User talk:Ddp224

IS group

Could you please continue the discussion on IS group on Talk:IS group. In particular, the article needs reliable sources explaining the notability of the group. Thanks! Weregerbil 13:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

conflict of interest

Ddp224, please take a look at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest if you have not done so already. Wikipedia strongly discourages the kind of editing you've been doing on your biography Philip Rubin, your institute Haskins Laboratories, articles on your colleagues there, and IS group.--ragesoss 01:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ragesoss. Thanks for letting me know about the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guidelines. As you can probably tell from my brief history on Wikipedia, I am fairly new to Wikipedia and appreciate your guidance. I will be sure to avoid this kind of editing in the future and will, if you think it is appropriate, move this material to some other venue. However, if possible I would hope that some of this can remain (though the "IS group" entry seems to be a clear problem, and should probably be removed). The material related to Haskins Laboratories and many of the prominent scientists affiliated with the Laboratories over the years, however, seems very valuable as it relates to the history of science and technology -- it is all verifiable, and is based on published sources such as referreed Journal articles, published books, the Smithsonian archives, etc. The notability of the research done at the Laboratories over the years is not in question. From the many hundreds of scientists and students who have worked at the Laboratories since 1935, only those were included who's entries would be considered to be notable according to Wikipedia standards. Many of these scientists are deceased, no longer are affiliated with Haskins Laboratories, and/or are not colleagues, thus there does not appear to be a similar conflict of interest for certain entries. Regarding Haskins Laboratories and its key scientists, it would be very difficult to be able for anyone to provide a neutral, and accurate, history who was not at some point either affiliated with the Laboratories or was one of its "competitors," because of the broad influence of Haskins over the years, the fact that the field in its early days was small and most were either affiliated with Haskins or some outside entity doing similar work. At this point, I could use your guidance on what is the best way to approach these issues going forward? Please note that I originally decided to provide this material because many individuals over the years have been interested in and inquired about historical information about the leaders of our field, both past and present. Many of these pioneers were affiliated with Haskins over the years. A representative, and accurate, history of contributions in the areas of speech perception, speech synthesis, etc., would be inaccurate and weak without information on these contributions. Thus, I took time out of my busy schedule over the past couple of months, to attempt to provide this information and to do something that I thought was being useful to Wikipedia, a resource that I greatly appreciate. Unfortunately, I have little future time for this and, if you have monitored recent contributions, have already begun to cut drastically back on my time devoted to this effort. However, if you think that additional time is needed on this, please let me know, and also let me know how this should be handled. I would hate to see the contributions that I have made, and the time devoted to this, to have been in vain. In my original entry on "IS group" I interacted with "weregerbil" who legitimately questioned the notability of the entry, but had not in these interactions mentioned the conflict of interest policy. Thus, in future entries my main goals had been in being very careful about establishing sourcing and notability. I apologize for not attending to the conflict of interest matter, which I was unaware of, but will be careful to attend to this in the future. Thanks again for your attention to this matter. (Ddp224). Ddp224 04:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I doubt anyone will try to delete any of the articles besides IS group. From a cursory read (without going through the reference links carefully), it looks like the Haskins Laboratories article is OK. According to Wikipedia's policy of Verifiability, articles cannot contain information that could not, in principle, be checked by anyone who knew where to look. So if the article contains information or a synthetic viewpoint beyond what an outsider could create by going to the sources provided, it constitutes original research (which is against Wikipedia policy). However, one way around that could be used if necessary: you could publish such a history on the Haskins website, and use that as a source. (Though if you did that and used any identical text, be sure to indicate GFDL status on the website so the Wikipedia version is not deleted as plagiarism sometime in the future). If the article would simply be unlikely rather than impossible coming from someone with no connection to the lab, then all is well. I hope that helps. If you have any questions or would like help with something, you can leave a message on my talk page. --ragesoss 05:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt feedback. Things are clearer now, both on the IS group entry and the other Haskins material. The Haskins material looks to be okay. Should published, verifiable sources become available for the IS group, I hope that this information will be provided. However, because of the conflict of interest policy, I think that is best that I avoid active participation in these areas, unless minor things, such as typographical corrections, are needed. Thanks again for your very valuable guidance on these matters. It is greatly appreciated. Ddp224 06:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

IS group

I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article IS group, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, or, if you disagree with the notice, discuss the issues at its talk page. Removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, but the article may still be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached, or if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria.

Before removing the proposed deletion template, consider whether there are any verifiable sources independent of the group and its members that indicate that the IS group is notable. If there are no such sources, then the article is not appropriate for Wikipedia. If there are such sources, the article still needs to be cleaned up and all information that is not verifiable (i.e., anything that only someone connected to the group would or could know) needs to be removed. Don't let this discourage you from contributing to Wikipedia; I'm sure many of the scientific articles related to your area of expertise could use some work.ragesoss 03:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ragesoss -- based on your very clear explanation, I am unaware of any verifiable published sources independent of the group and its members. I would prefer that the article not be deleted, because I think that its inclusion is a valuable addition to the history of informal science which has been too often neglected and is, unfortunately, difficult to establish without the kind of ethnography that requires information directly based upon the participation and experiences of the participants of the activity. Because of the nature of the "IS group" all of its verifiablity would need to be based on the reputation and notability of its participants. During my years as Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation I had the good fortune to be responsibile for a wide range of fields, including Cultural Anthropology. In that field of science, ethnography and oral history often play a large role and are usually seen as credible, depending upon the reputation of the scientist or scientists involved in gathering the oral history/ethnography, even if that scientist is not independent from the event or group(s) being studied. The notability of the group has been discussed in some detail in the "IS group" discussion page. As noted there, the entry was based on my reading "The Reality Club" entry. In this context, the IS group seemed notable because of its long-standing existence that has resulted in many collaborations and research directions across multiple leading institutions. These influences, which are often informal and subtle, are reflected in the research directions and published papers of the participants in the group. It would be silly, and probably inappropriate, for these publications to formally refer to an informal group. But, like ""The Reality Club" and "The Algonquin Group", that does not mean that these groups, though informal, did not have important, though intangible, influences in their relative domains (science in the first case, and popular culture in the second). Unfortunately, I do not make the rules for Wikipedia, so ultimately will yield to whatever is decided. However, I would encourage carefull flexibility in Wikipedia and that it have a more nuanced approach to the documentation and verification of things such as informal science, placing greater value on things such as oral history, where the information sources often are, by definition, non-independent members of groups. Based upon my preliminary reading of the Wikipedia guidelines, I had thought that such observer-participant reporting was acceptable for Wikipedia in certain instances, particularly when relating history of an event only experienced by that observer-participant, but I am not an expert on Wikipedia so am not at all clear on this. Please note that I will remove the "proposed deletion template." I not doing this to be contentious, but instead am removing it because the instructions in the template seem to indicate that I should remove it if I have a disagreement. Unfortunately, once again, my knowledge of Wikipedia is not sophisticated enough to know if I am doing the right thing, so please accept my apology in advance if, once again, I have made some type of error. One day I will be better at this and, hopefully, will do things the appropriate way. I would also be happy to discuss further with you why I think that this entry is notable and why the COI policy presents a problem for entries such as this, if you think that additional discussion in these areas is useful. Thanks again for your input on this matter and for taking time to ensure the quality of Wikipedia and its contents. Please also accept my apologies for providing problems with this entry. Ddp224 Ddp224 05:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the article violates Wikipedia's No Original Research policy. I'm sure you can appreciate the reason for such a policy's existence; if unverifiable sources (e.g., participant knowledge) were allowed, abuse would be rampant; there would be no way to distinguish something like the IS group from a fictional group invented by a clever high school student (and given the number of clever high school students and the collective amount of free time they have, abusive articles would undoubtedly outnumber legitimate ones). I sympathize with your concern about Wikipedia's notability guidelines (which are flexible but in my opinion too restrictive), but the main problem with the IS group article is verifiability, a core policy of Wikipedia that admits no exceptions. Other venues may exist for this kind of material, but it isn't appropriate for Wikipedia.--ragesoss 05:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I've started the deletion process for IS group; if you wish, you can follow the discussion and contribute to it: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IS group. I moved a copy of the article to your userspace, in case you don't have another copy of it and the consensus of the discussion is to delete the article: User:Ddp224/IS group.--ragesoss 06:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I used the term "verifiable" the deletion discussion in the Wikipedia sense (per Wikipedia:Verifiability), which is by definition a published source. Wikipedia is not the place for unpublished work (which is by Wikipedia's definition, as opposed to common usage, original research). But there are other possible venues. If seeking out a more formal publication venue, like a journal in your field(s), would be too onerous, try wikinfo, a wiki encyclopedia with different editorial policies.--ragesoss 03:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

If you're serious about saving the history of your group and tracking the people down and squeezing the information out of them, then saving documents and soliciting personal accounts is probably a much more reliable method than putting your original information onto Wikipedia, where anyone can have their way with it. If you got a collection together, maybe Yale's Manuscripts and Archives would take it. (They're very friendly people; I worked there for the last two summers.) Though sometimes encumbered by silly rules and processes, Wikipedia is very flexible in many ways. But what is not flexible is that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, including unpublished historical information. I'm sorry you had a bitter experience with Wikipedia.--ragesoss 06:47, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the valuable suggestions -- if time permits, I will explore other venues for assisting in the more complete documentation of this group. My brief experience on Wikipedia has been very useful, introducing me to tools and concepts that I was previously unfamiliar with. I disagree that the IS entry is unpublished historical information, but agree that it is presently not well-sourced. Perhaps I misled myself by starting the IS group entry after looking at The Reality Club entry and believing that the latter was a standard, appropriate Wikipedia entry, but that I could do a better job than was done in that case. My experience with Wikipedia was not bitter, but it was very frustrating and time consuming. At times I found the editors insulting (see interactions with weregerbil), inappropriately inaccurate (such as your comment about the lack of expertise on my part and the part of others with informal science), off the point, and, to my mind, not very competent regarding clearly and simply explaining the Wikipedia policies to newcomers. I realize that this is a volunteer effort on the part of the editors, and appreciate their effort. Nevertheless, I don't feel that direct questions that I asked were answered clearly, nor were Wikipedia policies explained in a timely fashion. For those reasons, coupled with my density on some of these issues and my desire to more fully understand Wikipedia's flexibility on informal issues, this process has stretched out. Thanks again. Ddp224 13:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyright violation

Your addition to Articulatory phonology has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other websites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of article content such as sentences or images. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. I realise that this is an old violation, but I thought that it was serious enough to warrant a warning. For people checking this, have a look at the diff of the violation and the source on PubMed. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 06:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

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