User talk:Dhorton2020

A lengthy welcome
Welcome to Wikipedia. I've added a welcome message to the top of this page that gives a great deal of information about Wikipedia. I hope you find it useful.

Additionally, I hope you don't mind if I share some of my thoughts on starting out as a new editor on Wikipedia: If I could get editors in your situation to follow just one piece of advice, it would be this: Learn Wikipedia by working only on non-contentious topics until you have a feel for the normal editing process and the policies that usually come up when editing casually. You'll find editing to be fun, easy, and rewarding. The rare disputes are resolved quickly and easily.

Working on biographical information about living persons is far more difficult. Wikipedia's Biographies of living persons policy requires strict adherence to multiple content policies, and applies to all information about living persons including talk pages.

If you have a relationship with the topics you want to edit, then you will need to review Wikipedia's Conflict of interest policy, which may require you to disclose your relationship and restrict your editing depending upon how you are affiliated with the subject matter. Regardless, editing in a manner that promotes an entity or viewpoint over others can appear to be detrimental to the purpose of Wikipedia and the neutrality required in articles.

Some topic areas within Wikipedia have special editing restrictions that apply to all editors. It's best to avoid these topics until you are extremely familiar with all relevant policies and guidelines.

If you work from reliable, independent sources, you shouldn't go far wrong. WP:RSP and WP:RSN are helpful in determining if a source is reliable.

I hope you find some useful information in all this, and welcome again. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:31, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

May 2020
Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style, as you did in Debt settlement, disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Jessicapierce (talk) 17:33, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Regarding your edits to Debt settlement, please use the preview button before you save your edit; this helps you find any errors you have made and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history, as well as helping prevent edit conflicts. Below the edit box is a Show preview button. Pressing this will show you what the article will look like without actually saving it.

It is strongly recommended that you use this before saving. If you have any questions, contact the help desk for assistance. Thank you. Jessicapierce (talk) 17:33, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Debt settlement
To clarify my above messages: please don't edit further until you have reviewed the Manual of Style and have sources to support your additions. Thank you, Jessicapierce (talk) 17:41, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be ideal if you could add a source to support what you keep adding/changing in this article. Also, please see to the errors in your most recent edit. "Escrow Company" does not need capital letters, and instead of "as," you mean "has."
 * I mention this because you continue to create issues for other editors to remove or fix. That's... not great. Jessicapierce (talk) 20:26, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I have removed your subsequent changes to this article. Please reply to this message so we can discuss it. I'm not going to go in-depth until I know you are getting these messages, but in short, your contributions contained sourcing, linking, grammar, style, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling errors.
 * You are welcome to contribute here, but these issues must be addressed. Jessicapierce (talk) 16:05, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Understood, I'll clean up my edits and provide links to verify my sources. I am a certified debt specialist with Debt Advisors of America and we help people settle their debts with creditors every single day. I have been referring my potential clients to this Wiki page so that they may get a third party source of unbiased information on the program. Unfortunately, a lot of the information in this article is not unbiased... It is bias towards credit card companies and / or Debt Management companies and the way a lot of this stuff is written is designed to discourage people from doing debt settlement. I'm not saying it should be written in a way that'll, "encourage" debt settlement, (although that would be great if it were), but at least it shouldn't be discouraging. For example, the comment about the credit issue should not be in the first paragraph as it is detouring people who are considering Debt Settlement from reading the rest of the article. In all due fairness to the consumer, I believe the impact to credit is an issue that should be addressed in the "Objections" section and ONLY in the objection's section.


 * Thank you for the reply. I would urge you to tone down your edit summaries. All-caps hysteria is not a good look. It sounds to me like you do have expertise in this area, but that's not how you're coming across. If you want your edits to stand, I would encourage you to take a breath, gather actual sources. and spend a little more time on your edits. Jessicapierce (talk) 16:52, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Dhorton2020, you are invited to the Teahouse!
Noted, thank you! and sorry for coming off a bit high strung... You're right... I will tone it down a bit...

Please respond
Hi Dhorton2020. While I appreciate your work on Debt settlement, it would be extremely helpful if you took some time to work with the other editors who have reached out to you. Currently it is unclear if you even know that this talk page exists. Could you please respond to at least some of the concerns here? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:35, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, of course... and I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner. I am still new to this... I will tone it down a bit and keep my edits more professional. Sorry about that...


 * Thank you.
 * The article needs a lot of work. Please provide sources, always. Unreferenced material is most likely going to be removed, as you've seen.
 * Also, the article has had a long history of having an instructional format. This is inappropriate and instructional content needs to be rewritten to suit an encyclopedia article instead. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 21:14, 9 May 2020 (UTC)