User talk:Gfg1234

Welcome!

Hello, Gfg1234, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 15:14, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hello, Gfg1234. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must 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 WP:PAID).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies.

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

Comments and requests

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps – disclosure, and a form of peer review.

Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you must do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first step. While you need not reveal your identity (anonymity is strictly protected by our outing policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Wacław Struszyński, either directly, or indirectly through a third party (e.g. a PR agency or the like)? You can answer however you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, please disclose it.
Peer review – After you respond, we can discuss the peer review process, if appropriate. Please reply below, to keep the discussion in one place.

Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 21:26, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

cut and pasted to here, to keep the discussion in one place. comment was originally left at Mathglot's TP in this diff Jytdog (talk) 15:13, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Mathglot,

Thank you for your interest in my attempt to create a Wikipedia page on behalf of Waclaw Struszynski.

In response to your disclosure request, I worked with Struszynski at the Marconi Company about 50 years ago, but I have had no contact with him since then. Also, at that time I had no knowledge of his wartime work on seaborne HF direction finding, and became aware of this only when the IEE News published his obituary in 1980.

More recently, I have had an interest in the technical side of his wartime work, and in the effectiveness of this in the Battle of the Atlantic, and have sought references of integrity. Also, with some effort, I recently managed to locate and contact the daughter of Struszynski, to simply request a photograph of her father.

Yours sincerely,

Geoffrey Gott

Emeritus Professor

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

University of Manchester

Gfg1234 (talk) 18:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gfg1234 - I work on conflict of interest issues a lot, and Mathglot asked for help learning how to talk about COI matters with editors in general, and in this interaction in particular, and invited others to simply enter the discussion. Sorry if this is confusing, but i would like to finish walking through this process with you.

First thing, is using talk pages. Your remarks above of the first time you have used a talk page here. Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And you already have this down.. but we also "sign" by typing four tildas after the comment. These two things together -- threading and signing -- are how somebody reading the discussion later, knows who said what to whom. I'll reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 15:18, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so Mathglot didn't explain what raised the COI concern. Looking at your edits, your work on the Struszyński has clearly been a labor of love, and unfortunately for Wikipedia this comes through in your editing, which is promotional. In this edit Mathglot removed overly praising language; and in this edit Mathglot removed unsourced editorializing: "It is regrettable that his wartime achievement is not sufficiently recognised, particularly as Churchill stated that “…the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”

When someone edits this way (or its exact opposite, writing negative things in this fashion), we call it "advocacy", and it is generally for one of two reasons: they have some direct external interest in or connection with the subject (a COI), or they are a "fan" (or "hater") of the subject (simple advocacy).

Based on your answer above, there is no significant COI (knowing somebody 50 years ago is not a big deal) but it is clear that you very much admire this person and want other people to as well.

That is just something that we ask you to be mindful of as you work. You might find the essay, WP:Advocacy and WP:SPA helpful. Please also keep in mind the policies WP:PROMO and neutral point of view ("NPOV").

The NPOV policy is really essential here, and I want to talk about it a bit, as it doesn't mean what most people intuit (that articles are somehow "fair" or "balanced") What it actually means is that articles reflect what reliable sources say. Everything here is based on sources -- our mission is to provide the public with articles that summarize "accepted knowledge", working a community of pseudonymous editors who have no personal authority (!), and the only way that is possible, is if sources are authoritative. Everything must come from authoritative sources. We follow them, and summarize them. That is how this place works. That is the heart of the NPOV policy.

NPOV also means that we don't write praising or damning things, unless those things are clearly described in reliable sources. Often people who are "fans" trip up in their use of adjectives - they want the subject to appear great so they use lots of adjectives like "unique" or "exceptional" and the like. If you try writing using no adjectives at all (!), in simple, plain English, it will help keep your feelings out of it. You can go back and put them in as needed in subsequent rounds.

That was a lot for me to write and for you to read. If you like, I will leave you with User:Jytdog/How, which is an as-brief-as-I-could-make-it orientation to what Wikipedia is and how it works. Please have a look if you like.

Happy to talk if you have any questions. Jytdog (talk) 15:35, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]