User talk:Authorized2023

February 2023
Hello, Authorized2023. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Caryn James, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the request edit template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Conflict of interest);
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Spam);
 * do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. PritongKandule -✉️📝 16:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Please help me amend this page. It is about me, but I did not authorize or add this information and would like to delete extraneous, outdated and family informaiton, whcih Wikipedia seems to be preventing me from doing. I would also be happy to delete the entire page. I am very unhappy that I cannot control my own information at this point. Authorized2023 (talk) 17:51, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Caryn James, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use your sandbox for that. Thank you. ... disco spinster   talk  17:42, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Please stop. If you continue to blank out or remove portions of page content, templates, or other materials from Wikipedia without adequate explanation, as you did at Caryn James, you may be blocked from editing. Sheep (talk • he/him) 17:43, 15 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I am trying to amend a page about me, which someone unknown added information to. The deletions are mine, about my own information. Can you please help? Thank you. Authorized2023 (talk) 17:53, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The information is backed up by reliable sources, and in some cases it's information that the author published. What is the reason for the deletion? ... disco spinster   talk  18:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of the information was NOT published by me, including the birth name and college information. And my family would like their information out,which is a legitimate change. There is also incorrect information. I have, for example, never written for the LA Times; follow that link and you'll see that is not my name. Please allow me to edit or to remove the entire page. I don't know who added all this but much of it is intrusive and erroneous. Authorized2023 (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have removed that you have written for LA times, as that really wasn't your name. The response that you've received from other volunteers so far has only been an initial reaction to seemingly undesirable edits before we were able to form a good picture about what is going on. We have a policy for this situation: Biographies of living persons § Relationship between the subject, the article, and Wikipedia. We take your concerns seriously. Our policy tells us that we should make every effort to act with kindness toward the subjects of biographical material when the subjects arrive to express concern. While we will do so, please understand that acting on your wishes is not at all a straightforward thing for us because we are compelled to retain encyclopedic content under Wikipedia's fundamental principle that it benefits readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge – this includes biographies, including biographies of living people. So there are competing interests. But we can probably resolve the issue if we go over the specific portions of the article on its talk page. I suggest that you propose specific changes there in the form of "change x to y", "remove x" etc. with explanations for how the sources aren't "valid" (as you have been saying) etc. Despite your present dissatisfaction with the article, the type of information that is included does not make it seem like this is something so urgent that it can't be dealt with over the course of several days at least. We want to do what's right. Sincerely—Alalch E. 19:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Please tell me more about how Talk works. If that is a public forum, for example, won't I simply make the unwanted material more public by doing that? At the very least, can you replace "Caryn A. James" with "Caryn James"? I have never used the initial, the supposed Indiewire source for that never included the initial and it is a link that no longer leads anywhere. The same for "Caryn A. Fuoroli". I understand your policy but I think you are making this more cumbersome and difficult than it has to be. Removing my birth name should be a mater of privacy, not public consensus. And a Dean's List from a college paper does not seem like a valid source. Thank you.  Authorized2023 (talk) 20:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The talk page of the article is just like this page that we are talking on (which is a talk page to your user page [it hasn't been made]). Such talk pages are generally visible, and this page is already publicly accessible but it does not appear in Google searches. But nevermind that. Basically:In late October last year, an editor made this series of changes to your article whereby he obviously did a lot of digging to find the exact name of your parents (more exact than in your book), your birth name, college, your past work including some writings, and was able to deduce when you stopped using the birth name in your work. The added infromation is mostly or exclusively supported by primary sources, all or most of which seem fine individually; for example, the dean's list is an okay source that we have no reason to doubt (is it a forgery? no). But it isn't so easy to retrace his steps; he probably started with the mention of your parents and university, searched some of those genealogy sites, etc, and went back and forward in time to connect the dots. The added information is nice as it offers a more continuous biographical overview and the type of information delivered is encyclopedic in nature, but the sourcing for this part of your life is like a stack of cards: remove the primary references supporting your birth name and suddenly we don't know it's you who wrote in that and that publication in that and that year, etc. That makes it too close to original synthesis and does not reflect how we typically develop biographical articles. I have thought pretty hard and have decided to remove all of that. Sincerely —Alalch E. 21:39, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I know it took some effort to do that and I truly appreciate it. I just took a look and noticed a typo in the box that has my name, and don't see how to fix that. And can we plesae eliminate the middle inital, which is still there at the top? It's accurate but no one would ever look for me that way. Again, I am really grateful. Authorized2023 (talk) 21:45, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. —Alalch E. 21:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * One more question: is there any way to prevent whoever did this from adding everything back? WIth thanks again. Authorized2023 (talk) 14:43, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's fair to tell you – speaking of a possible technical method the application of which is also grounded in policy and common sense – in a case such as this, there is no such method to prevent someone from restoring an undesirable revision or adding new content to the same or similar effect. The specific, sole, editor that you are referring to made a lapse in judgement and did not uphold our best practices. If and when he sees that his contributions to this article have been undone, he will see the reason for that in the article's history, and he can be expected to show enough good judgement (to that very small degree which would be required) not to repeat the same mistake. I have the article on my watchlist now (one of the articles which I monitor for potentially bad changes) and probably a few more people do as well. The page doesn't see frequent changes, it is not heavily trafficked, and it's unlikely that subsequent editors could get the same mistaken idea about "improving" it as that editor. They might. Yet, among these subsequent editors there will be others who will recognize that an old issue has come up again and remedy it. It's a fluid thing but the actions that have been taken have constrained it to remain within acceptable bounds in the foreseeable future. And not to suddenly get all didactic – I want to give you a complete answer and there's no other way for me to do so – it's of critical importance to stay open-minded. People do stupid things on Wikipedia on an industrial scale. What that colleague did was innocently wrong-headed. He saw a typo, fixed it and then made himself busy with thinking up ways to add something that he felt was lacking in an article about a noteworthy creative professional with a long career ("there's got to be more" – an otherwise healthy impulse that usually leads editors in a constructive direction). That's all there is to it. Sincerely—Alalch E. 19:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for this. It is helpful. Authorized2023 (talk) 19:10, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I've pinged you as a first responder and administrator to offer a second opinion if you're so inclined. —Alalch E. 22:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with your actions and the reasoning. My main concern was that there wasn't much of an explanation for the removals in the first place. ... disco spinster   talk  22:52, 15 February 2023 (UTC)