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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rosencomet (talk | contribs) at 05:34, 21 December 2007. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Archived talk

Hi Rosencomet, and welcome back. I archived your page for you since it was getting quite cluttered. If that's not what you want, let me know, or if you want something from the archive restored to this page, contact me. For more information bout archiving talk pages, see the link above your talk archive. —Viriditas | Talk 08:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

December 2007

With regard to your comments on Starwood: Please see Misplaced Pages's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks will lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Please stop your personal attacks on me. It is against[REDACTED] policy to continue to attack me as you do. This is a warning. Mattisse 12:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Mattisse

Rosencomet, I have asked Mattisse to ignore you, and I expect you to do the same to him. Please do not engage Mattisse in any way, because if you do, I will guarantee that once again you will find yourself blocked. Please listen to me on this. After having an extensive discussion with Mattisse, I realize that Mattisse is only interested in trying to block you and will continue to attempt to bait you at every level. Do not fall for it. Pretend that Mattisse does not exist no matter what Mattisse says or does. This will only make Mattisse look bad, and you will be able to file a harassment report. —Viriditas | Talk 14:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Whpq clarification

I hope you don't mind my posting this. If you wish me to not post on your talk page, just say so and I will certainly respect your wishes. I saw your post to User:Viriditas. And I'm watching his talk page because I've been in conversation with him about something else entirely, not because of you.

Although Whpq (talk · contribs) is not an admin, uncontroversial closings of AfDs (such as the Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Matthew Abelson one) can be made by anyone. Because I withdrew my nomination of the article for deletion, this is considered uncontroversial and the result is to keep the article. When articles are kept after an AfD, it is normal to put a notice on the talk page of the article saying that it had previously gone through an AfD with a link to the discussion so later editors can see the information and arguments made in the AfD. There is nothing sinister or unusual about this action. See point 7 on this Deletion Process page link to confirm this.

As to User:Whpq being a sockpuppet, I personally think this is very unlikely. The account appears to have a steady, active, and consistent editing history since early 2006. Look here. I hope this information helps you understand this particular situation. Cheers, Pigman☿ 21:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:COI guidelines

Again, I apologize in advance if I'm imposing by posting this but a recent comment of yours indicated to me you still do not have a firm grasp of why I (and others) say you are violating Misplaced Pages conflict of interest guidelines. At the risk of boring you with material you may already have read, I'd like to post a relevant section here for your consideration.

Self-promotion

Conflict of interest often presents itself in the form of self-promotion, including advertising links, personal website links, personal or semi-personal photos, or other material that appears to promote the private or commercial interests of the editor, or their associates.

Examples of these types of material include:

1. Links that appear to promote products by pointing to obscure or not particularly relevant commercial sites (commercial links).
2. Links that appear to promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages.
3. Biographical material that does not significantly add to the clarity or quality of the article.

Autobiography

Further information: Misplaced Pages:Autobiography

It is not recommended to write an article about yourself. If you are notable, someone else will notice you and write the article. In some cases, Misplaced Pages users write articles about themselves when the more appropriate action would be to create a user page. In these cases, the article is normally moved into the user namespace rather than deleted. If you believe you may be notable enough, make your case on the appropriate talk pages, and seek consensus first, both with the notability and any proposed autobiography.(all bold emphasis mine)

There is more that is applicable to your situation but these are definitely central to the issue. Financial interests are not the sole criteria for COI by any means. If your work advances the profile of an organization you are a part of, that is COI. If you write articles about your friends when no verifiable sources exists, that is COI. And when such writing contains almost nothing but your own knowledge with little in the way of supporting and verifiable sources, that is original research. I don't know why I keep posting this sort of info on your talk page. It seems I've done this several times over the last 16 months. I think I have an ideal that if the information offered and understood, of course you will do the right thing, will address the issues and alter your behaviour. Pigman☿ 23:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Paul is a bit off in one of these areas: Even when there are third-party sources, it is a violation of the COI policy to write about anyone you hire for an event, per Misplaced Pages:COI#Examples:

"Producing promotional articles for Misplaced Pages on behalf of clients is strictly prohibited."

If you hire them for your events, you cannot write articles about them on WP. It's a conflict of interest. And it is certainly COI for you to add mentions of yourself and the products you sell (tapes) to these articles. (Note - As is stated on rosencomet.com, re hiring speakers and performers, whose tapes you then sell: " is both the primary event organizer and product manufacturer for ACE." and "For speaker and workshop availablility and contact information, please contact Jeff Rosenbaum" and "A.C.E. Office MailTo: for general information, sales, and festival-related details: Jeff Rosenbaum) The only reason this has gone unnoticed for this long is you were working in an obscure area of WP. Just because it hadn't been noticed until recently doesn't mean that what you did was ok. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 00:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, you are distorting the meaning of the guidelines you are quoting all out of proportion, and it seems that some of the arbitrators who have been involved in these issues agree with me.

1. I will say now, and again, and as many times as it takes: All the work I do, and that anyone else does for ACE, is on a voluntary basis, and we profit not a penny by it. I know it is YOUR opinion that this makes no difference, but that is just your opinion. If someone does volunteer work for Muscular Dystrophy or Habitat for Humanity, that does not exclude them from creating or editing an article about those organizations. I do NOT accept the broad interpretation that if any work you do as a volunteer for an organization helps that organization, you are FORBIDDEN to edit that article in any way. I do not consider a link to the website of an organization's program for an event with classes placed solely as a CITATION to support a fact, such as whether the subject of that article actually did perform or lecture at that event, to be improper, even if somewhere ELSE in that website a catalog exists (as many, many organization's websites have). I particularly find it hard to accept that interpretation from one of a group of three editors who act as one posting requirements for citations next to these facts. However, how about if I delete the citation needed tag with a "see talk page" note, and place the external link on the talk page? All I want is for the facts to stop being challenged, because I fear the next step will be to delete the facts, then delete the whole article as "too thin" or "lacking support for notability". I don't consider the ACE website to be commercial, because they pay no employees and all funds generated go back into programming. They provide a public service.

2. The Jeff Rosenbaum article was NOT written by me (nor Starwood Festival, nor Association for Consciousness Exploration for that matter). I have added a bit of information to it, mostly when someone required a citation to support information in it. I have also added references occasionally to make it a better article, more supported, and more accurate. I do not believe this is forbidden; as in, not that there is some guideline saying that it is not best practice, or "not recommended", or "one should avoid it", but FORBIDDEN. I would appreciate it if neither of you would treat guidelines and recommendations as laws. I have seen many, many cases of biographical articles where the subject or someone associated with them has provided information, or objected to information included in the article. (And I'm not impressed with "Other stuff exists"; precedent has to count for something, or all guidelines and rules will be applied unevenly and unjustly.) As for the other articles, I consider Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism to be the posterboy for COI, POV, etc, etc,... but I ignore these issues because I think that in general you two have been contributing to the article being better, even if it does advance the interests of organizations and a movement you are totally involved with from it's very formation. (It's also the posterboy for being WP:OWNy, as Kathryn would say.)

3. I also don't agree that the moment an organization might hire a band, for instance, that means that no one who donates his time to that organization is allowed to either create or edit an article about that band. First, these are not regular employees of the organization, but either self-employed individuals or ones working for/with agencies or their own organizations, engaged on individual instances, and in many cases they are not paid at all. It's like saying that if I ever had UPS deliver a package for me, Domino's sell me a pizza, hired Roto-Rooter, or have phone service from AT&T, I am forbidden to write or edit an article about them. Worse, it's like saying that if I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, and THEY paid UPS, Domino's, Roto-Rooter or AT&T for a service, I can't edit those articles. Lets say I OWNED a store, totally commercial, and PAID AT&T for phone service, or UPS, or rented a U-Haul Van! Or if you worked with any of the Woodstock concerts, or Comic Relief, or Band Aid, or the Grammys, or Lillith Faire, or Lalapaloosa, well, there's a couple hundred people you can never edit an article about. The same goes for all the personnel that go into making a movie, if you were one of them. It is absurd on the face of it. I don't "hire them for my event", ACE chooses them by committee and ACE hires them. I don't HAVE events.

4. ACE has a lot of different functions, and different people have taken on different ones. There are several directors. One person is the primary financial director, another handles virtually all research, another handles the website, another the graphic arts and mailings, another all recording both audio and video, another all data-base related work (like the mailing list), and so on and so forth. I am not in charge of any of the above. When it comes down to it, my main deal is handling communications - the phones, the e-mail, the travel and other arrangements for events, the information inquiries and shunting them where they need to go: if you have questions about event details, product content, how to apply to perform or speak, how to contact someone in the group, ask me and I'll either answer them or get you in contact with someone who does. That's what all the stuff you talked about above means; I handle inquiries and communication with the public. I also USED to assemble our tapes and CDs, but frankly we just let the CD house do that nowadays (and we haven't produced tapes in many years); I should really tell the webmaster to change that. I don't manufacture the discs or boxes, don't record the original, don't duplicate them, don't assemble them...; I used to do it all back in the eighties. Now, however, I still often write jacket notes and sit in on the making of the inserts; but I don't know Photoshop or In Access or whatever the ACE graphics guys use. I also help edit by reviewing raw footage and making notes. But it's all a group effort, and all the money (when there is some, which is rare) goes back into programming. Except for the CD House, no one makes a penny. As far as sales, I'm the guy who takes the phone orders. I don't fill them, and I don't get anything out of it. I don't handle the on-line or catalog orders, just the phone ones, and they are rare indeed. Almost all sales nowadays are through ebay or paypal, and I never even see them. And truth to tell, they're hardly worth the work; we do it mostly so more people get the benefit of music and lectures by people we happen to think are cool. That's the Goddess-honest truth.

I am not paid to, or hired to, edit Misplaced Pages. I did it all by myself, the moment I understood that you can, and I did it because I was aware of a lot of people and things that I thought should have articles about them, and qualified for them, and I saw a lot of articles I thought I could contribute to. I did not do it to promote myself or anyone else, and a good deal of the articles I have written are about authors and artists who have never been to any event I have been associated with or even people I've met. I've been cranking out articles about occult authors for months based solely on information I researched, like Nicholas R. Mann, Al G. Manning, Vivianne Crowley, Ed Fitch, Prem Das, Laura Huxley, Sally Morningstar, Gabrielle Roth, Dorothy Morrison, Luisah Teish, etc, etc. I've done it almost entirely with only friendly and/or civil interaction with other editors, until you and your group showed up again. I've edited or continued to protect the articles of people I admire who are dead, like Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, and Baba Raul Canizares. I don't consider that to be self-promotion. I get nothing out of it.

You two and your friend have NEVER "assumed good faith" with me, and continue to watch everything I do and try to provoke me. I know there are some who say I shouldn't stand up for myself and shouldn't react, but there it is. I know you have the experience and the ability to bury me under mis-applied guidelines you can pretend are rules carved in stone, and I know you can keep poking at me until I respond with frustration, gather the responses and call them "hostile" or "agressive", even on my own talk page. Like when you say I'm attacking you for saying you're stalking me, when you maintain a User:Pigman/Starwood-Rosencomet Watchlist, and comment minutes later when I edit.

I think my work falls into normal parameters of other editors working here (at least now that I have become somewhat used to Misplaced Pages; I'll readily admit that when I started out, I made a lot of mistakes). I think it has value, and involves a unique set of subjects that might otherwise not be addressed, or not for a long time. I don't think my work has been commercial or promotional, no matter how much you twist your definitions. I wish to continue working with REASONABLE editors who want to guide and improve my work, but I really doubt that you want to help me, having seen your discussions about me to others over the last week, and knowing our history. I would rather see a truly objective administrator with a sense of proportion work with me, and let me discuss the propriety of anything I do that he/she thinks is controversial, and have you guys leave me alone; because I believe you are prejudiced against me and no fair judge of my editing. I don't know what your real issues are with me, but I do believe you have some, and it makes you pursue me obsessively and treat me unfairly.Rosencomet (talk) 05:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)