User talk:Vermonte1974

Recent edits to Carol M. Swain
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Carol M. Swain, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed 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! Materialscientist (talk) 23:30, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

December 2015
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Carol M. Swain has been reverted. Your edit here to Carol M. Swain was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. a sound or video file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy, as well as other parts of our external links guideline. If the information you linked to is indeed in violation of copyright, then such information should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file, or consider linking to the original. If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 05:07, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Carol M. Swain
Hello, Vermonte1974. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Carol M. Swain, you may have a conflict of interest. People with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, see the conflict of interest guideline and frequently asked questions for organizations. In particular, please:


 * avoid editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, its competitors, or projects and products you or they are involved with;
 * instead, propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the template);
 * avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or 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, the Wikimedia Foundation'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.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. Thank you. Edwardx (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Vermonte1974 response to Wikipedia
Hello, EdwardX and Wikipedia. I have read your explanation and guidance regarding possible COI concern in having a contributor paid by the subject of a page going in and editing the page. Full disclosure: I am indeed an editor and writer paid by Dr. Swain, and I am trying to help her correct, clarify and otherwise augment information on the page that is either incorrect or incomplete. We are not trying to "take over" the page and turn it into a self-written puff piece that ignores the truth; instead, we want to insert information that will make the page the whole truth and truly inform readers. But again, it seems I can't do that because of my ties to Dr. Swain, even when we have made an effort to find and insert legit sources that back up the information I'm putting in (but which you keep scrubbing out behind me).

We are not looking to significantly rewrite the page; nothing close to that. There are just some areas here and there that, again, need to be corrected or clarified ("tweaked" for the lack of a better term), and which, if they remain as written, present a false or distorted account of Dr. Swain's life, career, and beliefs to Wikipedia readers. One example--the sidebar that says one of her religions -- past or present -- is Jehovah's Witness. That simply is not true, despite what some obviously unreliable (yet credible, according to Wikipedia) source says. Dr. Swain briefly dabbled with Jehovah's Witnesses when she was very young, and for that matter several other Eastern religions also while quite young, yet that does not come close to justifying her current faith or even her past faith as being listed as JW. This is no more credible than it would be calling Madonna's past or present faith "born-again Christian" just because she briefly attended some Christian evangelical services and prayer studies about 20-25 years ago.

The point is, there is some important, truthful, documentable information that should be added to or edited into Dr. Swain's Wikipedia page in order to give readers a truly accurate and complete portrayal of who she is, "good" and "bad." Are you telling me if someone in the employ of President Obama's administration or or even Donald Trump were asked by their employer to correct or clarify information in their Wikipedia pages, that they would not be allowed to do so because of your COI rules? Really?

So, how can we see to it that these changes for the Carol Swain page get made? How can I do that, without jumping through a whole bunch of hoops, so to speak. It should be just as easy for Dr. Swain or me to get that information added to the page as if we were any non-COI user going in on a whim and adding in information that purports to be cited by reliable sources.

What is a convenient way to do this, to get it right?

Thanks, Vermonte1974 Vermonte1974 (talk) 19:40, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your response. It is all explained above and on the various help pages linked to. For every change or addition that you would like to propose, please use the Template:Request edit on Talk:Carol M. Swain and insert what you like to add or change, with links to independent reliable sources. To ease your way in, it might be better to start with things that you would like to add, rather then anything you might seek to change or remove! By the way, I've no interest in Swain, and only stumbled across this article the other day. Edwardx (talk) 11:08, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested Vermonte74 adds to Carol M. Swain page
request edit 1. Academic career, end of 1st paragraph, please add:

A counter-petition supporting Swain and her right to free speech and academic freedom quickly exceeded its goal of 5,000 signatures. As of December 18, 2015 more than 12,700 signatures had been garnered on the pro-Swain position.

Source: http://citizengo.org/en/sy/31026-protect-academic-freedom-professor-carol-swain

2. Immediately after the information to be added above at end of Academic career 1st paragraph, and keeping to the same paragraph, please add the following:

Students objecting to Swain have been criticized for their attacks on her.

Sources: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260759/angry-white-leftists-target-black-conservative-daniel-greenfield http://dailysignal.com/2015/11/13/vanderbilt-professor-facing-protests-tells-students-to-grow-up/

3. In the boxed-in summary of Carol M. Swain on the right side of the page, please change her religion simply to Christianity. She was never actually a Jehovah’s Witness, and Pentecostalism is not accurate either.

Source: Carol M. Swain, "Can Religion Promote Harmony?" in The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). pp. 420-421 Quoted text: "My religious views have evolved significantly over the last few years. Once a devotee of New Age religions, I have become a born-again Christian water-baptized by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ, according to the dictates of Acts 2:38."

4. One spot (of many), but this one especially, where the information is incorrect, needs to be corrected and augmented. This is the section entitled Be the People talk show. As currently written, those two sentences are incorrect because they are no longer true – regardless what the dated sources state. The show no longer is being televised on those stations.

Here is what that section should say, followed by the sources:

Swain has been the host of Be the People, a weekly television news talk program, which originally aired starting October 8, 2012 on Nashville’s NBC affiliate WSMV-TV [50] following the network’s Sunday Night Football telecasts. It reached as many as 46,000 households, according to the Nielsen ratings. Starting in February 2014, Be the People also was shown in Nashville on Fox affiliate WZTV as well as Comcast Channel 6 and Channel 1006.[51] With guests ranging from the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto and U.S. Congressman Steve King to economist Arthur Laffer and singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood, discussion topics have included affirmative action on university campuses, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, immigration reform, the GOP’s difficulties in attracting racial and ethnic minorities, freedom on university campuses and abortion. In the fall of 2014, Be the People moved to YouTube. The show has a companion TV website that offers conservative commentary on current issues.

Sources: 1. Carol M. Swain (2015). Free Speech, Politics, and Academia. PS: Political Science & Politics, 48, pp 100-107. doi:10.1017/S1049096515000517. page 105-106 needs to be specifically cited for information about the show. 2. http://bethepeopletv.com/tv-appearances/people-television/showtimes-stations/ 3. http://www.carolmswain.net/2012/10/the-premier-of-be-the-people-show/ Thanks, Vermonte1974 (talk) 22:22, 18 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You need to put the above on the Article's Talk Page, not your talk page. I've deactiveted the template. Ron h jones (Talk) 19:46, 15 April 2016 (UTC)