User talk:Rep Nikkel

Welcome!
Hello, Rep Nikkel, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! —C.Fred (talk) 01:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
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Username concerns
Welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I noticed that your username (Rep Nikkel) may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because it suggests you are purporting to be B.J. Nikkel or editing on his behalf. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account to use for editing. Thank you.

Please also note that if you are claiming to be Nikkel, you may be asked to correspond with Wikipedia via email to verify your identity. You will not be asked to present such verification in the open text of a talk page. —C.Fred (talk) 01:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Greetings - I am indeed Rep. B.J. Nikkel. I do not believe my username violates your policy in any way and I am always quite careful in editing for factual content only. I am in the process of trying to edit the page with my name on it for factual content and have found a problem with an editor which I am in the process of trying to resolve.

Thank you. Rep Nikkel (talk) 19:41, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

June 2012
Hello, Rep Nikkel. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but 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 or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

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 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
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Please familiarize yourself with relevant content 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. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 15:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Good morning Mr. Bunderson,

I assure you I am extremely cautious and as a former writer, myself, to add actual factual information only. I do not embellish - I cite facts.

To get right to the point, you wrote some inaccurate information about me on Wikipedia page about me. You also reversed a large amount of work I did to include all of the 2011 and 2012 legislation that I was joint prime sponsor of, along with other pertinent information. I had also edited the page to ensure it made sense to have the biographical information under that heading and the legislative under that heading.

I dispute your edit depicting me "as a strong supporter of gay marriage" and that is why I attempted to remove it. It simply is not true. Nowhere will you find that has been said either publicly or privately. Certainly the Denver Post article you cite does nothing of the kind to support your claim. There are no articles you will find that do so. That is because I am not a strong supporter of "gay marriage." Respectfully, there is a reason one is called "civil unions" and the other is called "gay marriage." They are distinctly different. I would highly encourage you to familiarize yourself with the very acute distinction between the two.

I suspect, that as a seminarian in the Catholic Church in Denver, who opposed SB12-002 - the civil unions bill, you are perhaps a little too close to the subject yourself, to actually be neutral. Perhaps you should recuse yourself from editing on the topic. But, again, it is intellectually dishonest and blatantly untrue to make the claim you did about me and I ask you to stop it.

I am very happy to acknowledge my support for civil unions, however. In fact, I added a very factual paragraph about that to the page, but again, you un-did all the work I contributed to, including that.

In addition, I am no longer the vice chairman for ALEC. I'm not even sure I'm still a member. So, perhaps you should do a little fact checking before making additions to these web pages without being able to substantiate the facts.

I edit that page because in fact it is my name on it. I don't care to embellish, I simply wish to ensure that only the truth and the facts about me are presented accurately.

I have contacted Wikipedia about this matter. Meanwhile, I would respectfully ask you to allow me to edit the page and allow the facts to be presented, as they are the truth.

Best regards, Rep Nikkel (talk) 16:05, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I point out here that it is not only truth but also verifiability that must be achieved in articles. To that end, I agree with User:Rep Nikkel's edits to remove the characterization of Nikkel as "a strong supporter of gay marriage", because that description was not supported by the source in the Denver Post. About all that source would back up is that Nikkel was the key vote to get the bill out of committee. Regarding ALEC, it may have been a tense issue: the article may have needed recast to say she was vice chairman of ALEC during some listed time period.


 * I also point out that the article needs to be written from neutral point of view. This does not prohibit Nikkel from editing her own article; it does require her to use caution to make sure she edits neutrally. In general, her edits have done so. Any issues I have are more with verifiability than the article being turned into an advertisement. That said, I would like to see a reliable source for the "Miss Transparency" moniker. —C.Fred (talk) 17:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you;,sir. Here are various citations of having been dubbed "Miss Transparency": http://transparency.i2i.org/2009/05/15/the-opapue-governor/ http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/26866029/detail.html http://thecoloradoobserver.com/2012/02/776/ Again, I will use utmost caution in editing this page. I will try to learn more about how to add citations from news sources to ensure accountability. Sincerely, Rep Nikkel (talk) 17:27, 9 June 2012 (UTC) http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2010/04/18/b-j-nikkel-accepts-the-republican-party%E2%80%99s-nomination-for-house-district-49-assembly/

I confirmed yesterday that I am a past member of ALEC as my membership expired in December 2011.

Rep Nikkel (talk) 18:49, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Your membership in ALEC
As of today, you are still listed as a State Chairman for ALEC on the alec website. That information has been repeated on dozens of other websites, which also cite your active participation in the organization. I have searched for and have found no sources stating that you have publicly announced you have left the organization or that you have done anything to distance yourself from a leadership position with the organization. To report the opposite on your article would be an un-sourced statement. Since the majority of your content is obviously self-generated, in violation of WP:COI and that statement is contradictory to the sources, the assumption here would be that you are perpetrating a lie and using wikipedia as a vehicle. That's a bad thing to say about a politician. That's a bad thing for you to do to wikipedia. It hurts the reputation of wikipedia. It severely discredits you and everything else you report as a valid wikipedia editor. The proper reaction would be to remove all other content you have posted. I'm going to change the status in your article to match current sources. I would suggest you have to directly deal with ALEC if they are mis-representing your leadership on their website. Please direct me to reliable public media sources that show you have quit the organization and I will follow though on correcting that information on several other articles that so report it. Trackinfo (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't help that ALEC does not update their website. I verified yesterday and you can too, if you'd like to know the truth - by calling Laura Elliott in the membership department with ALEC at 202-742-8527. She will be able to confirm that I am no longer a member and no longer a state vice chairman. As you probably know, information on websites is only as good as the editor making the updates valid. If you reallywant the truth, call ALEC yourself and find out.

I have no qualms, by the way, admitting to the fact I was a member, and as you saw, I left that information in place. I just want the facts to stated as they actually exist - not as old information. I did call ALEC and asked them to make sure to change their website and list the new vice chairman and they said they would do so.

Thank you for your assistance in promoting true, verifiable facts.

Rep Nikkel (talk) 20:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Do bear in mind that part of the Wikipedia definition of verifiable includes what can be traced back to published sources. That means yes, there may be a lag at times while sources are updated. —C.Fred (talk) 03:07, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much and I do appreciate and understand that.

Rep Nikkel (talk) 03:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Here is the the verifiable proof that I am no longer state chairman for ALEC: http://www.alec.org/about-alec/state-chairmen/ Rep Nikkel (talk) 08:33, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Verification of identity.
Hello Ms Nikkel, I apologize for the inconvenience, but could you please contact info-en@wikimedia.org using an official email address to verify your identity? We would like to ensure that no one is using Wikipedia to impersonate you. Best, Danger! High voltage! 00:45, 1 July 2012 (UTC)