User talk:Olehenriksen

Are you the human being Ole Henriksen, or somebody working for his company?

Welcome to Wikipedia. Because we have a policy against usernames that give the impression that the account represents a group, organization or website, your account has been blocked; you are welcome to create a new account with a username that represents only you. You should also read our conflict of interest guideline. If your username doesn't represent a group, organization or website, you may appeal this username block by adding the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} below this notice. Thank you.

--Orange Mike | Talk 20:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Olehenriksen (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

My name IS Ole Henriksen. I am not trying to impersonate anyone, and it's not my fault if someone else called Ole Henriksen is a celebrity or there is a company out there called Ole Henriksen. What should I do (short of changing my name)? If I change my account name, it seems you'll construe that as "evasion". You are not making this easy.

Accept reason:

I am happy to unblock your account. I see no reason why you should not have the name "Ole Henriksen", just because someone else of the same name has set up a company using the name. (In fact, even if you had been the owner of a company named after yourself, I personally don't think there would be any reason not to allow you to use it as your username.) The only reason I did not unblock you immediately is that you once indicated that you had tried to upload a logo for your company, and I thought it might help allay concerns raised by another administrator (not me) if you could confirm that this was a different company. You have now provided more than enough information, and I see no problem with unblocking you. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you really are named Ole Henriksen, then by my reading of the username policy there is no reason why you should not use that username. However, before I decide whether to unblock your account, are you willing to help clarify the issue by saying what company you have planned to edit for? JamesBWatson (talk) 12:51, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi James

Sorry if I am creating messages all over the place, but I am not at home with Wikipedia communications.

I am not impersonating anyone, but I am of course aware that there is both a celebrity and a company with the same name. And hundreds if not thousands of others; it's not an uncommon name for a Dane.

If I create another account or change the name of my current one, that seems to be construed as some kind of "evasion" attempt by Wikipedia, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On this occasion I was going to edit the "Origins" entry on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick because it is incorrect. I was there at the time and can tell it the way it was.

I don't know what kind of verification you will accept, but I can refer to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland

where I am listed as one of the co-founders of Borland back in the '80s. For more current roles I can refer to:

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=137671287&trk=tab_pro and http://www.bpod.biz/uk/contact.html

Kind regards, Ole Henriksen

I am sorry that you have been inconvenienced, and I hope that you will now be able to edit without further problems. In fact, you didn't need to worry about being accused of block evasion. While it is generally true that creating another account to avoid a block is considered unacceptable, in this case the blocking administrator had explicitly told you "you are welcome to create a new account with a username that represents only you", so there would have been no problem.
When editing about any subject to which you have a close personal connection, such as a company you work for, have worked for, own, etc etc, you should be very careful. There should be no problem with simple factual corrections or updates, but Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines strongly discourage any editing which could possibly be seen as controversial.
Wikipedia can be a frustrating and bewildering place for new users, with its (in my opinion) far too complex set of policies and guidelines. Do feel welcome to contact me on my talk page if you need any further help.
I used Borland programming tools (particularly Delphi) for many years, so perhaps I can take this opportunity to thank you. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks James. I hope I am getting better at communicating the way I should.

I can confirm that the logo I tried to upload some time ago was not for the company Ole Henriksen. For reasons I didn't understand the entries I tried to create at the time, including on myself as a co-founder of Borland, were rejected, so I gave up.

I accept what you say about conflicts of interest, but if an entry is wrong, should it not be corrected even if by a person who was there and knows what happened, and even if that could be (mis)construed as a conflict of interest? I have cleared my entry with others who knew what happened at the time (Niels Jensen and Mogens Glad), but I don't know how to make this verification clear to Wikipedia.

Thanks for your kind comments on Borland. I was lucky to be part of something very exiting for a number of years back then, and if only for Borland's many fans, I think its legacy as reflected on Wikipedia ought to be as close to reality as possible. I am not trying to promote myself - if I wanted that I had done it long ago :-)

Regards, Ole — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olehenriksen (talk • contribs) 14:12, 16 January 2014‎

As I said, there should be no "conflict of interest" problem with simple factual corrections and updates. Unfortunately, though, we get enormous numbers of people coming here to edit in non-neutral ways, such as using Wikipedia for promotion, suppressing information that reflects badly on their own businesses, themselves, or whatever. This can be done in many ways, from simple biased choice of phrasing to outright lies. Because of this, a lot of Wikipedia editors get very distrustful of anything that looks like insider-editing. My advice is that if you have any unambiguous correction of facts, which cannot reasonably be seen as controversial or questionable, then go ahead and do it. However, if you have any change to make to an article where you think someone may reasonably think there is a conflict of interest problem (even if you think that they would be mistaken) then ask for an independent editor's help. One way to do that is to post {{edit request}}, followed by an explanation of what change you want, on the talk page of the article you want edited, such as Talk:Borland Sidekick. This will do two things: (1) put a prominent orange box on the page, asking for an independent editor to make the change, and (2) put the page in a list of pages waiting for editing help, and you can then hope that sooner or later someone who checks that list will come along and help. (You can see what the orange box looks like at Template:Request edit.) JamesBWatson (talk) 14:47, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, you say that "the entries [you] tried to create ... were rejected". Assuming that you tried to create them using this account, I am puzzled as to why there is no record of them. Normally, there is a record visible to administrators of all attempts to edit, even those which have been deleted or which never happened because they were blocked by an edit filter, but I can find nothing. However, it was a long time ago, and there's probably no point in worrying about it. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]