User talk:Ginasmith888


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possible COI
Hello Ginasmith888. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Byte (magazine)‎, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about following the reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content 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 a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. —EncMstr (talk) 17:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2016
Please do not write or add to an article about yourself, as you apparently did at Gina Smith (author). Creating an autobiography is strongly discouraged – see our guideline on writing autobiographies. If you create such an article, it may be deleted. If what you have done in life is genuinely notable and can be verified according to our policy for articles about living people, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later (see Wikipedians with articles). If you wish to add to an existing article about yourself, please propose the changes on its talk page. Please understand that this is an encyclopedia and not a personal web space or social networking site. If your article has already been deleted, please see: Why was my page deleted?, and if you feel the deletion was an error, please discuss it with the deleting administrator. Thank you. Grayfell (talk) 00:54, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
Hello? Did you receive my previous message about editing your own article, and editing with a conflict of interest? Grayfell (talk) 04:14, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, I didn't realize that, provided I added plenty of hard references, an autobiographical addition was a problem. I saw someone started a Wikipedia article about me just yesterday and was trying to ethically add to it. So much of my career in early tech journalism and dot com happened JUST before all this material was online. Of course, I understand the reason for the policy, though. I see notes therein that say "citation needed" next to my positions at PC Week and PC/Computing in the early 1990s.

This is fairly well documented, through this article on Ziff Davis from Wired: http://www.wired.com/1994/05/ziff/

I won't be the one to add it, though : )

Thank you for your attention. It's nice to know how rigorous the standards are among the Wikipedia editors .. gs Ginasmith888 (talk) 22:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I adjusted that article to include that. As an explanation, articles about living people are held to higher sourcing standards. You can read about this at WP:BLP. If there is no source, content should be fully removed. The sources included did partially support content in the article, but not very clearly (specific dates are missing, the length of the radio show is different, etc.) and some of the sources are questionably reliable, so I tagged them with . I have also responded to your comments on my talk page, which you may have already seen. Grayfell (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that's helpful. And that leads me to a question, which applies really not just to this entry but in fact to all Wikipedia articles about living people. To your point about the two radio shows -- or aNewDomain Media, which I own -- if there are no articles that specifically list start and end dates, then what could possibly be used as a citation? For instance, if you are editing an article about someone who claims to own a company but no press report exists that details ownership, would Wikipedia need corporate registration docs, whois listings, about pages? As I said, my question applies both to this entry and to all others, too. I never knew this before.

Oh, re the radio show -- there were two -- with two startdates -- but they were the same show with different syndicators (SNP and ABC News) and, so, different names and start dates. No wonder that was confusing : ) Anyway, thank you! I ought to write an article about this effort.


 * This is the kind of thing that primary sources could be used for: filling in details for things that are supported by better sources. This is where the Byte.com press release is useful, for example. If this were at all controversial (someone else claimed they started the company, for example) then it would need to be attributed to you: "Smith says that she co-founded the company in 2013" or whatever. That's not the case, so a primary source would be fine. Regardless, not every venture will be worth mentioning, and a lack of independent sources suggest that it may not be encyclopedically significant yet. Oh, sources don't have to be on the Internet, but they do have to be verifiable (no personal documents, obviously, because readers can't check those). If all else fails, your own website could be used as a source for this info, but err on the side of extreme caution here, please.
 * WikiProject Companies may have more resources that may help. 'About' pages and listings are dicey, because they are WP:SPS: self-published sources. As long as they aren't the sole supporter of a broader claim, and it is very clear that they are provided by the subject of the claim (clear to others, we can't take your word on this because Wikipedia doesn't make sure you are who you say you are except in unusual cases) they can sometimes work for this. Many of these sources obviously just grabbed something off of Wikipedia or from a press-packet, which doesn't help. Official documents, like registration docs, are a pain in the butt, because they are so easy to misinterpret. They are the classic example of WP:PRIMARY, but they could be used too, as above. Grayfell (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)