Talk:Reverse mortgage

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Candian Info Is Incorrect

Much of the information in the Canadian section of this article on reverse mortgages is incorrect.

This is important to fix since this is a product being sold to a demographic of society (people over 55) for whom care should be used in presenting information.

I edited it and linked to my website (which has the correct information and is even quoted in the article) but apparently this was deemed to be me 'advertising'.

So, how can I go about correcting this wrong information?

I am a licensed Mortgage Professional in Canada and considered the one of (if not the) foremost experts on reverse mortgages in Canada.

Please let me know how to proceed - I can correct it without references if that works.

Thanks, Mich Sneddon, CPA, CA 174.95.161.162 (talk) 18:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

You're free to add non-promotional material to the article. You will need to supply reliable sources for every bit of it. Do not add your commercial, promotional site again. Use third party sources and avoid any conflict of interest. Sam Kuru (talk) 00:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Just messaged you elsewhere but FYI - unfortunately my IP changed as I installed a new modem over the weekend - so I've made an account to keep track of everything. Thanks for your info Sam - I see it's been updated and much of the incorrect info removed - I'll update the remaining info that's also incorrect. Some things it's impossible to ad references for since they don't really exist and don't really work that way in this industry - but since you won't accept my site as a leading authority on reverse mortgages, I'll just update them with no references. Mich Sneddon, CPA, CA (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

If you cannot add sources, then the information fails WP:V; it should be removed. It would be your own WP:OR. Sorry, that's how this site works. Sam Kuru (talk) 00:32, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

No worries - what makes sense then is to not include certain information at all (that can't be sourced) and cut down the Canadian section of the page to extremely basic statements, as I have done. FYI - much of the information for reverse mortgages (or any mortgage) comes from commitment letters or legal documents that aren't online (eg. things like penalties) - other than when people write about them. In this particular space there isn't really anyone in Canada actually writing about reverse mortgages at this granular and minutiae a level of detail (other than me - and since my website isn't allowed to be used, despite my being a qualified professional and one of the leading experts in Canada, then this strategy of removing the incorrect information makes sense).

Some other editing suggestions: the opening paragraph of the Canadian section makes zero sense and is basically just spam, with a random rant about 2018 funding numbers - linking to a spammy real estate blog (which prints out the same article every 3 months) - that it looks like someone has tried to cram in there for no reason (it adds nothing to the page). It's also probably worth updating the references in the Canadian section to articles that aren't 10 or 12 years old. For now - unless you're ok with my making these changes, I'm not going to touch it - my experience so far has been overly aggressive responses to everything I've done, when I'm just trying to help correct blatantly false information that my customers have pointed out to me. Thanks. Mich Sneddon, CPA, CA (talk) 15:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

The reason your site isn't allowed to be used is because that would be original research and promotion. No one has been aggressive towards you, we were only trying to make sure that the proper policies are followed. Philipnelson99 (talk) 16:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I get that you all probably deal with a lot of spam but I'm completely new to Wikipedia and learning the rules - rather than explaining them I was threatened with blocks and bans (even for putting an article I wrote into an explanation of an edit - which I thought would be fine since it's not publicly published anyway and I'm trying to explain to you why the information I was editing needed changing).

The definition of 'original research' is tricky in this space - as I mentioned. For example on the subject of 'reverse mortgage penalties' I can tell you what they are based on the 1,000+ reverse mortgage commitments and legal contracts I've read that detail the penalty calculations. That's my 'source' and it's certainly not original research - I didn't come up with the penalties or write the legal contracts, I'm just explaining what is contained in these legal documents. Which I do in articles on my site. But these legal documents don't exist online in any way that Wikipedia could link to - other than the articles I write explaining how they work.

Anyway the article is much better and more accurate now without this information that can't be 'sourced' (even if it doesn't actually really explain much about the Canadian product anymore) if everyone is fine with it. Other than the entire first paragraph which I suggest be deleted as it's spammy, out of date, adds nothing to the article and is not from a reliable source. Mich Sneddon, CPA, CA (talk) 18:10, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

The first paragraph of the Canada section doesn't look like spam to me, as it cites a news article. This source is cited several times in various articles. @Kuru do you think that this specific paragraph should be kept in that section? Philipnelson99 (talk) 18:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

That specific paragraph was added by @Oceanflynn back in 2019[1]. Philipnelson99 (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not a news article - Better Dwelling is a well known real estate blog in Canada - look to the right of the 'article' page itself under the subscribe headline.

The 'article' is basically a content curation blog post that they publish every 2-3 months until they stopped doing it (my guess was they were thinking of entering the reverse mortgage space but gave up - happens a lot). Here's the last blog post of a bunch of blog posts about this - this one was published in 2020: https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-seniors-racked-up-408-million-more-in-reverse-mortgage-debt-this-year/

In my opinion, quoting out of date reverse mortgage stats from 2018 adds absolutely nothing to the Canadian reverse mortgage section of this article. Mich Sneddon, CPA, CA (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2023 (UTC)