is both a conflict-of-interest problem, and also unsupported attribution. These are just examples, but this isn't a comprehensive explanation of all of the problems with these edits. I recommend that you look carefully at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Words to watch as a starting point for understanding why this style of writing isn't appropriate.

Hopefully this explains why I've reverted your edits. I am not an admin, I am just a regular editor, like you. In this sense, we are both peers in the Misplaced Pages community. If you would like additional input, one options to post to Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. There, other uninvolved editors will see this and can help evaluate if my actions were appropriate.

Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 22:37, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! See: Misplaced Pages:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Talk:Young_Living#Prohibited_marketing_claims Alweth (talk) 02:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

What was that for?

The source is right here, it leads to the link of the video that is still available, though the deceased man was not included there.

(Okay, I actually DO NOT KNOW how to make any reliable sources, all I got was... from YouTube video links. How do I do that?)

ROBLOXGamingDavid (talk) 09:41, 17 February 2019 (UTC)ROBLOXGamingDavid

@ROBLOXGamingDavid: The video was just reposted by a random account. It wasn't on Logan Paul's account, and we don't know exactly how or why they changed the video. Also, that person doesn't own the copyright to the video, which makes it a copyright violation. Misplaced Pages articles should not link to copyright violations on Youtube (per WP:COPYVIO and WP:YOUTUBE).

Please look at Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources. After you've looked at that, you may want to also look at Help:Referencing for beginners. Grayfell (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Grayfell: Maybe you can just remove the references and keep the text. Also, I know how and why. It's because he done this to avoid breaking the rules for YouTube Community Guidelines and he edited it out on editing softwares or something. You didn't read the sentences, have you?

ROBLOXGamingDavid (talk) 12:54, 18 February 2019 (UTC)ROBL0XGamingDavid

I read the sentences. Pretty much everything is "still available online" for people who bother to look, but Misplaced Pages article's shouldn't encourage people to go looking for trashy illegal uploads. If you think this belongs, find a reliable source explaining it. Info on Misplaced Pages should be verifiable, which means that you have to point to a source. Otherwise it's original research, which doesn't belong. The place to talk about this is now Talk:Logan Paul, not here. Grayfell (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Rebab

Hello Acehood21 (talk) 04:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Deleted dead link from Pontiac Firebird page.

Hi, I found a dead link on the External Links from Pontiac Firebird wiki page and deleted it, I hope it was correct, and I did not check off minor edit, because I doubt it is minor. Please let me know if that was correct. Thanks You!CarIndustryFan (talk) 15:17, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Anthony Fantano

Thanks. Edit conflicted on my self-undo. Meters (talk) 00:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

No worries. I almost did the same thing. Grayfell (talk) 00:53, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I couldn't believe how fast you were to catch that. Meters (talk) 01:53, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I think. It was just a fluke, really. Grayfell (talk) 01:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Yup, it was just a complement on your quick undo of my bad edit. It's rare for me to make a bone-headed edit (or the more usual misclick due to slow screen updates) like that and not catch it myself before someone else sees it.Meters (talk) 04:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I hear you. That's a minor embarrassment I know all to well. Grayfell (talk) 05:08, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Unfounded accusations of sockpuppetry on BLP noticeboard

Please do not attack other editors. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.107.79.14 (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)CheckUser-confirmed block evader comments striked Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 21:53, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Ah, what fun. As I said at BLPN, this is a WP:DUCK, and User talk:50.107.81.26 explains it all. Grayfell (talk) 03:15, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Now this is founded. Aggressively removing any hint of sockpuppetery in other users' comments is surely a way to flag themselves. I wonder what kind of trick they'll bring up next time. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 21:53, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

T Robinson revert

I agree re controversial. So why use it? I wonder if you made the mistake that I made - concentrated on removing one controversial only to inadvertently insert it elsewhere. Or am I missing something? Jacksoncowes (talk) 07:46, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

For future reference, this is about this edit. Downplaying "far right" while effectively replacing it with "controversial" was the specific problem, but the place to discuss changes to the article would be the article's talk page. This was already mentioned in the edit summary you reverted, so please discuss at Talk:Tommy Robinson (activist) if you want to follow up on this. Grayfell (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Gab_(social_network)#Gab Dissenter merge

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Gab_(social_network)#Gab Dissenter merge. Grayfell, since you're one of the main contributors of the page, I believe this RfC is highly relevant to your interest. You may participate whenever you have time. Thanks. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 22:42, 1 March 2019 (UTC)Template:Z48

SomaFM edits

Hello Grayfell. I find it troubling now that two times in a row, quite clearly relevant historical information has been removed from what was a kind effort to document historical information on what in my and from what I can gather, many others' opinion constitutes a relatively extraordinary piece of open internet history. This site is likely under financial strain and will at some point be at risk of closing. If this occurs, historical information here is of enormous value. Equally, if the Internet Archive ever comes under threat, this resource might form a valuable backup source in the future. Multilateration and distribution is of definite value here. As I have said before, my overall impression of Misplaced Pages at the moment is one of immaturity and unprofessionalism. These qualities really endanger the future of the site as an open, stable platform, beyond the financial and legal strain. Please take a moment to consider to think, and perhaps you may realize that if the site gains a reputation for arrogance and rejection, the decline in number of new, and active contributors is likely to accelerate once again as it did in the late 2000s. The web today is a very different place than in 2008, and the environment might not be as forgiving as it was then. I came here merely to help better document a nonprofit website/service that is of historical importance to myself and many others, and that is increasingly rare in today's landscape. It would seem in keeping with Misplaced Pages's founding spirit to help document a similar site which may at some point encounter difficulties. For my effort and time, not only have my references, but in fact all references to the site's current and historical channel offerings been removed. Instead of simply removing people's work, perhaps you might consider the merits of being constructive and helping instead. If SomaFM, and/or the Internet Archive were to one day disappear, one could be sure that the amount of effort required to actually recompile the information would be enormous. One would think that Misplaced Pages would have an interest in trying to help prevent such situations.

It seems as though other contributors encountered similar issues a decade ago, and gave up. I hope my efforts perhaps were not entirely wasted, and that someone might see the value in some of the information. As for me, I will keep a copy of my contribution locally as a PDF and a physical printed copy. At least with physical books documenting this kind of thing, they don't get retroactively edited while the books sit on shelves by people who don't seem to care or have very much knowledge about the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Somafmlistener (talk • contribs) 06:25, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Somafmlistener: Take a look at what the article looks like right now. The info is still there, and will remain in the article's history until it doesn't. Maybe that will be soon, maybe not. As you've noticed, Misplaced Pages isn't a great place to store information over the long term. In fact, it never was the right place to store info. It was always a gamble, and that's not a good quality for an archive. To put it another way, Misplaced Pages has never been the place to publish original research. This is a policy of the site, and has been for almost two decades. I have already tried to explain some of this both on your talk page, and the article's talk page (Talk:SomaFM#Notability and third-party sources). The problems will need to be fixed, because being a collaborative project means that sometimes the project doesn't work the way we want it to. If you want me to be constructive and help you, you need to help me as well. You can start by reading the posts I've already added to talk pages, and by finding reliable sources. Again, I strongly recommend taking a look at Misplaced Pages:No original research, a page which is now old enough to vote and buy cigarettes.

Take a look at that and then, if you have any more questions, you can ask me, or perhaps post to the Misplaced Pages teahouse. Grayfell (talk) 06:40, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Grayfell: It would seem strange to require third party sources when discussing the channel offerings of a radio or media service. I have trouble to think of a better source to cite than the site themselves regarding services they currently offer, and to use the web archive to show what they offered in the past. If you yourself could offer some ideas of relevant sources for a resolution, instead of saying that it is all on the original contributor to solve the situation if they wish the information they offered to remain, it would be most appreciated. Yes, Misplaced Pages would seem to be a poor archive. However, Misplaced Pages claims it is an encyclopedia. For centuries upon centuries, physical encyclopedias and similar have played vital roles for historians and researchers trying to piece together a previously known past. Again, this would seem something that Misplaced Pages editors might be humble enough to consider for a moment. Some day Misplaced Pages itself might come under threat, control or become property of a large player in the internet space today. Moderation, and humility in all things. Also, I find it hard to consider links to web archive copies of SomaFM's site in the early 2000s "original research". By that token again a lot of Misplaced Pages itself falls under that category. I don't even want to think about how Misplaced Pages deals with the page describing Misplaced Pages itself, and how controversial edits and violent disputes are there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Somafmlistener (talk • contribs) 07:47, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Somafmlistener: Before we go any further, you've responded both here, and at your own talk page, but I can tell from my watchlist that you've said slightly different things in both places. Obviously this is going to get very confusing very quickly. Where do you want me to respond? Here, or your own talk page?

Additionally, you should sign every post (see Help:signature) It may seem overly-fussy, but it really does make things easier for experienced editors. You also don't need to use ping when posting on my talk page, since I am already notified of such posts. Grayfell (talk) 08:16, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Here is fine. Somafmlistener (talk) 08:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Somafmlistener:Okay, I will respond to your comments here.

I agree that humility is important, so is it humble to imply that we haven't "considered it for a moment"? I think that's actually pretty rude, and I can assure I have have thought about this, and I am confident so have many other editors. Not only have we thought about it, we've tried to deal with it. These are not simple problems. Misplaced Pages isn't a physical encyclopedia, and it's not designed to be. This is an unfortunate limitation of the project, and I have no idea what it's going to mean for the future. If you have a solution to these deep, existential problems Misplaced Pages faces, by all means, propose them. Misplaced Pages editors, myself included, do have an arrogance problem, but I don't think veiled insults are much help, here.

You comments suggest some familiarity with Misplaced Pages, but your account is brand new, so I'm going to assume you're relatively new to editing also. If your interested in the philosophy of Misplaced Pages as an encyclopedia, a good starting point is Misplaced Pages:Five pillars, but throwing an alphabet soup of additional acronyms at you probably isn't what either of us wants. I could go into my thinking on these issue, but if you're not interested in the specific points I raised on the article's talk page, perhaps you're willing to trust instead that the guidelines and policies in place are there for a reason. The gist of it is that Misplaced Pages is always changing, and the dirty work of editing Misplaced Pages is actual editing. This means we have to figure out what to include and what to leave out. We do this by consensus, which doesn't ignore all the thousands of editors who've built consensus on prior policies and guidelines.

The article on Misplaced Pages is a flawed comparison. For one thing, Misplaced Pages isn't a reliable source on Misplaced Pages. For another, "Misplaced Pages" has so many sources about it, there are standalone articles about them. SomaFM doesn't have these resources, obviously.

If you want to discuss specific issues with the article, that talk page is a much better place, because this will help form consensus, and will make the discussion much easier for others to find, whenever it may come up. Grayfell (talk) 09:50, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

QuisLex

Greyfell, thanks for reaching out.

I’m very glad that you portray yourself on your talk page as not an angry mastodon. Neither am I, so I believe we can agree to discuss this matter in civilized fashion. Let me tell you something about myself first. It’s a lengthy explanation, but it’s necessary to show you my experience as a Misplaced Pages editor and what I feel needs to be changed.

I have edited many pages as a labor of love, particularly articles about films and filmmakers, which in my experience are executed very, very badly on Misplaced Pages. I performed many edits to polish and complete the article on Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece Pather Panchali and to nominate it successfully as a Today’s Featured Article, where it appeared in August 2015.

I virtually created from scratch the article about one of Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpieces, Late Spring, which became the most comprehensive source for English-language scholarship on this famous film anywhere on the Internet. The information in my article has been paraphrased, and sometimes copied outright, by many online articles about the movie. This article (https://film.avclub.com/yasujiro-ozu-s-quietly-staggering-late-spring-returns-i-1798186831), for example, is strongly influenced by my Misplaced Pages article as it originally appeared.

Alas, several editors who apparently had never seen the film in question, nor even read about it, eviscerated the article, making huge deletions, in one case removing an entire section. Another editor, bless him, tried to reinstate these deleted parts, with the correct comment “lots of relevant info was removed without consensus,” but his edit was unfortunately reversed. Ironically, because of these unjustified deletions, certain statements which, in the original version, had appeared with appropriate citations included, now appeared unsupported, and thus the article has since been given an “original research” tag!

It’s an odd situation when an editor with a great deal of specialized knowledge in a topic – who has done so much research and writing for a particular article and has included citations for every fact mentioned and every claim asserted – is undone by editors with no knowledge of the topic, who come in and make sweeping, unjustified changes. It makes editing Misplaced Pages very not-fun... and discourages talented people from contributing to the encyclopedia.

This is my very long way of saying that I welcome editors who are collaborative and constructive, but I’m less than happy with editors who are destructive.

I want to thank you for pointing out that I need to reveal the fact that I’m being compensated. I will add this information to the article’s talk page.

When I was approached by my client, representing the organization QuisLex, to edit their page for compensation, I thought “why not”? Obviously you disagree, but if all information in an article is properly sourced, it shouldn’t matter whether an editor has been paid or is working for free.

I didn’t find anything negative about this particular company, except for the odd fact that many legal firms had at first felt threatened by QuisLex, because they initially saw the company as a competitor, a fact that I duly noted in the text you deleted. Believe me, if I had found additional criticisms about QuisLex on the Internet, I would have gladly included them and sourced them, and then informed the client, if they had any objections, that I needed to include the criticisms to maintain NPOV.

However, I was recently approached by a client to represent a company that has had many legal claims and other public complaints against it. I was appalled by this company and immediately turned the client down. I refuse to edit the Misplaced Pages page of a company that I believe may be fraudulent or otherwise unsavory.

You wrote that the use of the phrase “award-winning” in the first sentence of the original article was a case of WP:PEACOCK. I have consulted that particular Misplaced Pages template, and I don’t believe this to be true, because in the original text you deleted, immediately after the phrase “award-winning,” I included a reference to an article that specifically mentioned awards won by QuisLex. In other words, the claim “award-winning” was not “puffery,” but verifiable fact. However, out of consideration for your views, if the sentence has to you the appearance of WP:PEACOCK – even though I believe it does not – I will delete the use of the phrase “award winning” from that sentence when I re-create the article.

Let me also add in perfect candor that the “conflict of interest” rule you cited doesn’t make any sense to me, because it appears to contradict the dictionary definition of COI, including Misplaced Pages’s own definition of it:

“A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in which the personal interest of an individual or organization might adversely affect a duty owed to make decisions for the benefit of a third party.”

The sense of the above passage is clear: for conflict of interest to occur, there must be (at least) three parties involved. Let’s call them A, B and C. In this case, I am A, and my client is B. But who on earth is C? To whom is my “duty owed”?

Is it the Misplaced Pages Foundation? I have never been hired by the Misplaced Pages Foundation, I’m not being paid by it, and I sure didn’t become a Misplaced Pages editor to help the foundation. Is it the “Misplaced Pages community”? What is that exactly? I have a purely voluntary – not legal or contractual – obligation to serve Misplaced Pages’s readers. The way I do that is by creating complete, accurate and well-sourced Misplaced Pages articles. And that’s exactly what I was doing with the QuisLex article from which you erased all my changes. So I’m involved in no conflict of interest with the Misplaced Pages community, and I think most readers of the encyclopedia would agree with that. But if you disagree, please explain to me how conflict of interest applies in this case.

The rules say that paid editors are strongly discouraged from contributing to Misplaced Pages. It doesn’t say that they are forbidden from doing so. I suspect that that wording is included because to forbid editors from making edits to an article for which they are being paid by a client would constitute restraint of trade. Certainly, I would claim restraint of trade if I were thus prevented from editing this article.

I would like to invite you to help me rebuild the QuisLex Misplaced Pages article. Particularly, if you happen to find any negative articles about QuisLex, by all means let me know, since to help maintain NPOV, I will gladly include references to those negative articles in the text.

Yours truly,

Dylanexpert (talk) 22:12, 3 March 2019 (UTC)