User talk:Fskooter

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Notice of request for administrator help, too many reversions
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding changes reverted with no discussion on talk page. The thread is Article on Floyd Skloot. The discussion is about the topic Floyd Skloot. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:26, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit warring and a possible conflict of interest at Floyd Skloot
Hello Fskooter. You've been warned for edit warring at Floyd Skloot per a complaint at the edit warring noticeboard. Some of your edits appear to be removing easily-verified information. You should get consensus on the talk page before continuing to revert the article. You've also stated you are the subject of the article. If so, you need to be aware of our WP:Conflict of interest guideline which strongly discourages people from editing their own biographies. If you see mistakes in something written about you, you should make your concern known to an administrator or ask for assistance at one of the noticeboards. You can also write about your concerns at Talk:Floyd Skloot and wait for others to do the correction. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 12:25, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello. I did not realize until today that there was such a thing as a wikipedia talk page or that the changes I was trying to make to my own wikipedia page were considered warring. I didn't realize that Wikipedia was trying to get in touch, and was confused about why my edits kept reverting. I was just hoping to keep my wikidpedia page as I wished it to be, correcting certain errors that had intruded into my entry and keeping private information private (i.e. my date of birth, my first marriage which I do not write about), and to keep the Floyd Skloot page focused on a simple overview of my career. I never sought to include reviews of my 20 books, positive or negative, feeling that interested readers could go to my webpage for that, and also feeling that there were too many reviews and too many books to include--and that including only a few would skew the overall perspective. The material I was trying to delete and replace presented just such a partial account. I do not know who Ed Johnston is and I do not mean any criticism of him--I'm grateful for his interest in me and my work. But I did hope to keep my wikipedia page simple and containing the kind of information I'd originally put there. I'm imagining that in the world of wikipedia, this was a naive hope, and that the page doesn't "belong" to me after all. Fskooter (talk) 18:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)Floyd Skloot

Is it possible to request correction of material that is either incorrect or offensive to me? For instance, in the introductory paragraph of my wikipedia page Mr. Johnston writes "His first marriage ended at that time; his new self attracted a second wife. He is married to painter Beverly Hallberg." My first marriage did not end at the time I got sick in 1988. And it is not accurate to say the "his new self attracted a second wife," since we knew each other for many years before we married. Nor is it accurate to describe my wife as a painter, although for a few years she did paint. AND this level of personal detail is not needed. Further, it is seriously misleading to say that my poetry is published in literary magazines. I have published 9 books of poetry including poems that have appeared in general interest magazines as well as literary magazines. There are other points in the page where correction is needed--that was the gist of my attempted edits, as would be shown by a comparison between the page as it now stands and the page as I kept trying to correct it. Yes, I also attempted to simplify the page by eliminating the skewed selection of reviews, but primarily I attempted to correct errors and update (as regards my forthcoming book of poems, for example). I apologize for appearing to be "warring" over the page; again, I wasn't familiar enough with wikipedia to even realize you were reaching out to me Fskooter (talk) 19:39, 26 June 2017 (UTC) Floyd Skloot


 * Hello, it is good to be talking with you. You might like to read the guidance for an article like Floyd Skloot a biography of a living person, at Biographies of living persons/Help. It explains how Wikipedia approaches writing about living persons who are notable, and links to other articles about Conflict of Interest as viewed by Wikipedia. You are notable, and we need outside sources to establish that. I am sorry that you do not like the reviews excerpted. They are the reviews I could find on line, and I find them both quite persuasive about your notability, in yourself and through your writing. If you have a list of other reviews that can be easily accessed, perhaps you could post them on the Talk page of Floyd Skloot --Talk:Floyd Skloot, and I or other editors can see what else can be extracted from those reviews, and include them as "inline citations", that is, quotes or paraphrase of quotes to paint a picture of your writing, with references that show up in the References section. Some points of your personal life are included in your memoir; I do not have a copy at hand, but perhaps that can be used as a source in this article. We can take up specific changes on the Talk page for the article on Floyd Skloot, where that discussion belongs, so any editor can see what is happening, which issues were raised, how they were resolved.


 * Getting used to the ways and rules of Wikipedia takes a while, or it did for me, at any rate. EdJohnston, the editor who posted the notice here, is one of so many English (language) Wikipedia editors, and he has taken on the task of being an administrator to resolve disputes among editors, as you and I had. Now that is resolved, you are aware of how those reversions appeared. You might be interested to read the article on Laura Hillenbrand, where editors rely on published materials about her for the article. There is much information in the article Floyd Skloot, but few references. Your birth date was found in a public source, on the article page. At the very end of the page, there is a box named Authority Control, with links to various bibliographic files: World Cat for libraries, LCCN for Library of Congress, BNF perhaps the French version of our Library of Congress, and VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) which lists books for libraries and also organizes by author. Floyd Skloot's birth date was in the information found on BNF. The Authority Control box appears on articles, and I cannot explain how Wikipedia links so quickly to those bibliographic databases; it is called a template in Wikipedia-speak, the string of words inside curly brackets to make that appear. I am what some might call a content editor, a person interested in the content of the articles on topics of interest to me, and how to write references to support text. I have a User page and a Talk page for myself, plus you can see the articles to which I have contributed, by clicking on contribs after my name in the View History list for this page or the Floyd Skloot page. I hope you see the difference between your own website, and this article about you in Wikipedia now. The article on Floyd Skloot needs some improvements, from a Wikipedia perspective, besides dealing with the issues you have raised. One other point to notice is that an article has a "lead", a short section that highlights what is found in the article and lets a reader know quickly what is the topic of the article. There is now an "infobox" to collect key information, then a Table of Contents appears and then the article itself begins, with its various section headings. I look forward to working with you. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:21, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your response and for all this clarifying information.It helps me understand what happened, and what a wikipedia page is (and is not). As my wife and I talked about all this, we kept coming back to that "Early Life and Family" entry, which offended both of us. Would you be open to revising it so that it's accurate and doesn't draw inferences about personal relationships. Specifically, the passage now reads: "His first marriage ended at that time; his new self attracted a second wife. He is married to painter Beverly Hallberg." But the facts are that my first marriage did not end at the time I got sick in 1988. And it is not accurate to say the "his new self attracted a second wife," since we knew and caredd for each other for many years before we married. Nor is it accurate to describe my wife as a painter, although for a few years she did paint. If anything, she might be referred to as a birder. AND this level of personal detail is not needed. If we could correct that, I would be very grateful.

I believe you're saying that I should use the Talk section to suggest additional reference material, and I can do that over time. The other issue I had was in regard to the final sentence in the opening statement, where the final sentences say my poetry is published in literary magazines. I believe this is misleading since it suggests that's the only place the poems are published. I have published 9 books of poetry including poems that have appeared in general interest magazines (Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Utne Reader) as well as literary magazines. So I'm wondering if it's possible to change or delete that sentence.

Thank you again. Fskooter (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC) Floyd Floyd Skloot