User talk:Jacques van Zyl the third

October 2015
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a message letting you know that one or more of your recent edits to Kombucha has been undone by an automated computer program called ClueBot NG.

Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 10:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * ClueBot NG makes very few mistakes, but it does happen. If you believe the change you made was constructive, please read about it, [ report it here], remove this message from your talk page, and then make the edit again.
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 * The following is the log entry regarding this message: Kombucha was changed by Jacques van Zyl the third (u) (t) ANN scored at 0.867757 on 2015-10-28T10:58:33+00:00.

Welcome back!
Hi Jacques, and welcome back under your new name. I guess you might not be happy to hear from me because I've been causing you trouble, and true to form, I've once again reverted your addition of PHI from the Voigt pipe article. As far as I can tell, it simply isn't yet a generally notable company, so I don't think it's a suitable addition to the article. The natural assumption is that you have a conflict of interest here, so I'd recommend discussing it on the article's talk page before re-adding this material.

Once again, thanks for your other valuable contributions - don't think you're not appreciated or wanted at Wikipedia: I'm not the voice of the movement in any sense (not even an admin, just a user). I have checked your editing history, though, and I think you're OK. Do you know about Wikimedia South Africa, by the way? --Slashme (talk) 10:01, 29 October 2015 (UTC)


 * (I don't know how Talk works. Here's my best try.

I'll tell you what I really don't appreciate - being blocked from posting on Wikipedia for one relatively minor infraction. I have hitherto considered Wikipedia a valuable resource, and the fact of it being a general resource that is editable by anyone but still reliable, has gone as far as giving me more hope for mankind in general than this mere truth would suggest. This interaction, and what happened with my minor Kombucha edit has left a very bad taste in the mouth. Yes, I am involved with PHI and you might view this as a conflict of interest, but my aim has always been to give value to Wikipedia, not to myself or any concern of mine. Maybe you should consider again how the extremely rigorous application of your rules benefits this resource. In fact, I cannot imagine a rule which justifies summary deletion of a participant, merely because they have on a single occasion fallen foul of one your guidelines. You are very close to losing a champion of your cause. Sure, I am only one, and it probably wouldn't in the least matter to you. But it should.


 * Your edit to the Kombucha article was reverted by a bot, not a human. ClueBot is generally rather accurate at reverting vandalism, but you just happened to trigger a false positive for some reason. The message (above) says "ClueBot NG makes very few mistakes, but it does happen. If you believe the change you made was constructive, please read about it, [ report it here], remove this message from your talk page, and then make the edit again." I'd strongly recommend that you do that. It's now too late to just click "undo" to redo your edit, because others have edited the article since then, but if you don't mind trying again, I'd appreciate it. It is definitely also worth alerting ClueBot's authors that it made a mistake, so that they can improve it.


 * As for the CoI editing, it's quite normal for new users to do that. When I was still a new editor, I even created an article about Vital Health Foods, the company I worked for at the time, because I didn't know any better. The article wasn't deleted, and I don't think the notability of the company was really in question, but it would definitely have been grounds for a stern warning if anyone had noticed! It's just safer to stick to the talk pages in these cases, and that's what I do these days.


 * I also get that it's really irritating to be blocked for your username. The German Wikipedia has kind of an opposite policy: on the English Wikipedia, you're just not allowed to edit under a CoI, and you're not allowed to have a username that identifies with a company. On the German Wikipedia on the other hand, you may certainly edit on behalf of a company, but they actually require you to have a username that identifies you as such: I think that's rather healthier, but, well, that's not the en-wiki policy. Here we block everybody who is upfront about their connections, and only block the sneaky ones when we find out.


 * Anyway, that was a lot of text. I'll keep your talk page on my watchlist, so I should see if you reply here, but if I don't, you can always drop a note on my talk page. I would like to help reduce your level of frustration with Wikipedia, not increase it, so let me know what bugs you and I'll do what I can. --Slashme (talk) 21:49, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I just took a look at your edit to the Kombucha article - you say that it was minor, but to me it seems to be very extensive. It's possible that you started from an old version of the article or something like that, so that you thought that you were making a small change, but in fact it was a really big change in reality? That could be why ClueBot reacted: you were a new editor making large changes, removing references and other content, as far as the bot could tell, so its artificial intelligence classed it as vandalism. That's one possible explanation, anyway. --Slashme (talk) 22:05, 29 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That must have been what happened. When the article was reverted, it wasn't at all what I was editing. Maybe, in my harried search for why I was deactivated, I chanced upon an old version and changed that. I never use "undo/revert/whatever" because I don't know how to.


 * That at least is easy: you can click on the "history" tab at the top right of the article, and you can see all the previous versions, and see what the difference is between any two versions. You should also see an "undo" link next to each revision, which allows you to undo it, if it's still possible.

I have never intended doing something sneaky. That was part of the reason for using the name JacquersPHI.


 * Exactly - I was pointing out that you weren't being sneaky, and that's why your username was blocked :-/.

When my edits and page creations were left as they were, and for many years, I thought I had not fallen foul of anything. It was a bit shocking when I logged in again, after quite a while.


 * That's rather typical of what happens in minor articles: unless someone happens to run across it, an article (or editor) which doesn't attract much attention can remain unnoticed for years, and then suddenly get deleted/blocked/whatever.

I wish someone would do a search and find other companies that build Voigt pipes. There aren't many, and it is rather left-field, for lack of a better phrase, but it would be counterproductive to not have the reference to Voigt Pipes and its builders. It would be a serious omission to exclude Cain&Cain, for instance. Terry Cain is dead and I've never spoken to him or anyone there, so there's no conflict. Yet, the entry was also deleted.


 * Do you have a reference to an independent, reliable source that shows that Cain&Cain are notable? I know nothing about the topic, so I'm not the best person to judge.

Though I champion Wikipedia, I cannot spend large portions of my life to its cause. (That goes for many, I assume, and probably is the driving force behind Wikipedia's accuracy; and maybe for a few inaccuracies too.) As is obvious, I have not read all the rules. But I believe I can make useful contributions, from time to time, and summarily disabling my username does not feel appropriate. A message could for instance have been sent. It would have been heeded.


 * That's absolutely true, but take a look at your old user talk page, and you'll see that you were sent a message: the note left at User_talk:JacquesPHI says "You may simply create a new account, but you may prefer to change your username to one that complies with our username policy, so that your past contributions are associated with your new username. If you would prefer to change your username, you may appeal this username block by adding the text below this notice."


 * The question is then, did you not get this notification, or was that part not explained clearly enough? Either way, that's a failure of Wikipedia's procedures in handling cases like yours, and believe me, there are people who research how to make Wikipedia a more welcoming environment, so I could show them this case study to help shape their design decisions. --Slashme (talk) 08:05, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I never received such a message. I would have acted on it. I have yet to read most policies, but frankly that seems like a lot of work. The ones that are pointed out would of course be read first/preferentially.


 * That's unfortunate! The problem is, your talk page is where everyone on Wikipedia goes to contact you, so if you missed that notification, you missed out on the communication. Still, I think your new username has quite a ring to it, so maybe just keep it ;-] --Slashme (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

About Cain&Cain: there are so few Voigt Pipe loudspeaker manufacturers that almost all of them are notable IN THEIR CONTEXT. As soon as one has to supply numbers, these smaller subjects (which does not mean they are less important - in a few years' time one might find that most speakers are built this way, not that it matters) seem unworthy of an entry. I sincerely hope this is not a Wikipedia policy. DIYaudio.com has numerous references to Terry Cain's company. Elsewhere I'm not sure.


 * This is always a tricky subject, but Wikipedia has a notability guideline that says that a topic is notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable, third-party sources. Is DIYaudio.com a reliable source by Wikipedia's standards? I have no idea!  Normally in this case, I'd redirect you to a WikiProject about the topic, but I can't find one, so my next step would be to look for similar or related articles, and talk to the editors who are active on them. For example, you could send talk-page messages to a few of the recent editors at the sound recording and reproduction article (take a look at what kind of edits they make, and whether they seem sensible by clicking on the "diff" links.) It might also be good to see who posts on the talk pages of these articles, and whether they seem to make sense in their posts. For example, see who's chatting at Talk:Sound recording and reproduction or Talk:Bang & Olufsen, and open a discussion with them. --Slashme (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I saw a very troubling TED Talk on Astroturfing recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU I really hope that what's said about Wikipedia is being addressed. I'm sure I don't have to point out any irony here. Either way, the chances of a large interest group or company manipulating content is much larger (and more troubling!) than that of an individual doing so. One might also find that a person who is affiliated with a particular commercial entity might be best equipped to report on such an entity. Of course I can see the problem here too, and I don't have an answer. The content should speak for itself in such cases (it should be easy to see if an entry is in essence promotional).


 * We've blocked a number of people who were doing Astroturfing. One of the worst offenders was the Church of Scientology, but politicians regularly get outed for trying to whitewash their articles. Generally large companies are scared of getting caught doing Astroturfing on Wikipedia, for example, the Corporate Communications team at my own company prefer to spend their time at Facebook and Twitter where they can own their own material, but there have been some cases, and Wikipedia editors and administrators see that as one of the worst threats to the integrity of the site (see below).


 * I have major concerns about that journalist's TedX talk. She said "Drown out a link between a medicine and a harmful side-effect, say, vaccines and autism, by throwing a bunch of conflicting paid-for studies, surveys and experts into the mix, confusing the truth beyond recognition." Wait, what? The MMR vaccine controversy is her idea of truth being hidden by Astroturfers? Andrew Wakefield was the paid-for researcher here who confused the truth beyond recognition, and I see that she's published anti-vaccine articles.


 * Then she talks about the Philip Roth affair. The myth is that Philip Roth tried to edit the article to correct what was written there, but that stuck-up Wikipedia editors refused to accept that the author was an authority on his own work, and kept reverting him until he wrote about it in the New York Times. What actually happened here was that his agent edited the article anonymously, giving no sources. (You can find links to these edits at the article's talk page.) Even if Roth had registered the username Philip Roth and edited the article, how would we have known that he was the real Philip Roth, and not an impostor? That's why Wikipedia needs good, secondary sources, as Cory Doctorow explains quite well.


 * Then she says that "Wikipedia Officials started offering a PR service" - I'm not sure what she's referring to, but if it's the Long-term_abuse/Orangemoody affair, that's something where people claiming to be Wikipedia officials, but actually completely unaffiliated with the site, were running a scam where they'd take money to create articles. I among many other editors spent hours cleaning up after them when they were discovered.


 * Furthermore, she claims that a peer-reviewed study found that Wikipedia articles contradict peer-reviewed research 90% of the time. This refers to a discredited article published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic association. Maybe Osteopaths don't like mainstream medicine. Who knew?


 * Astroturfing is real, but some of the Wikipedia editors that I respect the most are doing great work over at WikiProject Medicine. For example, James Heilman, a guy I've met in real life, was in the news for exposing a case this year.

Who are you, by the way? Just someone who creates Wikipedia content? Scary name ...


 * Well, I work as a candy scientist by day, but as a kid I had a 1974 Encyclopedia Britannica that I read for fun, and now I help to write the biggest encyclopedia that the world has ever seen. As soon as I heard of the project, I wanted to be part of it. It's more accurate, more complete and more up-to-date than Britannica ever was. It isn't perfect. It isn't even close, and it will never be finished or complete, but we do our best. I made my twenty-thousandth edit on my 10 year anniversary as a Wikipedia editor (partly due to a sprint near the end, fixing minor things), and I want Wikipedia to remain free, and constantly improve its quality.  I'm not an administrator or an official of any kind, because there's enough for me to do without those rights. I've written some stuff about myself and what I do at User:Slashme.


 * As for my name, I took it from IRC, where you type "/me" to insert your name: it was my IRC handle because I would type "/me looks around" and on the screen you'd see "slashme looks around". Nothing deeper than that! --Slashme (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)