User talk:T.edsall@verizon.net

January 2012
Hello T.edsall@verizon.net. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Thomas Edsall, 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 following the 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.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * 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.

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. — Ryulong ( 竜龙 ) 00:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Greetings, I also wanted to add that its typically against policy to use Email addresses in usernames. Although there might be a few really old ones around its not really allowed anymore. I went ahead and made a few minor edits to the article but if you have any questions please feel free to drop me a note. --Kumioko (talk) 00:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

A discussion about your edits
There is a discussion about your edits and your username here. --Kumioko (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because your username, T.edsall@verizon.net, does not meet our username policy. '''Your username is the only reason for this block. You are welcome to choose a new username (see below).''' A username should not be promotional, related to a "real-world" group or organization, misleading, offensive, or disruptive. Also, usernames may not end in the word "bot" unless the account is an approved bot account. You are encouraged to choose a new account name that meets our policy guidelines. Alternatively, if you have already made edits and you wish to keep your existing contributions under a new name, then you may request a change in username by:
 * Adding on your user talk page. You should be able to do this even though you are blocked, as you can usually still edit your own talk page. If not, you may wish to contact the blocking administrator by clicking on "E-mail this user" on their talk page.
 * At an administrator's discretion, you may be unblocked for 24 hours to file a request.
 * Please note that you may only request a name that is not already in use, so please check here for a listing of already taken names. The account is created upon acceptance, thus do not try to create the new account before making the request for a name change. For more information, please see Changing username.

If you feel that you were blocked in error, you may appeal this block by adding below this notice the text, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 05:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

To be more specific, our username policy doesn't allow e-mail addresses to be used as usernames. You are more than welcome to register your real name as a username if you desire. You should also have a read of our conflict of interest policy as well, and consider stepping away from topics you're closely affiliated with. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 17:09, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Note
Hi Professor Edsall,

I'm sorry your last couple of days have been rockier than necessary. Perhaps you understand everything that is going on, but I know I'd be confused if I were in your shoes, so I'll comment here, at the risk of underestimating your familiarity with Wikipedia processes.


 * Issue #1: The block on your account. Although it appears you've had this username for almost 6 years, it's technically not allowed to use email addresses as usernames anymore. This should be a minor issue compared to inaccuracies in an biographical article, but now that the block is in place, we're stuck dealing with that before we address any article problems. Although there's some precedent for grandfathering such usernames in if they were created before the rule went into effect, my advice is to simply agree to have your username changed.  Theoretically, you could instead make a case for keeping the username, and you might succeed, but even if you do the argument would be a bother, and every time someone notices your username, they will go into hysterics and you'd have to explain yourself all over again. If the block template above is unclear, I (or another admin) can guide you through the process of changing your name, or disputing the need to do so; just comment here with what you want to do.  Or, alternately, I've modifed the block so you should be able to simply create a new account name.


 * Issue #2: The content of the article about you. There are so many attempts to self-promote on Wikipedia that many people freak out whenever they see someone editing an article about themselves, and tend to see self-promotion everywhere, even if it isn't there. While I think the initial reaction to your edits was unreasonable, it appears there are now several editors working on improving your article.  You can interact with them on Talk:Thomas Edsall once you're no longer blocked.  After you've read WP:COI, you'll see that theoretically, you can cautiously edit the article too, but as you've experienced, people tend to over-react to that, so my advice is to stay on the talk page.  If you don't believe you're being treated fairly, subjects of articles can also complain via our WP:OTRS system.

Hope this has helped to make things clearer; if I've actually muddied the waters instead, let me know here and I'll try to explain better.--Floquenbeam (talk) 22:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Edsall needs to accept what the RS say about him
please don't remove critiques of your work that directly quote a RS (reliable source) like the Forbes guide. you will get blocked. the guidelines wiki editors use are at Autobiography In any case the quotation is on the whole quite favorable. Rjensen (talk) 02:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)