User talk:Tigerflier

Tiger Aircraft

I have restored the referenced content about the purchase price of True Flight that you deleted twice. Please don't delete relevant text that is properly referenced. Deleting content like this can be mistaken for vandalism and result in a ban. Some editors will also assume that you are working for the company in question and thus in an editing conflict of interest. If you do work for True Flight or are otherwise in a conflict of interest then please make that known on the article talk page and post any changes you would like to see on the talk page so that editors who are not in a COI can judge whether to make the changes or not. That procedure is all explained in WP:COI

I have also tagged your new paragraph on the display at Sun 'n Fun. Under Wikipedia policy you must have a reference cited to verify these statements, otherwise they constitute original research which is not allowed in Wikipedia. Essentially everything stated of a factual or opinion nature (in other words not just copyediting) needs to be supported by references. If you want to see why this is important have a look at this CBC article. - Ahunt (talk) 11:21, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Please stop removing factually accurate and properly referenced content from this article. For the third time I have restored content that you have deleted on the purchase of Tiger Aircraft by True Flight. I can only assume that you have a Conflict of Interest and are somehow associated with True Flight and are trying to control how their story is presented in Wikipedia. If I am not correct in this assumption then please feel free to explain why you keep deleting this information. - Ahunt (talk) 11:16, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Please stop removing information that has a citation without discussion as this could be considered vandalism. If you have a reason to believe that the information is wrong or misleading then please discuss it on the articles talk page. Please note also the contents of conflict of interest guideline and note that accounts that appear, based on their edit history, to exist for the sole or primary purpose of promoting a person, company, product, service, or organization in apparent violation of Conflict of interest may be blocked. MilborneOne (talk)

Please excuse my ignorance here - I am fumbling my way through this wiki stuff. I is not my desire to remove factually accurate information. I am attempting to remove factually inaccurate information. Being sourced does not make it true. I may indeed have a conflict of interest here (because I am affiliated with the company and know the whole story) but the posted information is incorrect, harmful and from my point of view malicious. It appears that Russ Niles, whose article is quoted, took his information from an article in the Martinsburg Journal that only covered part of the deal and was misleading. As to the Sun n Fun comments I added, I have not figured out how to add a reference but You can find all of that information on the AYA.org web site. I am not trying to spin anything - I just want to avoid half truths masquerading as the whole story. I really don't understand how or why the comments of someone writing who is not privy to the whole story can have precidence over the information provided by those who actually know. It is very frustrating! Thanks and again, please excuse my fumbling around. I'm learning though, I hope! Tigerflier (talk) 03:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for finally communicating on this issue. Sorry about the last edit here, I missed your note here.

The key thing is that you are affiliated with the company, which puts you in a conflict of interest on how the information in the article is presented. There are many articles on Wikipedia where company people are hired to make sure that Wikipedia presents the company in the most favourable light. This never succeeds and results in that often becoming part of the article itself, which casts the company in an even less-favourable light than if they hadn't tried to intervene in the first place. Please read COI editors. The best approach is to follow the guidelines and post changes you would like to see on the article's talk page for discussion by other editors, who will then decide to include the information or not. As the article says:

"An editor with a conflict of interest who wishes to suggest substantive changes to an article should use that article's talk page. When making a request please consider disclosing your conflict of interest to avoid misunderstanding."

AvWeb is generally considered a reliable media source of information. Naturally that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes in reporting news. The key thing here is that Wikipedia uses information that is verifiable, as that policy says:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed."

If you have information that contradicts the information from AvWeb then that is great, but you need to show where it is published in a publicly-accessible place so the article can be corrected. Having non-published material that is not-verifiable isn't really of much value in writing an encyclopedia article. Perhaps the actual purchase pricing information could be published on the company website in a press release to correct the media information already out there.

The information on the display at Sun 'n Fun was actually referenced by me in a previous edit (I found the story and formatted a ref for it), but another editor thought it was not notable and so cut it out during a fairly major rewrite of that section. having seen his rewrite, I agree that it is not that notable. As to how to write references have a look at Wikipedia:Citing sources.

I hope this all helps. Engaging in edit warring with other editors is not constructive. It is better, now that your situation is clearer, to discuss problems with the article on the talk page. - Ahunt (talk) 10:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to answer your other question. In cases where company staff edit an article on the company to control content there, they often find themselves blocked by Administrators as a result. The common next step is to create a new account or multiple new accounts to continue editing the article. These new accounts are called sockpuppets. As that article outlines, sockpuppets have been a problem on Wikipedia, but most of the tactics are well-documented. With few exceptions, sockpuppeting is not allowed in Wikipedia. It is really better to put all the cards on the table and edit in a straightforward manner.

In the interests of disclosure, I am an aviation writer and am actually a fan of the AA-1 and AA-5. I owned an AA-1 Yankee from 2004-07 and was a member of AYA during that period as well and wrote articles for The Star. I have worked on this and other articles on the Grummans and the companies that have built them because I like the aircraft a lot. Despite the challenging economic circumstances to start up an aircraft manufacturing operation in 2008, I hope TF succeeds. - Ahunt (talk) 11:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply from Tigerflier, I think Ahunt has summarised the situation correctly but just to note if you think the information is a bit iffy and you can find a source to disprove it we can reach a consensus on the talk page to change. You just have to appreciate that encounters with users editing their company articles to remove factual information is not that uncommon. But as AHunt says he is a bit of an AA fan and only wants to do right and present verifiable information. One of the main problems is the difference between knowing it is wrong and proving it - the documents or sources do not have to be on the internet just in the public domain. If you have any questions or need help then please ask. MilborneOne (talk) 12:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand but the price mentioned is not accurate or pertinent to the article about Tiger Aircraft. It is harmful to TF. Picture this. Let's say you made a deal to buy land to develop - for $30,000 cash plus a commitment to spend $300,000 to remove the leaking fuel tanks buried there and $100,000 to clean up the site. The public record only picks up the $30,000. Our local friendly reporter goes to the court house and sees that you paid $30,000 for the land and prints it. Knowing you actually spent $430,000 to purchase the land, do you respond? Would you take out an ad to try to correct the situation or just laugh it off and hope it is not repeated? Then, unfortunately, someone reads that and posts it on the web. How would that affect you ability to develop the land. Anyone you approach to buy into your projcet says but it's only worth $30,000 - I saw it on Wiki. Not good. Russ is a good guy and I'm sure he means no harm but it is harmful nonetheless and is not pertinent to understanding the fate of Tiger Aircraft. It may look sensational but it is not pertinent. I would suggest that the Sun n fun reference is pertinent because the wiki page stated that there had been no furhter information from TF since 11-07 when TF had, in fact, participated in SNF and given a briefing to the AYA and has been published in their magazine The STAR and on their web site. Actually, I'm not sure that either is appropriate for an article about Tiger Aircraft. Sorry I took so long to communicate - what seems simple to you has taken me hours to figure out and I'm still pretty unsure where we are actually talking and if it is open to the world. This is a dangerous place. Scary. Tigerflier (talk) 13:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice to hear from you. Yes this page is open to the whole internet to read, that is rather how Wikipedia works, through collaboration from potentially all internet users. That is why at least one study found Wikipedia as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica, the large numbers of people working on it makes it work, so it has to be open.

Some people do find Wikipedia scary to contribute to because everything any user does or says is available in the article and user page archives permanently for anyone to go and check. For most of us who contribute we see that as one of the greatest strengths of Wikipedia, in that there is total transparency. As long as everything written is properly sourced and cited, then it shouldn't be a problem creating accurate articles that the editors of the page are happy to stand behind.

I understand your point about how much was paid for the company. I believe it is relevant to an article on Tiger Aircraft, if the information is available, how much it sold for. It shows how well the company was run in the past and how much of it was left when it was sold. It is probably even more relevant in the case of this company when the former president of Tiger Aircraft was fired by the board for trying to sell the company out from under them. In this case the amount quoted b AvWeb seems quite low, which, if it is accurate, would be an important part of the story of Tiger Aircraft.

Keep in mind that while the number of $925,000 is cited here, it is very easy to find on AvWeb, which is the original source. Wikipedia forbids original research, so only information from other sources should be found in articles here. A quick search finds that that same information is also available on The Aviation Forum, Aero-News, [EAA Chapter 797 newsletter and even AOPA Sweden. So the problem isn't that Wikipedia is citing this number, but that so many web sources, most of which are fairly reliable are. Even if the number was removed from this article, anyone who cares can find it all over the internet. From a company point-of-view if the public availability of this number is bad for business then I don't see that tracking down all references to it and asking people to remove it will be successful.

It is certainly not my place to give TF advice, but the company will have to decide if they want to issue some information on this subject or ignore it and leave the multiple internet sources to stand as the last word.

At this point the media reports are all we have to go on on this aspect of the story. As MilborneOne mentioned above, if there is another publicly available source of information that indicates that the AvWeb report is incorrect then we can evaluate the two sources and amend the article accordingly. In the case of doubt it is likely that the article could refer to both claims and indicate that there is disagreement. What we have is a usually-reliable media report saying one thing and one fairly anonymous Wikipedia editor who is somehow affiliated with the company saying another. Wikipedia is solely built on verifiable information. If the AvWeb report is wrong then we need something verifiable that says otherwise. - Ahunt (talk) 15:34, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

How funny - you just made my point about why the price is irrelevent. The price shows nothing about how the company was run or what was left. There was nearly $3mm in new aircraft parts alone and $367,163.66 cash in the bank not to mention $30mm+ in aircraft manufacturing equipment. They had deposits for new aircraft and the people to build them. There is far more to this than I could begin to explain here. The price more closely speaks to how poorly the sale of the company was handled - the article leads the reader to the conclusion you reached - thus my frustration.

One other point. The President of Tiger did not try to sell the company out from under the board. He acted in what he thought was in the best interest of all involved. I have seen the internal docs. He was in fact trying to preserve the jobs of his employees, many family bread winners, and prevent the intentional bankruptcy of a solvent company resulting in losses to creditors and vendors. He gained nothin in the deal. The board would have been properly compensated - instead they got nothing. Doesn't make any sense unless you know Taiwanese politics. Be careful - you just don't know enough to be posting assumptions. say. When I asked Mr. Criss why he allowed the false stories to go unchecked he said "What am I going to do? Fight them in the media?" I'm starting to see his point.

Total transparancy would include editors revealing themselves and being accountable for perpetuation misimformation. Nothing personal but it is amazing how wrong the entire article is and how wrong the media is about what actually transpired at Tiger Aircraft. For example, Tiger Aircraft never owned the type certificate to the GA-7 Cougar. Socata bought it in 1995 and shipped everything to France before Tiger existed. Innocent enough but it is bad that the misimformation is being propagated. Surely you are savvy enough to realize that all those sources who ran the wrong information likely got it from the same inaccurate source and the further down the line it goes, the less accurate it becomes. I do not see them documenting where they got the information. The fact that something wrong is repeated 100 times doesn't make it right - it just causes uninformed people to believe it. That leads to good people being hurt. I am shocked that wiki doesn't care if it is true - only that it is documented. There should be a disclaimer at the top of every article stating that. Maybe there is. I wish we could have a real conversation - I type way too slow to ever get anywhere with a keyboard :-)Tigerflier (talk) 17:57, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I am as keen as you to get the story right on this subject, even if it contradicts the media reports (actually especially if it does ;), but that takes sources that anyone can double-check.

Wikipedia can never be better than its sources are, as it isn't supposed to contain any new information. At best it collects together all the publicly-available existing information, which is then written into a coherent form by a team of editors and that should result in a good article (best case). The worst case is that it collects together some, but not all, information and it gets written by only a few editors of modest skills.

It doesn't really help correct the article to indicate that there is non-public information that could be used to improve the article, but that it can't be made public and therefore the solution is that the article should say nothing on the subject.

Apparently you have the information to make this article more accurate, what can be done to make that information publicly available, so this article can be better? - Ahunt (talk) 18:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I mean no disrespect - I am trying to learn my way through a new world here. Thank you for your insights. Tigerflier (talk) 20:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

No that was all very positive and helpful. Have a look at the article now and see what you think. - Ahunt (talk) 20:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks very good. Thank you for your direction and help. Maybe I'll eventually get the hang of this.Tigerflier (talk) 00:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully - it is a bit of an art in a way! Here is a suggestion that will avoid you having to worry about it. Whenever you have any newly published info (such as a new press release that has been posted on the TF website, or an article you know about elsewhere, such as on AYA) you can just post a link to it on the Talk:Tiger Aircraft page or even here and I will pick it up and convert it to an entry and reference.

As I noted on the talk page, once TF hits a notable milestone, such as a production certificate that I will move the TF info to its own new page True Flight Aerospace (which is currently a redirect to Tiger Aircraft) - Ahunt (talk) 00:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)