User talk:RobertFindling

Welcome 1
RobertFindling, welcome back. I am going to copy here what I wrote at User talk:Oshwah, who undeleted your user page, and remind you to have a look at WP:COI before editing as well:

Thanks, Oshwah. Now that I can see User:RobertFindling, yes,, I think you'll want them to get that cleaned up quickly. As a couple of samples of appropriate userpages of practicing physician/experts, see  and  (I have gleaned from others that Jacob might meet notability and could have his own Wikipedia article, but you'll see no such indication of that on his user page, which focuses exclusively on his Wikipedia work). I think it wise to list your Wikipedia work, link to your real life credentials, but take care that user pages are not CVs trying to look like articles. One distinction where you all need to be very careful (compared to Tim or Graham or Jacob) is that your userpages and work are not promoting your own work in the area of assessment. Oshwah, I will watchlist that user page. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  15:35, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:RobertFindling


A tag has been placed on User:RobertFindling requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Theroadislong (talk) 16:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * did you read the discussion above and at 's talk page? Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:25, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If you would have checked the log, you would see this entry: 15:15, December 31, 2020 Oshwah talk contribs restored page User:RobertFindling (4 revisions) (Per discussion and request on my user talk page.)  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Contested deletion Reply
This page should not be speedily deleted because the editor who placed it does not seem to have read the discussion where User:Oshwah reinstated the deleted page. That discussion is linked here on talk; more here. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  16:26, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Endorse deletion, as apparently the concerns will not be addressed quickly. This poster can start over when they are prepared to understand and address core Wikipedia policies. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  17:19, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The content is entirely inappropriate, it is promotional and written in the third person like an article, better just to start afresh, there is nothing salvageable there. Theroadislong (talk) 16:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you would take that up with Oshwah, or allow time for either this user or Eric Youngstrom to address the concerns, which are clearly laid out at the resinstating admin's page, including the explanation that EYoungstrom would return shortly. This sort of precipitous action just created a lot of extra work for everyone, when the process of addressing these concerns is underway.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:34, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you, all! Theroadislong, there is a chunk of context in the thread referenced above. I am going to make some edits to the page to add links to the HGAPS web site, user group, and a bit of other effort to be proactive. This is a new editor who is Busy in Real Life (chair of a department, dealing with COVID surge in census). This was intended to be a good faith start, and the logic is in the thread. We understand the guidance. It will take a couple days to implement. Starting from scratch is likely to trigger a repeat of this dance. I request that we leave as is, and I will work to help adjust.
 * Bob and I are tentatively planning on talking next week, and it is unlikely that he will try to make more edits himself until we have a chance to talk. More shortly.... and thanks! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * NO.  Please get "Bob" to do this now, or I will endorse re-deletion. I feel quite put out at having supported this and seeing that the concerns cannot be, and will not be, quickly addressed. And you cannot edit someone else's userpage.  You should not have asked for this page to be reinstated if you could not deal with this issue immediately; this is promotional content and Wikipedia is not a WEBHOST.  Oshwah has other concerns on his talk.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:13, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This has now taken time from Theroadislong, Oshwah, me, and any other admin who now is forced to review the request for speedy deletion. We're all busy.  This is not a good look.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:14, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, all, I am back online -- finished the errand. I am going to reply piecemeal because I keep getting conflicted copies. Please give me 10 min. Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No. You can't edit someone else's userpage, so you can't fix this.  So I am done here; this has taken my entire morning.  Bob needs to start over when he has time.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I am on the phone with Bob right now, getting back on Zoom. Agree with the point about this taking a lot of people's valuable time. :-) Trying, here! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:23, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Please advise what the best way to do a stopgap here is. I am on a Zoom with the chair of psychiatry at a medical center. I would like to coach him how to demonstrate a good faith effort here. He has spent a big chunk of his morning on this as well. I am grateful to all involved, and trying to help -- this isn't what I expected to be spending my morning on either. :-) Thanks! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * He can blank the page immediately. Simply remove everything until he has the time to do it right. And with many people now watching and having expended time on this, I suggest he makes sure he reviews all relevant Wikipedia policies before writing anything new on his user page. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:37, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Further, since I am not an admin, I am in no position to advise whether doing this will suffice. At this point, because the page has been nominated for deletion, an independent admin is now obligated to look at this page.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Done! I am teaching him how to reply on the Talk page now. Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, just had him create his Sandbox page. We'll work on the draft there so that we are not triggering more deletion requests. I apologize -- I thought that UserPages were benign (as indicated in initial thread) and he could work on it as time permitted. Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you see WP:UPGOOD for advice on what you can have on your user page. Theroadislong (talk) 17:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Content should be mainly related to your Wikipedia work and activities NOT autobiographical content like your sandbox I'm afraid. Theroadislong (talk) 17:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I wanted to thank you all for your thoughtful guidance and feedback. I certainly meant no offense, and did not wish to commit any transgressions. I am new to this, and am willing to learn.
 * Eric will help me through my navigation of these new processes.
 * I intend to do better in the future.
 * Thank you for your patience.RobertFindling (talk) 18:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * RobertFindling - For your safety and your privacy, I suppressed the revisions on your user page where you added your biography and personal information and details. I would be very careful with what personal information you share on Wikipedia about yourself. I never encourage the practice of sharing personal information to where someone would be able to contact you outside of Wikipedia. This is due to the risk of harassment and other serious problems I've seen happen. Once someone puts information like that on Wikipedia, even with revision deletion and even suppression available, the information is still hard to completely remove and is never really gone once someone has it. This will give you the chance to (hopefully) take my advice and not make such a user page about yourself. If anything, it's discouraged on Wikipedia and doesn't comply with policy. That's not what user pages are supposed to be used for. I also highly recommend that you read this essay, a page that I significantly expanded and added important information to. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I'll be happy to answer them. By the way, welcome to Wikipedia! We're happy that you decided to join us and become part of the community! :-)  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   18:38, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you so very very much. I am grateful.RobertFindling (talk) 18:41, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, just had him create his Sandbox page. We'll work on the draft there so that we are not triggering more deletion requests. I apologize -- I thought that UserPages were benign (as indicated in initial thread) and he could work on it as time permitted. Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you see WP:UPGOOD for advice on what you can have on your user page. Theroadislong (talk) 17:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Content should be mainly related to your Wikipedia work and activities NOT autobiographical content like your sandbox I'm afraid. Theroadislong (talk) 17:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I wanted to thank you all for your thoughtful guidance and feedback. I certainly meant no offense, and did not wish to commit any transgressions. I am new to this, and am willing to learn.
 * Eric will help me through my navigation of these new processes.
 * I intend to do better in the future.
 * Thank you for your patience.RobertFindling (talk) 18:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * RobertFindling - For your safety and your privacy, I suppressed the revisions on your user page where you added your biography and personal information and details. I would be very careful with what personal information you share on Wikipedia about yourself. I never encourage the practice of sharing personal information to where someone would be able to contact you outside of Wikipedia. This is due to the risk of harassment and other serious problems I've seen happen. Once someone puts information like that on Wikipedia, even with revision deletion and even suppression available, the information is still hard to completely remove and is never really gone once someone has it. This will give you the chance to (hopefully) take my advice and not make such a user page about yourself. If anything, it's discouraged on Wikipedia and doesn't comply with policy. That's not what user pages are supposed to be used for. I also highly recommend that you read this essay, a page that I significantly expanded and added important information to. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I'll be happy to answer them. By the way, welcome to Wikipedia! We're happy that you decided to join us and become part of the community! :-)  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   18:38, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you so very very much. I am grateful.RobertFindling (talk) 18:41, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Welcome
Welcome to Wikipedia Dr. Findling. I'm an editor and administrator who goes by the pseudonym Barkeep49 and I see you've had a bit of a rough start. That makes me a bit sad as Wikipedia benefits when people with your level of expertise edit Wikipedia. If you haven't already read our essay with advice for editors like yourself I recommend doing so. It seems that you and are attempting to create an article about you. You do appear to meet our standard for inclusion (what we call notable). That's the good news. The bad news is that writing an autobiography on Wikipedia can be more challenging than in other contexts due to our requirements for things like a neutral point of view. I would recommend reading our explanatory supplement on autobiographies (much of the guidance would also apply to Prof. Youngstrom writing about you). With that as preamble, I need to add to your rough start a bit because after posting this message I will need to delete your sandbox (and also some of the older version of your user page) as a copyright violation. While I have no doubt that you wrote the text which you're using there, whether or not you have the copyright to it is not clear to me, as it is included on a page with a clear copyright notice. Wikipedia can be pedantic about a lot of things and among the topics we take most seriously is copyright violations. As such my recommendation would be to rework that text, so that it's not even a close paraphrase before saving it in your Sandbox. There's one more thing you should do to ensure you don't get caught in a Kafkaesque situation. Can you send an email, ideally from your JHU account, to info-enwikimedia.org? If you tell me you've done this, I can then verify your identity to ensure you don't get blocked. Which we'd be doing for your protection to make sure you weren't being impersonated - I don't think it's happening here but others might take a more literal reading of things, like I said kafkaesque. I hope that all makes sense. If you have questions please don't hesitate to ask. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for reaching out to me. Please know that I'm no longer at JHU. I'm at VCU. My email is Robert.Findling@vcu.edu
 * I am grateful to you for your feedback and wisdom. Please do send me an email to which I can send my reply. Is it info-enwikimedia.org That doesn't seem to be an email address to me.
 * Looking forward to hearing back from you. Bob RobertFindling (talk) 18:33, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The VCU email will obviously be fine. Apologies for the confusion on the email address: put an @ between info-en and wikimedia.org
 * One more piece of advice: I noted you marked this as a minor edit. Minor edits are primarily things like correcting a typo. So if I'd noticed the missing @ sign in my original message I could have fixed that with a minor edit. Replies like this are not considered "minor" by Wikipedia's definition. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:40, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I just sent an email out. I do hope it gets to the ' right place. If you don't get it, please let me know.RobertFindling (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That worked. Thanks. If you have questions that I might be able to help with, please don't hesitate to ping me or leave me a message on my talk page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:49, 31 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the assistance! Hugely appreciated! Two quick follow-up questions:
 * is it worth doing the verification email to OTRS for my account?
 * should this be something that we do as part of our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for getting other Board members and experts engaged?
 * I am going to work on a summary of what happened here, lessons learned so far, and a draft way of working going forward. We already have versions of of some of these on Wikiversity, where we have been more active for the last couple years. I will add a link to them when back on my laptop. But based on this, I want to draft a plan, get expert input from the editing community, and then work the plan. ;-) Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:06, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Prof. Youngstrom I don't know that it would make sense to happen as a part of a standard operating procedure. It is a good idea for anyone who already has an article about them, so yes it would make sense for you to do so. If Dr. Findling hadn't attracted so much attention it likely wouldn't have been necessary - obviously you've been able to work here without having done so for some time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I too would like to welcome you to Wikipedia, and I highly encourage that you stay with us and become a long-term contributor here. Don't worry! I had a rough start too when I first joined Wikipedia! There's a lot of guidelines, and we expect mistakes to happen. Have you gone through our new user tutorial yet? If not, I highly recommend doing so. It will provide you with many important walkthroughs, guides, interactive lessons, and other information that will familiarize you with our policies and guidelines, how Wikipedia works, how to navigate around the site, and how to find important locations and pages. Most users who take this advice and complete the tutorial tell me later that it was significantly helpful to them and saved them hours of time and frustration they would've experienced otherwise. If you have any questions or need help with anything, please let me know and I'll be more than happy to help you out! :-)  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   18:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the kind words. I am very appreciative of your patience while I try to learnRobertFindling (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion about the training. We include that very one as part of our orientation for new editors, on the SOPs linked Here. We also had been using the trainings from WikiEducation. Our plan had been to get Dr. Findling set up with an account, paste in a brief bio, show how to call the visual editor, and then let him do the Wikipedia Adventure on his own time. It seems that we had the right pieces, just not in the optimal sequence. The speed that things happen on Wikipedia is going to be a challenge, too. We will learn and keep striving to do better! Thank you! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion about the training. We include that very one as part of our orientation for new editors, on the SOPs linked Here. We also had been using the trainings from WikiEducation. Our plan had been to get Dr. Findling set up with an account, paste in a brief bio, show how to call the visual editor, and then let him do the Wikipedia Adventure on his own time. It seems that we had the right pieces, just not in the optimal sequence. The speed that things happen on Wikipedia is going to be a challenge, too. We will learn and keep striving to do better! Thank you! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

A beer on me, with an apology

 * Thank you for the all-too-kind words. Happy New Year to all. RobertFindling (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help! And thank you, and Dr. Findling, for being so charitable and gracious. I feel fortunate to have had this experience with Bob rather than another board member. He is probably the busiest of the bunch, especially leading a department through the COVID surge; but we also have worked together for decades, so he was willing to hang in longer. I fear that I don’t the have the same history or social capital with others that we hope to engage, so helping work a good process will be key. Super grateful to all, feeling lucky at how things came together, and looking forward to next steps! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help! And thank you, and Dr. Findling, for being so charitable and gracious. I feel fortunate to have had this experience with Bob rather than another board member. He is probably the busiest of the bunch, especially leading a department through the COVID surge; but we also have worked together for decades, so he was willing to hang in longer. I fear that I don’t the have the same history or social capital with others that we hope to engage, so helping work a good process will be key. Super grateful to all, feeling lucky at how things came together, and looking forward to next steps! Prof. Eric A. Youngstrom (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2021 (UTC)