User talk:Peter Graham White

50 years of watching Formula One. Many decades of participation in motorsport. Total commitment to the truth. Only objective factual content posted on Wikepedia. For opinion and speculation you would have to contact me in person...(Peter Graham White (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC))

Ron Dennis edits

Hi. I object in the strongest possible terms to your edit summary "Sadly Mark88 has some sort of commercial axe to grind here." It is against the fundamental Wikipedia principle of assume good faith. It's none of your business, but for the record I am a student of Economics & Politics who works for a major retailer living in Belfast with no personal, academic or commercial relationship with McLaren Group, Mercedes-Benz or any other related companies -- including employees (Dennis or other).

On the general point - when you add material, the burden of proof is on you to provide references to back it up.

Ideally I'd appreciate an apology for the unfounded accusation which stands in the edit summary; failing that please at least refrain from such personal attacks in future. Thank you. Mark83 (talk) 23:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I regret that my speculations about Mark83 were made publicly but make no unconditional apology

Dear Mark83, my suggestion that you may have a commercial interest in maintaining the entry on Ron Dennis is certainly unverifiable. It was merely an opinion based upon the speed with which my own easily verifiable modification was removed from what I regard as a generally correct summary of Ron's motosport career weakened by hagiographic elements and expressions of unverifiable opinion that attempt to diminish the doubts about his honesty that must occur to the objective observer after the events last year. I know little about Wikipedia but I often use it myself. I see that you are an administrator. I would have expected you to have attempted to trace the source materials behind my little modification yourself. It is possible that my opinion about your motives is wrong. It is possible that you are merely intellectually lazy. Or I may be wrong about that too. Whatever the reason behind your intervention it has certainly been a waste of my time. The comments I want to add are attributable to the FIA president, Max Mosley, and are recorded in the public domain. I will be adding the references to my observation as soon as I work out how to do this. In the meantime, it is naturally of the greatest importance to know the age, background, employer, and qualification within the area of comment, of busy administrators like yourself. Good faith cannot be freely assumed especially when contributors use pseudonyms and cannot be contacted directly. Based on your lack of interest in the source of my own additions, and the speed with which you have removed them, a good nickname for you could be "Ron's guard-dog". I feel disinclined to offer any apology to a pseudonym, though I thank you for such a polite and measured response. But I feel very strongly that you should not have been so hasty to delete additional material which is factual, verifiable although I have not yet added the references, and which adds an important insight into Ron Dennis which would benefit anyone who uses this entry to learn about the man and his career. It is the haste of your intervention, and the lack of curiosity it displays, that has triggered my suspicions. Peter Graham White (talk) 14:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Now I Do Apologise Unconditionally

Dear Mark83, I now believe that I really do owe you an apology and I have only my own lack of knowledge of the Wikipedia rules to excuse this lapse. Having re-read your comment when you removed my addition "All true I believe, but citations needed" I realise that you do seem to have been completely fair to me. I thought at the time that the "All true I believe" referred to the original text rather than to my revision. I now see that you were saying that you believed that my modification was true, but that it needed citations before it could be allowed to remain in place. My suspicions about your motives were aroused when I saw that you had intervened in postings about BAE systems because this is a company with various indirect links to the McLaren team. Many of the present management were former BAE employees, for example. I completely withdraw my earlier comments and will take pains to avoid personal remarks in any future contibutions to Wikipedia.

I have now added the citations needed to justify my addition to the entry on Ron Dennis. I fully accept that these rules are needed (though I still wonder why so much unsupported opinion has been allowed to appear in this article in the first place. Best wishes Peter Graham White (talk) 16:33, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for the apology. You don't have to apologise for your lack of knowledge about Wikipedia rules however, it takes time. As you say I recognised your edit to be "all true I believe" - perhaps I could have explained myself better though.

As I mentioned on the Ron Dennis talk page, I agree that other information that is unverifiable should be removed - complementary or not. I have to hold my hands up and agree that a lot of unsourced material has got through - however if I remember right I only put Ron Dennis on my watchlist when it was suffering a lot of vandalism when Alonso 'parted company' with McLaren.

Just a note about the BAE Systems angle - I don't have any links with BAE either and can say as categorically as I did about McLaren - not personal, academic or commercial - nor am I a shareholder. I just have a keen interest in aviation/engineering/politics (all BAE-related) and have enjoyed playing a major part in transforming the BAE Systems article from a short few sentences to a Featured Article. I think my neutral point of view credentials are on display in this regard - the BAE article doesn't pull its punches about BAE's poor project management at times and the controversies that surround the company.

I consider this settled (i.e. let's move on & no hard feelings). Best regards. Mark83 (talk) 21:15, 20 August 2008 (UTC)