User talk:Jud Newborn

Image copyright problem with Image:BookCoverNewbornWhiteRose.jpg
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Duplicate images uploaded
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Fair use rationale for Image:NewBookCoverNewbornWhiteRose.jpg
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File:SophieScholl-WhiteRose-Cover-Newborn.jpg listed for deletion
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Conflict of interest
If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, 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, 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; and
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with 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 a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Smartse (talk) 13:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have reverted your edits to Hans Scholl. Adding information from a book you have written constitutes original research and is not permitted. Please message me if you have any questions. Thanks Smartse (talk) 13:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

== Dear Smartse, I have no idea how to message you or contact you. I have no idea if you will see this message. I think you should have given me an e-mail address so we could communicate on this, given your total removal of my careful edit. I therefore have the uncomfortable feeling that you are taking "control" here and undoing important improvements to the article by an acknowledged expert on the subject. With all due respect, may I say that your own areas of expertise do not appear to dovetail at all with the subject of Hans Scholl and German history, and show little regard for my own, which others have cited (sometimes rather clumsily) in order to write parts of this entry.

I do NOT agree that there is a conflict of interest in my edit. I was very careful, as a historian, to make needed corrections and comprehensive updating with references to other work as well as my own.

I realize there are basic protocols for writing and editing any article. I put in a great deal of work on that edit--based not simply on my book--but on broader historical knowledge of the subject matter and new findings that correct old errors. IF, having taken it upon yourself to intrude upon this subject matter (forgive me again, that is my reaction), you could therefore do more than just suggest I look at protocols. You could provide me yourself some guidelines--a copy-edited draft--suggesting how to incorporate this material AND the necessary citation to my "new" referenced article--actually copyrighted 2006-- which provides crucial updating, corrections and answers to questions that have nagged and mystified those interested in Hans Scholl since 1945--and which, as I wrote, was also supported by two other authors/experts and Gestapo records available in German archives. I made sure all of this was available to readers.

This article, as noted, was intended to have been an afterword to the book cited in the entry, but could not be included in time, and I have not had a chance to publish it in some widely accessible publication yet. Readers who might have updated this entry therefore would not have wide access to it--unless I ran after someone and said, "can you please update this article?" (I think that would be even more compromising and suggestive of a surreptitious motive or hidden, biased agenda.) I therefore had to direct readers to my website where the article is available for anyone to download and scrutinize. This article, made available through this and other methods of distribution and copyrighting, is part now of the historical record on Hans Scholl as of 2006.

As you've 'reverted' my edit, the article is once again woefully brief, out of date and ridden with errors. (Hans Scholl did NOT "quickly" become disillusioned by Nazism, which is a non-critical reading of his surviving sister's laudable but compromised account, dating from the mid 1950s originally, and which has crept into most subsequent books and articles about Hans Scholl. Incidentally, and for your information, given your interest in this entry, she was not taken into the confidence of her brother and knew nothing of his resistande activity until he was arrested and executed.) Hans in fact was an avid Hitler Youth leader until at least the end of 1936. He was simultaneously a member of an alternative youth group while still a Nazi--again, contrary to his sister's compromised account. He remained a Nazi up until an arrest for a same-sex relationship, something which--given his "legendary" status in Germany and prevailing prejudices of the day, had been suppressed or ignored for 70 year (beginning again with his sister Inge's fairy-tale like account, and her subsequent, successful pressure on other authors not to mention it. Nonetheless, for anyone historian or journalist critical-thinking enough to question the writings of a sibling, and instead to search for information that would fill in a giant gap in his sister's account, they would have found that the information about all this, including his traumantic and stigmatizing ear;oer arrest, has long been available in detailed form in existing (but ignored) Gestapo records housed in Duesseldorf.

Please re-read my edit, which I presume you must have saved before taking it upon yourself to remove it from the site! Otherwise all that work will have been for nothing. When you re-read it, you'll be better able to understand the importance of these corrections and the need for them to appear in this biographical entry. In case you didn't save these corrections, or only looked at the article edit for "red flags"--I should point out how important these are for understanding the motivations that caused Hans Scholl to transform from an avid Nazi Youth leader to a great anti-Nazi, something which has not been known until now. It also provides further information to someone's citation from my book, which only lightly suggests what the long-sought origins of the "White Rose name were, and for which more solid evidence now exists. This information can be found in the cited material I offered. (By the way, I suspect some people who edit Wiki articles actually are writers using false identities to surreptitiously alter the content to suit their own agendas. By using my own name I take responsibility for the edit, which, counter-productively in this case, may have drawn your attention to what you consider problematic.]

Smartse, what now am I to do? I am terribly, terribly busy. How am I to correct and improve the entry--which requires reference to the intended "Afterword" to my book, which is accesible to all from my website as a kind of electronic, on-line form of publication?

By the way, it also occurs to me that many encyclopedias actually engage experts on particular subjects to write the entries. Wikipedia allows anyone to write them. I like that, so far as people are careful, and I like to join in. In this case, however, my contribution is essential. I hope you'll take time now to go over my edit and suggest to me how to retain its important historical content and references for the reader. Would you like my e-mail address?

I feel rather like Kafka at the moment. Is anyone there? Jud Newborn


 * Hi Jud, I'm very busy for the next few days so I can't fully explain why I removed the information. I've posted some details here for some others to take a look at. Hopefully someone will explain. If they don't I'll get back to you. Smartse (talk) 09:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Using talk pages
Hi Jud Newborn, you can contact Smartse by going to his/her talk page - click here. JulieSpaulding (talk) 05:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Reply RE Conflict of interest
Hi Jud, sorry once again for taking a while to get back to you. I stand by my removal of the content that you added as I believe it was required to keep wikipedia neutral. I fully understand that you tried to improve this article but unfortunately adding references to your own work tends to set alarm bells ringing. These edits do seem a little self-promotional in my opinion and I see from the edit history of White Rose that other editors feel that your edits were perhaps a little biased there as well. If you would like to edit these pages I have some suggestions that would ensure that information you add is not removed. As you are an academic I assume that you have used some reliable sources to write your book; it would be absolutely fine if you were to add the same information but provide references that demonstrate where you got the information from yourself. You should be careful to only state information in these sources though as wikipedia is not a place for original research - this may mean that some analysis that you've written in your book cannot be included.

I'm afraid I don't have any prior knowledge of this topic - the reason I noticed your additions was through a search function which flags up edits made by people with a possible conflict of interest. Myself and others patrol these pages to ensure that only suitable information is added to the encyclopedia. Whilst you may think that this is a bad thing it is generally considered that non-experts can make a better article as they rely more on reliable sources and less on prior knowledge.

It would be great if you could add some information back to these pages but please bear in mind that citing your own book will be questioned by any experienced editor. I do appreciate your honesty in making it clear that you are the author however. Please message me (here or on my talk page) if you need any further assistance. Thanks Smartse (talk) 11:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)