User talk:Lperdue

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April 2008
Please do not add copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Whpq (talk) 17:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

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 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 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. Whpq (talk) 17:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

March 2009
Please do not add copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 02:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

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 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 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. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 02:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Copyright Violation?

 * copied from User talk:Whpq as this is a more natural home for the conversation.

Please advise which link violates copyright.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lewis_Perdue&action=history

Is putting the copyrighted source reference in a footnote the acceptable way to do this? If so, I apologize for being a Wiki newbie.

FYI, article as posted,

1. Is linked to a copyrighted article 2. Is incorrect. Random House sued me. My resulting counter-claim was the only legal method to defend myself.

Thank you for your help.

Lew

Lperdue (talk) 14:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Reply - The article includes material copied from this website. The website does not specify a copyright or licensing terms for material on the site and as such, is considered to be under copyright by the author.  Based on your username, I'm assuming that you are Lewis Purdue.  Unfortunately, this being the internet, nobody can be sure that the person who is registered in Wikipedia as User:Lperdue is really Lewis Purdue.  In order for the material to be used verbatim, it needs to be released under a license compatible with the GFDL.  See WP:DCP for the process to donate copyright material.
 * I'll note that as the subject of the article, you have a conflict of interest, and copying biographical information from your website might not be the best idea. You may want to just edit the article with fresh text and provide citations to back up any facts.  Regards, -- Whpq (talk) 21:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Lperdue (talk)

Many thanks for that. You've opened my eyes to just how careful you guys are.

I've spent quite some time today grepping the Wiki tags etc, and creating everything from scratch and footnoting things. I hope the newest version works. I'm certainly ready to make any of the changes needed, so please let me know.


 * Lperdue, I understand that you're trying to improve the Lewis Perdue article, but you aren't succeeding. You need to read a little more about Wikipedia—WP:BESTCOI might be a good place to start. In general, you shouldn't be editing Lewis Perdue at all; in particular, no editors should use your web sites as references. Additionally, your edits deleted some things like article categories. If you have any questions after you've read the policies and guidelines, just ask. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 22:37, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Lperdue (talk)

Okay, I started small. I added a source and corrected the error in the stub.

The statement in the old stub was incorrect:" The Da Vinci Legacy was a semi-unknown book until the release of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code."

The book was a bestseller in 1983. How can I verify that for the wiki article without using the scans of material from my publisher? Sure, they are parked on my website, but they're not my documents.

The BBC link, while telling part of the story, is out of context. Lperdue (talk) 04:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Lperdue (talk)

Comments and suggestions welcome and needed for a new draft of this which I have created here:

User:Lperdue/DraftBio

Lperdue (talk) 18:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Review by user:whpq
I'll start with the dull manual of style stuff.
 * 1) Remove the "Summary" section header.  The lead paragraph(s) never have section headings
 * 2) Add wikilinks.  There are very few links to other articles.
 * 3) The infobox is too big.  Remove the imagesize and let the infobox act on its defaul size settings.
 * 4) The references should use citation templates.  WP:CITET provides a list to choose from, or if you are lazy like I am, you can activate refTools under My preferences > gadgets to provide a button that brings up a fill-in-the-blanks form to generate the citation.
 * 5) The references should be in its own section titled "References".
 * 6) For a long list of references as you have in this article, it's preferable to use a smaller display by using reflist.

As for the actual content, as is this is an autobiography, I'd like to commend you for seeking other editors to review the material. You may want to consider asking for reviews from members of Wikiproject Biography as they specialize in dealing with biographies.


 * 1) The lead paragraph is too short, and fails to mention one of the key aspects of your notoriety -- the allegations of plagiarism and the resultant law suit.
 * 2) Sourcing for the lawsuit goes to primary sources, the court documents. The material i this section really should be sourced to newspaper reports.
 * 3) A biography isn't a resume. A list of all the publications you may written something for isnt't necessary.
 * 4) I don't see any serious issues with neutral point of view which often plagues autobiogrtaphies.

Regards, -- Whpq (talk) 14:38, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Lperdue (talk)


 * Reply - Thank you! I will make all the corrections suggested. The only one which poses a problem is the one regarding the court filings. Because the legal case has been so complicated, the newspaper articles written have been incomplete, inaccurate and out of context. I have referenced the Vanity Fair article because it's the only account that has done a complete and accurate job on the issue. They had two fact checkers working on Mnookin's article for almost a month to verify everything. This was not done by any other newspaper or publication.

Because I have spent so many years as a journalist and journalism instructor, I am always aware that daily newspaper and other media sources create their articles under deadline pressures by competent, earnest people who must rush pieces to their readers/viewers.

They must do this without the benefit of fact-checkers, without adequate time to read and absorb lengthy documents and with the frequent temptation to rely upon public relations people who will "interpret" a complicated story in ways that best suit their clients.

I've been there and that's the reason I quoted from the court records whenever possible and referenced the original source documents.

If there is a better way to use the primary sources -- the court document -- I am all ears.

As a broader Wikipedia consideration, there are many other complicated issues -- political, legal, environmental etc. -- that do rely primarily on media accounts with the same flaws I mentioned above. Primary sources could go a long way to helping those who want to did as deep as the facts go.

I might imagine that someone who is interested enough to dig through source documents, might be a good editorial contributor to a Wiki entry ... just a thought.

Thanks again for your suggestions ... especially the specifics that will help me slice to what needs doing now.

Lperdue (talk) 16:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)