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Hello, Ellen Light, and Welcome to Wikipedia!

Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask at the help desk, or place {{Help me}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to help you get started. Happy editing! glman (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May 2024

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Information icon Hello, Ellen Light. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page The Independent Florida Alligator, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for article subjects for more information. We ask that you:

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. 81.187.192.168 (talk) 19:05, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is all new to me. I have worked at The Independent Florida Alligator for 26 years. I manage the historical archives and alumni information. Up until a few months ago everything was fine with this page. Whoever was adding the new editors to the list was keeping everything current. However, recently, someone has removed very pertinent information - specifically the list of past editors - was removed. I do not know why. I was merely trying to put it back when it all hit the fan. I made an account (which I had never had to do before). I REALLY don't understand the whole "Conflict of Interest" thing! Who better to make sure that everything on this page is correct than someone who works here and knows what is what? I just want the editor list data returned to the page. I don't know who is responsible and who deemed it "unproduction, irrelevant", etc. ???? I think we, as the organization should have sole control over the content that is made public about us. Ellen Light (talk) 19:48, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also missing, are several of the notable alumni under the "Alumni" section Ellen Light (talk) 19:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Ellen! Wikipedia only contains verifiable information that is published in other source (policies can be found at WP:RS and WP:V). While your knowledge is useful, adding information without references is considered original research (WP:OR). Frankly, including a list of editors for the page may not be possible, as that list may not be notable. Wikipedia is not a database WP:NOTDATABASE. I will look to see if there are sources anywhere! glman (talk) 19:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Funny, the list was there for years and years... Where did you want it to have been published? We have YEARS - from 1912 through 2024 - of publications with the data in question in print. Those in turn have been digitized by the University of Florida's library. I'm not sure what else could be asked. Ellen Light (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is also incorrect information in the info box on the right side of the page...where are the citations on that???? Ellen Light (talk) 20:34, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have requested expert help and advice for you at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#The Independent Florida Alligator. 81.187.192.168 (talk) 19:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. This is ridiculous. Ellen Light (talk) 20:01, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. As a tangent to the overall discussion on references and COI, regarding your comment I think we, as the organization should have sole control over the content that is made public about us, you may find Wikipedia's ownership of content policy informative. Mokadoshi (talk) 04:47, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ownership is not the point. I would like to know why, information that was present on this page for YEARS is suddenly questionable and considered “irrelevant and unproductive” when it clearly IS relevant productive to gain knowledge of our organization. I don’t know who was updating the page all of these years. I don’t really care who it has been because they were doing a good job of adding the newest editors’ names (we get a new one each semester, three each year) and updating the sidebar info box on the right side with all of the new names. This box currently contains incorrect information and…no citations. As a matter of fact, there are many things on the page as a whole that do not contain citations. And, there is additional information that is incorrect. And, there is also several of the “Notable Alumni” missing that had also been there for YEARS. There is a block under the History section which states: “This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message).”  Who is supposed to be providing the citations to reliable sources?  And if that person does not do it, will there be additional information deleted???? I don’t know how to do citations. This is not part of my job and I absolutely do not have time to dedicate to learning all of your jargon, procedures. I am not overly computer savvy and have many other tasks that monopolize my time – working with a list of over 6000 alumni being the main one. The Wikipedia page for our organization has never been something that I had to address and see no good reason for it to be an issue now. Our archives with the University of Florida’s Library system who digitized over a hundred years of our publications should stand to be enough of a citation to corroborate the validity of our list of editors’ names and the years that they held the position. It should also stand as enough of a citation to corroborate the correct information in the sidebar info box. All of that information can be found in our archives…PUBLISHED archives that are then digitized and added to our digital archives by the UF Library. As you can tell, I am very frustrated by this whole thing. What exactly changed in the last two months that created this ridiculous situation? Any help you can provide, or forward this to someone who CAN, to resolve this situation would be greatly appreciated. It seems such a simple thing… If our Wiki page can’t be accurate or complete, why have it at all? Ellen Light (talk) 12:52, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ATTENTION: Please reply to new username E-358-lit. Thank you. E-358-lit (talk) 14:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The simple answer is that there are over six million articles on Wikipedia and not every article has been reviewed by experienced editors that understand the policies. For whatever reason, the article didn't raise much attention for years. I don't think anything "changed" two months ago, just that a volunteer randomly came across the article, noticed the issues, and fixed them according to the policies. I guess I don't understand your argument that if it's been in the article for years it needs to be kept? Wikipedia would be full of spam and promotion if we were unable to fix issues just because they weren't noticed until years later. That's impossible to do when the site is run by volunteers.
I understand the frustration that an article that you care about has had information removed that you think is important, and you don't have the time or knowledge to fix it. If other editors feel strongly as well, I'm sure someone will come along eventually and fix it. However, what I think you're not understanding is that there may be nothing to "fix". As Glman said above, the lack of sources is a problem but issue may be more about notability. I'm happy to explain this in further detail for you, but the short of it is that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate source of information, not every person who has ever worked on a newspaper or any other business is going to be included in an article. Only notable people (possibly people notable enough to have their own articles) would be included. To that end, the Alumni section in the article may be complete, but if there are people missing, you could mention them on the article's talk page and I'm sure an interested editor will see it. Mokadoshi (talk) 14:36, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have submitted recommended changes / corrections to the Talk area of our page.
I have given up on the editors list and the notable alumni info.
I have only included factual corrections and updates.
I hope that someone will address them. Also can this be sent to Glman? E-358-lit (talk) 15:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Great, I'll respond there as that is the best place to discuss changes to the article. Mokadoshi (talk) 16:03, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moving forward

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E-358-lit, forgive me for writing a considerable amount in the following. But, it will (I hope) be more digestible than all the various policy/guideline/essay pages you've been asked to read.

I am sorry you are frustrated with your experience here. I do understand it, even empathize with it. When I first got here, it was difficult to onboard the knowledge I needed in order to be effective. I came to Wikipedia long time ago, when it was easier to get up to speed. Now, the learning curve is quite intense. To be honest, I think it's becoming so difficult for new editors that we are harming ourselves; bringing new editors to the point of effectiveness is probably happening far slower than we are losing long time editors. This is a wider problem for Wikipedia in general, but it does speak to the frustrations you have experienced.

There's a tendency among experienced editors to toss guidelines/policies/essays at new editors who run into problems, believing this will make things better. I just did it myself [1] to you. Just the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy alone is 4500 words, 18 printed pages long. To expect you to onboard that and suddenly have it all make sense isn't appropriate. I'm sorry.

Wikipedia has an almost knee-jerk, negative reaction to people who have a direct conflict of interest (COI, hereafter) with a given article. COI editors are frequently viewed with scorn. There's reasons for this, even if it's not proper. Wikipedia has been the target of an enormous amount of unscrupulous COI editors. It's considerably less common to find a COI editor who is acting in good faith, and trying to improve things, even if inexperienced. Obviously the latter applies to you. We do want work with you.

On the list of past editors on the article; it's just not important enough to warrant a section of its own. It is indiscriminate information of no particular interest to the average reader. When I was in college, I was the president of a major student run organization. That organization has an article here on Wikipedia. There is no list of past presidents on the article, and thus my name is not on the article, nor should it be. Nobody would care that I was once the president of the organization. Heck, even my family doesn't care :) Even the university archives barely mention me. It's just not important enough for someone to gain an understanding of the organization and what it does. Similarly with The Alligator, the average reader does not care that John Brown was the editor in 1941 nor do they need to know that information to understand what the newspaper is and its summarize history.

I don't expect you to learn everything you need to know to be a productive editor to move things forward with The Independent Florida Alligator. I will happily explain things as needed, and try to do so in ways that don't require reading pages and pages of guidelines/policies/essays. So, let's start with what you feel is missing from the article or needs to be corrected and I'll try to assist. Does that sound workable? --Hammersoft (talk) 22:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the things you wrote here. I understand where you are coming from. I think, though, that you do not fully comprehend our audience…the ones that will come here to read our page. It is our alumni. Our alumni are rabidly proponents of our organization. I literally cannot tell you how many of our responders repeatedly tell us that they would not have a career if it hadn’t been for The Alligator. So many talk of the fact that they actually learned more working here than they did in their four years at the University of Florida’s Journalism school. I am not exaggerating either. I read this from them all of the time. In addition, many, many of our alumni go on to amazing things. We have many Pulitzer Prize-winning alumni; many who are high-powered and influential people who have positions like editor in chief of the Washington Post, The New York Times, Politifact founders, the previous executive director of the American Association of Media Photographers. One is the person who established the legal support for journalists who are incarcerated abroad. People magazine executive editor. I could go on and on and on. These people got their start in our offices. And, they remember that and acknowledge it repeatedly.
So, for them and the rest of our 6000+ alumni to be able to come and read about us and show others what we are, and to inspire the next generation, and the next generation and the next as to who and what we are and how beneficial and influential spending time working here is, we think it is quite relevant and important to have ALL of this information available. We do actually have much of it on our website https://www.alligator.org/page/about . I guess maybe that is enough. Maybe we don’t even NEED the Wikipedia page… Our first general manager, C.E. Barber wrote what is on the Wiki page many years ago. (I wrote what is on our website) Mr. Barber worked here from 1963 through 2007. (I have been here since 1998.) I think the important thing is that if something exists like the Wiki page, that it should be accurate and complete. However, with US being the ones who “published” the facts (as we are dedicated to doing) it is very difficult to figure out who the heck do I provide as a citable source??? We are very often the only ones to report on our own events and happenings. Yes, most of those things are reported in our own pages…but WHERE in all of those thousands and thousands of pages? Up until a few years ago we published a new paper five days a week. I literally have an entire 12’ x 12’ wall bookcase with our bound publications. We started in 1906!
Fortunately for us, the University library, who has always collected our papers and preserved them in print and in microfiche, decided a few years ago to digitize our entire collection and make it searchable. I use that term loosely, because if you don’t search for the exact term that was used in the article you STILL have a hard time finding something without extensive time.  It is sometimes like searching for a needle in a haystack to find a particular bit of information. I absolutely do not have time in my days to search for citations to attach to every bit of text on our page. Mr. Barber IS the citation. He was there. He lived it. I know him. He has more integrity and adherence to accuracy than pretty much anyone I’ve ever known.
Someone – unknown to us – has added various parts over the years; some of it a bit inaccurate. Hence my suggestions for corrections. Frankly, I am so frustrated with this whole thing that I’m ready to just say #%&# it. If it can’t be accurate and have the complete information available for the ones who come here to read it – our alumni – then maybe it shouldn’t exist at all. To have it be incorrect or lack basic information, it not really doing our organization justice. Maybe we should just be satisfied with letting people read what is on our website.
We are journalists. There is an integrity that comes with that which prevents us from publishing incorrect information. Having that questioned is difficult.  I appreciate that we are not “special” and not deserving circumventing your policies. But, I don’t know where to go to get the information that you want – the publication of our history – other than our own archives which apparently is not enough. I have actually spent far more time on this than I should have and feel like I am accomplishing nothing. E-358-lit (talk) 13:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(sorry this is long, but I hope it's worth it)

With respect, The Alligator article doesn't exist to service alumni of the organization. Rather the opposite in fact; the alum of The Alligator already know far more about the organization than any encyclopedia would ever have. To continue the analogy about the organization I was president of in college; I almost never go to that article because it's of little interest to me. I already know a lot more than what's in the article, and if I'm really curious about how things are going, I still have some contacts to reach out to who would have more information than I would ever find in an encyclopedia.

The Alligator as a means to inspire, sure. The Alligator as a means to show how beneficial it would be to work there? No, that's effectively advertising.

I agree that having accurate information is critical. The concept of "complete" is more nebulous and subjective. Wikipedia strives very hard to be accurate. Some articles get more attention than others in this regard. This is to be expected. The article for The Alligator averages about 11 views a day. Our currently most viewed article (Eurovision Song Contest 2024) is averaging 133,000 views a day right now. That article has 137 people who have added it to their watchlist; they are notified when changes are made. The Alligator has less than 50 (we don't show how many when it's less than 50; it's anywhere from 0-49). As to what to add to the article to make it "complete"; we're going to get into grey areas here. If the only source for that information is the primary source of The Alligator, great care is going to need to be taken to judge whether it should be included or not. I want to elaborate on using primary sources. You note that Mr. Barber "IS the citation". With utter respect for Mr. Barber's contributions, that's not a usable citation for us. If someone wrote a book about The Alligator and included information from Mr. Barber, that might (or might not) be usable. But, we can't cite Mr. Barber himself.

With primary sources, we have to be careful. Primary sources are most often used to support simple statements of fact. For example, when a paper began publishing might be verified using a primary source. Any analysis or interpretation of material has to be supported by secondary sources. Large passages of an article should not be based solely on primary sources. That's the problem with the list of past editors. While some editors will of course be of more historical interest than others (and those have secondary sources supporting mention of them), the entire list could only be included by way of using the paper itself.

It's important to understand what our role here is as an encyclopedia. We're not a directory listing of businesses/organizations. We don't host all information about an entity, even if it's accurate. Just as you would not find mention Michael Jordan in the dictionary entry for "basketball", there are types of information you would not expect to find in an encyclopedia. We're a tertiary source; we summarize primary and secondary sources into a summary style article that highlights important (as in, needed to know to support reader's understanding of) information about an organization. Information that does not have a secondary source to support it is likely not of interest to the average tertiary source reader.

If you identify something that is inaccurate in the article, then please ask for a correction on the article's talk page or ask me, and please provide a source that supports the correction. If there is something in the article that you know to be untrue, and it's not supported by a reliable, secondary source, most editors will happily remove it as challenged, unsourced material. Again, raise it on the article talk page or bring it to my attention and I'll take care of it for you.

I really want to work with you. You don't have to spend time trying to figure out all our of ways and means of doing things. I don't want you to have to spend any more time on this than necessary. You are important to the process of getting this article to be accurate. I can't possibly search the Internet long and hard enough to find even 1% of the knowledge you have. I've been editing Wikipedia for about 2/3rds of the amount of time you've been at The Alligator. It would take me forever to figure out how to be a constructive contributor to your organization. We each have our strengths. Let's work together.

So, let's start. Could you please highlight something you know to be inaccurate? --Hammersoft (talk) 15:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry... I put the corrections that I feel are important in the talk section of the Alligator's page. I was asked some questions about them. They are actually pretty simple things. I answered with the only info that I have. I simply cannot provide any more of what so clearly you need. So, sadly, I have to give up on this and just let it be what it is...a page about us with some less than accurate information which I am unable to correct the way you want me to. Thank you for your time but I am done. It is what it is. E-358-lit (talk) 16:03, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please, do not give up. We can make progress! I see the following requested corrections and my responses in indents.

  1. You requested the editors be removed from the infobox on the article.
    This has been done
  2. You requested the addition of "In 2019, Shaun O'Connor, who had worked at the paper beginning as a student in 2009, succeeded Carey as general manager."
    I've added O'Connor as the general manager in the infobox, and used the primary source of the "About" section of your website to support it, as simple fact.
  3. You asked for a change in the periodicity of printing
    No cite to support it was given, so not added. I have removed mention of "daily" in a couple of places due to it not being clear. A primary source would be fine here!
  4. You asked for verbiage to added regarding the purchase of The High Springs Herald.
    No cite to support it was given, so not added
  5. You asked for the addition of "lease" to the 2016 move.
    The cite doesn't support "lease" but I've changed the line to say "...to the same building as the Gainesville Sun." I hope you find this clearer. The cite doesn't make it clear as to who owns the building. It infers it, but doesn't state it outright.
  6. You noted the readership program and The Really Independent Florida Crocodile as no longer operating.
    I removed the latter, as there is no connection to The Alligator. I couldn't find any source indicating it was defunct. I've not updated the readership program. The only source I could find about it being cancelled was from 2013, and that was from The Alligator [2].

How do you feel about the above? --Hammersoft (talk) 19:33, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. Thank you.
2. Thank you.
3. If you use this: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/title-sets/UF00028290 you can see the publication dates.
4. I guess so. It just seems to leave a question out there of "Why did The Alligator buy and then sell it?"
5. Better.
6. This is the only time the Readership Program line item appeared in the UF budget. It was not renewed. https://sg.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/1051-Amendment-to-the-20099-2010-AS-Fee-Budget.pdf And, this is all you get when you try to go to the Crocodile's website. https://thecrocodile.org/
Thanks for your efforts. E-358-lit (talk) 19:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It might be better to remove mention of the readership program entirely? The paragraph is uncited as is, and I can't find any sources to support it. On the publication dates; true, one can infer that the periodicity, but it's not specifically stated. https://issuu.com/floridaalligator is similar; one can conclude the publication periodicity, but there's no positive affirmation in sources to support it. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:43, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, remove it.
Have a good weekend. I'll be back in on Tuesday. E-358-lit (talk) 20:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done. You too! --Hammersoft (talk) 20:55, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. E-358-lit (talk) 20:59, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@E-358-lit and @Hammersoft, I am sorry for the archiving earlier as i was mistaken thinking it was insight of "forum" or whatever. It has been resolved thanks to Hammersoft. Have a good day. Safari ScribeEdits! Talk! 21:05, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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