Talk:American Council of Learned Societies

Copyright issues

This is in connection with the copyright query on the American Council of Learned Societies. Please advise what else I need do to reinstate my entries. Thank you.Cfrede (talk) 15:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I hereby affirm that the American Council of Learned Societies is the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of http://www.acls.org/history. http://www.acls.org/about/history/

I agree to publish that work under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported" and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws. I am aware that this agreement is not limited to Wikipedia or related sites. I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be claimed to have been made by me. I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

Cfrede (talk) 14:50, 11 July 2013 (UTC)Candace Frede Director of Web and Information Systems American Council of Learned Societies 633 Third Avenue | New York, NY 10017-6795 212-697-1505 x133 | cfrede@acls.org www.acls.org

• Reply to {{help me}} request:

For now you have done what needs to be done. An administrator, copyright clerk, or OTRS agent will respond to the situation in due course. You could also put the {{Admin help}} template at the beginning of this section of the talk page to get an admin to reply to this thread, however it is unlikely that would produce faster results as administrators are volunteers also and tend to have a lot of issues to address. No action should be taken for or against this page until the copyright issue is ruled on. Unfortunately it is a waiting game at this point. If you have any other questions you may post them here as I will be following this discussion until the issue is resolved.—    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 15:38, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Also: I just noticed that the link you included in your above statement does not work. Please edit to provide the curent web address (URL) of the content. Also, it would be best if the Creative Commons licensing statement appeared on the page linked.—    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 15:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

corrected URL above with strike through and insertion of correct address... Boogerpatrol (talk) 16:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I just posted a creative commons license on the acls web page from which the Wikipedia entry is drawn. I hope this can expedite reinstatement of my text. On another issue, I'm unclear what my user page should include - if anything. I very much appreciate your assistance in these matters. I dove into Wikipedia, not knowing I needed swimming lessons! Cfrede (talk) 16:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Your user page can consist of anything you want to put there. Check out this article for guidelines. Most users' signatures have a link to their page (as mine does) so you can see what other users have done with their pages. Click my name to see mine. I've also added a welcome message to your user talk page with some valuable links. —    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 17:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

OTRS permission has been received to use material from http://www.acls.org/history. I have updated the top of this talk page, and will remove the copyvio tag from the article. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Addition of {{one source}} maintenance tag

I've added the {{one source}} maintenance tag because while there are four references, they are all published by the subject organization. Wikipedia requires third-party sources that are reliable and verifiable. Please help improve this article by improving the references. —    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 17:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The article has many more issues than just a single source. I have expanded the tagging accordingly. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

General help with issues

I am dismayed by - and don't know how to address - the issues noted. We are a non-profit federation of scholarly societies - and uphold scholarly standards (as we know them) in all our work. My purpose in working on our Wikipedia page is to offer information on the organization - not to advertise in any way. The references in the article are verifiable: ACLS Bulletins are in the collection of most colleges and research universities. All our material goes through rigorous copy editing. I did not change the layout in any way. Help me :) Cfrede (talk) 18:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

While it's technically allowed to edit articles that you have a conflict of interest in (like what appears to be the case), it is strongly discouraged, and you must be very transparent on doing so. This is because, if you have a motivation to make ACLS look good, it is incredibly difficult to make a neutral article. This isn't really your fault, but it's simply part of human nature.

There are two pages on COI editing: one is here, and a simpler one is here.

If ACLS had anything to do with creating a reference, we unfortunately cannot use it, no matter how rigorous the process is in creating said reference. I dream of horses (T) @ 18:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Please see this in light of the content of other encyclopedias you have read. One must be very careful when editing an article like this that there is no conflict of interest and that the article is written from a neutral point of view. We assume good faith on your part; however, we see it time and time again: Those who have a connection with an article's subject find themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, including items that are not encyclopedic. Let your dismay fuel your intent to make this a good, or even eventually a featured article. Read all the above with understanding and learn from that precisely what you can and must do (and not do) to improve this article. You have been given the tools; all you need do is learn to use them. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 18:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem here is not that you or your organization are guilty of trying to perpetrate anything nefarious, but rather that Wikipedia has these policies in place that govern all 4,000,000+ articles in the encyclopedia. Yes, the references are verifiable, but they are all written by your organization. As I mentioned, Wikipedia requires third-party sources, and this article has none. It's important to recognize that this is an encyclopedia and, at the risk of being redundant, all articles must be encyclopedic. And that means we can't just take your, or your group's, word on the content of the article. We need verifiable third party sources to ensure the article has a neutral point of view (NPOV as we call it) and is not biased in favor of the group. For example, has anyone ever criticized your group? That criticism is unlikely to ever be mentioned in an article written entirely by the group in question, and therefor NPOV is not upheld. The speedy deletion tag has been removed, and the article has not been proposed for or recommended for deletion. So there is plenty of time for you or other editors to improve the article to make sure it fully complies with encyclopedic standards. I left a Welcome Message on your User_talk page, and the links there, plus those provided here by myself and others, will help you understand how a Wikipedia article should be written. —    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 18:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'll add my comments:

Don't be dismayed. Nobody is proposing that this article be deleted. Those tags at the top are simply notices to other editors in the community suggesting how the article could be improved.

Much of the content in the Background section is undeniably worded in a promotional, non-neutral tone, and should be reverted to a prior version. Phrases like "helped pioneer" and "well positioned to serve" and many other examples are not neutral; the whole tone of the Background section is that of ACLS talking about itself, rather than the tone one would expect of an independent source describing the organization. It reads like a brochure, not like an encyclopedia article.

Sourcing is another serious problem. WP:42 summarizes what might be considered "the Golden Rule of Wikipedia", namely: all article topics must have significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic. This article has zero of the type of coverage required. The sources currently in this article are what we call primary sources and we strive to avoid using them.

One issue in particular should be of concern to you: That the article is "contaminated", so to speak, by significant contributions from a person with a conflict of interest. Please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and abide by them. You can make minor corrections to spelling, grammar, numbers, updates of organizational leaders as they change, etc., but you should not be making any significant changes to content. Propose significant changes on the talk page instead. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate all your comments and will revise the text. And I want to thank Paige, in particular, for comments made on my user page, which may be of interest here, so I quote it below: Cfrede (talk) 19:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Contributors are noting on the talk page that "third-party" references are needed to support the claims in the article. One good source would be a Google scholarly search. I ran such a search and found this list of scholarly reference sources of over a million scholarly references to help support claims made in the article. I hope very much that this helps you. You may even show the list on the article's talk page to let other editors see that just the number alone of the "scholarly" only references enhances the notability of the ACLS. You and other editors may be able to draw 3rd-party references from this list to provide the neutral perspective the article now requires. Joys! – – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 19:22, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome, Cfrede! I went ahead and transferred the search link to the quote above. All are welcome to use those reference sources to corroborate claims made in the article. Joys to all! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 00:56, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Removed {{help me}} tag: Since there is no new question asked, it is not necessary to have the {{help me}} template here. Please feel free to re-add the template if you have a new question that you need assistance with. You should also use the "New section" button at the top of the page to ask a new question to help keep this page orderly. I also placed the quote from Paine in a {{quotebox}} to ease reading. I am also interested in helping improve this article, so I will keep the article and the talk page on my watch list so I will see any changes on either page and be ready to help if needed. —    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  — 20:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

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