User talk:Fresh 42

February 2024
Hello, Fresh 42. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Physics Forums, 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 article subjects 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 edit COI template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see );
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see );
 * 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. Chaotıċ Enby  (talk · contribs) 03:05, 22 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Understood. I am very, very conservative on editing anything on Wikipedia. So far I only made minor changes (an obivious mistake on a Lie algebra page, IIRC on a German Wikipedia page), typos, or in case of Physics Forum an exterior reference I have no relations to. Promotion would have included an assessment but I only stated the fact, third party citation included.
 * I am using Wikipedia (in several language versions) far too often to compromise it in any way. Fresh 42 (talk) 04:07, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I see that you are a staff member of Physics Forums. As mentioned above, you should have disclosed the connection on your user page and/or on the article's talk page. It is also advised that you avoid directly writing about Physics Forums, and instead suggest your contributions through edit requests on the talk page.
 * Also, I see that multiple accounts connected to Physics Forums have recently edited the page. Please be honest, was there any off-site coordination between you? That is also something that should be disclosed for the sake of transparency. Chaotıċ Enby   (talk · contribs) 09:50, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We only wanted to get the site listed among on the category pages for physics websites and / or Q&A websites as is e.g. SE which I'm by the way also a member of and which is younger than PF. However, those lists required a Wikipedia page since even red links weren't supported. That's why the page was added, without further goals and without my contribution, just to provide the required link. PF is non-commercial and offers free tutorials for students given by mostly former professional scientists. We thought that such an offer should appear on named lists of websites. The information on the new page is very rudimentary and I only added one factual line plus reference. However, I will refrain to edit that page at all in the future. Just to be clear: who is supposed to edit that page if members are excluded? Disappointed former users since all others are barely interested? Fresh 42 (talk) 13:48, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No, users are allowed to edit the page. Staff members are not, as that is a conflict of interest. Chaotıċ Enby   (talk · contribs) 14:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * So let me get this straight: you have no problem with listing SE that went for 1.8 billion dollars over the counter (https://tex.co/stackexchange-verkauft/), and no problem with listing physics.org, a commercial popular and science website (https://phys.org/ - note the ads), but you do have a problem with some professional science enthusiasts who teach students for free? Guess, I ran into politics here. We cannot compete with 1.8 billion. Interesting to know. I once joined Wikipedia on the editorial level after I mocked about a tiny but significant error on a mathematical page. Someone, who already contributed to Wikipedia said: "Then sign in and change it instead of complaining about the absence of scientific rigor." So I did. Maybe that was a fault. Fresh 42 (talk) 15:11, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, so, first of all, I don't have "no problem" with SE or physics.org. I'm doing new pages reviewing, and they just happen not to be new pages, so I didn't review them. Also, notability isn't about enthusiasm or doing things for free. It's not about money, SE isn't paying us to get their pages here (it would be an even bigger conflict of interest). Of course you're allowed to edit stuff on mathematics pages if you see errors there (or even if you want to add something). It's just not advised to write about a company of which you're a staff member. That's it. Nothing to do with how much money SE or Physics Forums has. Chaotıċ Enby   (talk · contribs) 22:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Fresh 42 Thank you for your support, but please stand down. The editors here have been more than reasonable by working with us to get the page in compliance. Dethfire (talk) 13:23, 23 February 2024 (UTC)