User talk:Mainsouth

April 2009

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your recent edits to Charlie Pierce have been reverted as they could be seen to be defamatory or potentially libellous. Take a look at our welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Barry m (talk) 05:35, 19 April 2009 (UTC) Too funny, Barry my friend -- you are accusing me of writing defamatory things ABOUT MYSELF??? The same things I write about myself on MY OWN WEBSITE??? And let you pass half-informed posts from other contributors who think they know something about my life? Seems an odd way to try and make Wikipedia the most reliable source of information on the web Mainsouth (talk) 05:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)MainSouth, Charles P. Pierce[reply]

The recent edit you made to Charlie Pierce constitutes vandalism, and has been reverted. Please do not continue to remove content from articles without explanation. Thank you. - ℅ ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 06:01, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, please read WP:COI regarding subjects of articles editing their own articles. - ℅ ✰ALLST☆R✰ ^echo 06:05, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Charlie Pierce

You may find these Wiki guidelines about editing one's own biography helpful. Best regards, Chuckiesdad/Talk/Contribs 06:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am very happy to have someone do it competently. ("I heard him say it on the radio" is not competent.) I was happy to transfer my bio over from my own website -- a bio which has been cited in articles across the country. Somebody wants to dry it up, fine. But let's at least try to rely on actual facts. If you can't, then I'd just prefer to have my entry deleted. Charles Piece the female impersonator makes far more entertaining reading, anyway. Cheers, CPP —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mainsouth (talk • contribs)

(see my note, below)... Okay, I see it here: http://www.charlespierce.net/aboutPage. Unfortunately, per WP:SPS we probably can't directly use your website and per WP:COPYRIGHT we would have to paraphrase. So more likely we would be looking for a third party, neutral, reliable source... a news writer has the luxury and credentials to get to the source (we would call it primary sources and make their own judgment (with the editor's help and guidelines, accountability, fact checkers, etc) about the veracity and relevance. We don't have any of those luxuries so we have to use "secondary sources", i.e. find a newspaper, book, periodical article, etc., from a neutral source that seems trustworthy, and rely on their judgment. As a starting point, say, if the New York Times reports something as fact (in news coverage or analysis, as opposed to editorial, mode) we can mention the fact and support it with a citation to the New York Times. If your website, or a pundit, a detractor, a random youtube video, or your high school enemy's blog, says something, we just can't use it for most purposes. I think that's pretty close to how all encyclopedias work. Your article as it stands, alas, is not nearly up to those standards but that's the path it should follow. Please excuse the length and the crash course here - trying to be efficient. Anyway, maybe we can start with the facts in the bio and see for each if it's reprinted. Human interest details and color are usually hard to source and too informal / minor to add even if sourced, e.g. the part about the lawnmower. Let's hope we can't find any news articles about the suffering of the spouse. I may not have time tonight but in the next day or two I'll try to give it some attention.

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Charlie Pierce, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should 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;
participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and,
avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. --Avant-garde a clue-hexa Chord ² 06:25, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please don't panic. Please recognize that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that like any publication has its own style guidelines, procedures, etc. One of the big ones is that any content here has to be cited to a reliable source, and cannot simply be a person's self-published biography. Another big issue has to do with copyright, specifically that everything published here must be public domain or GPL licensed. Nobody is setting out to write a bad article. It takes some time to learn the ropes but there are a lot of good editors here who would be happy to work with you to fix any inaccuracies and other problems. Is there anything in particular about the article that is misleading? Also, please do be careful about asserting legal violations - by the WP:NLT policy, any direct legal threat against other editors or the project will result in immediate account deactivation. Because Wikipedia is not censored it is very rare that we would delete an article about a notable person such as yourself even at your request. However, there is another very strong policy, WP:BLP, by which we try very hard not to have any poorly sourced harmful content about people. I seriously doubt there is an issue we can't fix, but you have an objection to your coverage here that you can't work through via the normal process, there is a system WP:OTRS by which you can directly and privately contact some higher-ups who will look into things. Please use that only in extreme cases or a last resort, though. We normal volunteer editors are always around and we aim to please. Wikidemon (talk) 06:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, in general order:

Don't mention legal issues or you will get quickly bounced. Per WP:NLT.
Confirm your identity with OTRS, so we know you are who you claim to be. They are a confidential service and will give you a ticket number which you can use on your user page or here on your talk page. If you don't have that, you're just some random guy on the Internet.
If you want any part of your website to be copied over, change your own web pages to show them as licensed under either GFDL (much preferred) or CC-BY-SA (images and audio clips for now). Even if you prove who you are, the source you copy from has to equally show that it gives a free license if you want it to be more than a quotation in the article.
Don't edit your own article! Propose changes on the article talk page and let other people do it. Enough editors are watching now.
If you have really serious legal concerns, as mentioned by a few of us - go through OTRS, you will eventually meet up with some serious legal talent to answer you. Here and at the OTRS level too, we're volunteers and will just walk away if we're threatened. We don't do the "defamation and libel" thing in edit summaries - that's not legal notice at all, it's just a vague threat.
You're much better off to prove your identity at OTRS, release your website material to the public domain, and keep strictly on talk pages to ask for the changes you desire. Franamax (talk) 09:00, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]