Garrett.stephens

This user has publicly declared that they have a conflict of interest regarding the Wikipedia article Paul Lee (environmentalist).

WP:COI Declaration

Hi all, I just wanted to declare regarding the page Paul Lee (environmentalist): I know Paul personally and have heard direct stories about his life and events from him. But I am absolutely not being paid to create a page, nor receiving money from him for anything, if anything he's my mentor. But I consider him a close friend. Sincere intention must be that any WP Editor that looks over any clause on this page would think: "okay, this page goes above and beyond in being thorough in its citations of legitimate corroborations of everything that is discussed on the page, and links go directly to those proofs so that it is easy for me to verify without having to put in a bunch of work". Especially noting the potential COI.

Most of Paul Lee's publicly written and published content involves autobiographical allusions, but just to let anyone interested in on my editing of this page: much of Paul's life has been heavily documented by a variety of sources, at least the primary events that make up the page on him as of 4.9.22. If any part of his page ever sounds as if I am stating something that sounds like opinion without expressly stating whose opinion it is, please edit it, let me know on the talk page, or draw attention to it. My submitting this draft was guided largely by knowing that he should already have had a page already, he just happened not to yet.... but he should've had info out there just as his friends and colleagues do (Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Ted Carpenter, Terence Malick, etc...). And he shows up in a mind boggling amount of published sources, so it seemed clear he would eventually make it onto wikipedia regardless. As of 4.9.22 he's got something like 35 sources not written by himself alluding to each separate clause on his entry, but by people who are mostly other people with their own influential careers who have their own wikipedia page, or are clearly authors published by respected companies who thoroughly vet their publications. And there are more sources out there covering other things on his life; the ones in the reflist are just what seemed the most obvious to include to educate a reader on Paul's life/career/what-to-know.

The one thing that comes to mind in COI declaration related to myself and Paul is that I am (4.9.22) enrolled in school and Paul wrote a letter of recommendation when I applied based on my merits to be admitted to the school... but hopefully that example would be obvious that I didn't pay him to do that and he wasn't "my boss" when he did that. Another thought is I had have had a chance to volunteer at Food Not Bombs, which he supports through his Homeless advocacy in Santa Cruz. But that project is all volunteer-run, so while I was inspired to learn about Paul's advocacy for unhoused folks throughout the year, and that was relevant to me starting to volunteer at Food Not Bombs, it's not by any means a job I've gotten through him, but a volunteer thing I do, related to the advocacy he's shown throughout his time working with the Santa Cruz unhoused population.

The goal with any edits I make is that it is not even close to ambiguous as to whether the statements are truthful and so in that light, I absolutely encourage anyone who reads over this content to click the citations to see exactly the online source I refer to for every clause on the page. I intend to stick to that rigorous standard with any edits I make moving forward. And with any edits I make on Wikipedia in general, for that matter. I take editor integrity seriously, please let me know if I ever fall short; I appreciate learning from mistakes. If anything I thought my having heard about experiences he's had through his lectures and lessons would help inform me as a person to type a decently well-done summary... but yes, the intention is to have no opinions be a part of this encyclopedic summary.

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Happy editing! Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:26, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Paul Lee (environmentalist) has been accepted

Paul Lee (environmentalist), which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

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Thanks again, and happy editing!

Scorpions13256 (talk) 23:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Academic biographies

Hello! Regarding this edit summary, and the questions it raised: I believed my edits had brought the article in line with the Wikipedia Manual of Style subsection on the use of academic degrees as titles or postnominals. While Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh includes a well-written note that summarizes who counts as an alumni, I cannot find a similar note on top of any university faculty-related categories. To explain that, I can only point you to the article academic personnel, which explains the difference between faculty and staff in North America, and is the definition I use when categorizing academics. I have previously explained my views on the categorization of academics on my talk page here. I hope reading over any of those links, and comparing to a high quality academia-related article such as Stephen Hawking will help. Specifically discussing the Hawking article as an example: It introduces Hawking as "an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author" before listing his directorship and academic titles. Of the article had immediately introduced him as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, people might have thought that he was primarily known for mathematics research, and discounted his contributions to physics. If the focus is on academic titles, I often find myself asking "What subject did he teach?" By describing the science in question, readers don't have to wonder. Sometimes, like with Hawking, the professorship's title doesn't match with some scientist's actual area of study. But in general, a "professor of history" is a "historian" and a "professor of biology" is a biologist. More directly with regard to Lee a "professor of philosophy" is likely to be a "philosopher." If you wished to talk about Lee's later work after he stopped teaching, I would suggest philosopher and enviromentalist. Shortening academic titles is my attempt to find balance between conciseness and preciseness of detail. Listing occupations based on specific scientific fields of study, in my opinion, should, more often than not, be more concise than and give an appropriate amount of detail. Another example on the potential confusion academic titles can cause can be illustrated by the disambiguation page Susan Baker (professor). Each of the three Susan Bakers listed there is or was a professor, but every one of them specialized in a diffrent topic. If you're curious, Talk:Kate Dewes#“Peace campaigner” versus “anti-nuclear activist” is where I've posted my views about the concise nature of article text. Happy editing! Vycl1994 (talk) 04:30, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your response... perhaps this is a lame duck response on my part... but User:MB visited Paul Lee (environmentalist) in the meantime and made updates to the updates I made on the infobox. As they are Master Class editor, I have assumed I should defer to their edit. My original response was, if infobox should only refer to tenure track teaching positions, that made me think about how Lee's contributions are really as existentialist philosopher and religious philosopher, as well as environmentalist (pragmatist natural philosopher) and homeless advocate (pragmatist), so my thought was: okay, I am thinking this points to why it is not as helpful to have him primarily be Professor, as over against Philosopher (**to your point, indeed!) ... this because to have his title and infobox only display working at UCSC would be misleading to the main goal of the article which is to educate users on Paul Lee.

So in thinking that way I converted infobox to Philosopher which simply only showed his alma matter (Harvard Divinity School, no ambiguity there), and the academic wording went away that was previously on the Professor infobox was no longer there. But as User:MB came back in, they reinstituted the listing of Harvard Divinity, MIT and UCSC altogether, so for me I am currently thinking I'll defer to that decision. So again, hopefully not lame duck decision, but I think what you brought to my attention was reasoning that makes me still think it was right to have his infobox be philosopher rather than academic, and MB's adjustments within the philosopher infobox I am for the moment surmising implies that was the correct formatting decision. Thanks for taking your time to look over this content. I am excited it is live!

All the best,

Garrett.stephens (talk) 04:47, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify a few points, the "institutions" went away when you changed the infobox type just because the parameter had a different name. That caused the article to be listed in an error category which is how I found it and why I fixed the error. We normally do list where a person received their education - in the academic, scientist, philosopher, and other related infoboxes, as that is considered "key information" belonging in a condensed summary of the article. If you are unaware of how to see all the available fields in the infobox, just look at template:infobox philosopher. I would also like to point out that "Master Class editor" is just based on number of edits made, which doesn't mean that much. I make a lot of small edits almost every day fixing all kinds of things. I have no subject matter expertise of academics/philosophers. MB 23:26, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes that is my understanding! I noted

(1) that when I changed infobox to 'philosopher' institutions seem to go away, with only alma matter listed so I thought to myself "oh maybe that's a field that is shown in "academic" infobox, but not in "philosopher", and then I noticed after you cleaned the infobox up I could see them again as showing. But perhaps they were still there and simply I needed to like refresh cookies in my browser or something like that. I think my understanding of infoboxes has improved over last few days regardless. This is all pretty similar to html and css and wordpress, etc.

(2) I mentioned you as "master class" because it sounded cool, but further it means you've made at least 42,000 edits and edited for 6 years, as opposed to my maybe 150 edits and about 1.5 week of work. I thought it a safe bet you probably know more of what you are doing than I do in editing wikipedia... Though I made the Paul Lee page and know him personally so I know about him and his life and have heard him tell me about adventures and stories so I know more about the subject matter... I am still trying to grok the proper way to do wikipedia or be a part of the community.... so I at least want to nod to the fact that though you may understate it, 42,000 edits is a lot of sweat equity into wikipedia as a project! Garrett.stephens (talk) 00:08, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Since your have mentioned that you know Paul Lee, I should point out WP:COI. It looks like the article is very well sourced and not based on your personal knowledge. I don't suspect any bias (a majority of COI editors are trying to promote someone or something against WP policy), but you should be familiar with the policy and make the necessary disclosure. MB 22:55, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you thank you! Yes, I only want to have it sourced with direct citations, not have my signature on it really at all, just get the info out there

Garrett.stephens (talk) 04:00, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

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