User talk:Thefactcorrecter

April 2017
Hello, I'm Triptothecottage. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Georgina Downs, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Triptothecottage (talk) 01:11, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Thefactcorrecter. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about in the article Georgina Downs, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:


 * avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
 * instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the request edit template);
 * when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
 * avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
 * exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. Triptothecottage (talk) 03:09, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.

April 2017
This is your only warning; if you make personal attacks on others again, as you did on Triptothe Cottage's talk page, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Comment on content, not on other contributors or people.  DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I also call your attention to No legal threats. I assume you do not know our rules, so I did not do what is the more usual course, and block you until you withdrew the threat of taking legal action.  DGG ( talk ) 05:37, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm an administrator and I have dealt with several real-world complaints on Wikipedia like this before.

I think the discussion has been at cross purposes. Basically, we have a strict policy on articles about living people and it's important to get the article right - as you said, simply reproducing what the papers say for a relatively low-profile individual can be problematic when the information is actually wrong. For what it's worth, I have seen words I wrote on Wikipedia reproduced in the Daily Mail and attributed to somebody else out of context, and I get cross about it. I'm not going to criticise Triptothecottage, as I have no reason to doubt that he read what was written in the Guardian and the Independent and believed it was true. We usually treat broadsheet newspapers as acceptable sources (tabloids are generally rejected), but no source is perfect. Our policy is "facts must be backed up with sources", not "pull out anything you can find from any source and hope it sticks".

You are right that it would be absurd to claim that The Independent knows better than you at what age you moved to Chichester. But a more pertinent question to ask would be, is this information important for a reader attempting to learn about the UK Pesticides Campaign? I would say probably not. Petitions generally aren't significant enough to include in a Wikipedia article unless they are of the high-profile sort that obtain millions of signatures, get debated in Parliament, and mentioned on the news.

Elsewhere, somebody has suggested we re-appropriate the article about you to one about the UK Pesticides Campaign generally. I think this is a good idea, as it will reduce your coverage of Wikipedia solely to your involvement in the campaign and the government responses, which have been adequately covered by the press already and can be used. This gives the information the reader might be looking for, while side-stepping personal information, which is always problematic. However, Wikipedia will not takes sides on the debate; it will simply reproduce your views on the campaign, and the Government's response.

I hope this addresses your concerns, if not, please let me know. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:20, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I have replied to your message over on my talk page : User talk:Ritchie333 Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  16:43, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

A request for clarification
I wonder, as a matter of interest, whether you would be willing to tell me why you object so strenuously to being referred to as an "environmental activist". I am not at all clear why anyone might find that term objectionable. Also I would have thought that an "activist" was substantially the same thing as a "campaigner", which is your own preferred designation, and it does seem that your campaigning or activism (whichever you like to call it) is related to environmental issues, so the description seems to me to be a reasonable one. However, you evidently see things differently, and if you would be willing to spend a minute explaining why I would be interested to know what your thinking on this is.

Incidentally, you also say that you "have never named [your]self" as an environmental activist, but it may help you to tell you that what you have called yourself is not relevant: Wikipedia seeks to present people not according to the view of themselves that they wish to promulgate, but according to the way they are generally seen by independent observers. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:32, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

A piece of information will no doubt surprise you
Since writing my message above I have discovered that on another talk page you went further than saying that you had never called yourself an "environmental activist": you said that you "have never been called an environmental activist". You will therefore be surprised, and perhaps interested, to learn that in fact you have, for example here, here, here, and here. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2017 (UTC)