Susan Spaid

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File permission problem with File:Lenore Malen, I am the Animal install view, 2011.png

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Welcome Susan Spaid!

Now that you've joined Wikipedia, there are 48,203,744 users!

Hello, Susan Spaid. Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions! I'm Pahazzard, one of the other editors here, and I hope you decide to stay and help contribute to this amazing repository of knowledge.

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File permission problem with File:Portrait of Lenore Malen 2014.jpg

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A page you started (Jean-François Paquay) has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Jean-François Paquay, Susan Spaid!

Wikipedia editor NHCLS just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

Hello. The Jean-Francois Paquay page needs a lot of improvement. Currently, it lacks sources, sounds rather like publicity for Paquay, and the subject's notability is dubious. Thanks!

To reply, leave a comment on NHCLS's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.

License tagging for File:Green Fall12 pg copy 01.JPG

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License tagging for File:Green BoobTree 1975(small) 01.JPG

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License tagging for File:Green Turkish Bath Table SE 01.JPG

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Image copyright problem with File:Green Turkish Bath Table SE 01.JPG

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Disambiguation link notification for March 10

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Speedy deletion nomination of File:Photograph of Jean-Francois Paquay at his press conference.jpg

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Proposed deletion of Robin Hill (Studio)

The article Robin Hill (Studio) has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this biography of a living person will be deleted after seven days unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Susan Spaid. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Marc Kreisel

Hello, I'm Deb. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you.Deb (talk) 16:14, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

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Thank you for your contributions

		The Barnstar of Fine Arts
		For creating nine quality articles, most of which regarding to fine arts; and your other edits in the same category. —usernamekiran(talk) 10:15, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

---

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Lynn Zelevansky

The article Lynn Zelevansky has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this biography of a living person will be deleted after seven days unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp/dated}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within seven days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:38, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

COI, re: writing non-neutral content about colleagues

Hello, Susan Spaid. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. Editing for the purpose of advertising or promotion is not permitted. 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, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• 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 must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Susan, it's unfortunate that rather than responding to the above--conflict of interest must be acknowledged--you've continued to edit, inconsistently. No editor is going to clean up after hyperbolic prose and poor or inappropriately sourcing indefinitely. At some point I'll add COI templates to the articles if justified, or make a report to an appropriate noticeboard and ask other editors to become involved. Please read more about our guidelines re: article structure, tone, and references. Thank you, 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 20:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
• Hi Susan, as an administrator, I'm asking you to reply to this message. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Please clarify your connection to the subjects of the articles you have created

Susan, I am adding my voice to that of the IP editor and Neil above. Please respond and clarify your relationship with the people you have edited about, and also whether you have received any compensation for your editing.
Being upfront about this will mean that other editors can guide you as to how to properly disclose any conflicts of interest and how you can appropriately do things like request edits and submit draft articles for review by independent editors.
On the other hand, continuing to ignore these requests is more than likely to end with you being reported and blocked from editing. Thank you, Melcous (talk) 04:52, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Dear Melcous and Neil,

I have no "personal relationships" with the people whose wiki pages I initiate. In some cases I've heard of them or have met them briefly, but I do not know much about their work until I do the research required to write their pages. The only reason I didn't reply earlier is that I couldn't imagine that it was as simple as editing my talk page as I am doing now. You must also know that soon after I launched the page, the IP editor decided to delete the entire section with citations, leaving a wiki page without citations. The next day, I found a way to add them back in. Also, I find it odd that movie stars and film makers can list their films, etc. but not so curators When I write a wiki page for curators, I have typically modeled it after those of filmmakers since curating and filmmaking are very similar activities.

Best Susan Spaid (talk) 12:11, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

pinging Melcous, and NeilN; in case they dont have this page watchlisted. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:31, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Susan, thank you for replying. As a next step, can I ask you to read WP:PAID and then clarify/confirm here whether any of your editing could be viewed as in any way "paid" or not. Thanks.

It seems to me that you have been working over the last few years on a number of articles in this field, and so this may just be a particular interest of yours, but unfortunately some of the issues with your editing (e.g. using non-neutral language and relying on primary sources) coupled with the lack of communication with other editors, is similar to the kind of editing that many undisclosed paid editors engage in. Hopefully this can be cleared up and you can work with NeilN regarding an unblock request.

Your point about movie stars is an interesting one - I think it is more about the fact that celebrities in these industries tend to have much more written about them, and so it is easier to find reliable sources verifying their roles than it may be for other professions (I tend to create articles about female judges and politicians from non-Western countries, so there is often a dearth of information compared to what is available on movie stars!). But wikipedia articles should be based on content that has been published in independent, secondary sources, so that is what we have to work with.

Just a couple more comments for now. The IP editor who left the message above and has worked on some of the articles you have edited is a very experienced editor, and I don't see where he has done what you have said above - and he has explained in edit summaries why he has made reversions and given suggestions of what to do instead. It might be worth taking some time to read through the guidelines he and I have linked to, and you can always ask questions here on your talk page if you don't understand why people are wanting to challenge some of your edits.

Finally, it would be good if you can clarify whether the account User:Sue Spaid is also yours. Generally, editors should only have one account unless there is a good reason, so if you can explain, that would be really helpful.

Again, thanks for engaging here, this is a really important thing to do as a wikipedia editor (one of the core principles the whole project works by is consensus, which requires editors to engage with each other). I hope the issues can be sorted out relatively easily and you can continue to learn and grow as a contributor here. Cheers, Melcous (talk) 13:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Dear Melcous, I am User: Susan Spaid. When I clicked on User:Sue Spaid, it says there is no such wiki account, so I'm not sure why you suspect me of having two accounts. I think it is extremely important for curator's wiki pages to list all of the artists included in some exhibition (with reference to either a catalog, review or institutional website). I say this because exhibitions are entirely collaborative and it matters greatly who is involved in the project. Plus, eventually artists names go from black to blue, if you know what I mean. And since there is a huge effort to get people to write wiki entries for women, listing artists names seems a smart thing, since having the artists names in black will help to turn them blue one day. Are you familiar with this project: http://www.artnews.com/2015/03/10/artfeminisms-2015-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-adds-334-articles-on-female-artists/ As you may have noticed (or not), only three of the dozens of wiki pages I've written have addressed women artists, which is a passion of mine. As for knowing artists or not, most of my gigs are by referal, so I rarely know the artists or their works. I charge the world's most modest fee- $200 for 50-100 hours of research. My main goal is to learn something about living artists that I wouldn't otherwise learn. And doing so I've actually made some wild discoveries. You claim that my language is neutral, but I challenge you to even find any adjectives, save perhaps my quotes of others.

I hope this clarifies things. Sue Susan Spaid (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

There's no user page for Sue Spaid but there is certainly an account with these contributions. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:37, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Re the statement "I think it is extremely important for curator's wiki pages to list all of the artists included in some exhibition," it is not the role of an encyclopedia article to gather such lists, especially if the notability of those artists has not been established, per WP:WTAF. That misunderstanding is one of a number that have effected the articles in question. 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 16:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

January 2018

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for failure to respond to undisclosed paid editing concerns.

If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:53, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Dear Neil,

I am now very confused here. I don't know why it sometimes says Sue and sometimes Susan. So far as I know, I have only ever logged in as Susan Spaid. And now that I see that there is actually a code for paid pages, I'm more than happy to use it. It's really news to me. You must know that I've never even ever met another wiki editor in my life, so it's not like I have people with whom I can discuss the ins and outs of wiki page creation. I taught myself...and apparently very badly. Best, Sue 15:42, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

You probably created the other account and forgot about it. I will block it so there's no confusion. I will unblock this account if you commit to following WP:DISCLOSE. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:58, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Before unblocking, NeilN, I want to underscore a few concerns. Though Ms. Spaid said above I have no "personal relationships" with the people whose wiki pages I initiate. In some cases I've heard of them or have met them briefly, but I do not know much about their work until I do the research required to write their pages., most of the articles she's created have been about artists and fellow curators she would have worked with in California; some of the artists were curated into exhibitions by her, or were represented in her gallery. None of that is a dealbreaker, but I am troubled by the hesitancy to acknowledge the associations. Full transparency is necessary. As well, in the capacity of paid contributor, a trail of public-relations quality articles have been left for other editors to clean up. We need more coverage of female artists and curators, but not resumes and promotional prose. 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 16:11, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I dont remember exactly how I came across Susan, but I have her talkpage watchlisted since this barnstar special:diff/788431015. Before awarding that barnstar, I skimmed through the contrib history, and I was surprised by the fluency in editing, yet lack of communication with other editors (thats what intrigued me to watchlist the page). At that time I had a doubt about COI, but I thought most of the edits were neutral, and encyclopaedia worthy. So I didnt bother myself much. But then the only update from my watchlist was this account getting blocked. I agree with IP editor above on "Full transparency is necessary. [...] We need more coverage of female artists and curators, but not resumes and promotional prose." I also support Neil's judgement on this issue. My kind apologies to everybody if I seem to be nosey here. But I think if everything works out, Susan Spaid can turn out to be a good contributor. I would also request her to respond if some other contributor communicates to her. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Usernamekiran and no need to apologise, we're all jumping in to try to help improve the project. I am slightly concerned, Susan Spaid, that when you were asked to explain your relationship to the subjects you said "I have no personal relationship" and only later disclosed that you are being paid for your contributions here. That is exactly the kind of relationship we were asking you about, and one which you should know comes with specific obligations, and you will find many editors here at wikipedia (the vast percentage of whom are volunteers), have very low tolerance for paid editing. You need to read through WP:PAID and comply with it - this is not a friendly suggestion, it is a requirement which you signed up to when you created an account here. As Neil mentions above, you will need to disclose all your clients and subjects of paid editing properly, on your user page and whenever you edit those articles. I would also note that as a paid editor you should not continue creating articles directly as you have done so far, but rather should be creating drafts and submitting them to the articles for creation process for review before they are added to the main encyclopedia. Others may have additional advice for you. Thanks, Melcous (talk) 22:37, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Response

With the exception of Robin Hill (known to my co-curator of a one-day pool exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach), Julia Couzens (again, selected by co-curator), Phyllis Green and Eileen Cowin, I have no memory of ever editing a page for someone with whom I have worked with in the artworld. I have never made pages for any of the artists who showed at my LA gallery (1990-1995) nor any of the 50 eco-artists on whom I’ve built my reputation (the author of five books on this subject). Yes, I was commissioned to create wiki pages, but I stand by my point that there was no COI, even for the three above. Cowin and Green are two of the nation’s greatest women artists. The artists who come to me don’t have gallery representation...if they did unpaid interns working at their galleries would prepare their pages. The assumption there is that artists with galleries are better artists than those without, which is illogical, since artists with galleries are simply more saleable, which usually means they take fewer risks.

This draft submission process is news to me, but I’m happy to comply, as well as to list {{User(paid)}} atop every page. I have no reluctance to be honest with anyone about anything. In fact, I have reported every $ earned via Wiki (most is $1350 in one year) to the IRS and the Belgian IRS, so it is hardly a secret, or a “job”. I was a bit taken aback by your behaving as though you’d led a sting operation and caught the ringleader of an artworld publicity syndicate. I am totally small potatoes on this front... and I actually work really hard to make Wiki useful to students and researchers, not collectors, which is what drives most pages. Susan Spaid (talk) 11:09, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• Thank you for the further explanation. I rescind my claim that 'most of the articles she's (you've) created have been about artists and fellow curators she would have worked with in California.' But as Melcous states above, it's difficult to claim that there's no personal relationship or COI with the subjects about whom one has written, if payment--no matter how small--is involved. Rather than a sting operation, my uneasiness is due to the tone of numerous articles to which you've contributed, and the addition of inadequately sourced or unencyclopedic content. 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 11:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• This is missunderstanding of the terminology. I think Susan is thinking of COI as being biased, and/or influenced. —usernamekiran(talk) 11:46, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Susan, I think your statement "I stand by my point that there was no COI" suggests that you have not fully understood what is meant by a Conflict of interest on wikipedia, or have not yet fully read WP:COI and WP:PAID. According to those guidelines, being paid to edit an article automatically means you have a conflict of interest with regards to that article, whether you have any other kind of relationship with the subject or not. Melcous (talk) 11:49, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Continued

If COI is simply the exchange of money (or the commodification of an artist’s life contribution to society)...take your pick... then the galleries and museums who actually stand to make money selling art and monographs and thus hire unpaid interns to beef up artists’ exisitng wiki pages for free are the real beneficiaries of this game. My over 30-year experience as an art writer, philosopher and biennial curator is clearly meaningless as compared to some post-millennial, unbesmirched intern working their wiki magic under an alias, whose name (fake or real) cannot possibly raise a red flag to wiki trolls. Had I used an alias as wiki trolls seem to do...No one would suspect me for COI...or for “padding” my own wiki page, which is really an astonishing accusation. I’m just an expat who helps out artists who feel their artistic contributions are under-served (most are 60+, in collections, have catalogs and even museum shows), but since I’m also a member of AICA, I’m actually prohibited from writing for free (AICA members are supposed to charge $1 per word, but neither magazines nor museums pay close to that), which is why I charge a modest fee. An unpaid intern could not join AICA, which has only 300 members nationwide...so it’s a crazy small club. I’m happy to comply with your definition of COI, though its logic escapes me. I guess it is more of a law than a principle, since a principle requires an internal logic. If you really want to beef up wiki, you should have a “new law” that says that only AICA members can write wiki pages...that would omake sense. I don’t know any AICA members whom I would accuse of COI, since they’re reputations depends on their writing record. OK...I’m just having fun here, so take this in stride. But I do think these are important issues to consider...and maybe one day they’ll be resolved more ethically.

Susan Spaid (talk) 13:28, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• Your knowledge, scholarship and experience are a given. As long as you're making comparisons, I and many other contributors have spent years reverting promotional edits by interns, employees and interested parties who have not identified themselves. Nobody accused you of padding your bio; rather, associates of yours appear to have written it. In short, I've little interest in the resumes of fellow editors. What matters is their neutrality. Thanks, 2601:188:180:11F0:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 13:37, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• For the record, it was problems with the content of your editing I noticed first. Recognition of conflict of interest soon followed. Parenthetically, referring to volunteers who are trying to maintain encyclopedic guidelines as ‘trolls’ suggests you’re not getting this yet. Expertise doesn’t give any of us a free pass. 107.77.223.229 (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi all. I request everybody to remain calm. Paid or not, Susan's edits seem to be encyclopaedic. Rather than discussing personal definitions of different things; we should discuss what went wrong, and what should n shouldn't be done. To editor Susan Spaid: I request to you to read WP:COI, WP:PAID, and WP:NPOV. And then you should formally confirm that you have understood them, and will follow them. —usernamekiran(talk) 00:06, 25 January 2018 (UTC)