User talk:Interbang

The Golddiggers
Why did you revert my edits to The Golddiggers page? The text you're adding is not appropriate and smacks of POV. I left the official external link itself which is quite sufficient. The other link appears to be a blog of some sort which is not allowed by Wikipedia's external links policies. If it's not a blog, I have no problem with it being there. However, Wikipedia is not to be used to promote personal websites or any websites for that matter. There's no need to include all that text in the description. If you take a look at other articles, that is not standard practice for external links and I see no reason why an exception is to be made in this case. If you have a huge issue with this, I suggest you contact an administrator before you revert again. Pinkadelica 21:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * First off, I suggest you read WP:CIVIL and start applying it to your responses to other editors ASAP. Personal attacks aren't going to fly and if you can't be civil and comment on content instead of an editor, do not respond. Your assumptions of other people's knowledge have no place here and your snide remarks won't be tolerated. Second of all, this isn't a "one person attack". The article is fairly obscure which is why no one else has recently changed what you insist on keeping in. That doesn't mean it's right, that just means no one else has seen it lately. Looking through the relatively short history of the article, I see that I'm not the only one who has removed this. At least two other editors have changed your unneeded descriptions in the external links. You are fully aware of that because you added it right back on more than one occasion. That should be some indication that what you're doing is not within the parameters of Wikipedia's guidelines for external links. I have no objections to the links themselves and I didn't even question the validity of them, but there's no need to write a long description about an external link. State what it is and move on. Since you obviously think you're correct and no one else can tell you about Wikipedia policy, I'm going to let an administrator take a look at this situation. Since you've already reverted the page twice in a 24 hour period, you are one revert away from violating 3RR. If you want to go ahead and violate that policy and risk a ban just because you want to push your POV, have at it. Pinkadelica  02:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Since another editor has intervened and notified you that your behavior is in fact uncivil and your version of the page does not meet Wikipedia's standards and has since been changed back, I suggest any other issues you have with the page be taken up with an administrator as I initially suggested. Pinkadelica  04:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

May 2008
If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about or have websites related to, 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 articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
 * 2) adding external links to pages in which you are involved in a promotional tone or manner;
 * 3) participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
 * 4) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam);
 * and you must always:
 * 1) avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Conflict of Interest. Because you have made it clear that one of these external links is your website, it is inappropriate and in violation of WP:EL and WP:CoI for you to promote it in this way, which is stated in WP:EL to includes both commercial and non-commercial sites. Further, one of the sites in question appears to be a self-published blog page, which may violate WP:EL completely. The manner of presentation of the external links is not in keeping with Manual of Style, and thus, should only consist of the link and title. It is up to the reader to determine which to go to. Anything else appears as promotional spam. If you wish for the link to remain, please stop reverting the article to include promotional wording. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks will lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Response
What admonitions are given to another editor isn't something that I would discuss with someone else, nor would I discuss an admonition I give you with another editor. I will simply say that everyone is supposed to abide by Wikipedia guidelines.

Regarding article contributions, if you will note at the bottom of each page, when it is opened for editing, there is a sentence which reads: "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it." In essence, if you disagree with something another editor changes, the first step should be to post a note on the article talk page and also good etiquette would say that a brief note be posted on the user's talk page directing them to the talk page discussion opened. At that point, a civil and hopefully productive dialogue can occur regarding the changes. Having said that, there is no policy that dictates that a person be an expert, or for that matter even well-versed, to edit a page. There are specific policies in place that govern nearly everything that might come up in editing.

In this particular situation, no one need be an authority on the Golddiggers to question the appropriateness of links under the External links title. The detailed promotional sounding descriptions are not in keeping with WP guidelines for external links and no expertise is required to determine that. The proper format for external links is the link itself with the name or title of the page. The reader who chooses to visit the external site will assess it on its merits and weaknesses. For myself, I have a small concern that the wordpress.com link may not meet external link guidelines at all, as that site appears to be a personal blog-type of site, which doesn't require objective third party checking. In any case, the promotional tone of the link descriptions for both pages was inappropriate by guidelines.

Finally, one of the basic tenets of Wikipedia is to assume good faith when confronted with changes made by others. When I read your page, the other editor said she had no objection to the links themselves and didn't question their validity. She did question the manner in which they were presented, i.e., the detailed descriptions that were given. That is a qualitative difference from denying that material was removed arbitrarily. She also commented in the first post that there was a question regarding whether the one link (the wordpress) was allowable, which would have been the reason it was removed at first. As I noted, I still have a small concern regarding that, but I'm willing to let it stay as a stand alone link with no promotion.

I hope I've addressed your concerns. Wildhartlivie (talk) 05:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The Dean Martin Show; The Golddiggers
Ckatz, I can't quite fathom your sudden reason for deciding that the website of which I am the chief administrator, The Golddiggers Super SIte, is not a valid source, but the fact of the matter is that ALL of the information in Wikipedia's articles on both The Dean Martin Show and The Golddiggers for which The Golddiggers Super Site was cited as a reference was supplied by me and drawn from authoritative sources, including more than 20 alumnae of The Golddiggers group (who participated in the creation of the Super Site and remain actively involved in contributing to its editorial content), as well as executives of the two home video companies (Guthy-Renker and Time-Life) that produced the Dean Martin Show DVDs.

In point of fact, The Golddiggers Super Site broke every single story related to the Dean Martin Show DVDs from 2007 to the present -- from our scoop on the lawsuit filed by NBCUniversal against Guthy-Renker, Greg Garrison Productions and other parties over Guthy-Renker's Best Of The Dean Martin Variety Show series (http://thegolddiggers.wordpress.com/2007/09/08/breaking-news-—-exclusive) right up to our exclusive on the latest DVD releases by Time-Life (http://thegolddiggers.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/dean-comes-home-for-christmas). Those articles, and all in-between, represent first-hand, impartial, enterprise reporting, employing the highest journalistic standards and based directly on extensive interviews with key sources involved in the stories covered.

In addition, The Golddiggers Super Site has been commended for its accuracy and detail by numerous individuals who actually worked on The Dean Martin Show and Golddiggers series -- not the least of them, Lee Hale, Musical Director of The Dean Martin Show, editor of ALL of The Dean Martin Show DVDs, and creator of The Golddiggers (see his comment here: http://thegolddiggers.wordpress.com/comments/#comment-271).

I singlehandedly wrote the first several paragraphs of Wikipedia's article on The Golddiggers and almost the entirety of the DVD section of WIkipedia's article on The Dean Martin Show. How does it make any sense that the information which I provided has been left in place, yet the source from which that information was drawn has been removed?!

The Golddiggers Super Site is a purely educational, informational, noncommercial, not-for-profit project. The reason that it was established was precisely for the purpose of providing accurate, reliable and authoritative information about The Golddiggers and The Dean Martin Show, and to serve as a corrective to all of the MISinformation that appeared on other websites -- including the Internet Movie Database (whose section on The Golddiggers is rife with inaccuracies, yet you left it in place on the list of External Links), and yes, Wikipedia itself, which had only a paltry, error-filled article on the subject of The Golddiggers before I fleshed it out with accurate, substantive information over five years ago.

I don't quite understand your prejudice against The Golddiggers Super Site in particular, but if it's because we use as our host Wordpress, I would point out that that platform is also utilized by many major and well-respected media entities, including CNN.

Given all that I have stated above, I hope that you will have no objection to my reinstating the links that you previously deleted. If the primary purpose of Wikipedia is to serve as a fount of knowledge and provide accurate information, then it would stand to reason that it would be to everyone's benefit that Wikipedia include references for its articles drawn from demonstrably credible and accurate sources.

If you'd like any further proof of that credibility, I'd be more than happy to provide it, so please feel free to write back to me.

Sincerely, Interbang (talk) 11:41, 9 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for the note. While your response is appreciated, it is important that you refrain from reposting the links until this matter is resolved. As the site's administrator, you have a direct conflict of interest with respect to its suitability. Generally speaking, the reliable sources policy would direct us to avoid such sites. Note that this is in no way a comment on the quality of your site, but instead a reflection of what the Wikipedia community has established as necessary for referencing material in an encyclopedia. --Ckatz chat spy  20:59, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are not articles.
Your recent edits at The Golddiggers added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Gold Diggers. Such links are rarely appropriate, since disambiguation pages are not articles. I have replaced the link with one pointing to Gold Diggers of 1933, which is an article.

Thank you for contributing your expertise to Wikipedia. However, please remember that editors do not own articles and should respect the work of their fellow contributors. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 22:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I was baffled by your comment about my adding a link to The Golddiggers article that pointed to the disambiguation page The Gold Diggers -- UNTIL I looked at the Edit history of the article and saw brackets around the words "The Gold Diggers". That’s when I realized the cause of my initial confusion: It stemmed from the fact that while I wrote the paragraph containing the text in question, I did not insert those brackets to create a link for the phrase "The Gold Diggers"; that was apparently someone else's handiwork.


 * In any event, my whole reason for NOT attaching a link to the wording of "The Gold Diggers" is that the term -- in the context of the Busby Berekely-Warner Bros. films, which are the relevant point of reference here -- belongs not simply to one film, whether it be "The Gold Diggers of 1933" or any other year, but to a series of films that featured the singer-dancers known as "The Gold Diggers". That list would include "42nd Street" (the first of the Berkely-Warner Bros. movie musicals), "The Gold Diggers of 1933," "Footlight Parade," "Dames," and "The Gold Diggers of 1935". It’s not one, but ALL of those films — indeed the whole gestalt of the Berkely-Warner Bros. style — that gave rise to the television version of the troupe, which came to be called “The Golddiggers”.


 * It would thus be historically inaccurate to credit any single motion picture with inspiring the latter-day incarnation of “The Goldidggers,” which is why I have made another edit to The Golddiggers article to remove both the reference to the film “The Gold Diggers of 1933,” as well as the brackets around the words “The Gold Diggers,” thereby solving the problem of having a link associated with those words that goes to a disambiguation page. Instead, I have inserted a link to the Wikipedia article about Busby Berkeley, which I believe provides a better contextual overview of the background of the "Gold Diggers" films.


 * Interbang (talk) 10:12, 27 April 2014 (UTC)