User talk:V.F. Dodge

Welcome

Hello V.F. Dodge. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely strongly discouraged from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.

Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at User:V.F. Dodge. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=V.F. Dodge|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message. --VViking_TalkEdits 19:47, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I have absolutely NO financial stake in GCLS which is a nonprofit organization. Rather, I’m a 75-year-old woman who has been a volunteer with the organization since 2007. I have never been paid for my GCLS volunteer efforts. If I had, I would have retired years earlier.

FYI, GCLS just received a major grant from a charitable foundation, and we want our pages to be updated. I in no way have, or will, derive financial benefit from that restricted grant.

Best, V.F. Dodge V.F. Dodge (talk) 19:56, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

You clearly have a conflict of interest with this organization; please see WP:DISCLOSE and act accordingly. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 20:55, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi there. As mentioned before, I have no conflict with the organization. I was experimenting with adding Lambda Literary as an external link and actually didn’t mean to publish it. I think you were correct in disputing the link. I tried to remove it all together but couldn’t figure out how. If you will remove it totally, I would be most appreciative. And I definitely will not experiment with adding any external links in the future. Thanks so much! V.F. Dodge (talk) 21:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m really sad that you deleted what I have spent the last two weeks creating. You win. I’m 75 years old and have no more capacity to fight the same battle over and over again with different people. I’ll leave it to others to fight those battles. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am, as I was actually beginning to feel like a part of the Wikipedia community. Good luck to all of you in the future. V.F.Dodge V.F. Dodge (talk) 21:30, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I get your point about data hoarding. I just wish someone had pointed that out to me eight versions ago and me not finding out by having it all deleted. Now, I’m too tired to figure out how to do it the right way. Clearly, conflating conference dates and locales by year with Trailblazer winners and Lee Lynch winners and speakers is WAY too much information. Too bad it can’t be restored. If it were, I just might expend the energy during the next couple of weeks to figure out how to make it right. Best, V.F. Dodge. V.F. Dodge (talk) 22:06, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

You do have a conflict of interest: you just said you are volunteering with them for 16 years, and you even speak in the plural. As for my edits, I don't "win", and it's not a battle you fought before if you say no one has ever suggested that such lists violate our guidelines. You could have looked at other organizational articles, particularly those categorized as WP:FA and WP:GA, and you would have seen that decent articles don't have those lists. There is no "right way" to do a list of conferences, because we don't list those, unless there are compelling reasons found in secondary sources. Speaking of which--I still don't see any secondary sources that discuss the organization in any depth, and that goes for the awards as well. It is entirely possible they exist, but you would probably need to look for them not in the newspapers but in scholarly journals in the field. I would start with JSTOR, but that is just me.

Anyway, you need to declare your COI properly or I will have to block you from editing the article directly, and you will have to negotiate article changes via the talk page--but all of that is explained in the linked policies and guidelines. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:31, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

As I said, it makes no difference to me. I’m finished trying to get this done. It is now up to others. I have absolutely no interest in continuing this unpleasant experience. You are welcome. V.F. Dodge (talk) 17:26, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Mirrors

Thanks for contributing to the article Golden Crown Literary Society. However, one of Wikipedia's core policies is that material must be verifiable and attributed to reliable sources. You have recently used citations which copied, or mirrored, material from Wikipedia. This leads to a circular reference and is not acceptable. Most mirrors are clearly labeled as such, but some are in violation of our license and do not provide the correct attribution. Please help by adding alternate sources to the article you edited! If you need any help or clarification, you can look at Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia or ask at Wikipedia:New contributors' help page, or just ask me. Thank you. Sam Kuru (talk) 11:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Again, that section of the 'en-academic.com' site is copy of our article (from long ago) and clearly attributed as such. We obviously cannot source ourselves; please stop adding it. If this is confusing, please leave me a note, and I'd be happy to explain in more detail. Sam Kuru (talk) 12:24, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I think I understand. I’ll delete or provide another link soon. Thanks for the help,as I’m new at this. V.F. Dodge (talk) 12:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I now see you have removed them already. That’s good. I’ll try to find an original source and put that in. I can’t do that right now but will later when I get to my big computer. Just message me if you see anything else. Thanks! V.F. Dodge (talk) 12:33, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure which part of our conversation here or on my talk page lead you to think that re-adding the 'en-academic' source, as you did here, was acceptable. Just to be clear: do not use refences to known Wikipedia mirrors under any circumstances.

Additionally, please do not remove "citation needed" tags unless you're actually adding the requested sources. If you cannot find sources, then the material is likely unverifiable and should be removed instead. Thanks. Sam Kuru (talk) 11:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Kuru, thanks for the input and clarification. Let me discuss your second point first, as I can understand it more easily, then the second.

I will leave the citations needed indicator as I search for another source for the information. It came from a very early GCLS website posting archived on Wikipedia. I have looked for the information elsewhere via Google but no luck so far. Tomorrow I will get in touch with Lori L. Lake, one of the founders, who might be able to point me to a non-Wiki source you will except.

I would do that today, but I turned 75 this morning. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I don’t have a ready solution to the en-academic problem you discuss. I deleted the old reference, not because I was trying to trick the system, but because I thought I was responding to the issue. GCLS has updated and redesigned its website several times, which has nothing do with Wikipedia, so I thought the new link would work. Does this mean we can never update Wiki via a link to the website that has nothing to do with Wiki? If so, could members of the GCLS broad take some action to make this workable? Again, I am not a part of the GCLS governing body so doing this is strictly out of my hands. Please advise.

Best, V.F. Dodge V.F. Dodge (talk) 12:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Augh, no one replied with a happy birthday to you. I hope that it was a good one indeed! -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:42, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Kuru, I hope I got the citations right in the History section. I deleted the one for GCLS founders until I could look some more for a non-Wikipedia source. Thanks, V.F. Dodge V.F. Dodge (talk) 13:42, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

PS: I still have one more citation in the history section I’m crashing and have a lead. More later! V.F. Dodge (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Using (or not using) the minor edits check box

V.F.! I appreciate the energy with which you are working on Golden Crown Literary Society. Could you do me a favor and stop clicking that "minor edit" checkbox when you do? I realize you think that adding just a little information, or adding a source, or removing a bit or piece is minor, and perhaps on the big scheme of things it is, but under our guidelines (which you can see at WP:MINOR), none of them are minor. Thanks, Nat Gertler (talk) 03:59, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn’t realize I was creating that problem. From now on, should I check the “watch this page” box? I will be happy to do that, though I’m not exactly sure what it means. Again, thanks for the help. V.F. Dodge (talk) 04:14, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I read your link about what is a minor error and won’t make that mistake again. I guess I’m now to the point that all my changes are major. I guess that means always choosing the other box from now on. Thanks again. I have only been a Wiki user for a couple of weeks and obviously have a LOT to learn. V.F. Dodge (talk) 04:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

"Watch this page" is up to you. What that does is put the page you just edited on your "watchlist", a list of pages that you're interested in in monitoring. In a menu up at the very top of this page, you'll see an entry marked "Watchlist". Click that, and you'll find a list of the most recently edited pages on your watchlist. For you at this point, this isn't that important, because you're all about one page, and you always go directly there. But I'm hoping that you'll grow to being a more general Wikipedia editor. A long-timer like me, I have thousands of pages on my watchlist, and I can quickly see the 50 most recently edited pages on that list... so I can see pages that might have had imperfect edits done to them that need touching up, real problem edits that need undoing, and so forth.

It's on the watchlist where that minor edit mark comes into play. If I see that an edit is marked "minor" (there's a bold M on the list entry) and comes from an editor I know enough to trust their using the minor checkbox correctly, i don't need to double-check that edit. Some people have their watchlists set up so they won't even show minor edits. However, between new editors marking non-minor edits as minor out of lack of knowledge of what that means, and bad actors replacing the name of a former president with "Turdface McGee" or other vandalism and marking it as minor, there's a lot of mismarked stuff.

To sum up... you don't need to check either box, and probably shouldn't. And even if you end up using a watchlist, you only need to use the "watch this page" checkbox the first time you edit that page, and that page will stay on your watchlist until you actively take it off. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 12:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

That is very helpful to this novice. Thanks so much%! V.F. Dodge (talk) 12:45, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. You are a nice fellow. The other editor has run me off. Take care of yourself. I will forward you what I got from him and what I said. It really is too bad things have turned out like this. All the best to you! Actually, I don’t have you email address so I can’t forward our exchange. Hope you can see it from your self. Goodbye. V.F. Dodge (talk) 17:29, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 17

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Golden Crown Literary Society, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Sapphic. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 06:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 23:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)