Bjonesrsol

Welcome!

Hello, Bjonesrsol, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc., which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or any other editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! : Noyster (talk), 18:57, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion on conflict of interest

Hello Noyster! And thank you for explaining the policy. I appreciate that there is a conflict of interest policy, and why you may feel that I might find it difficult to be objective. I am the volunteer Executive Director of the organization. However, the person who created the page (I only know her email, not her Wiki name) did so in the hope that we would find it useful, and specifically asked us to edit it to correct her English (she is not a native speaker) and correct any factual errors. This is the first time I have ever tried to edit a page, and can assure you that I was very careful to use only factual statements about RSOL in my edits, as did the original page creator. Most of what we put there is also on our actual website.

While it is our hope that people will see the Wikipedia article and learn a bit more about us and our mission, we certainly do not want to violate any terms of use, and I hope that we have not put any such information in the page. It is simply describing what RSOL is and what it does. If there is any part that you find questionable, please let me or the original poster know and we will gladly fix or remove.

Indeed, if you go to our website I hope you will see that while we most definitely HAVE a point of view, we are also very careful even there to present a clear and rational message. We are working to add supporting documentation for each of our Assertions and other statements.

We were more concerned about online Hate groups damaging the articleor inserting obnoxious remarks. We have a number of "haters" out there, which probably does not come as a surprise to you. One disclaimer you will find on our site is in direct response to them, and we absolutely mean every word: "RSOL does not in any way condone sexual activity between adults and children, nor does it condone any sexual activity that would break laws in any state. We do not advocate lowering the age of consent, and we have no affiliation with any group that does condone such activities." Our vigilante "friends" would have you think otherwise. Do you think we should add the disclaimer to the article, too?

If the Reform Sex Offender Laws, Inc. article starts getting attacked by the likes of such folks, our friend who created the page will lock it from further public edits, which I am told she can do? If you have any further concerns or questions please don't hesitate to ask me.

Thank you, Brenda Jones Bjonesrsol (talk) 20:53, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

• You say "our friend who created the page will lock it from further public edits, which I am told she can do". No she can't, as only administrators can do that, and the editor who created the article is not an administrator. Also, if an administrator were to protect an article they had written, so as to preserve their preferred version and prevent others from editing it, it would be inappropriate, as administrative powers should be used only by an administrator who is not personally involved in the dispute. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 21:09, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

{{Help me}} Thanks for the clarification - that makes sense. Obviously none of us is all that clear on what we're doing and I appreciate your patience. :-) I hope then that the article is okay as-is? We won't be making further changes, if the edits I made can stay. Again, they were more to clean up and correct things originally put in. And I guess Wikipedia has sufficient controls in place to block other people's hate-filled edits. I imagine they would be deleted for the same reasons that you were concerned about mine: neither neutral nor objective. Bjonesrsol (talk) 21:22, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd advise you not to edit the article itself except for obviously uncontroversial edits such as grammar and spelling improvements, but rather to propose specific changes of content on the article talk page. The current article's biggest issue is the referencing; some sections cite no sources whatsoever except your website (which isn't the reliable third-party coverage Wikipedia content should be based on), and others cite references that I don't think mention RSOL, for example the scientific studies claimed to support RSOL's positions. That would be considered original synthesis, a special case of original research, which is not acceptable on Wikipedia. If the article is to say that scientific studies support RSOL's positions, we should present a source that explicitly says so - just pointing to a study that doesn't even mention RSOL is not enough. Huon (talk) 23:56, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

RSOL Page Fixup

In reply to your post on my talk page, any proposal for deletion now would carry a seven-day notice period to fix the perceived problems. I'd say deletion would be unlikely, as you have included several references to coverage in independent reputable media ("Notability" by our definition). This doesn't give any protection against changes to the article by any other editor, which we hope would be constructive changes. Any disagreements are best addressed on talk pages, and if the issues cannot be resolved there, on community noticeboards which you can find out more about if need arises. Please don't be tempted to get into a back-and-forth "edit war" in the article itself.

Now about use of talk pages: (1) it's just my personal preference to keep a discussion in the place where it began. If you wish to alert an editor to a post on any talk page other than their own, just mention them in the post in the following format: [[User:Noyster]] (replacing Noyster with their own username). (2) When replying, please use colons : to indent your addition. (3) I've taken the liberty to move the preceding discussion to below my earlier message, as we normally add new talk page threads at the bottom of the page. This page gives you more details of the conventions. With regards: Noyster (talk), 11:12, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Developing article

Hello again, may I suggest you transfer the developing article to a "sandbox" or "user subpage", rather than keep it on your main user page? The main user page is like your "shopfront", where you can place basic information about yourself and the ways you contribute to Wikipedia, though there's no compulsion to have anything there at all. If you take another look at the "Your first article" page listed in your Welcome message, that will tell you more about developing and submitting an article. With regards: Noyster (talk), 19:32, 24 November 2014 (UTC)