DaveBurkum

Welcome to Wikipedia: check out the Teahouse!

Hello! DaveBurkum, you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us!

I, and the rest of the hosts, would be more than happy to answer any questions you have! SarahStierch (talk) 07:57, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

January 2016

Greetings. At least one of your recent edits, such as the edit you made to Tyler Burkum, did not appear to be constructive and has been or will be reverted or removed. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make some test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. I could pick several warnings: adding information without references, not actually testing your edits, but I'll leave it with this one. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:32, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, DaveBurkum. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the article Tyler Burkum, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
• instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident in which you may be involved. Thank you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia - some discussion

Hi Dave I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia and saw the nice note you left at the COIN page, referenced above.

Thanks for being so gracious. It is hard to figure out how this place works.

So -- because Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work, managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Tyler Burkum? Based on your username and your contribs, it sure seems likely but I just need to ask. You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, with please disclose it. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. You can reply here - I am watching this page. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 04:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello Jytdog. Thanks for your offer for some help. I do have a connection with Tyler Burkum, he is my son. I understand the COI problems and appreciate the need for policies to guard against bogus-motivated edits and additions. That said, it is also to important to consider the personal and professional interests of people the articles are about. The article on Tyler Burkum has been a cause of frustration to him as it misrepresents him by focusing on such a narrow slice of his career. If there is going to be a Wikipedia article about him, it would be nice to know how it could be more accurate and up to date. Tyler also had concerns about privacy issues since there had been information about his family and location where he lives. I made a request for that to be removed and it was. Thanks to whoever did that. Anyway, I jumped into the Wikipedia editing pool just to see if anything could be done to respect Tyler's interests. Maybe you can help. Thanks. DaveBurkum (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for replying! Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And you have this part figured out -- at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages. That is how we know who said what. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 16:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again for replying. Now replying on the substance (note that I indented the same as my comment above, as I am still replying to your comment above that). Thanks for making that disclosure here. My sense is that you have become aware of the Wikipedia COI guideline and you see the importance of following it, so I won't belabor that piece of things. I have added a tag to the article's Talk page so your COI is disclosed there. Would you please also add it to your User page (which is here: User:DaveBurkum) Something simple like: I am related to Tyler Burkum and have a conflict of interest with regard to content about him in Wikipedia" would be fine. If you are thinking of editing any content in Wikipedia where you have a COI with regard to your own career or activities, you can disclose the external relationship that creates the conflict there too. That will take care of the "disclosure" piece of this.

With regard to the 2nd step I mentioned above - the "Peer review" piece -- this may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and viola there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary publisher or editor or review. What we ask editors who have a COI to do, is a) if you create an article, submit it through the WP:AFC process so it can be reviewed before it publishes. b) And if you want to change content in an existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:Tyler Burkum - there is a link at "click here" in that section -- if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request. When you make a request, please be sure it is very specific (like "Please change X to Y"), please make sure it complies with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and please provide a reason for the change. I will say a bit more about the policies and guidelines in a bit. But will you please agree to follow this procedure going forward? I will wait for your reply before I explain more about the "policies and guidelines." Thanks again. Jytdog (talk) 16:37, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for being honest about your CoI. My main concern is not that you have ties to the subject. Many editors would request that you not edit the article at all. I believe that people close to a subject often have knowledge of good sources that are not known to the general public. I voiced my actual concern when I stated that the content was "unsourced". If you add a sentence or paragraph, but provide a reliable source that makes the added content verifiable, I'll be happy. If it's minor information and is not sourced, I will likely add a {{citation needed}} template. If it goes against the guidelines around biographies of living people, I, or another editor, will remove it immediately.

If you want to make an edit request, make it on the talk page. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Jytdog and Walter Görlitz. I don't see me really getting up to speed and becoming a proficient editor WP, but this exercise and dialog has been helpful. I only waded into the pool to see if I could get some help and guidance. Thanks to you both. Do I understand correctly that Walter Görlitz is the editor who created the Tyler Burkum page? If I have suggestions or requests for edits I can make it on the talk page Walter Görlitz? Would you be open to considering some requests and updates? That would be great. Then you can make sure protocol and sources are correct.2601:441:8200:BC3E:FA1E:DFFF:FEE2:922E (talk) 16:45, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome.

You can see from the page's edit history that it was created on August 19, 2006 at 4:50 (UTC) by an editor who hasn't used the account for more than six years. I just watch that page, and others related to Christian music, to make sure additions and removal happen based on policies and guidelines. If you want to make suggestions for additions make them at Talk:Tyler Burkum. Every page has an associated talk page. This is your talk page and the page you linked to is my user page, while user talk:Walter Görlitz is my user talk page. Some editors are OK with you making requests directly on their user talk pages (I made one to an active user of the Christian music project to improve references for a band and their albums and he followed-through on it, but since I watch articles, I would rather comments be made on the article's talk page). Just make sure that any requests have a source. That should be a publication (local newspaper, trade publication, etc.) rather than a blog. If it's about something that one of those publications isn't likely to discuss, a blog can be OK, but content sourced by a primary source is less likely to be accepted. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• Hi Dave -- from a COI management perspective, the key thing I wanted you to understand is that you shouldn't try to edit the article directly, but rather you should make suggestions for changes on the article's Talk page. I appreciate very much, that you aware that there are policies and guidelines that govern content here. If you want some change made, it seems that you will be very open to hearing people react to it, saying that they can't do it under policies and guidelines or that they need sources (or better sources).... so I think everything will be fine going forward. Just so you have it, here is high level overview of the key policies and guidelines here...
• WP:NOT (what WP is, and is not - we aim to be a free resource of "accepted knowledge" for every day people - we are not here to promote or denigrate anyone or anything, nor be a directory or a catalog or a how-to manual or a technical guide or any number of other things)
• WP:OR - no original research is allowed here, instead
• WP:VERIFY - everything has to be cited to a reliable source (so everything in WP comes down, to the sources you bring!)
• WP:RS is the guideline defining what a "reliable source" is for general content; and
• WP:NPOV articles must be "neutral" as we define that here - namely (1) the article is well balanced and no aspect is exaggerated or left out and (2) the language is neutral (not super colorful, good or bad)

Those are the main policies and guidelines. I noticed that someone nominated the article for deletion. Just so you are aware, the criteria for whether an article should exist or not, is described at a high level in WP:Golden rule - -the details are here: WP:NOTABILITY. The decision about whether to keep the article or delete it, will be based on that policy. Good luck! I will leave you in peace now.  :) Jytdog (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, both, for your help. I will try to move forward, accordingly. I will be careful to disclose my COI relationship when making requests on the talk section for the Tyler Burkum page. The whole process has been informative and has raised my respect for WP knowing that people are keeping such a good eye on content and protocol, even when it comes to lesser known topics and people. 2601:441:8200:BC3E:FA1E:DFFF:FEE2:922E (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2016 (UTC)