User Talk:Matthewrb/Archive/2011-December

Latest comment: 12 years ago by Matthewrbowker in topic DPS MMS Scandal


Clarification Re. Request Review at WP:AFC User:Curiouscientist

Thanks for your review; I need some clarification on the points you raise. Re. Notability: Academics. Am I correct that Dr Hofer meets several criteria?

  1. 1, significant impact on field as demonstrated by independent authoritative sources- see references 1-3
  2. 2, academic awards and honors at international levels-see last paragraph on "..Activities, Awards and Honors"
  3. 5, holds named professorial chair appointment- see "Education and Career Path"
  4. 6, President of international scholarly societies-see "Research-related Activities.."

Re. your comment: "A lot of sourcing of the article is written by the subject. Please remove that sourcing." When the findings and conclusions described in a biographical article are the result of the subject's, and his close colleague's own research, providing a "source"-a reference to the published work- is the only way to provide the "verifiability" that I know is a core requirement for articles in Wikipedia. Also, it's important to recognize the contributions of students and colleagues to the subject's discoveries and their interpretation. (Clearly, statements as to the impact of the findings on the field of research, or its importance to other scientists must be sourced by reference to publications by others, as has been done in refs. 1-3.

Re. "...isn't necessary.. to include an overview of every work she's written." That's certainly true, but Dr. Hofer has had a productive research career of more than 50 years, and there are several lines of work and many publications that are not included in this article. Are there sections in the "Summary of Research Findings" that seem to you to be particularly responsible for your feeling that "every work" has been included? The "Narrative Summary of Research Findings" was written in order to give a picture of how research discoveries lead to a new understanding of familiar concepts, and to provide access to papers that are a source of new ideas to students and other researchers in the field who will be the readers of Wikipedia Scientific Biographies in the future.

I appreciate your advice and look forward to hearing from you in response to my questions above. 11-28-2011 User:Curiouscientist 207.237.102.142 (talk) 20:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, welcome to Wikipedia!
I'll make my comments below to each point.
RE: Notablilty (Academics) - I declined the article because most of the sources were primary (see below).
RE: Sourcing - I'm sorry, but sources by the author are not reliable. Think about it this way. I could write a book saying I've traveled to Mars and get it published. That doesn't make it true, but there's really no way to check that. Now if a newspaper (or a book written by a third party that did a lot of research into me) wrote an article saying I'd been the first person to travel to Mars, that would be a reliable source. You see my point?
I'd recommend you remove the sources written by the author. If you can't find the information in other sources, it probably shouldn't be in the article.
RE: Articles: I probably misspoke there, I was talking about the sources. Sorry about that.  
If you have any other questions, feel free to reply below. But, I would advise you not to put spaces at the very front of the sentences, as that tells the software that the text is preformatted, and puts it in a box, ignoring all the wikicode within.
A final thought: Your article is almost ready to go. I'd say, if you remove the sources written by the author and source those statements with other sources, it'll be moved to being a live article. It's great work, and I'm really sorry I had to decline it based on the sources thing. You've put a lot of work into the article and it shows. ~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 22:52, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


Thanks, that is all very helpful.

Re. Sources- I think I now understand Wiki policy and something of its history. I followed a number of 'clicks' to topics such as 'secondary' vs 'primary' sources', 'verifiability', 'new research' etc....it really is a whole new take on these topics, and pretty much the opposite of standard academic rules and rationale for sourcing.
I am going to take some time to reframe the "..Research Findings" section as well as deleting subject-authored sources and replacing them with appropriate 'other' sources. And I'll try to delete the spaces at the very front of sentences as I go.
This all may take some time... Curiouscientist (talk) 19:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC)User:Curiouscientist 12-1-11 Curiouscientist (talk) 19:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusion about sources. I know it's strange, it freaked me out the first time as well.
Let me know when you're done. I'd love to review your article again.~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 19:32, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks from "Borkfisch"

Thanks for the welcome and cookies! I am about to update my user page with my name. Why stay anonymous? Peter Tuffin (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Film November 2011 Newsletter

The June 2011 issue of the Films WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. —Peppage (talk | contribs) 22:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 December 2011

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/AwesomeSponge

Perhaps it might have been better for you to have considered closing this as WP:SNOW before the voting even starts. It obviously cannot succeed, thus making any votes totally superfluous. The principle at Wikipedia is to help new users avoid embarrassment, even if they understand very little of how things are done here. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

For the record, I did. There was only one !vote when I commented, I felt that it couldn't be WP:SNOWed yet.(If there's a policy that says I can, feel free to point me to it, I could be wrong).~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 03:43, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Any user in good standing can close an RfA that is blatantly obvious not to succeed. I tried to catch it and untransclude it before the voting even started, but my connection is too slow thjs morning. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:48, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Ah, OK. Thanks for clarifying.~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 03:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

December 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

 

The December 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 03:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 December 2011

Office Hours

Hey Matthewrb/Archive/2011-December; another Article Feedback Tool office hours session! This is going to be immediately after we start trialing the software publicly, so it's a pretty important one. If any of you want to attend, it will be held in #wikimedia-office on Friday 16th December at 19:00 UTC. As always, if you can't attend, drop me a line and I'm happy to link you to the logs when we're done. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

As promised, office hours logs! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

YouASTRO

Hi Matthew

I am the author of the YouASTRO page, for which you have raised a concern about source reliability. I am writing you because I have read the guidelines about source reliability, and I am trying to understand how to improve the page to get it published. Frankly speaking, I am a bit confused. The web-application subject of the page have been presented and dicussed at an international conference, and it will appear in the proceedings of that conference, published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The paper is publicly available, because it has been posted in the arXiv server, which hosts the largest publication archive used by many scholars in the world. All the links to the source has been given in the page. Still, it seems that it is not reliable enough. What it puzzles me is that for many other pages about RMSs, much less is reported but they have evidently been considered reliable.

May I ask you to suggest any other improvements which would make the page appear in the main space?

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Regards Sanna030 (talk) 17:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Sanna030, welcome to Wikipedia!
I can see how you'd be confused. I do see how the subject was presented at a conference, but the only source I see is that conference's page. Which isn't a very good source according to our guidelines. My recommendation would be to find other sources (Maybe newspapers that covered the event?) and include them as sources. Then the article would be ready to go.
Feel free to reply below if you have any other questions. ~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 22:31, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Saint Michael's School of Padada

Hi! good morning, ok thanks, i'll be leaving next week to go to padada area and gather facts about "Saint Michael's School of Padada" to continue my articles for creation...Have a nice day... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Browneyespercy (talkcontribs) 03:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! I look forward to seeing what you gather.~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 00:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 December 2011

MARKINT article

Hello - You reviewed my "MARKINT" article recently and asked that it be written in a more neutral style. First of all, let me provide a bit of a background:

This article had been submitted, approved, and active, for some time under the title "Market Intelligence (MARKINT)". At some point in November, it was modified (perhaps rewritten) and removed erroneously. I can not tell what was done because I am unable to access the original article from the modified article history (for reasons that I can't understand). Indeed, I was only able to access the original article after a third party located it and sent it to me.

My most recent submission merely clarifies issues by retitling the article to "MARKINT". It is the same article as before. The new title should avoid confusion, which was the apparently the reason changes were made in November.... I was unable to determine a more elegant way of dealing with this other then resubmitting the article from scratch.

Now, getting to your review: I seriously take issue with the review. How is the "MARKINT" article more like an essay than, say, the entry on "Thomas Jefferson"?

I would really appreciate you looking into this again so this article - which had been live for many months and is very useful - can once again be active.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samporo (talkcontribs) 14:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Samporo! Welcome to Wikipedia!
The reason you can no longer find the article at Market Intelligence (MARKINT) is because it was moved to Market Intelligence by User:DragonflySixtyseven. You can view the history there. That being said, we don't allow duplicate topics, so I'd recommend improving the Market Intelligence article.
As per the essay decline, you can view more information about it here. The decline was actually made by a group of editors in an informal discussion in one of our Internet Relay Chat channels. If you'd like help in removing the essay-ness (is that a word?) you can visit us by clicking here. This is a live help channel, where a group of editors will be able to help.
Again, welcome to Wikipedia! I'm sorry about the confusion, and I hope you enjoy your stay.~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 01:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)


Thanks Matthew - I'm sorry to be dense: Considerable changes were made to the page AFTER DragonflySixtyseven made the move on 26 August AND the article, as it should be (ie., in the form I have under the title MARKINT) was available until the end of November. I can't determine what happened, or exactly when, because I still can't access the original article (or undo changes to get it back to it's previous state).

Samporo (talk) 14:22, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The thing is, no one specific person owns an article on Wikipedia. It is written by collaborative effort. The changes that DragonflySixtyseven (and many other people) made to the article are better and more within our policy about reliable sources. Please read this page: WP:OWN for more information about collaborative editing and how you can't claim one revision of the article is right. I'm sorry, but it's the way Wikipedia works.~ Matthewrbowker Say hi! 06:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

My Article on Rommana

Hi Matthew, Obviously there is something here I do not understand. publishing an article on Wikipedia can not be that tricky. I went through the Notability requirement and I believe I did every thing I could to meet those. I am not sure why you and Kevin insists that this article is an advertisement. This article states facts that has been published by verifiable sources. I also gave the example article that I followed and other examples of articles published on Wikipedia on the same subject. They all follow the same format. please see the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuildMaster. If my article is advertisement, what would you say about this one? I have stated nothing different from what those articles stated, namely, a description, history pricing and products. No advertisement tone at all. Please be specific. Facts in this article and notability is established through reputable publications like SD Times. Please provide specific reasons why this article is not notable.

Magdy Hanna — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magdyshanna (talkcontribs) 06:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Magdy! Welcome aboard.
When I first opened the article, my first thought was: "OK, this company is selling something." Most Wikipedia articles on companies include a brief history of the company and sometimes their current projects. Prices and features of their products aren't generally included. BuildMaster is a terrible example article, a better one is IBM. Notice that the article doesn't mention the prices of their latest microprocessors. Instead, most of the article is the history of the company. This would be what we'd be looking for in your article.
Another thing, I strongly encourage you to read this page before you continue working on the article. Your name comes up on the sources of the article as the company's CEO. Most companies don't get an article on Wikipedia unless they've been featured in numerous newspapers. In its current state, the article will probably be speedy deleted unless you can find many more references in newspapers. And only if you totally forget about promoting your company. That's not what Wikipedia is for.
Feel free to reply below if you have any other questions.~ Matthewrbowker Talk to me 07:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe there is a major misunderstanding here. This article is not about the company. It is about a product. it is intended to explain what the product is exactly like all articles about products listed on the Application Lifecycle Management page. If you scroll down on that page, there is about 30 companies that have write about their tools. I think it is totally unfair to expect an article about a product like Rommana will have the same notability as IBM or IBM products. Rommana as a product has been in the market for only 2 years. When a reputable magazine like SD times shows that Rommana popularity has increased by more than 50% over the last year, I believe it is important for people to know about that product, I am following exactly articles that are currently published On Wikipedia on similar products. I removed pricing, although pricing was listed by another product page. I added more entries on Architectures, like some other articles did. I listed 3 references under external links that are written by a third part. A fourth reference was cited, which is also written by a third party. I think this is quite a bit in two years. One of the articles compares Rommana to Quality Center, which has been the leading ALM tool for many years. For the first time, there is a tool that competes with HP tools. I am not sure what more notability we are hoping to see. I also added links to other Wiki pages when appropriate. I am submitting the article for your review again after making these changes. Please tell me where you see the article is promoting the company or the product. Thank you for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magdyshanna (talkcontribs) 07:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Honestly Magdy, the product is not notable. When you stated, "I think it is totally unfair to expect an article about a product like Rommana will have the same notability as IBM or IBM products," you showed that you don't understand notability here. If I was to go save a person from a burning building, does that make me notable? Yes, but only for a short time and because of one event. The reason that IBM is notable is because it has been here for a long time and is very interwoven into the fabric of society. Just because your company is similar to another company listed on the Application Lifestyle Management page does not make it notable. If this were the case, we would all have Wikipedia articles because we exist. My father owns a business, which places people into jobs where there are vacancies. Although my father's small business has been around for over thirty years, that does not make it notable and deserving of an article even though that is a long time for a business to run. Additionally, you mention that you are following the style of other articles written on this site. Anyone can write their article in the style of another product, but that does not make their product worthwhile if they are blind to their own interests within the corporation, as you are. I encouraged you the other day to have someone look over and neutralize your article, as long as they did not have a heavy involvement in Rommana, but it appears as though you did not follow that advice. You are writing as the CEO of the corporation and that gives you a conflict of interest. If anything, you are more than allowed to have a conflict of interest, but the investment into your product is shown in how you are unable to see that you are promoting the article. If I wanted, I could go strip the submission to a more neutral state, but that would probably leave a few lines of text.
On the other hand, you are very knowledgeable about your field of work and I would encourage you to divest your time from the Rommana article and focus it more on other interests that are in the field. In e-mail conversations with you, I have become very impressed by your willingness to work with others towards a common goal, something which very few people have these days as a trait on this site. I would strongly encourage you to become involved with a WikiProject or two and help expand the area around Application Lifestyle Management so that there is more adequate and accurate coverage on this product. Who knows, maybe you can expand it to become a featured article! Additionally, I am sure that you are also knowledgeable in many other subjects, and I would encourage you to get involved in those fields so that you can hone your skills working on articles.
In the end, getting involved in the Wikipedia community will benefit you in more ways than one. One of these is that you will be able to write better articles and recognize your conflict of interest. This in turn will help you write a better article about your product, but only if it achieves notability worthy of Wikipedia. Matthew and I have invested a lot of time helping you with your work because you will not take no for an answer (this whole response took over a half an hour), and that can be both good and bad. The reason that it is good is that you have come back seeking to improve your article, something which most people do not try to do when their request is declined at Articles for Creation. Unfortunately, you are also heavily invested in your product, and this makes you believe that your corporation is notable. I can guarantee that most of the editors on this site who have been actively involved in the community have had instances where something, which they have believed to be notable, is not. Heck, I have probably had at least ten articles where something like this has occurred to me. In the end, you should not try to push something, which the community will probably not approve of, as seen by Matthew’s request to move the article back into the Articles for Creation space.
In the end, I hope that we will not scare you away with the truth about your company and product. There is the possibility that you will be blocked for your obvious conflict of interest but if you can divert your skills to other areas of which you are knowledgeable, I guarantee that you will be able to write an article about your corporation that will be almost completely void of conflict of interest, should the company ever go mainstream. I would highly encourage you to take some time off from the article and explore other articles, both of corporations, and other things that will interest you. This bit of a Zen experience will allow you to gauge how Wikipedia articles are written so that you will eventually be able to write a good article about your corporation, should it ever come to that. I hope that I have not scared you off with this response, and I look forward to hearing back from you. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 08:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 December 2011

DPS MMS Scandal

Dear Matthewrbowker, Could you please review the article that you just nominated for speedy deletion please? It is a stub class article but the topic is of high importance and I am trying to look for sources because its a 2004 event and most links are dead. Noopur28 (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I only nominated the redirect for deletion, the article itself is located at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DPS MMS Scandal. I left a more complete explanation on your talk page while you were writing this.   ~ Matthewrbowker Talk to me 22:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Got it :) I'm sorry for the confusion. I added 5-6 sources and most of those links are to reputed newspapers but the papers have removed the articles now. Do you have any suggestions for such dead references or is it okay if I let those links be? Thanks again :) Noopur28 (talk) 22:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You might link to an archived version of the page at places like This one or this one (hey, it even has a policy page at Wikipedia:Using WebCite!). We are perfectly OK with using archive services.~ Matthewrbowker Talk to me 23:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)