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Managing a conflict of interest

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Information icon Hello, Presklein. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page The Rice Thresher, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to 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 Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to see that you have a conflict of interest with this topic. Please refrain from editing the article directly (and especially from reverting recent edits that made it more neutral); you may propose edits on the talk page. Drmies (talk) 22:31, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Rice Thresher

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I've reverted your edits to The Rice Thresher because they are largely trivial/unencyclopedic and often referenced to poor sourcing like LinkedIn or primary/non-independent sourcing like the newspaper itself. The alumni section was almost entirely non-notable people, who should not be included in such lists. The "Sections" section is entirely trivial unencyclopedic information which belongs on the paper's website, not in an encyclopedia article. Same with the "Internal Awards" and "Editors in Chief" sections. Please don't revert without discussion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:34, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Premeditated Chaos, this is of interest to you too, I think. Copied from my talk:

Thank you for your comment about the changes on The Rice Thresher page. I appreciate the conflict of interest, and I am happy to follow the rules. The bulk of the information put on the site originally was a part of a history project for The Rice Thresher's 100th year anniversary. There is no attempt to advertise; only inform and memorialize the history of the paper, but I understand the COI exists nonetheless. I have read the rules you provided, and I will gladly propose changes in the Talk section. Since I was uninformed on the COI disclosure (my fault), and I am the source of the information on the page now, is there a means to provide that disclosure now that will follow the information going forward? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Presklein (talk • contribs) 23:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Rice Thresher, thanks. I understand how such projects go; very often, though, editors like PMC and me deal with the after effects of it. What needs to happen here is not that much, I think: first, you just need to formally disclose your COI, and it's not a big deal--see WP:DISCLOSE, and just put that userbox on your user page, that's the easiest, I think. Second, well, that's article writing: we need content verified by secondary sources, etc. I don't get the feeling that you're about to spam the hell out of Wikipedia, and so I wouldn't mind if you were to add content directly--as long as it is verified by secondary sources. If PMC feels differently, well, that's the way it is: you can propose edits on the talk page. OK? Drmies (talk) 01:25, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Understood, and thank you. I am well aware of the flak moderators and editors take, and I apologize for reversing the changes without ‘talking’ about it. I didn’t know the rules (again, my fault), and I suppose I had a knee-jerk reaction to everything disappearing after 5 years of only minor edits… still no excuse for not reading and knowing the rules. I will await Premeditated Chaos’ response before going down either path. I will definitely perform the COI disclosure, and thanks again to y’all for the work you do! Presklein (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Presklein - let's keep this conversation centered here rather than going across multiple talk pages. I appreciate that you're being receptive to our feedback here, it's certainly a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the reason we're so wary of conflict of interest editing is that it can cause issues even if the person with the COI is not strictly out to promote something or profit from it. It can cause conflict about sourcing, adherence to the neutral point of view, encyclopedic tone, and overly detailed content, and that's exactly what I saw (and removed) in this case.
To be honest, I'm not even sure that the paper itself meets our guidelines for notability of periodicals. The article's content has always been almost entirely sourced to The Rice Thresher itself, which is not suitable because the paper itself can't possibly be an independent indicator of its own importance. What we need to indicate notability for Wikipedia's purposes are (quoting from the notability guideline I just linked) "reliable sources which write significant commentary about the periodical". For example, if Texas Monthly wrote an article about TRT, or if there were a few pages about its history in a book about Rice University, that would be the kind of independent reliable coverage we're looking for. Anything that comes from a TRT source like a press release or a reprint of an article would not qualify, it has to be editorially independent about TRT.
Do you think you would be able to find some sources like that, given a bit of time? I'm not in any rush to do away with the article, but if it doesn't meet our sourcing requirements, I may seek consensus to merge it to the parent Rice University article. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:57, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the response, and apologies for not responding sooner. It has been a week. Anyway, I completely understand the comments, and I am happy to remove much of the detail. And, I definitely can find sources to back up information. Thanks for providing a little leeway on timing, as I will need to get my resource/sources out of storage later this month. I further appreciate the discussion about notability. I believe they had a discussion on that in 2007 before any information was put up, and it was determined then that it was notable. I realize times can and do change, and the decision is not eternal. Just wanted to point it out, as us Rice folks tend to have a little guy’s mentality on all this a la JFK’s speech at Rice Stadium to launch the space race… “Why does Rice play Texas?” Anyway, speaking of Texas, would it be okay to mirror The Daily Texan site and reload the high-level content in History, Awards, and Alumni? I can strip out a ton of info. from each, as it is in The Daily Texan, and then I can circle back around with a ton more cites? Or I can wait. I just would like to get the note removed that says the History section is unreadable and should have subheads, as the person who originally removed all the content removed the sub-heads as well. Please let me know, and thank you for the willingness to engage on the topic! Presklein (talk) 19:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At this point I'm most concerned about confirming the existence of independent reliable sources. Worrying about the content that might go in the article can come at a later date, since the content won't matter if the subject is determined not to be notable enough for a standalone article. I tried to look for sources on databases I have access to via the Wikipedia Library (including JSTOR and Newspapers.com) but didn't find anything substantial. I just want to confirm before you start making the effort to pull stuff out of storage - the sources you're talking about there are independent coverage of the newspaper by other media outlets, right? Stuff by the newspaper or the university can't be taken as an indication of notability since it wouldn't be independent of the subject.
I'm not seeing any formal deletion discussion from 2007. There is one from 2004, which resulted in a merge that was undone by someone else in 2007. Actually, I do see a talk page discussion from 2007, but it had only three participants each of whom only commented once, and the argument the last guy makes about university newspapers being inherently notable is not policy-based, to say the least - notability is not inherited. A talk page discussion from almost 15 years ago with minimal participation is definitely not going to matter given our modern standards, which are much more strict about requiring sourcing to show notability.
As for The Daily Texan, the sourcing on that article sucks too, although the fact that someone went to the trouble of writing a book about it is something. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:22, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it was admittedly a pretty weak discussion a while back. Yes, independent sources. Primarily the Houston Post due to their community focus as compared to the ultimately victorious Houston Chronicle. Two articles from 1916 and 1919 cover the first two paragraphs of the History section. I suppose I don’t have independent confirmation of circulation and current editor information, but I’m not sure many organizations would have that, especially since that information solely derives from the organization. Awards are confirmable in many cases from the organizations providing the awards and sometimes from peer publications. And ample sources about the notability of a number of alums, especially the Fab Five that founded Texas Monthly, long-serving former Texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby, Obama Press Secretary Josh Earnest, etc. I can pull many of the sources electronically, but I’ll grab my research out of storage to augment. Happy to provide the cites on the page and then discuss any potential content additions. Presklein (talk) 04:11, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you happen to know the exact dates of those Houston Post articles? Newspapers.com has the Post through the 50s, but I'm not seeing anything really in-depth about TRT. The site's search function is total garbage however, so it's very possible it's just not coming up. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

“Rice Institute to Have Permanent Publication.” Houston Post. December 10, 1915. [Page 7, just for reference.]

“Students Association Will Be Revived at Rice.” Houston Post. December 13, 1918. [Page 10, just for reference.]

Apologies for not having the precise dates and the correct years in my first comment. Was going on memory, and clearly I’m a year off in my head. Presklein (talk) 11:33, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Couple more…

“First Edition Out.” Houston Post. January 16, 1916. [Page 23, just for reference.] {To replace citation #1.}

“Eyes of Texas Will Be on 36 Rice Graduates.” Houston Post. May 21, 1916. [Page 22, just for reference.] {Additional source for 1st paragraph in history; redundant to prior article provided, though.} Presklein (talk) 23:00, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No worries re: dates. I also have an...approximate sort of memory so I know how that is :) Okay, on to the articles. I've made clippings to make it easier to refer back to them (and it's also easier to cite them using VisualEditor to autogenerate refs). These are a great illustration of the difference between references that have enough significant coverage of a topic to support a claim of notability for it, and refs are reliable but don't contain enough coverage to support notability.
The article titled "Rice Institute" source is of the first type - reliable and long enough to be significant coverage. "First Edition Out (pt 1)(pt 2)" is also significant coverage.
On the other hand, "Students Association" is reliable and independent, but its focus is on the association rather than the paper, so it's not significant coverage for the notability of the paper. "Eyes of Texas (pt 1)(pt 2)" is the same - it's about the first grad class, with a couple of sentences about the Thresher.
So far you have two articles from the same local newspaper, which is a good start, but insufficient on its own. Quoting the general notability guideline: "Multiple publications from the same author or organization are usually regarded as a single source for the purposes of establishing notability." So at AfD a strong argument could be made to count those two as only one source. Since the paper is local to the subject, I would also argue they don't indicate "significant attention by the world at large", which is required per WP:N.
What you need are more in-depth sources of the first type, preferably from publications that cover a wider range than just the Houston area. Sourcing to verify stuff like the alumni can come later. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Understood on the sourcing. Students Association was more about the creation of the blanket tax that lead to modern creation of the paper and validating that fact, but I am aware it is not about the paper directly. As for sources outside the City of Houston, we would have to look at text that was cut from the original post… those generally come about when the paper has done something exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. For example:

“His beat covers the globe.” The Miami Herald. July 22, 1990. [Page 52, just for reference.] {While the article is about a student journalist, the impetus for the article is about his experience being one of the 17 journalists – 12 from the States; 5 internationally – to be selected by the Thresher to serve on the Thresher staff to produce daily papers during the G7 Economic Summitt hosted by Rice in 1990.}

“Rice President Says Fired Campus Editor in Contempt.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. March 17, 1965. [Page 2, just for reference.] {One of a few articles that exist that deal with the tension between the school and the paper re: prior review.}

“Holocaust museum rejects donation from Rice for ad.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram. December 18, 1997. [Section B, Page 14, just for reference.] {I’m not sure I included this in the original text that was ultimately removed, but it should have been. I believe it was on the list of future edits before I had to abruptly pack everything into storage and move across the country. Such is life.}

Also, there are a number of lengthy articles in Texas Monthly talking about the founding of that publication, with information about the Rice influence. In the analysis above, these might not be significant due to length or totality of the article, but they do have significance in terms of impact on a major publication, even if it is regionally.:

“What I’ve learned.” Texas Monthly. March 23, 2015. {Paul Burka explains the founding of Texas Monthly wherein Paul Burka, Griffin Smith, Jr., Gregory Curtis, and William Broyles helped Michael R. Levy get the magazine off the ground and comprised a disproportionate amount of the early staff.}

“A Q&A with Bill Broyles.” June 30, 2011. {Again, just a comment, but provides direct link to how the Ten Best lists were formulated and the Thresher’s influence on the process.}

These are just the ones that popped into my head. There is also a letter from Storm Thurmond to then editor in chief Brady Tyson about civil rights. I believe it was covered, but do not recall where at the moment. I found the original letter with Thurmond’s signature and turned it over to Rice’s archives, but I do have a copy of it. Anyway, will continue to recompile electronically until I can get my research. If any of the above are deemed appropriate and/or let me know that I can add back some nominal content with these sources. Thanks again for this back and forth. I truly appreciate the time and attention you are giving to this. Presklein (talk) 14:24, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I don't find these new sources convincing for the purpose of supporting a claim to notability. The Fort Worth articles are the same level of local coverage. The Miami Herald one is about the journalist, not the Thresher, so it doesn't support a claim of notability for the paper. I wasn't able to access the Texas Monthly articles even on Archive.org but based on your description of them, I don't think they would support the paper's notability either, since the focus is largely on other things. A letter from Strom Thurmond, may he rot in hell, is not indicative of notability of the paper; coverage of this letter would only support notability of the paper if it discussed the paper in some detail. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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