User talk:Elenabesley

I need to remove my IP from View history

@Elenabesley: - if you go to Oversight Email and let them which page, and how to know which IP (best if you know it, otherwise give any edit summary/time of editing etc) they can do it for you. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:34, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, Elenabesley, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Elena Besley, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Nick Moyes (talk) 23:16, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nick,

A wikipedia page was created on my name (I knew nothing about it); I tried to correct some text and did it without logging in. I left my IP address all over "View history". Could you help me to remove it please?

OK; I read your message again... Looks like I am involved in something I didn't wish to be involved and wasn't asked... Could we delete my profile please if we can not leave it as it is now and remove my IP from the history?

Please advise, Nick Elenabesley (talk) 23:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC)Elenabesley

You need help?

Hi Elena. How can I help you? I saw you left a message on my talk page Wikipedia can be a very strange place to figure out as we've so many rules and guidelines that you don't know you've crossed a line until someone like me leaves pops up and leaves what seems like a shirty message for you.

I've just looked at your latest edits and I am guessing (but I have no way of knowing) that you are genuinely the subject of the article. We really prefer subjects to leave their concerns on the article talk page and request an edit by someone else, as we call this a Conflict of Interest. But again - you weren't to know that. If you wish, I can explain how to leave an edit request which draws the attention of a willing volunteer to that page to assist you.

Anyway, how would you like me to assist or guide you? Reply to me here, rather than on my talk page - you'll find that easier at first. I'll watch this page and note any reply you might make. Oh, and we also have a special place called theTeahouse, open 24/7 for new editors to ask questions. Just follow that link to get help from other people. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Help me!

I am already logged in but don't know how to add my email

Elenabesley (talk) 23:56, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nick,

A wikipedia page was created on my name (I knew nothing about it); I tried to correct some text and did it without logging in. I left my IP address all over "View history". Could you help me to remove it please?

OK; I read your message again... Looks like I am involved in something I didn't wish to be involved and wasn't asked... Could we delete my profile please if we can not leave it as it is now and remove my IP from the history?

Please advise, Nick Elenabesley (talk) 23:54, 20 January 2020 (UTC)Elenabesley

OK. One step at a time. I'll follow up in a few minutes Nick Moyes (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Right - back again.

• To add an email to your Wikipedia account, go to the link called 'Preferences' - it's right at the very top of any page when you're logged in. Scroll down the the first tab that you're in (User Profile) and you can add or edit your email. This is useful should you forget your password.
• Hiding an IP address is not something that even normal administrators can do - a special breed called 'Oversighters can do this under our policy (see this shortcut: WP:OSPOL to that section) At the top of that page, as Nosebagbear has said, there's an email address which you would need to contact (oversight-en-wp@wikipedia.org) or you can click the link to a form to send a sort of on-wiki email to the oversight team. Possibly using your notts.ac.uk email would prove who you are more easily than your personal one - but the choice is yours. Bear in mind that your IP address only geolocates you very coarsely to a city, no more. Often you can change your IP address simply by turning your router on and off, and you'll get assigned a new one. More to follow in a moment.
• When you post a new message, these go at the bottom of the page, not the top. and we sign them simply by typing four keyboard tilde characters at the end, like this: ~~~~ More to follow in a moment Nick Moyes (talk) 00:31, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Also, when you're finished contacting our oversight team, can you please email our Volunteer Response Team (using our confidential communication system) at info-enwikimedia.org to ensure you are who you claim to be (preferably from an official email address)? That is just to ensure you are not someone impersonating Ms. Besley. Thank you, and apologies if this has been a bit of a stressful process for you thus far. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 00:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Further replies

• I do hope you aren't upset by having an article written about you. You clearly meet Wikipedia's 'notability criteria for academics (see this shorcut: WP:NPROF), and I'm pleased to see that it was made by User:Jesswade88 who has gained rather a superb reputation around the world recently as a notable scientist herself for her single-minded campaign of creating a new article about other female scientists every day this year.
• The problem with Wikipedia is that there are too many editors like me - white, male, middle class and Anglo-Saxon and guess what they write about? As a result, both of Wikipedia's internal biases, and the historic bias-cum-assumption that only men could do science (and hence there are fewer reliable sources about women, generally), Wikipedia only has just of 18% of its biographical articles about women. But we have a great project called Women in Red which has been working for the last few years to get it up to that figure from something liek 14% four years ago. And then there's Jess herself (see also this article that someone created about her)
• Wikipedia strongly discourages any person from writing about themselves (except to correct damaging falsehoods which are not sourced to anything reliably published), hence my not little message earlier. You've clearly worked out how to call for help with a 'help request'. When you are conflicted as an editor because you either are, or know the subject, it's best to leave a message on the articles Talk page (note the little tab right next to 'Article', explaining the alteration you'd like to make, and linking to any online or paper publications to support that suggestion. I am afraid that Wikipedia is loaded with lots of help and lots of instructions, and you can learn more about requesting edits at Wikipedia:Edit requests.
• I should mention this shortcut: WP:BLP - it's a very important policy here that aims to protect people like you. In essence, nothing should be added to any biography of a living person which is unsupported by properly sourced publications. Anything that is should be immediately removed if it liable to endanger them, libel them or do reputational harm,or which reveals personal details that aren't already properly published and in the public domain. We have ways of permanently deleting and hiding any such content from the history of an article if it is deemed harmful in that way. (I once accidentally pasted in my mobile phone number and had to have it specially removed! - we call it 'revision deletion' or WP:REVDEL for short)
• Finally, I'm going to hope that, like Jess, you might not be too hurt by having an article here about you, and that you might consider staying, learning the basics of how we edit here, and then bringing your obvious academic skills to help improve any articles that you encounter in your specialist field that you feel are weak in some way. We have an adoption programme here, and one of my 'adoptees' is a retired professor of geology, based in America. It has been quite interesting helping him appreciate that we have a somewhat different approach to scientific articles than occurs in academia, yet the principles are the same. We require factual statements to be supported by citations; we have a manual of style, and we have (effectively) an abstract at the top of every article which summarises the content of the rest of the page.
• If I can help you further, I will, though I won't respond again tonight as it's now quite late. If you have any questions, make a list of them and I or another editor will endeavour to help or guide you.

I hope some of this has made sense, and that I haven't put you off at all? Regards Nick Moyes (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Dear Nick Moyes, thank you for your kind help and reassurance. I have been in touch with Jess and she fixed everything to my satisfaction. Have a great day! Elenabesley (talk) 11:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC)Elenabesley

You're very welcome, Elena, and I am glad you're OK with it. Out of interest, did Jesswade88 contact you to tell you she'd created this page? If not, I might just pop over to her talk page and suggests it might be something she should perhaps think about doing. A courtesy email from one academic email address to another would be taken seriously by the recipient, and maybe offering some guidance to the many subjects she's writing about so that they know the best way to react would also be very helpful. This would create less hassle for people like you, and less hassle for the admins and editors like me who not unreasonably react if they see a subject of an article trying to edit it themselves. I'm sure Jess Wade is incredibly busy already, but if she only put something on her userpage (or created a subpage) explaining a few of the do's and don't for people like you to understand, I am sure it would help a lot. I stress that I am incredibly supportive of what she's doing, but we both spent ages on this late last night, and some of those issues could have been nipped in the bud with a bit of judicious advice on her page - or even a standard message on each new articles talk page along the lines of "If you are the subject of this article, here's what to do and what not to do...". I wonder what you think? Regards from a sunny Derby, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:54, 21 January 2020 (UTC) 

Hi Nick Moyes ! I didn't and don't reach out to tell people that I've created the pages because I thought that wasn't the right thing to do (some Wiki editors don't like you to reach out to the topics of pages), but when I saw this discussion I did because I didn't want to offend or upset Prof Besley in any way whatsoever, and I didn't want to waste your time. I am always happy to be contacted to correct things. Jesswade88 (talk) 20:14, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, Jesswade88 thanks for that explanation. You're not wasting my time - we all (well, except maybe that one idiot last year) appreciate what you're doing. But I do wonder whether you ought at least to consider putting something on the article talk page to assist the subject. Whilst I appreciate you're always happy to correct things, neither I nor the subjects are aware of the page creator, and they certainly aren't aware how to contact anyone on Wikipedia. I am in no way complaining, but it did take a lot of time last night to sort things out, first because I thought I was reverting an IP who appeared to be messing with an article, then I realised it was probably the subject herself, then I had to explain the basics of Wikipedia editing, then I had to welcome and encourage her and not frighten her off.

Because your work here is so well known, I'm sure most will appreciate what you're doing - and even if you directed them to a subpage of your own user page, you could successfully head off a potential car crash where a well meaning editor like me drops like a ton of bricks on an unsuspecting academic who thinks its quite OK to change content about them that they've only just discovered is there, and without sourcing it. I suspect most other editors might not have been quite -shall we say- encouraging to see WP:COI edits, and the worst thing we want to do is scare off the subjects and give them a bad impression of those nasty Wikipedians. In fact, don't we want academics to have a good and positive perspective on what Wikipedia gets up to? The last thing they need is editors like me or my fellow colleagues scaring them off with COI warnings and myriads of other templates. I'm just trying to be helpful here (but I fear it doesn't come across well in text speak) If you like the idea, but don't have the time, I'd be happy to draft out some suggested words and pop them on your talk page to consider. Equally, I'm quite OK to leave things just as they are. Follow up if you wish, or leave it as it stands; either way, keep up the great work! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Ok Nick Moyes, I've added a para to my User page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jesswade88. Let me know what you think! Jesswade88 (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll move the discussion over to your talk page, Jess, so poor Elena isn't bewildered by our wiki-orientated chat. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:48, 21 January 2020 (UTC)