User talk:Starworks Media Group

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Hello these are the changes I made to the Anthony Salzman page I had created. Although I do not believe there were copyright violations as I credited my sources, and linked as well. I was hired by Mr. Salzman to create his page. Could you please give me access to the original content I had posted that was deleted by you?

How does the new content below appear on wikipedia search Tony Salzman?

(text deleted - repetition of copyright violation) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starworks Media Group (talk • contribs)


 * This text is all about how amazing he is, not only listing his accomplishments but stepping back and marveling at them. Highly promotional, not in keeping with Wikipedia's neutrality policy.
 * How much of this is traceable to reliable sources independent of Salzman? —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I find some of this highly suspect. As I pointed out at Talk:Anthony salzman, he is certainly not the first American businessman ever to do business in Vietnam. As for:
 * "He issued the first check in Vietnam’s history on April 4, 1996." This seems unlikely. Did Vietnam never have banks before 1996? Did the French not open banks there?
 * "He was the first American to own a car in Hanoi." Is this known for certain? How? —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I recommend you check out No paid advocacy. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

April 2015
Hello, I'm 331dot. I noticed that you recently removed some content from Anthony salzman without explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; I restored the removed content. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. As stated, you cannot remove the template until the issues are resolved; please discuss them on the talk page or with those who put the template there. 331dot (talk) 18:18, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Starworks Media Group. 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.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * 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.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

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. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:31, 27 April 2015 (UTC) Your account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended for publicity and/or promotional purposes. If you intend to edit constructively in other topic areas, you may be granted the right to continue under a change of username. Please read the following carefully.

Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, website or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity. The edits may have violated one or more of our rules on spamming, which include: adding inappropriate external links, posting advertisements and using Wikipedia for promotion. Wikipedia has many articles on companies, groups, and organizations, but such groups are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia to write about themselves. In addition, usernames like yours are disallowed under our username policy.
 * Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

Probably not, although if you can demonstrate a pattern of future editing in strict accordance with our neutral point of view policy, you may be granted this right. See Wikipedia's FAQ for Organizations for a helpful list of frequently asked questions by people in your position. Also, review the conflict of interest guidance to see the kinds of limitations you would have to obey if you did want to continue editing about your company, group, organization, or clients. If this does not fit in with your goals, then you will not be allowed to edit Wikipedia again.
 * Am I allowed to make these edits if I change my username?


 * What can I do now?

If you have no interest in writing about some other topic than your organization, group, company, or product, you may consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead. If you do intend to make useful contributions here about some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:


 * Add the text on your user talk page.
 * Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with a new username you are willing to use. See Special:Listusers to search for available usernames. Your new username will need to meet our username policy.
 * Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:
 * Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
 * Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

If you believe this block was made in error, you may appeal this block by adding the text below, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. Diannaa (talk) 01:24, 28 April 2015 (UTC) There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. 331dot (talk) 10:04, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

block
Now why would you block me? it is my first time using wikipedia so im learning and all my questions go unanswered. Actually all the information is independant of salzman, I quoted the New York times, chicago tribune, zoom info and other Vietnam sources. They are actually referenced. So why the block? and why not help me edit accordingly instead of such rudeness?

I was eager to learn how to navigate this, furthermore why not google Anthony Salzman and Vietnam to find all credible sources, none of it written by him but by major media outlets !!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starworks Media Group (talk • contribs)


 * Just FYI making legal threats is a sure fire way to remain blocked. 331dot (talk) 09:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)


 * You were blocked because accounts that are only used for promotional purposes are blocked on Wikipedia. You can still try to convince admins to unblock you. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 10:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Let's go back a few steps and I'll try and explain what's happened.


 * Firstly, let's start off with the good news. I've read the New York Times source and it talks about Salzman and gives a brief overview of his career. So that means there is a possibility that somebody could spin an article out of this. However, to be honest, articles on businesspeople are a hard sell on Wikipedia, and you're far better off writing about the general subject and mentioning Salzman in United States–Vietnam relations. We can then redirect Anthony Salzman there. However, the US-Vietnam relations article is a complete and utter train wreck, full of unsourced and overlong content, and it needs a serious clean-up itself, far more than I can quickly do here.
 * Secondly, you need to have a username that clearly identifies you as an individual, it's not obvious to anybody that "Starworks Media Group" is not used by several different people. This is why you were blocked - not because of the article on Anthony Salzman. You can usually click here to choose a different account name, but obviously you can't do it while blocked. I'm personally dead against administrators blocking users in this manner and prefer to give editors a chance to rename themselves, because it upsets people - as you have been!
 * Thirdly, some people have complained your article was a copyright violation. This is difficult for new editors to understand, but what this means is that all text on Wikipedia must be free for others to edit, redistribute and even sell to others. To give an extreme example, somebody could take your article, create a book from it, and sell that book for $100 - they probably won't sell any copies, but it's not illegal for them to do so. Since this isn't what most people want, we can't accept content unless it is obviously using our free licence, which most other websites and books aren't. The simplest solution is to just write the article again in your own words.
 * Fourthly, you say "I was hired by Mr. Salzman to create his page". Now, I've written an article once for a pizza and two beers, but I knew what I was doing and if I believed said article was not compliant with Wikipedia's inclusion policies, I would have turned it down. Would you expect to be paid for fixing Mr. Salzman's car without knowing anything about automobiles? Would you expect to be paid for doing his gardening without a knowledge of horticulture? I suspect the answer for those is "no". So why would you expect to be paid for creating his Wikipedia article despite having no (apparent) skill or expertise?
 * Finally, as has been suggested elsewhere, making legal threats to the Wikimedia Foundation is about the worst thing you can do. They might decide the article must be deleted due to legal reasons, which probably isn't the result you want. In any case, you will not be able to edit Wikipedia while the threat is outstanding.

So in summary, I would advise you to delete the threat about going to your lawyer ASAP, and list an alternative account name here. Somebody can then convert that into an appropriate unblock request. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:27, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Richie for these explanations and the courteous explanation. As opposed to be blocked and accused by Diana (The admin who blocked me without explanations). Im having a really hard time navigating even the messaging system so it took me a while to find this thread. I find it so innapropriate on that blocking admin part to write the offensive comments about Mr. Salzman ( such as He cant possibly be the first man in vietnam to own a car). After further investigation it turns out Mr. Salzman was the first to own a car, his vietnam license plate was 000 001 ( he actually still owns the car and plate). She also wrote" He cannot have been the first to issue a check in Vietnam, wasnt there french banks there when he arrived." Well after further investigation, it turns out when Mr. Salzman arrived there were no banking institution.Banks. No, there were no foreign banks in this country when he arrived. No means zero. While he was here, sometime after he arrived, the ANZ bank Australia was the first. Citibank was the second. The country manager for the Australian bank was a wonderful guy named A.M. The country manager for Citibank was close-minded "clerk" named B.L. SALZMAN chose to deliver the caterpillar banking business to Alan. he ran one of the most successful and innovative marketing programs ever: it was a contest to find the oldest operating piece of caterpillar equipment in Vietnam. The reward was $1000. At that point in time the average monthly wage was $80. Submissions poured in from all over Vietnam. And, he thought it was high time that the first check be issued in Vietnam. It was after all a 100% cash society. A virgin banking market. So, they found the oldest caterpillar in the country that was still operating, a bulldozer built in 1937. The runner-up was 1939.

There ought to be some kind of archive photos of this someplace I'll try to find them. When they announced the winner, it was a celebration attended by a lot of people, and the winner, who was an engineer who owned a tugboat. Sorry, the oldest engine was on the tugboat, the second oldest on the bulldozer. On the tugboat it was used for the propulsion. I remember having seen those huge checks when I was a kid on game shows. The ones the size of the bed. salesman decided that that was exactly what my company and the bank needed. A gigantic check with both of our logos on it made out to "bearer". One of my staff members described the smile on the winners face as ear to ear Ivory! Well, the ivory disappeared when he saw this thing, the check, which salzman announced he had won. During the ceremony Salzman proceeded to explain what a check is: a negotiable instrument. he told the audience that it was about time for Vietnam to start using negotiable instruments, and here is the first one! I invited the very perplexed men to come to the stage, and then I gave him a cheap plastic pen. He looked even more confused. The huge check was held by two bankers as backdrop to Salzman and the very perplexed winner.

At this point in time I asked the bankers to turn the check around to show the blank side to the audience. They did this, and then I asked the winner to sign his name so as to endorse it. You can imagine, he looked even more perplexed then more perplexed then more perplexed! He did not want to sign. they then directed his attention to another representative from the bank who was holding two plastic shopping bags bearing the banks logo. The shopping bags were bursting full of cash. The ivory smile returned. He started to head for the bankers. I said no, you have to sign your name on the back of the check. He really did not know what I was talking about but he realized that he was not going to get near those bags of cash unless he signed his name

Anyway, that was the first check negotiated in the history of Vietnam, regardless of which government regime one talks about.

As far as asking the admin Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) Im not sure how to reach out, but I would be more than happy to change my name ( I wish the blocking admin had explained this was the reason why i was blocked) and would like to change it to IngridDG if possible.

I realize writing a wikipedia page about a businessman is tricky I would like to try to link his wikipedia to an actual contribution ( citing the New York times article and chicago tribune articles) and linking back to him as (cont)  suggested. However I also would like to say that being kind and polite ( like Ritchie333) was to me as a new contributor goes a long way and some kind of incident report should be filed for the admin who has responded so unkindly and attacking my contribution and actual facts about the man I was intending to write about.

Thank you all for your time

IngridDG (Starworks Media Group)


 * I disagree that it is unkind for someone to state that your information might not be correct, or that it is an "attack". Such questioning is a common occurrence here; people must justify their positions.  You also were told that your username was problematic, in the block notice above; "Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, website or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity." 331dot (talk) 09:46, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Here are:
 * a check book slip from the Saigon branch of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China from the 1920s
 * an obviously old bank check from the Banque de l'Indochine, Saigon (you can click the photo of the check to get to a page that shows a larger image of it if you scroll down one screen or so)
 * a photo of a Citroën in front of the Hanoi Sofitel Metropole hotel in 1940
 * a page full of old photos of cars in Vietnam, including a very old one at the top
 * lots of old photos of cars in Vietnam—well, Indochina, but some of them are in Vietnam, and the text mentions both Hanoi and Saigon—toward the bottom of the page ("The front wheel drive sedan was imported by Citroen into Indochina starting in 1936 up to 1957 through its Indochinese branch. It was the car of French government workers as well as of the Indochinese middle class of European and Asian heritage."); they started manufacturing the Dalat in Saigon in 1970
 * —Largo Plazo (talk) 10:49, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * One thing has been in the back of my mind since I started writing yesterday, so I looked into it. Above, you reiterate that Salzman was the first person to own a car in Vietnam. I thought I recalled that in the article you'd written that he was the first American to own a car in either Vietnam or Hanoi. I just check and found it claimed here that "He was the first American to own a car in Hanoi." So your retort to the photos I supplied above could be that he was the first American, not the first person, to own a car in Hanoi. But that would lead me to two follow-up questions:
 * Even if he were the first American to own a car on Hanoi, how would he possibly know that? How would anybody happen to know for a fact that none of the thousands of people who had owned cars in Hanoi over a period of decades had ever been American? Who would be keeping track of such a thing, and why would it even have occurred to him to inquire about such trivia? "Thanks, yes, I'll place this plate on my car right away. By the way, am I the first American to ever have one of these?" And what clerk would have the time, interest, and resources to answer that question?
 * If he were only the first American to own a car in Hanoi, decades after people had begun driving cars around that city, how in the world would he have been issued the license plate numbered 000 001? The story falls apart right there.
 * —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:39, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

—Largo Plazo (talk) reponse to your many questions and statements, I went to Mr. Salzman directly for answers and supporting facts being discussed here. Although I no longer intend on writing his biography with these facts but rather a possible link between Mr. Salzman and the Trade Agreement as suggested by one of the contributors, here is his reply:

Dear ladies and gentlemen, It has come to my attention that there were some inaccuracies in the original draft of my biography submitted to Wikipedia. This is regrettable and we thank you for helping us to correct them. The following information may be useful to put the chronology of my own history in Vietnam into the larger context.

Vietnam (Việt Nam), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam) is a long, thin country in Southeast Asia. Its neighbouring countries are China to the north, Laos and Cambodiato the west.

Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress.

In the history of Vietnam, April 30th, 1975 is the day that marks the fall of Saigon government, ending the Vietnam War and leading to the liberation of Vietnam's southern part.

After the Fall of Saigon and the capitulation of South Vietnam, Vietnam government was completely controlled by the Communistic North. On the 2nd of July 1976 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with the city of Hanoi as the capital. After the country was officially one, there was a unification program in order to integrate the South.

In December 1991 Washington lifted the ban on organized U.S. travel to Vietnam. The U.S. Congress authorizes the United States Information Agency (USIA) to begin exchange programs with Vietnam.

In 1992 Anthony Salzman made his 1st trip to Vietnam.

After a 20-year hiatus of severed ties, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton announced the formal normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 11, 1995. Subsequent to President Clinton's normalization announcement, in August 1995, both countries upgraded their Liaison Offices opened during January 1995 to embassy status.

I arrived in Vietnam soon after the travel restriction was lifted by the United States, but nearly 3 years before diplomatic relations were normalized. Prior to normalization, Americans were permitted to establish "representative offices" which were not allowed to actually transact business. License to transact business were first issued after normalization, i.e., after July 11, 1995.

In addition to myself, two other Americans received representative office licenses in 1993. but only I went ahead to commence revenue producing business activity.

Modern Vietnam's origin only dates from 1975, and due to the embargo by the United States against Vietnam after the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, no Americans were allowed to travel to Vietnam until 1992. Therefore, it would be more accurate to specify that I was one of the first three American "businessmen" in Hanoi. I was the first American business "operator" in Hanoi, and to the best of my knowledge in all of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

When I arrived in Vietnam there were indeed some automobiles. These were predominantly Russian Chaika brand cars owned by only the most elite government officials. There were as well some antique Citroens, and a few Toyotas for the country managers of Japanese trading companies. Although I imported an automobile, neither of the other two Americans did so. Their names are James Rockwell and Greig Craft. I expect they would confirm that they did not import automobiles in those days, should you wish to check with them. Unlike the west, license plates in Vietnam contain a great deal of information. They indicate the province that issued the plate, whether the owner of the vehicle is government or private, whether a representative office or an operating business, and the nationality of the owner. In my case, my first license plate was NN-35-01. NN signifies Representative off of a foreign owner, 35 indicates American nationality. And, 01 is self explanatory! The license plate can be glimpsed in a photograph of my white Lincoln Continental, which was in fact the first automobile in history owned by an American in the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I am proud of my contribution to the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. there is no need or desire on my part to embellish these historical facts.

Sincerely yours,

Anthony D. Salzman


 * This user still needs to request a username change in order to proceed. 331dot (talk) 13:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * "... which was in fact the first automobile in history owned by an American in the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" is contradictory. If his first-ownership is qualified by "in the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam", in other words, if it is restricted to "first after the war", then the "in history" phrase doesn't belong there. Even if no American had ever owned a car in Hanoi prior to the war, there is no reason why he would know that. The "01" means nothing in that regard, based on the information at Vehicle registration plates of Vietnam (unfortunately unsourced). That article indicates that the registration number scheme to which you refer came into effect in 1984, replacing one that had itself been in effect only since 1978. —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2015 (UTC)