User talk:Sandysummers

October 2009
If you are affiliated with 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 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 conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 03:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

November 2009
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added such as to the page Nurse stereotypes do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Cirt (talk) 22:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

July 2011
Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a collection of links, nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Because Wikipedia uses the nofollow attribute value, its external links are disregarded by most search engines. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. Thank you.  MrOllie (talk) 18:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Dear MrOllie, I feel you have very unfairly deleted all my content for no valid reason. Were the book entries I added really irrelevant to the page? No, both entries were appropriate. The book discussed those TV shows in depth. My additions to the nursing shortage? We wrote a lengthy paper totally relevant to the discussion, bringing new information and perspective to light, yet you deleted even a reference to it. The NP page--you deleted my entries even though they were valid and brought new information to the page. The awards for Grey's Anatomy, HawthoRNe and Nurse Jackie, do you doubt that we gave them these awards? I added links to them all so you could see the awards. I direct a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to improve public understanding of nursing. Is Wikipedia not in the business of improving the public's understanding? Please repost all my entries. Sandysummers (talk) 01:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)Thank you. SandySummers
 * I do not doubt that your organization gave awards or wrote papers, but I do doubt that mentions of those awards and papers comply with the guidelines on external links and advertising that I linked above. You should also take a look at our guideline on conflicts of interest. - MrOllie (talk) 12:02, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Ollie, This is exhausting, but I will address each and every of the 20 types of links to be avoided and tell you why our website and the links I provided do not violate Wikipedia's rules. Or if they do, I will be happy to fix any problems with them so that you do not delete all my work.

1. The Truth About Nursing's website is a unique resource that exists no where else in the world.

2. The Truth About Nursing's website is factually accurate when we quote research. We also do in-depth analyses and provide that qualitative perspective on nursing's portrayal in the media.

3. The Truth About Nursing's website does not contain any malware or anything else harmful or dangerous.

4. The Truth About Nursing website's main goal is to educate the public and decision makers about the damage caused by stereotypical depictions of nurses in the media. Included in the 1,800 pages of material on our website are a few letter-writing campaigns, but we probably have fewer than 10 current campaigns at any given time (0.5% of our overall content).

5. I have not linked to any pages that sell anything. Twice I linked to our book, but the page I linked to explained what the book is, discusses reviews and awards as well as a few links for where people could buy it. Other books are listed on Wikipedia. Do none of these contain information on how a person can buy the books linked? In addition, the authors (my husband and I) do not receive any royalties from the book whatsoever. They are all donated to our non-profit organization.

6. The Truth About Nursing's website does not ask anyone to register or to pay to see any content on its site.

7. The Truth About Nursing's website in not inaccessible to anyone. It is open to all.

8. The Truth About Nursing's website does not require any plugins or external applications.

9. The links I provided do not go to any type of search page.

10. The links I provided do not go to any type of social networking site.

11. The links I provided do not go to any type of blog, personal web page or fansite. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization recognized by the U.S. government, we are a recognized authority on the subject of the media's depiction of nursing. You can click here to see our IRS approval letter.

12. I have not linked to any open wikis.

13. The links I provided are more than directly related to the topic at hand.

14. I did not link to any manufacturers, suppliers or customers.

15. If you return my posts to their position, I will be happy to replace the book links I inserted to ISBN linking format that I just now learned about.

16. All the links I included are reliably functional. Our website is hardly ever down. I can't remember the last time it was. And when it does go down, it only stays down for a minute or two.

17. I did not include any affiliate, tracking or referral links in my postings.

18. I did not link to any pages with disambiguation, redirection or category pages.

19. The links I linked to are appropriate. Under "What can normally be linked criteria: 1) The links are to the Truth About Nursing's official website. 2) the links to the works I cite give as full a copy of the material as possible. 3) The material I included is neutral and accurate and very relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the nature of the public health crisis (the nursing shortage) that has its roots in the media's systematic undervaluation of the nursing profession. When nurses are not portrayed accurately, when physicians are given credit for the work that nurses do, it leads to this wrong belief that only physicians deserve credit for health care accomplishments, that nurses are their uneducated serfs who will happily feed off of their bread crumbs. But nurses are autonomous professionals with a wide body of knowledge, much of that exclusive to what physicians have. Nurses work on the cutting edge of health care inventing new health care delivery systems, saving lives and improving outcomes. But nurses receive only paltry financial support for their work because of this enduring belief perpetuated by the media that they don't do anything of value. How underfunded are nurses? For instance, for every $1 that nurses get for their residencies, physicians get $375 for their residencies. That's the level of disrespect decision makers have for nursing. So the gross lack of funding leads to a nursing profession that's not strong enough to save the lives we need saved, that we could save and that deserve to be saved. So if people better understand the value of nursing through a more accurate depiction of nursing, then funding for nursing clinical practice, education and research will surely improve, strengthening the profession, allowing more lives to be saved. But that's never going to happen as long as shows like "Grey's Anatomy" persist in portraying nurses as fawning or bitter losers, 3rd class citizens who flit in an out of the margins of the physician-heroes' lives, never doing anything meaningful on their own.

The Truth About Nursing analyzes media depictions of nurses and the effect they have on public thinking on our website, the main vehicle for our work. Feel free to call me to discuss, because I feel very frustrated with this forum that my work is systematically devalued, perceived as evil and self-serving, when all we're trying to do is provide perspective, a counter balance to this fandom that loves Grey's Anatomy and can see no flaw to it. Can Wikipedia really want no counter balance in its material?

20. I did link one list of awards, I can't remember in which piece now because they've been deleted, but there were no other awards but The Truth About Nursing's awards. So am I to read the rules that if there are no other entries in a category that no links may appear in the sole entry in a list? Perhaps you could guide me on how I could mention the awards and stay within your rules.

Regarding conflicts of interest We go out of our way to praise the media when it's doing a good job and criticize it when it's doing a bad job. We have praised Grey's Anatomy on occasion even though they do far more wrong for nurses than good. But when they do something right, we let people know about it. By the same token, "Nurse Jackie," "HawthoRNe" and "Mercy," favorite shows of ours because their central characters are nurses (nurses doing nursing work, who would have thought?), mess up sometimes, usually on nursing autonomy issues. So we criticize them for that and let the creators and the public know about it.

Quoting your rules "Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant and conforms to the content policies." We conform to that rule. I only posted that which is relevant to the discussion.

I receive no money whatsoever from what I posted. Not from my book, not from my organization. Both my husband and I are unpaid volunteers who donate all royalties from our book to the non-profit. Neither of us get paid nor do we receive any type of financial or other compensation from the Truth About Nursing whatsoever.

We have no legal antagonists.

Under how to avoid COI edits 3. Avoid linking. I volunteer for this organization. Of course we believe what we post on it to be true, accurate and a valid perspective that no one else is bringing to the subject of stereotypical portrayals of nursing. It's not like I posted something about our organization on some arborist webpage where it would be irrelevant. I posted it on relevant pages where we have written extensively on a topic.

I have posted nothing that promotes my personal website, photos or any private or commercial interests. My postings have all been about the public non-profit I volunteer for.

Thank you for considering my response. Sandysummers (talk) 15:48, 12 July 2011 (UTC)Sandy Summers, Founder, Executive Director, The Truth About Nursing, Baltimore, Maryland 21212, +1-410-323-1100

truthaboutnursing.org
You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you insert a spam link. Persistent spammers may have their websites blacklisted, preventing anyone from linking to them from all Wikimedia sites as well as potentially being penalized by search engines.

Please don't add your website to any further Wikipedia articles. Instead use an edit request to suggest such additions. Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline has changed dramatically since your 2011 discussions above. --Ronz (talk) 18:17, 29 November 2017 (UTC)