User talk:Backblastnet

Dan Harris

Wikipedia goes by the dates that are denoted as the official term of office by an MP's page on the Parliament of Canada website, which have consistently been the dates that the first session of Parliament after the election actually opened, not the date of the election itself. If you don't like the dates Parliament's website uses, then take it up with them; we use the dates they use. Bearcat (talk) 04:14, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

If you feel that there's a problem with the way that your term in office is denoted, take it up with the people who run Parliament's website — because they've denoted every single MP who ever predated you as starting their term in office on the day that the first session of Parliament actually opened after the election. I'm not trying to presume to tell you that I know your life better than you do; I'm simply telling you that as a reference site that relies on verifiability in reliable sources, we have to go with what Parliament's website says the date is — so if you don't like their tradition of using the date of the first actual sitting of the House, you need to ask the parliamentary webmaster about that.

I'd also ask you to read Wikipedia's policies around reliable sourcing (as linked above) and conflict of interest; we strongly discourage editing articles about yourself, and no article can ever contain any information that hasn't already been published in reliable media sources. Believe it or not, this is for your protection; it is possible, for example, for someone to edit the article in the future, claiming to be you but making statements that would be damaging to your reputation if we didn't insist on proper sourcing. (And as for your prior attempts to create an article, one of our rules is that unelected candidates aren't allowed to have articles just for being candidates — which is why your article kept getting deleted or redirected until you won.) I'm not trying to be difficult here, believe me — I'm actually trying to help — but we do have rules and procedures here that need to be followed, and they're for your own good. Bearcat (talk) 04:47, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Believe me, when I have staff I won't be doing it anymore, they won't let me =). Reliable sourcing will become available with time. I do understand the COI which is why I stuck to factual employment and education information. Regarding the earlier page it was one that was created in the early wiki days before the policy on candidates was in place and had remained in place for several years before being twice deleted in the past year. All water under the bridge now though. This stuff and this page is important to me perhaps more then others because my working life so heavily involved the internet and computers. A little flexibility for a short period of time is all I'm asking for.

Well, the only thing is that I can only make any sort of promises for myself; I can't guarantee that some other editor won't come along and strip the unsourced stuff out again anyway. The problem is that there've been quite a few major incidents on here in the past few years, with the consequence that we've had to really tighten up our content rules — we have to be a lot stricter now about what we can and can't include than we could get away with in 2005, because we're under a lot more pressure and scrutiny than we were back then. So we have to be a lot more careful now than we did five or six years ago — and unfortunately, sometimes that does also mean we have to delete stuff we previously could have kept. Truthfully, being actively involved around here is as much of a pain in the arse for us as it is for you — we're not trying to be mean or anything, but keeping things under control around here is practically a full-time job on a good day. So I just can't promise anything except that I'll be continuing to watch the article for problems.

Oh, and just for the record — I actually lived in SSW during the 2000 election. Which means you've got the honour of being the first person I've ever voted for in a federal election who actually went on to win. (Now I just need to work on voting for someone who actually wins in the same year that I vote for them, instead of 11 years afterward...but that's another story.) Bearcat (talk) 05:38, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, even if the thanks is 11 years late(and now I feel bad for getting a little angry last night). I also remember first hand how there's been some issues over the years. During the 2006 Municipal campaign someone kept coming into my wikipedia page and altering the link to my website and redirecting people to one of my opponent's websites. It turns out that the modifications were coming from an IP address at City Hall... Caused a bit of a splash, but only 6 months after the election. I'll try to get the source material up ASAP, though it could still be a while as the house resumes next week. You'll eventually vote for someone who wins in that election, just remember things never change if you give up =)