Talk:Robert Ellis Smith

Conflict of interest

Considering the primary contributor, Thorinosmith (talk · contribs), has no other contributions and appears to share the same surname as the article subject, I suspect the editor is at least related to the subject. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 16:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I will see about getting a third party to clean it up and cite references. Any volunteers? A quick search reveals that there are plenty of articles available about Robert Ellis Smith and Privacy Journal. Thorinosmith (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I am a third party and I have cleaned it up and added a few citations. As Thorino noted, there are plenty of articles that reveal that Robert is noteworthy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.247.168 (talk) 04:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, you added citations. You did not change the article beyond this, so I've re-tagged it with {{coi}}, and also tagged it with {{refimprove}} and {{wikify}}. The article needs expansion as well. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I would 'verify' that I do not have a conflict of interest. What else is needed for this article to be acceptable? Why was this "retagged" for citations? I already added citations, so I'm removing that.

You may not have a COI, but the primary contributor to the article (that is, the person who wrote all of this) does. Adding a few references changes some things, but that didn't change who wrote the bulk of the article. As to retagging it for further citations, WP:BIO states multiple significant mentions in reliable sources. Out of the references you've provided, there is one, maybe two, that both meets those requirements and provides some serious proof of his notability. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

There are only three references, and as they say, "two out of three aint bad." No, really, I just rewrote the article myself, added relevant sources and external links. Sufficient? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.247.168 (talk) 04:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a bit better- I've marked this to be evaluated by someone at the biographies wikiproject, since I think the article's still in a gray area of notability. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 04:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a TON of information available about him on the internet, it's just pretty poorly consolidated. More importantly, however, he is the publisher of several influential legal books and has been party to several important privacy lawsuits, such as Resmburg V. Docusearch, Inc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.247.168 (talk) 04:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm certain that's true, but the article does need work. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 05:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This Wikipedia article is hardly impartial. One of our contributors was a Block Islander and pointed out that the initial contributor, Thorinosmith, was Smith’s son Marc Smith. The moderators were right when they suspected that Thorinosmith was related to the subject. We also noticed the user at 68.9.247.168 who suggested that Smith was noteworthy, and our research on that ip address pointed to a Cox Communications subscriber at Cranston or Providence, Rhode Island. It seemed unlikely to us that the third party was unrelated to the subject because of their close proximity to each other.

We searched for major news update about the subject dating back to 2006, and majority of the available information only referred to him as publisher of Privacy Journal. There were few mentions about the subject in the mainstream media, and his last government position was a town council member of Block Island in 2006. There is no question that the subject is passionate about privacy issues and continues to publish his newsletter, but we carefully added in the article that he was not elected or appointed to any major position of note in recent years. We also found other publicly available information related to the subject, such as the Narragansett police record showing that his son Gregor was twice cited on January 21 2012 for transporting alcohol as a minor . There were also news from Block Island Times of his son’s drug overdose in April 2013, as well as the 2014 Rhode Island Monthly article “The Dark Side of the Sun” where the subject referenced his son’s incident and attacked New Shoreham as a hotbed of drug abuse. We are classy to not add that information into this Wikipedia article at this point, but we have a sense that the subject is carefully editing the page to embellish his own record. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.154.244.243 (talk) 23:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

We added tiny pieces of information to update the article that is known locally at Block Island. The subject is twice-divorced, and his second wife Kathryn used to work at Block Island. The subject's mother-in-law is also a long term Block Island resident after retiring from Western Kentucky University. We further add here (but not in the article itself) that the Block Island Times publicly published information that the subject sold his Old Town Road in February 2014 for $580,000. Aside from that edit, we requested for citations regarding the subject's teaching experience at Harvard College and the University of Maryland. It is known to Rhode Island residents that Smith has taught at Brown University (in the summer) and at Roger William Law School as an adjunct lecturer ie. non-tenured, short-term contract position. The subject supplements his income from these teaching jobs because Privacy Journal's revenues have been low for many years, the very same reason that the subject cannot afford to hire employee and created a fictional character "Lee Shoreham" to be his circulation manager. Fun fact, the subject picked "Lee" as a gender neutral name so that people don't know whether they are communicating with a man or a woman. This was originally intended so that a male or a female employee/intern could fill in the role of "Lee Shoreham," although these days "Lee Shoreham" is basically the subject himself. 205.154.244.239 (talk) 21:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

References