User talk:Virtualscholar

File permission problem with File:Darren Spedale.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Darren Spedale.jpg. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file has agreed to release it under the given license.

If you are the copyright holder for this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either
 * make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
 * Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add permission pending to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.

If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-en@wikimedia.org.

If you believe the media meets the criteria at Non-free content, use a tag such as non-free fair use or one of the other tags listed at File copyright tags, and add a rationale justifying the file's use on the article or articles where it is included. See File copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in [ your upload log]. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described in section F11 of the criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. --Minorax &laquo;&brvbar;talk&brvbar;&raquo; 15:52, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Virtualscholar. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Darren Spedale, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the request edit template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Conflict of interest);
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Spam);
 * do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:34, 14 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello Justlettersandnumbers. While your editing skills are greatly appreciated and vital to Wikipedia, please keep in mind that the purpose of Wikipedia is to add knowledge to the general public on persons, places, and events of interest. The goal of Wikipedia is to provide more information - not less - on persons of interest. Your most recent edits have eviscerated the profile of Darren Spedale, to the detriment of public knowledge and interest. You have deleted most of the information that describes why Darren Spedale is a person of public interest and the relevant background that makes it so. Please do not delete relevant and important information on a biography unless there is a compelling reason to do so in the general public interest. If you have places where you believe citations should be added, please note them but do not delete the underlying information. You do Wikipedia readers a disservice when you delete large swaths of relevant information in a biography with no compelling underlying reason in the public interest. Thank you. Virtualscholar (talk) 14:20, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

June 2023
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, discussion pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at Talk:Darren Spedale, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Alyo (chat·edits) 02:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree. You corrected my legitimate comments and I found it very irritating. As a member of the LGBT community I am very familiar with this person and his work in the LGBT and non-traditional family space. Are you? Unless you have more knowledge of a specific person of interest than the person making the edits, I suggest that you not delete relevant information that is in the public interest. Obviously, Spedale's work in researching registered partnerships / same-sex marriage and his work in non-traditional families in general is of significant interest. The fact that you have deleted the core of the rationale for his inclusion in Wikipedia is unacceptable. The "needs citation" feature was created within Wikipedia to provide you with an opportunity to point out where citations are needed; that is the purpose of this feature as opposed to deleting the underlying information which is to be frowned upon in the absence of a greater rationale other than a citation is needed. Please keep this in mind and do not delete relevant information without a specific rationale. Virtualscholar (talk) 22:07, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @Virtualscholar, unfortunately Wikipedia does not determine inclusion of content based purely on it being "in the public interest". We require material to be verified by independent, reliable sources. Pieces that Spedale himself has written are largely not considered independent or newsworthy, and the videos of Spedale appearing on CNN or the Today Show are actually copyright violations that cannot be linked to (see this policy). If you can find another source (again, preferably independent--so not his own website) saying that he made those appearances, then that might be added to the article.
 * I've gone back through the sources and reincluded the three that are independent + reliable. The issue is that those pieces don't actually discuss Spedale himself in very much detail, so there's little that can be added to the article purely from those three sources. Please let me know if you have further questions, and I would advise you not to simply re-add the same material over and over or you'll find yourself blocked. (I'm not saying that as a threat, I've just been editing for a long time and I know that's what happens because of our policy on "edit warring".) Alyo  (chat·edits) 20:38, 11 June 2023 (UTC)