User talk:Dr Jessica Flack

There are several factual errors in the "Walter Goffart" Wikipedia entry. I have changed his place of birth to the correct one; I have not been able to change the name given for his supervisor (not Robert S. Lopez but Charles Holt Taylor). Under influences in the boxed area and in the bio itself, Henri Pirenne should be omitted and replaced with J. B. Dubos and N. D. Fustel de Coulanges. Minor errors abound in the text itself.

A few updates could usefully be inserted along with these corrections. (The strange sentence saying that Goffart despises the field of Germanic philology is a total misconception and misreading: for a start, his wife is a Germanic philologist!)

Vienna and Toronto School historians
Thanks for your edits to Walter Goffart. Articles on Vienna and Toronto school historians (insofar as these are real 'schools'..) are a bit of a mess, far too reliant on opponents' characterizations. Any effort to balance them is welcome indeed! — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:47, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Dr Jessica Flack. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Walter Goffart, 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. Based on your edits on Roberta Frank you seem to have a close connection to Walter Goffart, and should thus not edit that article. - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 12:02, 2 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Dear Thomas, Yes, I have an external relationship with the subject. The changes I made to the entry last year (e.g., correction of items such as name of thesis supervisor; new book out) were factual ones, so that his obituary when the time comes would be accurate. I avoided edits that could suggest any conflict of interest. The heat produced by this simple biographical entry over the past ten or so years is astonishing; note that I have not taken part in this discussion nor brought it to the attention of the subject himself. Dr Jessica Flack (talk) 21:26, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

External relationship with subject Goffart
My corrections and additions have been in the service of accuracy; none of the changes suggested have involved whitewashing or, indeed, slandering. I see one more correction needed in the current bibliography but will refrain from remedying the error now that one seemingly obsessed individual has deemed that my external relationship with Goffart forbids my making such an improvement. With regret and gratitude to those who have tried to clean up what was turning into a hit-job. Dr Jessica Flack (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I hope that the Wikipedia folk reading this page can remove the charge of "external relationship" (which I do not deny) -- since (unlike the charger) I never expressed a value judgment or cast scorn on the subject or his rivals. Dr Jessica Flack (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2022 (UTC)