User talk:CouplandSmith

Ways to improve Donald Smith (academic)
Hello, CouplandSmith,

Thank you for creating Donald Smith (academic).

I have tagged the page as having some issues to fix, as a part of our page curation process and note that:

"This page needs to cite sources."

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and begin it with. Remember to sign your reply with. For broader editing help, please visit the Teahouse.

Delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Whiteguru (talk) 00:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

May 2021
Thank you for contributing to the article Donald Smith (academic). However, please do not use unreliable sources such as blogs, your own website, websites and publications with a poor reputation for checking the facts or with no editorial oversight, expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions, as one of Wikipedia's core policies is that contributions must be verifiable through reliable sources, preferably using inline citations. If you require further assistance, please look at Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia, or ask at the Teahouse. Thank you. Kuru  (talk)  12:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Welcome!
Hello, CouplandSmith, and welcome to Wikipedia!&#32;Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article.&#32;Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * Best practices for editors with close associations
 * Plain and simple conflict of interest guide
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * Tutorial
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
 * Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! --Animalparty! (talk) 00:45, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

August 2021
Hello, I'm Materialscientist. I wanted to let you know that I reverted one of your recent contributions—specifically this edit to Donald Smith (academic)—because it did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Help desk. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 09:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi CouplandSmith! I noticed that you recently marked an edit as minor&#32;at Donald Smith (academic) that may not have been. "Minor edit" has a very specific definition on Wikipedia – it refers only to superficial edits that could never be the subject of a dispute, such as typo corrections or reverting obvious vandalism. Any edit that changes the meaning of an article is not a minor edit, even if it only concerns a single word. Please see Help:Minor edit for more information. Thank you. Kj cheetham (talk) 21:36, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Conflict of interest editing
Hello, CouplandSmith. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Donald Smith (academic), 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 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. Can you please clarify whether you have a connection to the subject of this article? Melcous (talk) 10:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Please do not continue to edit the article without responding to this concern. Melcous (talk) 12:16, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Stop removing maintenance templates when you do not understand the issues - and have not responded here.
Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to remove maintenance templates without resolving the problem that the template refers to, as you did at Donald Smith (academic), you may be blocked from editing. To spell it out very clearly, the issues are as follows:
 * 1) The article is an WP:ORPHAN - there are no links from other articles in the English wikipedia to it and this has not been addressed
 * 2) There are concerns about a conflict of interest - as noted above, your user name and your pattern of editing here suggests you have a connection to the subject of this article. You need to respond to this concern and disclose if you do have a connection. Continuing to make the same edits to the article without responding to the concerns of other editors could lead to you being blocked from editing. Melcous (talk) 23:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello mMterialscientist and Kj cheetham,

I thank you for your interest in my article on Donald Smith and for your help to approve it. I fully understand the importance of respecting the norms of accuracy, verifiability and "notoriety" that must be reflected by all Wiki articles, and I know that your task as editors is enormous and essential.

I took out the template, and explained why I did so, because I thought I had resolved the problems. But it would appear I have not, or at least have not explained the situation properly. Let’s resolve them.

This article has been on Wikipedia for about six months. Different editors have vastly improved it and I thank them for this. Now let’s look at the orphan and conflict of interest questions.

On the English version of Wikipedia, I used Find Link with the search name Donald Smith professor. I could not find any Exact Match Snippets. One of the reasons may be because his name is so common and there were hundreds of Smiths appearing. I then used Find Link in the French Wikipedia and there were several "Exact Match Snippets". Canada is a bilingual French-English country so I was surprised not to see some matches in the English-language version. Here’s an example of the problem: in the article in English Wikipedia on Quebec singer, poet and story teller Gilles Vigneault, the book by Donald Smith on this author is not mentioned. In the article in French Wikipedia on Vigneault, the book is mentioned. I have consequently linked the article I wrote on Smith to the Vigneault article in French on Wikipedia as I suppose this is a kind of "match snippet". I do not feel comfortable to add, in the English Vigneault, a link to the site I created on Professor Smith because I am not the author of the article on Vigneault.

Is it possible for you, as editors, to accept the article as it is regarding the orphan predicament? On my part, I will continue to check regularly in the English Wiki for matches to Donald Smith and I think that with the article now published in English, new links will start to appear.

Conflict of interest. I do not see conflict of interest in the article. I have read three books by Donald Smith and decided to try to write an article on him for Wikipedia. This is my first article for Wikipedia and I am still learning. I created a wiki account and chose as user name my nickname and the name Smith because the article was to deal with this author. I now see that this was not a good idea. I have looked at the user names of Wiki editors and they are anonymous, as they should be. So if it can be done without causing a problem, I will change my username. I found all the information for my article on the Internet (in the French Wiki, both in articles related to Canada and to  France, they are many references to Donald Smith), from the university where D.W. Smith is Professor Emeritus, and from some of his publishers. I note that his articles are published in peer-reviewed scholarly magazines and that his books are published with serious and well-known publishers in Canada, the USA and Europe. I once heard Dr Smith give a public lecture but do not have any professional or non-professional connections with him.

--CouplandSmith (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * , can you please explain how, if your only connection with Donald Smith is that you have read his books and once heard him give a public lecture, that this photo of him is your own work? Thank you. Melcous (talk) 13:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I needed a recent photo of Prof Smith, the university and his publishing houses only have older photos. The university requested a more recent photo from professor Smith and his wife sent the university this recent photo that she had taken with permission for me to publish it as I like giving me ownership of the photo. CouplandSmith (talk) 14:05, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but that does appear to be the kind of convoluted explanation that seems to suggest a conflict of some kind, and/or a lack of transparency. A university (which university?) requested a photo and that results in you being given ownership of it? That does not make sense without some other kind of connection between you and the university and/or you and the person. Per WP:OUTING I'm not asking you to disclose who you are, but I would suggest that you read carefully through the WP:COI guidelines and if you have any kind of relationship with the subject of the article or their workplace or other affiliates, that you WP:DISCLOSE that you have a conflict of interest and agree to abide by the policy. It is far better to be up front about this. Thank you Melcous (talk) 14:48, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello Melcous,

Regarding "the university" that I described to you, I did not write Carleton University because in my article on Smith, mention is given several times to Carleton where he is now Professor Emeritus, I thought you would make the link between university and Carleton. As for the photo, I did indeed request from Carleton University a recent photo explaining that it was for WikiCommons, the Carleton administration contacted the wife of Professor Smith who sent them 2 or 3 photos with permission for me to be the owner for this usage.

My "connection" or relationship with Prof Smith. I went to one of his lectures at Carleton University with the topic Quebec feminist novelists. I remember asking him some questions and talking with him. This was before I started working on my article. I also know one of Prof. Smith's colleagues who I talked with a few months ago to get information on Prof. Smith's scholarly and professional activities outside of the university, and mainly with the Canada Council and the Learned Societies of Canada. I was able to use this information in my article, and was able to verify it and put the appropriate links as proof. I do not think my contact with Prof. Smith represents a conflict of interest nor a close connection, but your suggestion that i "disclose" that I, the author of the article, know Prof Smith but have carefully read the guidelines of Wikipedia and fully respect the policy, may be the route to go. I have read the "How to Disclose a COI" and note that it indicates "If you become involved in COI, you should always let other editors know about it." This is what we are doing, although I would say we are talking about transparency not conflict of interest. I clearly understand that, as indicated, if I want to "propose significant or potentially controversial changes to the article", I would make a request to an editor, and if this did happen, I would contact you. However, I consider the article finished, I can foresee only minor corrections and the addition of new information if Prof Smith publishes a new book or is given a new honorary degree. The article has gone through several months of scrutiny by Wiki's editors and I believe it is now in its final stage.

So I need your help here. Is the information that I have given you sufficient enough for you to take out the template? Thanks in advance for your advice. --CouplandSmith (talk) 11:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your explanations. I would agree that going forward if you are wanting to propose any significant changes to the article, using the talk page would be the wisest course of action (and definitely if there is any contact with the university, or other people who know/work with the subject of the article). This can most easily be done using the Template:Request edit. You might also consider whether you should add the Template:Connected contributor to the talk page. I will remove the COI template after this discussion. Finally, with the image, I am not as familiar with the guidelines, but I would suggest that what you have described does not make the image your "own work" and you might want to consider whether that needs to be clarified. Melcous (talk) 02:04, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

____________________________

Hello Melcous, Thanks for helping improving my article.

Sorry to bother you with this but I need some help regarding orphans. I have read the info on orphaned articles defined as an article with no incoming links. I am going to try to find articles in the English Wiki main space in which there is a reference to professor Smith, to one of his works, etc.

Questions: When I find one, can I (do I have the right?) edit this article and make a link to my article on Smith where he is mentioned? I feel uncomfortable with this but if this is what Wiki recommends, I will do it? I hesitate to add something to a page not create by me

Can I un-orphan my article in the other direction, namely put a link in my article to an article in English Wiki in which Prof Smith is mentioned, his work quoted, etc? I would feel more comfortable with this.

Once a new inline link is created, I will contact you through my Talk page and ask you to remove the orphan template. ... In fact, good news, I just found an article in the English Wiki that refers to Professor Smith's dictionary of Canadian French.

I note that Wiki defines an orphaned article as an article that has "zero incoming links", "one relevant link is all that is needed" according to the text. Also Wiki explains that "editors may remove an orphan tag if they believe that de-orphaning can't be done".

And yes, as you suggest, if a I have a major change for my article (I don't forsee any), I will go onto my talk page and ask if the new content is appropriate and properly presented. I will also look into using the TemplateRequest Edit and adding the TemplateConnected Contributor as this would make the process easier. Thanks for the useful suggestions. --CouplandSmith (talk) 11:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi, just to add (my name was mentioned at the top of this), I wanted to clarify that you don't WP:OWN an article. If anything, you are more free to edit other articles than this Donald Smith (academic) article. You cannot "un-orphan" it in the "other direction" by definition, it is only concerning incoming links. Also, an article is never truly finished on Wikipedia, it is always a WP:WORKINPROGRESS. I hope this makes things a bit clearer. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:25, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, my learning process is advancing.

--CouplandSmith (talk) 12:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)