User talk:Hexadisc

Welcome!

Hello, Hexadisc, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Maxamegalon2000 02:06, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I may be so bold, I think you're B.J. or someone very familiar with him. If you're willing to identify yourself as such, myself and fellow editors can be much more helpful in addressing your concerns with the article in question than you can be making what I'm afraid will be labeled vandalism. --Maxamegalon2000 02:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do I talk back to you, Max? Other than writing to myself like this? I would like to express some concerns about the article, in which much of the information is incorrect.

You had it right. This is your talk page, and you edited my talk page. Basically, the two guidelines are that you should sign your comments with two dashes (--) and four tildes (which I can't type out here, or it would show my user name), and to indent, you add a colon ( : ) to the beginning of your comment. Each colon indents another level. You can respond either here on your talk page or at mine. Welcome! --Maxamegalon2000 02:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct that I am BJ/someone familiar with him. What is the best way to correct inaccuracies in an article, as someone who is more familiar with the editing of the site --Hexadisc 02:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons says: Information supplied by the subject may be added to the article if:

It is relevant to the person's notability;
It is not contentious;
It is not unduly self-serving;
It does not involve claims about third parties, or about events not directly related to the subject;
There is no reasonable doubt that it was written by the subject.

From what I can tell, your biggest concerns are, understandably, about the Harvard election and the Logan Airport incident. What is currently in the article is well cited from reputable sources (if you look at the article's history, you'll find I pretty much wrote the entire article.) If you want to contest the truth of the sources, you should probably make some sort of statement at the article's talk page. From there, the other editors and I can see what changes are appropriate.

Here's the thing. It seems backwards, but Wikipedia is most concerned with verifiability, not truth. That is, even if what independent sources say is false, the fact that independent sources say it gives it precedence. If you have other sources that say something different, they can be used as well. I'm sorry if I cannot help you in this regard.

So, I recommend that you go to the talk page, introduce yourself as someone with firsthand information about the subject, express your concerns, and give the community some time to look at them. Beyond that, there are more drastic methods that involve calling the WikiMedia Foundation, though I don't think that will be necessary. As a means of verifying your familiarity with B.J., may I recommend you upload a photo for the article that you're willing to put into public domain?

Don't worry. You're by far the most courteous and friendly person I've seen a request like this from. --Maxamegalon2000 03:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel obligated to mention Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject) as well, though my recommendation still stands. In this situation, I think it will ultimately be the responsibility of regular editors like myself to work on this. --Maxamegalon2000 03:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information. I haven't submitted a "factual error" report yet, but some of the information in the original article is definitely and verifiably wrong - BJ did not graduate from high school in 1997. Other items seem to break the "neutrality" of Wikipedia - whatever insults Howie Carr might have written about BJ are neither relevant nor accurate, such as referring to someone whose mother has worked over 20 years as an elementary school teacher and two other jobs to put her children through school as "Richie Rich" --Hexadisc 01:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you'd like to make an edit that changes only the year of graduation, I'd let that stand; I think I can take your word on it. As for the Howie Carr commentary, as the editor who included that passage I must say I was very much on the fence about its inclusion. While the statements certainly express a POV, I would argue that in this situation Wikipedia is simply reporting what local reports said. What convinced me to mention it was that Howie Carr already has his own article; my logic was that if he's notable as a columnist and radio host, his opinions on the subject, which were the only ones I could find, may be relevant to this incident. Other editors may disagree with me, and I'd be happy to discuss it on the talk page.

That being said, and I've been thinking about this for a while, if you or anyone else can find a reliable and verifiable source that shows that Carr's opinions are not based on fact, such as B.J.'s upbringing and his parents' occupations, I would whole-heartedly recommend that those things be included. I've read reports that B.J.'s living conditions between graduation and The Amazing Race were less than comfortable, leading me to believe that Carr probably hadn't done his prepatory research. However, sometimes I have trouble determining how serious stories about B.J. are; I'm still not sure if there's really a TV show in the works, and I don't know what to think about the reported interest in a trip to outer space.

Another important point: I don't have any information besides the similar edit histories that suggest that you have created other accounts to edit the article, but if you have in face created what we call sock puppets, I have to ask that they not be used at the article again. Again, I don't have any evidence besides similar edits being made, but if you have more than one account that you're using on the article to make it seem like there's more than one editor making these revisions, it has to stop. I'm sorry I have to sound accusatory, but at Wikipedia we take this very seriously.

Also, I think Tyler MacNiven may have been editing his article last week, and B.J.'s today. The IP address is from San Francisco, and the edits to Tyler's article suggest that the user has some inside knowledge. If you have any information about this anonymous user, please encourage him to create a account. I was unhappy with the way I presented myself at his talk page, and I hope I didn't scare him away. If I'm way off here, never mind.

Again, I hope we can address your concerns about B.J.'s article. The article's talk page, Wikipedia:Village Pump, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons are great resources for this sort of thing. I think we can have an article that satisfies both parties. --Maxamegalon2000 02:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have only one account - no "sock puppets" - but I have been in email contact with a few people with similar objections to the original article, who have reposted the revisions that I made, because they are more upset about it than I am. I warned them about getting into a revision war, but I can understand that to some it seems the easiest way to solve the problem of inaccuracies. Regarding Carr; while he may already have his own article, I do not see how that makes his baseless POV relevant to a biographical article on someone else -- Hexadisc 08:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your concerns about the Carr quote seem reasonable, and I will be happy to discuss them and your other concerns further on the article's talk page. I also appreciate your restraint about a revision war, and am very glad that you are willing to discuss your concerns with us. --Maxamegalon2000 21:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you'll permit me to insinuate myself into this discussion; I followed Max's WP:AN/I query thither. With respect to Carr, btw, I think the exclusion of the information to be correct, but I base my conclusion on grounds wholly distinct from those on which Max bases his, viz., that the fact of Carr's opinion is simply not notable. The point-of-view of a newspaper columnist, though, even about an issue of which he/she is ignorant, should not be necessarily or cursorily excluded (see, for example, our general disfavoring of the removal of the fact of Charlie Sheen's suggestion that something other than an airliner hit the Pentagon on 11 September; even as Sheen has no factual basis on which to rest his case, his comments are notable in view of his notability [Carr, similarly, is notable]); here, though, the relative non-notability of the incident about which Carr writes disposes the question for me. In any event, I've offered more thoughts at Talk:B.J. Averell (recapitulating those thoughts, I suggest that, for several reasons, the conflation of the work of Max and of you that is extant seems fair and fine). Joe 06:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict): Came here from a respective posting at the administrator's incident noticeboard, I have to comment that indeed, this is a most uncommon case that you're willing to civilly discuss things; we normally just get disruptive users. Anyhow, I concur with Maxa, I'm glad you're willing to discuss this. Technically, anything sourced and verifiable should be included. However, I can see your concerns over the neutral point of view, and also agree. My take is that a compromise between your two revisions should be able to be reached. Both revisions should have things that stay in a compromise version, and both have things that are best left ommitted. Good luck in agreeing on a good version. NSL E _(T+C) at 06:13 UTC (2006-06-03)