User talk:Gaitherws311

Welcome
Welcome! Originator (Drexel University Archives) of this page provided some material that was factually incorrect and presented a very narrow impression of William S. Gaither. I have talked to the originator and have agreement that he will select from what I have provided to give a more complete biography for those who may have interests in other aspects of the life of William S. Gaither than the originator. This revision by the originator should take place during the week of December 8-12 if his schedule permits. I am puzzled as to what the unidentified individuals who regularly look in on this site have to contribute to either the accuracy or completeness of the biography of William S. Gaither. Just saying "conflict of interest," or "added promotional material," is non-information and totally useless. If Immortal Goddess or Brad et al have accurate and useful information to add to this biography they should identify themselves and state the reason they have accurate information. Newspaper articles are typically only 50%-60% accurate so they are not usually citeable as accurate sources. Commentors are welcome to contact me via e-mail  or by phone: (520) 647-7267. WSG

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William S. Gaither
If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:
 * 1) editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
 * 2) participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam); and,
 * 4) avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for businesses. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. --ImmortalGoddezz ( t/c ) 04:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

December 2008
Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia. While objective prose about products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not intended to be a vehicle for advertising or promotion. —BradV 03:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I will be happy to work with you on Drexel articles
If you will provide the information on the talk pages of these people, then drop me a note on User talk:Davidwr my talk page with a link-back to where you put the stuff, I'll use it to improve the article. Not all material will be added, only material which is encyclopedic. In particular, material which is relevant to the subject's major life work or major offices is much more likely to be kept than material from earlier in his life. Also, I will not add any material that is not referenced with a reliable source. Looking at this edit of William S. Gaither, I would probably limit his early life to his birth date, his hometown, his high school and graduating class. If he was an Eagle Scout or played on a state-championship-sports team I might add that. For his undergraduate years, I'd mention he was on a scholarship and might even name it if it was extremely prestigious. I would mention the schools he attended, the years, and his degrees he earned if any. I would mention the military only briefly, with the years of service and the type of discharge. As for his early employers, I would only mention the company name, a 1- or 2-word job title or job description, and the years. It doesn't look like he did anything extremely notable in these early years, but if he did, put it in and expound on it. By extremely notable I mean notable enough that if he had died the next day he would still warrant a Wikipedia article. As for his family, I would mention his spouse's name, the fact they had one child, and the year of their marriage, as well as the town they lived in at the time and the town they live in now. I would mention the year and state he was first certified as an engineer. I would briefly list his graduate degrees, as you did, along with the title of his thesis if it is relevant to the notable portions of his career. The fact he was offered an assistant professorship at Princeton is worth a mention, but only because Princeton is famous, not because he was offered a tenure-track position. In 1967 things start getting a bit more interesting. Starting a program at a university is definitely worth noting. The laundry-list of achievements while at the University of Delaware should be trimmed, as most of it is not suitable for an encyclopedia, but rather a biographical web page or book. Pick two or three things that were of national or international importance and leave it at that. His work as President of Drexel University is the reason he warrants an article on Wikipedia, and it should be the focus of this article. Focus on things he did outside the university or which served as examples to other universities, but touch on the major internal issues he faced. Had he originated the idea of a wholly-owned subsidiary to manage profit-making activities and had that been copied, it would've warranted a large number of words. Since he merely copied another university's successful idea, it warrants only a short mention, if any. Cover his downfall briefly, in a neutral fashion. Don't say "87 articles related to the 'scandal'" unless someone else said it first and you can cite them as a source, you will be faced with either citing all 87, which would make the article unwieldy, or you would be accused of original research, which is frowned upon. His work for Weston and Gaither & Associates don't seem particularly important in the grand scheme of things, so summarize those briefly. His post-retirement hobbies deserve a single sentence, if that.

You may want to look at some featured articles and Good Articles by notable engineers, and compare them with this article. In general, the more notable a person is, the more minor details in his life become encyclopedic. Less notable people get shorter articles, with the less important items cut.

I hope this helps. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  00:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Davidwr:
 * Thanks for offering to help. I'm a complete novice with Wikipedia and certainly did not originate the William S. Gaither entry.  That was done by the Archivist at Drexel University.  The error in the original piece was that the university trustees did not ask me to resign.  I resigned because I felt the media problem would simply continue and the university needed to get back to normal.  As to notable accomplishements, you seem to have a sense of what ought to be included.  Items you might consider that have not been mentioned in the material you've seen include: (1) the design and construction of the first all-aluminum coastal research vessel, the RV Cape Henlopen.  The feature of the vessel that was unique was portable laboratory vans to accommodate different disciplines.  Each van made up to the fixed on-board laboratory while on the ship and to laboratory buildings while on shore.  (2) the design of the Drift River Marine terminal in Cook Inlet, Alaska, the largest (Deadweight tons of ship) tanker terminal the farthest north in the world in the mid 1960s.  This terminal was described in an article by Gaither & Dalton in the Journal of the Waterways and Harbors Division, Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), WW2, May, 1969 titled: All-Weather Tanker Terminal for Cook Inlet, Alaska, pp. 131-148. WSG  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaitherws311 (talk • contribs) 05:17, 7 December 2008
 * I hope you don't mind, I moved your comment to below mine and I indented it, which is custom here. I also "signed" your comment, you should sign future comments by adding ~ to them. Before I add any material, I will need references from reliable sources.  Look at some of the featured articles and good articles I linked to above to get an idea of how references are used in Wikipedia. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  05:24, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Gaither is correct, the board did not ask for his resignation as per the New York Times citation. The fault was mine, I typed that as 'overturned the vote of no confidence and did ask Gaither for his resignation' omitting the not, I apologize it was an unintentional error on my part that I should have noticed before somebody had to bring it up. I will fix that sentence to reflect this and apologize once again. --ImmortalGoddezz ( t/c ) 05:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Please create a user page
In a previous reply, you declared who you were. Most people don't, but since you did, you might as well be front-and-center about it and put that fact on your user page, User:Gaithersws311. Be prepared for people to attempt to verify this information through other channels, such as through a telephone number, email address, or postal address already associated with you. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  05:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for correcting the error. A better way to express what happened would be to say, "the trustees did not act on the faculty's no confidence vote and continued to support Gaither's presidency."


 * I may try to figure out how to create a user page and then what to do with it. This Wikipedia entry is so limited in scope I'll probably not bother with it anymore.  WSG — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaithers311 (talk • contribs) 23:37, 7 December 2008
 * At least the factual error got corrected, that seems to have been your main concern. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  03:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I suggested more appropriate wording that has not been incorporated in the little article. There are other inaccuracies but not of the consequence of the one that has been partially corrected. The Wikipedia policy that prohibits conflicts of interest is bizzare in this case because a person with clear bias has set up an entry (without notification to me or discussion of proposed content) that focuses on the most painful and damaging six months of my professional life in which the media tried and convicted me while the facts of the situation did not warrant such a devastating judgement. This is a situation of clear bias against William S. Gaither with only the most cursory effort to portray the rest of his life of professional accomplishment. WSG — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaitherws311 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 8 December 2008
 * If you can do so while keeping a neutral point of view, go ahead and make the changes, I'll remove any new material that's unsourced as well as stuff that's "too much detail" or which sounds too self-promotional. See my notes above about what I would do if I were editing and had references available for guidelines on what I'm likely to remove as being "too much detail."  If you can find references for the stuff that's already there, please add them as well.  In the edit summary put "COI edit - see talk page for discussion" or something along those lines so you don't get reverted by other well-meaning editors.  I have this page on my watchlist, if there are changes I'll see them within 24 hours. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A general comment: The most encyclopedic part of your life happens to be your tenure as a university president.  That's true of most university presidents who don't "go on to greater things."  It probably got a lot of press, and as such, it will have a larger share of the article than you might like.  I'm going to post a note on one of the biography-workgroup talk pages asking for others to monitor this article and this talk page.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I've invited others to watch this work-in-progress: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:55, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Sign comments
Please add four tildes - ~ - to the end of all future comments on article talk pages and user talk pages. They will appear as today's date with your name. Without name- and date-stamps, conversations can get hard to follow. If you've noticed, I've gone back and added them to your recent comments, they show up as "—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaitherws311 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 8 December 2008" in the text and as Gaitherws311 in edit mode. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Disclaimer on biography about you
That was creative if unorthodox. I've opened a discussion at WikiProject_Biography about this. Without discussion, it's likely to be reverted by the first well-intentioned editor who sees it.

The long-term solution is to get an article that's well-sourced and is a reasonably complete picture of the encyclopedic portions of your professional life, with as little bias as possible and as few direct edits as possible from you or those close to you. I'm still willing to help you do that, per my comments earlier in the year. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  19:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Gaithers311 is deceased
In the comment above dated 05:17, 7 December 2008, the owner of this account claims to be the subject of the article William S. Gaither. The subject of that article died in September, 2009.

If you are still alive, please log in and reply. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  02:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * William S. Gaither is confirmed deceased. I have no reason to doubt that User:Gaitherws311 is anyone other than William S. Gaither, but that has not been confirmed off-wiki. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  22:43, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've confirmed off-wiki that User:Gaitherws311 and William S. Gaither were one in the same. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  18:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)