User talk:Jlesch

Welcome
Hi, Jlesch. Welcome to Wikipedia. I saw your first edit, to John Lesch. I have no doubt the information you added was true, but on Wikipedia everything has to be cited to a reliable source; we can't include it just because we think or know it to be true. I'm not going to undue the information you added, though, just as a courtesy, but you'll probably find that other volunteer editors (like yourself) will do so if you add information to any article that isn't properly attributed to a reliable source.

Also, given the similarity of the user name you chose to the name of the article you edited, it seems reasonable to suppose you might be the suject of the article. I'm sure you weren't aware of it at all, and it's obvious you weren't trying to hide anything, of course, but I have to tell you that all editors here are required to abide by our conflict of interest policies. Those policies strongly discourage anyone from editing an article about himself, something that's pretty fraught with potential difficulties from a PR perspective, too. I'm no expert on our conflict of interest policies at all, but the freindly volunteers at our WP:HELPDESK know all about them. All I really know is that it's strongly suggested that the subject of an article shouldn't edit it, but (at the most) only suggest edits on the article's talk/discussion page, properly identifying himself whenever he does so. Again, please remember that all information has to be attributed to a published, reliable source, or it can't be introduced into an article. Even the subject's say-so can't be admitted without a published reliable source to support it.

I certainly understand a desire to have only correct and current information present in an article about oneself, and I appreciate your desire to have that be so with respect to the John Lesch article. I'd very strongly suggest, though, that if you're going to try to make sure that's the case for this article, that you learn everything there is to know about our conflict of interest policies here. There's many a politician who's found himself in trouble in the press for the edits he's made to his own Wikipedia article. Such edits can be done, but they have to be done with scrupulously exacting regard for our COI policies to prevent the possibility of any real-world problem arising as a result. It's certainly better and less likely to cause one a problem to just suggest changes on the article's talk/discussion page, providing a reliable published source to support the claimed facts. I certainly don't mean to discourage you in the least in saying any of this; I just don't want to see you cause a problem for yourself in any way. If you have any questions or comments about any of this, you can post them immediately below, since I will temporarily add this page and the John Lesch article page, to my "watchlist" so as to be sure to see any changes that are made. If you prefer, you can also use the built-in Wikipedia e-mail facility to contact me privately, as well. By the way, I'm just another volunteer editor here, like yourself. I have no more authority than anyone else here, yourself included, and am not an administrator either. Just trying to do my bit to help out the project. Best regards, –  OhioStandard  (talk) 00:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)