Richard W Barber

Question for administrator

<Your Question>

I made two minor corrections of fact to the page relating to myself on Wikipedia (Richard Barber, historian), and it has been labelled saying that an editor of the page may be closely related to the subject. Is it possible to remove this label, which makes the whole entry appear suspect? Likewise, I am puzzled by the requirement for sources for an entry which is largely factual, and deals with data which is publicly available.

--Richard W Barber (talk) 10:46, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Although this account has made only minor changes to the article, other accounts that appear to be associated with you have done much more, so the conflict of interest tag seems justified. If the information is readily publicly available, then it should not be difficult to provide sources. Doing so once is much better than expecting every single person who wishes to verify the content of the article to search for it. Also, the need for sources is not only to enable the content to be verified, but also to show that the subject is notable enough to justify having an encyclopaedia article about it. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:21, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Richard W Barber. You have new messages at JamesBWatson's talk page.
Message added 22:54, 1 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SmartSE (talk) 22:54, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Marlborough or Shrewsbury

I reached your article as a link from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_School#Old_Salopians. I knew a Richard Barber of about the right age at Shrewsbury in the period 1955–1960. So I was quite surprised to see the school given as Marlborough. On checking the history I see that you were the one who changed Shrewsbury to Marlborough so that is obviously correct. Presumably, therefore, the link from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury_School#Old_Salopians should be deleted, but before doing that I'd be grateful to have your thoughts. Athel cb (talk) 07:30, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

This is indeed correct - not sure how and when the entry on the Shrewbury school page was made!

Best wishes

Richard Barber, Marlburian. 81.78.101.193 (talk) 20:19, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. For the moment I've just hidden the link, but now that I have your confirmation I'll delete it.

Some editors are quite careless (including me, on occasion). Someone saw the Shrewsbury list and thought they knew a Richard Barber and added a link without checking that it was the right one. Probably someone I knew at the time.

Best wishes,

Athel Cornish-Bowden, Salopian Athel cb (talk) 15:25, 4 May 2023 (UTC)