User talk:Hsmukler

Cydonia Mensae
Hi Hsmukler. Just a short note to say that I've responded to your message over at Cydonia Mensae. Best regards, --P LUMBAGO 21:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI: Conflict of interest policy
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. --Ronz (talk) 22:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Hsmukler. Echoing Ronz, one does need to be extremely careful adding or editing material that relates to yourself, or your organisation, and I should have mentioned this in my original response to you over at Cydonia Mensae's talkpage.  Regarding the specifics of the Ancient Astronauts piece, I've now added the citation that you provided to the article.  Thanks very much for that information!  Best regards, --P LUMBAGO  08:47, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Smukler book
I see that you've added a new section "Also See" to a lot of articles, linking to a non-standardly formatted record of a book by Maya Montanez Smukler.

There are a lot of problems here.

Firstly, if you are M M Smukler yourself, or a family member or other close associate, you shouldn't be adding all these links as it looks like a promotional project.

Secondly, the section heading would be "See also" (only one capital, that order), except that the "See also" section is for links to other Wikipedia articles. The appropriate heading for a new book with additional content about the topic would be "Further reading". The formatting for the book reference is also far from ideal, and you omit the isbn which is one of the key bits of information people need (and which can be linked, within Wikipedia, to a page linking to libraries worldwide). See the change I made to Women’s Steering Committee of the Director’s Guild of America, where I renamed the section heading and formatted the book citation. (That article is on my watchlist, which is what led me to notice your edits).

Thirdly, it would be much more useful if you could specify the chapter name and pages which are relevant to each person, rather than just dumping a standard link to the book. (In the "cite book" template I've used, you can add something like "|chapter=Jane Bloggs | pages=52-55" to show this information.)

It may well be that some other editor decides to remove all of your additions as purely promotional. Please read WP:COI, which explains Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest rules: you should not be promoting a publication by yourself or a member of your family.

Pam D  20:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Editing with a conflict of interest
Hi Hsmukler. Thanks for your message. You need to follow Wikipedia's conflict of interest policies. A short and simple introduction to these policies can be found at Help available for editors with conflicts of interest.

It's best to disclose your coi and use article talk pages to suggest changes.

I recommend you avoid any suggestions of adding "Further reading", "See also", or "External links" entries entirely. Instead focus on verifying information in articles, improving accuracy, and expanding encyclopedic content.

I hope you find this helpful. --Ronz (talk) 16:13, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Glad to help. The Smukler book appears to be of the high-quality that's required, though hard to find, for biographical information. I'd expect that it could be used to verify important information related to the notability of articles' subjects. --Ronz (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)


 * It looks as if you haven't understood how to use request edit. It goes on the talk page, not in an edit summary to a COI edit to an article. And the changes I made earlier to Women’s Steering Committee of the Director’s Guild of America showed you the standard Wikipedia way to format a book citation: to recap, your enhanced version should ideally have been something like:
 * which appears as:
 * rather than your version which didn't use the cite book template and had a rather clumsy-looking link covering both author and title. Using the standard templates makes it easier for various bits of software to search for, or manipulate, the data, and produces a nicely-formatted output. Pam  D  23:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * rather than your version which didn't use the cite book template and had a rather clumsy-looking link covering both author and title. Using the standard templates makes it easier for various bits of software to search for, or manipulate, the data, and produces a nicely-formatted output. Pam  D  23:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * rather than your version which didn't use the cite book template and had a rather clumsy-looking link covering both author and title. Using the standard templates makes it easier for various bits of software to search for, or manipulate, the data, and produces a nicely-formatted output. Pam  D  23:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks PamD, I understand the "cite book" suggestion. HOW DO I PUT IN A BULLET IN FRONT OF THE HEADINGHsmukler (talk) 16:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

PamD, sorry but I can't figure out where the "request edit" goes. I see the talk button on the applicable site, but can't figure out how to put in my request. Can you walk me through it. Now that you know me and I've disclosed my conflict, can I move on and not do this every time?Hsmukler (talk) 19:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
 * To add a new discussion to a an article's talk page: Press the "Talk" tab of an article. This will navigate you to the article's talk page. Then press "New section" to start a new discussion. Place your edit request there. --Ronz (talk) 14:56, 14 September 2019 (UTC)