Archilbald Haddock

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Happy editing! Marquardtika (talk) 01:57, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Archilbald Haddock. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page International School of Geneva, 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 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 Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP: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 Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Lard Almighty (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Lard Almighty. Please assume good faith and integrity in my contributions to the International School of Geneva page. I am one of the tens of thousands of the school's former students, but this is not a conflict of interest. My contributions to the page are disinterested - I have nothing personally to gain from them. It's natural that those who have had some direct insights into an institution, and have thus had the opportunity to collect relevant documents, and are in touch with other knowledgeable alumni, should be in a position to contribute valid and reliable information. The school's Wikipedia page was for a long time notoriously poor in many respects, and I am seeking to improve it with some rigorous, reliable and objective information.

There is no attempt on my part to present the school in a positive light - provable facts should speak for themselves. For instance, I've included the North Korean despot Kim Jong-il among the school's parents, although I'm sure the school's authorities would prefer this not to be known - but it happens to be true. If I have time to develop the school's history in greater detail, you will see that not all of it is particularly flattering. But it's certainly an interesting institution, warts and all, to any reader interested in the development of international education.

Kindly restore the "Notable Parents" section, which is the result of considerable research on my part, with the help of various reliable sources. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide as much factual, reliable and verifiable information as possible on each subject - not to remove such information. What parents choose to send their children to particular schools is historically and socially significant, and can provide the reader or researcher with interesting insights into the institution which would otherwise be unknown. Moreover, in the case of the International School of Geneva, parents play a determining role: some of them founded the school in collaboration with educators, they vote in the Governing Board's elections, and are elected to the Board - which is composed primarily of parents. Therefore it is mostly parents who are responsible for its governance. Who some of these parents have been is therefore highly relevant in understanding the history and development of the institution.

I look forward to your further collaboration in shaping this page in accordance to the highest Wikipedia standards. Archilbald Haddock (talk) 12:22, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I do assume good faith. That is why I asked a question rather than making a statement. You do have a connection with the school, which is all that I was trying to ascertain. That doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem, but it's good to be transparent.

As to the notable parents, the section is not appropriate. I moved the historical context that you provided to the appropriate part of the article, including the fact that parents elect governors. Many schools have notable parents. Eton College must have thousands, but we don't list them, whether or not the school would be happy for some names to be known.

By all means continue to improve the page, but please make sure that you don't include any original research and that you edit in conformity with all Wikipedia policies. Also, when you have a dispute with another editor, discuss the matter on the article's talk page rather than simply reverting, especially when that editor has already begun a discussion. Thank you. Lard Almighty (talk) 12:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Lard Almighty, when you say "we don't list (the notable parents)", who is "we"? Who speaks authoritatively on behalf of Wikipedia on the issue of whether a school's historical (not current) parents can or should be listed in an article on the school? Why shouldn't Eton's "thousands" of notable parents be specified in its Wikipedia article, if someone can reliably provide this list? Wikipedia's aim must surely be to make available more, not less, factual and verifiable information.

What prominent parents sent their children to a particular school is of historical and sociological interest to readers and researchers. In the case of Ecolint, because of its particular organization and governance, parents have, over the decades, contributed to shaping the school more than may be the case in most other schools. Their identity is potentially significant and illuminating for readers and researchers. To eliminate this information unilaterally (unless you have reason to believe that it is false) is destructive and is not in the best interests of Wikipedia's readers. Ideally such information would also be provided for other schools - let's hope that knowledgeable Wikipedia contributors can add it in the coming months and years.

Although I respect your Wikipedia expertise, in this particular case I think you have made an error of judgement, and I ask you please to reconsider and to revert your editing. Thank you.Archilbald Haddock (talk) 17:12, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

When I say "we", I mean what is customarily done on Wikipedia. It is not customary for articles on schools to have a list of notable parents.

I should also note that the addition is completely unsourced. Do any of the articles on the people you added state that they sent children to Ecolint. This is what Wikipedia refers to as original research, inferring from a fact that something else is true, in this case that because person A when to a school their notable parent was a parent in the sense that you mean. That is fraught with difficulty in many ways, for example whether the notable parent was the responsible parent at the time the student attended and had any relationship with the school at all.

I have not eliminated it unilaterally. I started a discussion on the article's talk page before I deleted the list. No one (including you) objected, so I acted boldly and reverted this. If you think I was wrong, the place to make your case is on the article's talk page, as you have now done. Let's keep the discussion there from now on. Lard Almighty (talk) 17:38, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Archilbald Haddock. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page Michael D. Aeschliman, 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 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 Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP: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 Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for advertising, publicizing, or promoting anyone is prohibited. Thank you.174.197.69.37 (talk) 18:00, 2 May 2024 (UTC)