Editormorrisonhimself

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Happy editing! – S. Rich (talk) 15:06, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

December 2022

Hello, I'm Transcendental. I noticed that you made an edit concerning content related to a living (or recently deceased) person on Stephen D. Cox, but you didn't support your changes with a citation to a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now. Wikipedia has a very strict policy concerning how we write about living people, so please help us keep such articles accurate and clear. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you! Transcendental (talk) 15:10, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Stephen Cox is a friend, and is the source of the information I'm posting.

It really would help if I were allowed to finish and not interrupted in the middle of what I'm trying to do. THEN, if I've made a mistake, which I'm the first to admit is possible, I could correct anything. Editormorrisonhimself (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Editormorrisonhimself. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Stephen D. Cox, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Zinnober9 (talk) 23:00, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I need to add this, to reply to your "In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. "

There is NO advertising or publicizing or publicising. "Promoting" is a dubious term. I mean, mentioning someone's book could, by an extremely stretched definition, be considered "promoting," but surely you don't mean that.

Dr. Cox is a friend, and an ally. The only compensation I want or would want is the correcting and updating of his entry. I am a semi-professional editor and accuracy is, to be frank, an obsession. But to comply: I am my employer. I am a free-lance writer and editor, living in Sierra Vista, Arizona. If there is anything else you need or want to know, now that I know how to reply, I will be more than happy to answer.

Thank you again. Editormorrisonhimself (talk) 10:34, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Edits to Stephen D. Cox article

You keep making the same changes to the Stephen D. Cox, and don't seem to be paying attention to the reasons they are being reverted by others. There are two main problems with the changes you are making:

1. It is not acceptable to insert personal details about a living person when there is no published source for those details.
2. Removing personal details that are published on the subject's own website isn't quite as bad, but still needs some explanation.

It is not sufficient that you claim to personally know subject of the article, or even if you claim the subject asked you to make the changes. The other editors on Wikipedia have no proof of either of those claims. You could literally be anyone in the world with any agenda or motivation. That is why we require sources to verify content instead of just taking people's word for the content they insert. And it is important for you to know that repeatedly making the same changes to the article when several other editors are objecting and reversing your edits is known as "edit warring", an unacceptable practice that could lead to your Wikipedia account being blocked from making further edits. I encourage you to step back from that and engage in more discussion of the changes you want, preferably after reading some of the links I've provided to our guidelines for what is generally accepted behavior on Wikipedia. RL0919 (talk) 23:33, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

You have my apology. However, since there is no good reason for my changes not to be or to have been accepted, I have been very puzzled.

Worse, because of my terrible vision, only now have I seen the "reply" button. I apologize again.

However, whoever stuck in that "gay" and the "Episcopalian" reference used a very old and, I believe, non-public website that Dr. Cox thought had been deleted, or at least hidden. In fact, when he saw it, he got quite angry. In fact, at first he was angry with me, thinking that I had inserted it.

If anyone cares enough about all of this to check, I'll be happy to give you his e-mail.

Now, if someone will tell me why his birth and place of rearing information -- both of which are also viewable on that archived site -- are deleted after I added them, I would be grateful.

Again, sorry, but so far I found the removal and reversion of my edits to be petty, and even spiteful. I do hope I was being paranoid and somehow there really was a good reason. But let me repeat: If the "gay" and "Episcopalian" references were OK for someone to insert, taken from that old site, then why not the correct place of birth?

By the way, I absolutely do understand your concerns about the bio of a living person. And, in my opinion, those concerns should hold for deceased persons, too.

But since everything I tried to post is downright innocuous, I do not understand as fully as perhaps I should. I will try harder henceforth to read the messages, and again I thank you all for communicating with me. Editormorrisonhimself (talk) 10:23, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. Once again I will use bullet points because there are several issues:

1. I don't know what he thought he did, but his website is definitely not deleted, hidden or secured. I found it using a Google search for his name. I can still find it that way today. I'm actually the one who added those details, based on this very unhidden website. For now I will take your word for it that he does not want to be identified in these ways, but I can't promise that no other editor will restore this material, given that it is easily found. I doubt whether he can fully put those cats back into the bag, but at a minimum he should work on getting the website actually taken down or at least updated to not say these things.
2. The reason the specific birthplace isn't being accepted is because that info is not on his website (not anywhere that I can see or find with a Google search), or in any other published source that has been brought forward. If he has written this somewhere that has been published, said it in a recorded public presentation, etc., then just give the details of what that source is, and it should be fine to include it.
3. In general, it is difficult for Wikipedia to take into account the personal preferences and situations of the many thousands of people who have biographies here. We can't just take pseudonymous accounts at their word when they say they are someone or know someone. There are lots of people with motivations to make up things about other people. Even if we knew for certain that a particular account was in contact with Dr. Cox (or even was Dr. Cox himself), sometimes people's personal requests are at odds with reality (wanting to hide information that is widely known, claim things that aren't true, etc.). So typically we try to follow what is in public sources, with lots of complicated rules about what sources are reliable, how to handle primary sources, self-published statements, etc.
4. All that said, if he has concerns about private personal information being exposed on Wikipedia, he can personally email oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org with requests for private information to be removed. This is typically more effective than asking a friend to do it. However, he really needs to get the details off that public website first, because the oversight team is going to be skeptical of requests to delete things that are sitting out in public on his own website.
5. Definitely do not place his or anyone else's email or other contact info anywhere on Wikipedia, not even this User Talk page. (Publishing your own info is fine, but not others'.) That will typically get you blocked ASAP.

Sorry for being a bit longwinded, but I hope the points above help. RL0919 (talk) 18:41, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

You have done a MASTERFUL job of answering me. I have too small a vocabulary to express properly my thanks.

Let me answer your last point: IF you had wanted his e-mail in order to verify something, I would have sent it ONLY to your own personal address, NOT in any way public. Thank you for your concern, which is important, and thank you for pointing out that you and Wikipedia are careful.

This might sound like an excuse, and probably it is, but that Dr. Cox was born in the same town as Ring Lardner is something I've known for years, and maybe it has been repeated somewhere, some place, I've seen recently, and that, coupled with my recent fevered bout of Covid, might be why I confusedly thought it was on that archived site. So I apologize again.

For now I have logged out and intend to rest, and try to get over all the residual effects, including fever, of Covid and SAD. Those are such appropriate initials because I get very sad when winter approaches. I'm in Southern Arizona, about 30 miles north of the Mexico line. Intuitively, one would think "cactus, sun, warmth," and one would be right. In the summer. But our altitude is such that we have had snow already!

If you are interested, I'll tell you the unofficial motto of Bisbee.

For now, I'll just repeat "Thank You" and if I come back to make any more corrections and updates, I'll bear in mind all your points, for which I am grateful. 70.166.102.25 (talk) 19:35, 14 December 2022 (UTC)