Lightmanalan1

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Hello, Lightmanalan1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Alan Lightman, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! – UnnamedUser (talk; contribs) 02:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

If you are not Alan Lightman, note that it is against the username policy to impersonate notable people with a Wikipedia article. – UnnamedUser (talk; contribs) 02:38, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

When you include information, can you add a source with it? You can know what you say about yourself is true, but readers do not have a source to verify the information. Unsourced information is liable to be deleted, especially on a biography of a living person. – UnnamedUser (talk; contribs) 03:55, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Sources needed in Alan Lightman

I started to add tags to the sections that lack sufficient citations, but that applies to nearly every section so I thought it might be more efficient to just point it out to you here. These sections lack references to independent, reliable sources: Early life and education; Career; Harpswell Foundation; Major awards and honors; Personal life.

Please keep in mind that all information in an article must be verifiable. Schazjmd (talk) 15:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC) was 98.229.124.218 (talk) 16:00, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

REPLY FROM ALAN LIGHTMAN

98.229.124.218 (talk) 16:01, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Schazjmd,

Thank you for this message. I would like a bit of further guidance. For example, when I say that I was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell (in the career section), how do I verify that? Do I need a letter from the 1970s, showing that I was given that appointment? And for my various awards and honors, I can put a link to the awarding institution, but I don't know what to do other than that.

I apologize for these naive questions, but I really don't know what is needed.

Alan Lightman

98.229.124.218 (talk) 15:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I cleaned up our conversation for formatting and removed the duplication. (Notice how I used a colon to indent your reply to me, and now my reply to you adds an additional colon. That's how we keep conversations on talk pages organized.)

As to your questions, have you read WP:Autobiography? It explains the difficulties that you find yourself in now. Your article cannot contain information that a reader cannot verify for themselves. Verifiability explains what's required. If an item of information has not been covered in published, independent, reliable sources, it should not be in the article. Using awards and honors as an example, you can link to an announcement by the awarding institution that names you or a newspaper article that mentions that you received the award.

I hope that helps. Schazjmd (talk) 16:13, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for these clarifications. I am pretty sure that I can document all the awards and honors. I am not sure about some

of the other material and may have to eliminate some of it. I appreciate the help you have given me. Alan Lightmanalan1 (talk) 16:32, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Schazjmd,

Please give me two months to source all of the facts in my Wikipedia site. After that, you can delete any material you feel is not sufficiently verifiable. I am going to be in Southeast Asia for most of the month of January so will need the full two months to track down everything. Thanks again for your guidance. Alan Lightman Lightmanalan1 (talk) 19:36, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Lightman and welcome to Wikipedia. When adding sources, please follow WP:Inline citations and link to third party news sources, not book listings/Amazon etc. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 20:15, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Schazjmd,

I have begun providing verifiable references. I started with linking to all the online announcements of my honorary degrees (in the Awards section), but after putting them in and publishing them, most of the links were erased. Why did that happen? I followed the protocol. I do not want to continue if my inserted sources are being deleted. Lightmanalan1 (talk) 20:23, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Please help me out here. I am trying to do this right. I spent alot of time hunting down all the public announcements

of my honorary degrees, put them in in the [website] format, and then they disappeared the next time I went to the site. What am I doing wrong? Lightmanalan1 (talk) 20:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that you are putting external links in the article, not references. References are entered between <ref> and </ref> tags. Schazjmd (talk) 20:36, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Schazjmd, I will not need two months to supply all the needed verifiable references. I have been able to do that more quickly than I thought. Thank you again for your help with this. I was not able to find any online reference to my Gold Medal for Humanitarian Service from the government of Cambodia in 2008 (in the Awards section). Cambodia evidently does not publish anything about these awards, although many people were present at the ceremony where I received it. I also noticed that you or someone else has begun footnoting reviews of some of my books. Obviously, I could footnote some of the most glowing reviews myself, but I have refrained from adding any reviews at all, as that would certainly be a conflict of interest. Please let me know if there are any other items that need to be sourced. I appreciate your patience with me and your own work in guaranteeing the veracity of Wikipedia. I totally support giving readers verifiable facts. Lightmanalan1 (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Great job finding sources. If you're done, I'm going to run a tool to convert your references into full citation format. (Btw, totally irrelevant, but I'm not a "mister") Schazjmd (talk) 23:15, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Apologies for calling you "mister." Whoever you are, you are very competent and on the ball. Thanks again.

I am done for now, until the time that I, or someone else, needs to update. Lightmanalan1 (talk) 23:39, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Do not cite wikipedia as a reference

Another wikipedia article cannot be used as a source for information in your article. Schazjmd (talk) 22:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Citations

Hi, welcome back. Instead of just putting URLs in your references, could you format them as citations so it gives readers the information that they would need to track down the reference if the URL goes dead? For example, you just added <ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-scientist-on-a-quest-to-understand-the-spiritual/2018/03/30/08fcaf58-05c7-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html]</ref>. If you scroll down the article to the references section, you will see that all it shows to readers is [1]. That's kind of useless.

To format that reference in a way that will show helpful details to the reader, use <ref>{{cite web | title=A scientist on a quest to understand the spiritual | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-scientist-on-a-quest-to-understand-the-spiritual/2018/03/30/08fcaf58-05c7-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html | last=Gimbel | first=Steven | website= Washington Post | access-date=11 Jan 2020}}</ref>.

There are additional versions of the citation template (news, books, journals, etc), and other parameters; I just used the basic ones.

Thanks! Schazjmd (talk) 00:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

==Thank you Schazimd. From now on, I will put the citations in proper format. I am sorry to have caused you the extra trouble. Lightmanalan1 (talk) 02:18, 12 January 2020 (UTC)