Fully agree with your undo's on YakirFeldman who is a Comverse marketing director cleaning Comverse's widely known controversies. Let's stay on top of his sensorship attempts!
Dear martijbn and Ipmatrix and other editors,
I hope that we are in contact now and can come to a fair, balanced and agreed text.
First of all -- and I hope this doesn’t disappoint you -- I am not a Comverse marketing director, I am not cleaning controversies and I am not attempting to censor anything.
I am a real person, Yakir Feldman. I am “merely” a marketing writer at Comverse -- an entry-level position -- who happened to look at the Comverse site on Wikipedia.
What did I see? Three lines on the parent company, two lines on Comverse itself, a bit of incorrect info on Netcentrex (it is not a subsidiary), no lines at all on any of the actual other subsidiaries, and many, many paragraphs on controversies, suspected collaboration, delisting, etc.
In other words, there are two lines about Comverse itself (less than 10% of the text) and 27 lines (more than 90% of the text) of negative stuff and suspicions. The same ratio holds for the links – two links to websites and 12 links (more than 90% of the links; many several years old) to negative stuff (layoffs).
This struck me as unbalanced and unfair, so I checked the Wikipedia entries on several other companies, including some of our main competitors in the voice, messaging, billing and mobile Internet arenas. All of their sites were entirely inoffensive – despite the fact that many of them also have histories of layoffs, etc. It seemed to me that Comverse was being singled out for heavy-handed treatment.
I made a moderate change (my first edits) on August 5th and the next time I looked it was undone. I tried again, and lo and behold -- it was again undone. I soon learned that there was no point in my investing any time at all trying to do meaningful edits because everything I attempted to do – even minor changes -- was soon simply and entirely undone. Seeing no other viable course of action, I ultimately started doing the same (undoing what had been undone/restored by the person before me).
I was not happy about this and wanted to talk to you (the other editors) and create an agreed truthful, balanced text that we can all be comfortable and live with. I looked up martijnb on Google and tried contacting him at his website (twice). I have no clue who Ipmatrix is, so I could not try to contact him (her?) directly.
So now that we have (hopefully) begun communicating, can we stop merely undoing what the other person does? Please, let’s get in contact and resolve this to everyone’s satisfaction. Offline is probably better.
My email address is yakir.feldman@comverse.com
Looking forward to meeting you!
Yours,
Yakir —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yakirfeldman (talk •
contribs) 06:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi Ipmatrix (whoever you are. Am I the only one around here who uses my real full name?)
Thanks for explaining to me how to use Wiki talk. I just made a change to the Comverse text and wrote to Martijn explaining the reasons for my suggestions. I will paste the letter I wrote to him here, in case you don't have access to it where I wrote it:
29 Aug 2009
Hi Martijn,
As per your request, I sourced the footprint stats (I’m really new at this – I had to figure out how to source stuff. I hope I did it right.)
The other changes I made I think are pretty self-explanatory, done with an eye for more concise and correct language. I eliminated extra words and repetition -- but no information at all.
My biggest suggested deletion is in the “Complaint” section. The second paragraph didn’t really say more than the first paragraph, and anyway the entire PDF doc is attached. Anyone who wants can read that extra paragraph and the whole complaint with a single click on the link.
Regarding the layoff text, the truth is that it really seemed bloated to me (I compared it to many other hi-tech companies in Wikipedia that have had layoffs and it was way out of line by comparison. If you want, I'll give you examples.) There were other issues in that section, too. As you are a critical reader, you know that the fact that something appears in a newspaper doesn’t necessarily make it true or worthy to be cited in an encyclopedia. For example, you wrote:
“...and an other report (YNet news) notes that Comverse’s board of directors has been mulling the possibility of moving a significant part of the operations of its subsidiary, Comverse, out of Israel [9].”
Well, here we are years later and no such move out of Israel was ever made. It was a rumor that made it into print with no apparent basis in reality. Why do we need to report rumors? I left the footnote in, though, so anyone who wants can follow it. Actually, I left all of your footnotes in, although by comparison with other Wikipedia entries the many footnotes on layoffs constitute a bit of overkill.
Also in the layoff text you wrote:
“One of the alleged reasons (for layoffs) have been its involvement in the before mentioned options backdating scandal [8]”
I’m not sure why you feel that this “alleged” reason (to use your own word) is worthy of being in an encyclopedia. There were many reasons for layoffs, but as far as I can determine, there is no actual connection between the backdating affair and layoffs.
Similarly, I think the Fox report about Comverse collaboration with Israel is little more than recycled rumors, but I suspect it is important to you to keep it in, so I have left it in.
Lastly, I want to thank you for your patience with me. I think you will agree that the Comverse entry that shocked me the first time I saw it was seriously unbalanced. I never made any changes to Wikipedia before, but in the name of fairness I felt moved to get involved.
You and Ipmatrix have helped me to understand how the process works.
Yours,
Yakir
Yakirfeldman (talk) 20:13, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Yakirfeldman (talk) 20:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi Again Ipmatrix,
I got your latest message about wanting me to give more info on the Layoff links. I will do that -- but please give me a bit of time to get to it. I'd like a chance to think about it a bit and do it properly. You have my word that I will address it -- hopefully to your complete satisfaction -- before too long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yakirfeldman (talk • contribs) 03:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi Ipmatrix,
I have restored all of the info to the layoff links -- I hope that you and I are now both okay on the text in that section.
Only now did I see your note about wanting to re-paste the second paragraph into the Complaint section -- I'm too tired to think about it now, so can you again give me a bit of time to get to it? I disagree with you, but I guess that means we should compromise, so maybe I'll summarize the text in a short paragraph and suggest that.
I also took out the "collaboration" section. Please don't accuse me of doing this for marketing reasons -- I got involved with this Wikipedia thing as an individual, not as an employee, although I have been entirely honest about who I am and where I currently work (at least till the next round of layoffs...). I am doing this for reasons more along the lines of truth, honesty, fairness and journalistic standards, and I am doing it at home on my own time, not as an assigned work task. I agree with you that the standard for inclusion should be truthfulness and relevance and not what is convenient for Comverse.
I will paste here what I just sent to Martijn. I hope that when you see what I wrote, you will agree with me, but if not, please explain where you think my thinking is wrong.
August 30:
Hi Martijn,
I appreciate your attempt to improve the layoff text and am happy to see that you have addressed at least one of the problems I cited previously, but the current text you propose is flawed in fundamental ways.
Here are some examples:
First of all, the headline that you yourself created says “Lay offs” and yet the text you wrote now says nothing at all about layoffs. It doesn’t even mention the word! Go ahead and re-read your entire new text. From the first word to the last, it discusses restructuring only. Which do you want to write about – layoffs or restructuring? If it’s restructuring, then the headline is wrong and many of the sources do not apply. And besides, it is the prerogative of any company to restructure – layoffs are more relevant to the people who are likely to read this entry. So I suggest that we stick with text about layoffs.
You say:
” One of the alleged reasons (for the restructuring) have been its involvement in the before mentioned options backdating scandal [10] “
Besides the incorrect grammar (you can’t use the word “have” in that place), there is nothing in the article that connects restructuring to backdating. Again, please read the footnoted article yourself if you wish and try to spot any correlation there at all and let me know if you can. Your purpose is the same as mine -- to report truth that has value and substance in the most unbiased and accurate way possible. People writing entries in Wikipedia must avoid the kind of writing that suggests that they have another motive at work…
You say:
“an other report (YNet news) notes that Comverse’s board of directors may be mulling the possibility of moving a significant part of the operations of its subsidiary, Comverse, out of Israel [11] although there is no clear indication of this at to date.” More grammar issues (e.g. “an other”, “at to date”), but more important: Do you really think an encyclopedia should say in an article that a company “may be mulling” something, “but there is no indication of this”? There is no fact or substance here, and even no source cited in the article for the rumor. The company denied it in the article (which you fail to mention) and years later we see that the thing that was mulled never happened and there is no further report of such rumors. Please explain (justify) why you think this type of yellow journalism belongs in any objective encyclopedia. It’s like saying “Yakir (or Martijn) may be mulling beating his wife, but there is no clear indication of this and he denies it.” In such a case, decency would suggest saying nothing at all – especially in a respectable reference work. Can you find any other similar examples of printed allegations anywhere in Wikipedia – or do special standards apply to Comverse?
You say:
According to reports in October 2008 (from JPost [14]), March 2009 (from YNet News [15]) and August 2009 (from YNet News [16]) new restructuring rounds seemed to be necessary following the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
And yet please look at link 14 – it isn’t even about Comverse! It is about another company entirely! Is this kind of fiction (or sloppiness) up to the standards of Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Why did you put such a link in – or did you not even check it out? (By the way, I left it in my new revision because I was afraid that if I tried to take it out it would make the text unstable.)
I have other specific criticisms of your suggested new text which I will share with you if you want, but it is late and I am tired. I hope I have given you enough explanation of why I am replacing the current text with my suggested text that is accurate and honest and objective and more in line with Wikipedia standards. Since Ipmatrix suggested it, I learned how to keep in the information about all of the links.
Please, if you plan to remove my layoffs text again, do me the courtesy of explaining why you feel that my text needs to be replaced, and why you think the text you are replacing it with is better/ more truthful/ more accurate/ better written.
One more thing. I have just taken the time to listen to the Fox News video for the first time. Not only is there no source ever cited in the clip at any time for the allegations, but at minute 3:53 a journalist asks, “Carl – is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved?” and Carl Cameron actually says, “No, there is not.” I therefore no longer think that this is a “decent” source to cite (“decent source” is the phrase you used when you took out my footprint text) if we are going to write something as inflammatory as that Comverse is “Suspected of collaboration with Israeli authorities.” So I have taken that text out. If want to put the text back in, please justify doing so at an objective and “decent” journalistic level.
The backdating scandal, the delisting, even the layoffs – these are real and valuable and factual issues, even if they are unpleasant for Comverse. Provocative innuendo like the “suspected collaboration”, based on a single video clip with no cited sources – a clip that itself admits there is no reason to suspect the accused -- this is not in the same class as the real issues mentioned above.
Thanks,
Yours as always,
Yakir
Yakirfeldman (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Yakirfeldman (talk) 20:30, 30 August 2009 (UTC)