MNW2009

September 2023

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, please note that there is a Manual of Style that should be followed to maintain a consistent, encyclopedic appearance. Deviating from this style, as you did in Daisy von Scherler Mayer, disturbs uniformity among articles and may cause readability or accessibility problems. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. LizardJr8 (talk) 21:48, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Please avoid the use of all caps. LizardJr8 (talk) 21:49, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Made adjustments and resubmitted! MNW2009 (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Your edit to Daisy von Scherler Mayer has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:48, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Got it, thank you for clarifying. We do own the copy write to this copy. We will add a clause to Daisy's website to give permission to use as public domain. Is there a reason the photo wasn't accepted? MNW2009 (talk) 23:19, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry about the photo, it got caught in the revert when I restored an older version. I'll add it back now. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:32, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, hi. I just emailed Lauren Hurt to confirm about the rights to the photograph. When you say you will add a clause to Daisy's website, which website is that? I can't find one listed in the Daisy von Scherler Mayer article. --GRuban (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@GRuban: I believe it's this one: Daisy von Scherler Mayer - Director for Television and Film. There's a notice at the bottom that reads "The text of this website is released under the Creative Commons Zero Waiver 1.0 (CCo)." ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Daisy added the suggested clause: "The text of this website is released under the Creative Commons Zero Waiver 1.0 (CCo)" to her website to give permission to use the bio on other websites. This is her website: https://daisyvonscherlermayer.com/ - thanks! MNW2009 (talk) 16:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 and LizardJr8: Aha. I see now, there used to be an official website listed, but you deleted it, along with all the other references, in your edits. Please don't do that. Please. References are very important. In fact, since you're writing in the plural, "we", is there a chance you are either the subject's employees or a public relations agency the subject has hired? If so, you really, really shouldn't just edit the article yourselves, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and follow the rules there: you want to make suggestions on the article talk page. When you do, you can ping me (or possibly the other two people I'm pinging here, don't know if they'll be interested), and one or more editors that aren't working for the article subject will quite possibly make the changes for you ... but until then, because of my suspicions of your CoI and especially because your edits deleted all those references, I'm going to revert those edits. Pinging the other editors so they know what is going on here. --GRuban (talk) 16:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I see. Happy to add any references if needed. Or I can copy and paste the information to the article talk page. Can you explain how I do that? Thanks. MNW2009 (talk) 16:09, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

What a fast response - I was writing the above at the same time you were replying! That's called an edit conflict. In this case it could be actually good, as we can probably get this straightened out fairly quickly. So - can you specify the most important changes you want to make? I'm afraid "we want to paste in the text from her official website, word for word" isn't ideal, not just because of the copyright issues, but more so because our article isn't supposed to be a public relations piece. It's supposed to be a compilation and summary of the reliable information that the world says about her. Not just what she says about herself. I linked the specific instructions above, but will say so again: please read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. I'm willing and able to help, but those are the official rules. I'm just another volunteer. --GRuban (talk) 16:13, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey, thank you. This is all new to us (Daisy and I, her former assistant), so thanks for being willing to help. She wanted to have that exact bio on here, but we didn't realize that is a problem. What is the best way to get it as close as possible without it being considered a PR piece? She'd love for it to reflect all her recent jobs, all the TV shows listed in the bio you guys reverted as well as discuss the re-release of her film Party Girl. Additionally, she wanted less information out in the world about her early life and more focused on her career - the projects she's done and the people she worked with. I'm not sure what the normal process is, but I can send the bio to you guys to then translate to wikipedia in the way that best applies to the rules. Just let me know what you need - thanks. MNW2009 (talk) 16:21, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely, this is understandably complex. Let's do the required things first:

1. Could you please start your user page (User:MNW2009 - when you do, this will turn from red to blue) and put something like this filled out Template:User COI there (everything between the nowiki tags, if you see those, or just the unindented stuff if you don't, it should turn into a little grey box if you do it right):

{{User COI | Daisy von Scherler Mayer | text=I'm a former assistant, and still a friend; we play pinochle and drink martinis together every Thursday; and actually this bit is just explanatory text for me to edit as I see fit or even leave out; the first field, the name of the article, is the key point here }}

I will put a somewhat similar template for you on the article talk page, but users are supposed to edit their own user pages, I probably shouldn't do that part for you.

2. Could you verify the license on the image? This means either getting the photographer (is that this Lauren Hurt https://www.laurenhurt.com/ ?) to email permissions-commons@wikimedia.org with something like the contents of this form: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikimedia_VRT_release_generator ; or, we will probably accept if you put the image on either the photographer's or Daisy von Scherler Mayer's website with a statement like "Released under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" (the latter only if the photographer has sold DvSM the rights as part of the photo contract - sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, that's between you, I'm afraid).

Meanwhile I'll see about incorporating the important bits you mention above. --GRuban (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for all of this. I just submitted task #1 but not sure if I did it correctly? Regarding the image, Daisy paid for the photos so she now owns the rights to use them. So the only way to prove that is if she adds it to her website, correct? MNW2009 (talk) 17:01, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I fixed the user page statement (you wanted to add the double curly braces). If she owns the rights,

• she can either fill out the "VRT release generator" form I linked to above, and email the results to the email address I wrote above, or
• she can put it on her website somewhere with that statement I wrote above.

The website way may be more straight forward if you can do that. See, the email goes to a different set of volunteers, and it depends on whom you get - some will say "Yeah, that sounds good, we'll accept that, next customer", and some will say: "Are you sure you own the copy rights? If it doesn't specifically say that you own the rights in the contract you might only own the physical photos..." and it could take a number of other emails back and forth to prove it, they might even demand that the photographer fill out that form and send the email. If you've ever worked with a group of volunteers, you will recognize both of these kinds of people! Any website will do, as long as it's indisputable it's hers, DvSM's, so if she has a Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever, that she has owned for a while, that will also probably work. --GRuban (talk) 17:15, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

OK got it, thank you. I'll have her fill out the form/email or add to her website.

Also, when can we expect her wiki to be properly updated with the information she'd like added? Or what are the next steps to make sure thats in motion? Thanks! MNW2009 (talk) 18:25, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, here're the next steps.

1. Read or at least skim Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest if you haven't already, then you're going to want to make Wikipedia:Edit requests. (Read that in more detail!) You can see one guy who has gotten pretty good at it Talk:Alice Walton - you can see a number of his edit requests there, they're very thorough, often even more than the official policy asks for. (Which reminds me, he wrote an entire suggested article that I really should look at!) You don't have go to his level of expertise, but the point is:

A: Suggest specific bite-sized changes, in sentences or paragraphs, so they can be reviewed in pieces.

B: Cite sources for your new content, ideally reputable sources not written by the subject. Most sentences should be cited to a source, sometimes you can have several consecutive sentences all from one source, but there should be at least one inline source for each paragraph, and every contentious or disputable claim (like "this is the film that launched Parker Posey's career"). The best sources for currently active people are usually mainstream books, newspapers, and magazines, paper still has more clout than electrons. Here are a few that I found in a few minutes that seem to discuss Party Girl's clout and its re-release, Vogue is quite good, big, reputable magazine; Brooklyn Magazine; IndieWire; Collider are a slightly lower level due to the electrons rather than paper thing, but should still be all right. If you aren't sure whether a source is good, the real rule is Wikipedia:Reliable sources but that's hard to parse, an easier rule of thumb is to read our Wikipedia article on a source. If it says things like "respected", "influential", "won prizes", that's good, if it says "run by two guys in their basement, regularly sued for making stuff up", not so much, and if we don't have an article about a source, that doesn't guarantee they're not reputable, but tends to lean that way.

Put the edit requests on the article talk page per that instruction, and someone will answer them; if you ping me, that someone may well be me.

2. Take a look at an article like the one you want, and use it as a model. I personally have only written one article about a filmmaker, Matthias Hoene. It's ... not bad, I hope, but I'm clearly biased! You can also take a look at the Parker Posey article, I haven't touched that one, and also seems fine. You can see they've each got sections for "Early life"; "Career" (with details, usually the largest section); then "Personal life". That's a pretty standard model. Our best articles can be found at Wikipedia:Featured articles - you can try to find some directors there and use them as models, but they tend to be Very Thorough, and may well be a lot to shoot for, the two I suggested might be more achievable.

3. Finally, if all that is too much, you could just hang back and I will get to it eventually, I know what you want now, and in general it's not unreasonable to make the Career longer in comparison to the Early life with more details. No guarantees as to when I'll get to it, I'm afraid, so if you start making concrete suggestions as in 1 and 2, that will almost certainly be faster. --GRuban (talk) 19:09, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for all the info - this is a lot! I attempted to figure it out but I don't have the time to handle it, unfortunately. Are there people who specialize in this that can be hired to handle? If not, let me know when you have the time to tackle, thanks again for all your help. MNW2009 (talk) 20:16, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

No; we're a volunteer shop, taking pay to edit articles is strongly discouraged. You can suggest (as in 1), which will probably help, or you can wait (as in 3). As I wrote, you've explained what you want, much of it will probably happen eventually. --GRuban (talk) 21:10, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I attempted to suggest some ideas - not sure I did it right but tagged you on one. Should I keep commenting new suggestions or space it out? Not sure exactly how it all works. MNW2009 (talk) 22:21, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, different editor here.(@GRuban I hope you don't mind me jumping in) You're going to need to add Template:Edit COI to your request. Doing so places it in a list that allows other editors to notice and respond, making response times much shorter for less popular articles. I've done so for you for this request, but next time you can use the Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard to make the process easier. Thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! MNW2009 (talk) 23:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)