User talk:Facsenator
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Work on Mark W. Rocha[edit]
First off, let me thank you for bringing your energy to the Mark W. Rocha and PCC articles, and for trying to keep them up to date. You appear to be a new editor, and it's always good to have new folks on board. You may have seen me undoing or altering a lot of your edits, and you may have some suspicion that I am trying to stop your overall effort or give some special protection to Mr. Rocha... but if you look at the history of that article, you'll find that pretty clearly not to be the case. However, we have certain guidelines at Wikipedia, and those become particularly important when dealing with a biography of a living person (what we call around here a BLP); you'll find those guidelines at WP:BLP. I'm about to do some work on the last couple of days of your edits on Rocha, and I'l be trying to explain those edits here, to help steer you toward things that won't be undone by me or other editors addressing the same concerns.
- "Within that year, faculty discord with him as president ensued." That statement is sourced to a video recording of an Academic Senate meeting. Unfortunately, a recording like that is not what we would consider a reliable source. At best, the recording will show that someone at the meeting said that discord had ensued, but someone merely saying something doesn't make that reliable. If some third-party source that had a reputation for reliability had said that (say, a newspaper article, not an op-ed), then that would be sufficient sourcing.
- You switched the source on the votes of no confidence from a Star News article to a page listing coverage. A list of coverage doesn't actually have that information; the Star News article does, and is a reliable source, so I'm switching back. Similarly, you linked to a list of articles at the http://takebackpcc.wordpress.com/ site.
- You link some of the text to documents at the http://takebackpcc.files.wordpress.com/ website. This runs into a few problems. One is that as a rule, we do not link sections of the body text of the article to external documents; many articles have an External Links section at the bottom, which is the appropriate place for such links. Another is that the Take Back PCC site does not appear to belong to the copyright holder in the document, which means that the document on their site would be a copyright violation, and material that violates copyright is one of the things on our list of things we don't provide external links to. And finally, the Take Back PCC site is neither the primary source for this material nor some source with a long-established history of reliability. This is not in any way to assume that they are dishonest, but you can certainly see how someone could put a fake document on their own website.
- The statement "Rocha announced his retirement from Pasadena City College in August 2014, following a failed attempt to take on the presidency of Kingsborough Community College in New York and following continued tensions at Pasadena City College" is an example of what we call synthesis, taking piece of information from two separate sources and putting them together to create an implication. The LA Times article used as source does not link the tensions to his resignation (nor could it, as it predates the resignation). By putting together two things like this, we are creating an implication of their linkage. I understand that in this case it seems like a very small leap at best, but I'm sure how you could think of examples that would make this synthesis guideline necessary ("Shortly after the bank was robbed, Gertler was cited bicycling away from the city at furious speed" could be the statement of two reliably-reported events, but linking them creates an implication.) We should not be appearing to invent such linkages. (Having said that, I would not be surprised if you could find an article on the resignation that cites the tensions, which would be appropriate sourcing for this statement. But - particularly because this is a BLP - this statement should not be there without the appropriate source.)
- "Although initially denied to the press by the PCC Board of Trustees, Rocha got over $400,000 for his legal fees and for his salary through to early 2016." This is a well-sourced edition, but there is a small adjustment needed. The article referred to potential legal fees, which avoids the implication that he has definite legal fees. I'll add that qualifier to the sentence.
If you have any questions about this, need anything clarified, or have specific disagreements, please let me know. Or if there's anything in particular that you want help with. I'm hoping that you will continue taking this energy not just to these articles, but to any further articles of your interest! --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:36, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Possible conflict of interest[edit]
Hello, Facsenator. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.
All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.
If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:
- Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
- Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
- Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.
Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.
For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:44, 5 August 2015 (UTC)