User talk:RoxannaErickson

Hello, and some advice relating to Wikipedia's guideline on conflict of interest

Hello, Roxanna, and welcome to editing Wikipedia. I have received your thanks for my edit to the article Milton H. Erickson, and I am glad that it was appreciated. However, since it seems that you are personally related to Milton Erickson, I thought it might be as well to warn you that Wikipedia's guideline on conflict of interest is highly discouraging on editing about someone you have a personal connection to. I see no problem at all with the couple of edits you have made, but you should be aware of the possibility that someone may at some time object to your editing about Milton Erickson. The guideline is in place mainly because of experience of people editing in biases ways, either intentionally or unwittingly, which certainly doesn't apply to your editing so far. As far as I am concerned I think that as long as you are aware of the possibility of problems, and careful to avoid them, it should be fine, but there are other editors and administrators who take a more stringent interpretation of the conflict of interest guideline, and tend to be disapproving of any editing by an editor with a personal connection to the subject they are writing about, so it is as well to be cautious. Like most of not all Wikipedia policies and guidelines, the guideline on conflict of interest is in my opinion far longer and more complex than it needs to be, making it potentially confusing and intimidating for an editor with little experience of editing Wikipedia, but you may like to have at least a quick look at it, even if you don't study the whole thing in depth. Incidentally, when I first started editing Wikipedia I edited an article about a member of my family, without knowing that doing so was discouraged, so I am not in any way criticising you for doing the same; I am just warning you to be aware of the issue and to be careful to avoid problems. JBW (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2020 (UTC)