WikiReader527
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Hi, Wikireader, welcome. Despite Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy I do not want to know whether you've ever attended Overlake Christian Church, or if have or have had any personal involvement with it. But as I said on the article's talk page (permalink/diff), I do have some sympathy for your desire to exclude negative information from the article. I don't attend church, but if I did, I doubt I'd be especially happy to see information in a Wikipedia article about it concerning a scandal of this nature. As I explained on the article's talk page, both Wikipedia's content policies and some very practical, non-policy considerations make it impossible that all negative information can be excluded, as you'd obviously like. But since it's also very clear from the article's edit history that you're far from being alone in your wishes, I'd be grateful if you can try to help us toward a presentation that will be as sensitive as possible, within the bounds of truth and fairness, to the desires of the present congregation of the church. We also need to be sensitive to the legitimate interests of other parties, of course, including the former members who were treated so very badly by the congragation for doing nothing more than coming forward to tell the truth about Bob Moorehead's actions.
It's my own opinion that it'd be best if you don't disclose whether you've attended the church. We do have a conflict of interest policy that says you should disclose that, if you have done, but I think this is probably a case to ignore all rules. The reason I say so is that my review of the article's edit history leads me to suppose that most of the anon/IP and single-purpose account editors who've contributed to this article in some way probably have a history of personal involvement with the church. I don't see that the article can ever settle down to a stable version that everyone can live with ( if not necessarily approve of, at all ) without the acceptance and participation of at least some of those people; thus my willingness to suspend our normally required COI disclosure rules re this article.
There's one thing you do have to disclose, though. Like Will Beback inferred at the article's talk page, I've also been under the impression that you might have edited this article previously, under at least two different account names, one going back to 2007. ( A comparision of the contribution history for the three accounts WikiReader527, WikiReader07, and WikiReader1 leads me to this supposition. ) I've also wondered whether Wikireader123 might be yours, as well. If any of this is correct, or if there are any other accounts you may have edited under, that does have to be fully disclosed. Cheers, – OhioStandard (talk) 14:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for the detailed response! I did some anon edits last year when I saw a couple typos etc. I was learning to add links too so I tried some out. When they were kicked out, I realized I should join the club instead of being anon. WikiReader527 is my first and only user account. 5/27 happens to be my anniversary. --WikiReader527 (talk) 23:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Oh, also: As regards these four accounts only, there'd be no issue of violating Wikipedia's policy about so-called "sockpuppet" accounts, since in this case each account's activity appears to have ceased before subsequent ones started up. My surmise about this has been that you probably just forgot the password for one account, and created another when you wanted to edit again. There may be some minor issue touching another of Wikipedia's more obscure policies, but no one's going to make an issue of that in this case if you fully disclose all accounts you may have used. As you may be aware, information about use of alternate accounts can also be determined via Wikipedia's "checkuser" facility, or more formally via a so-called "sockpuppet investigation", but we usually like to give an individual the opportunity to make a full disclosure himself, before resorting to those. I say "we", but I should probably note that I don't have "checkuser" privileges myself, and I'm not an administrator here, either. I'm just another user/editor trying to contribute productively to the encyclopedia within the bounds of our many policies for doing so.
Anyway, I'd be really happy if the editors who've taken an interest in this article could work together to come up with a way to present this information both truthfully and with sensitivity to all concerned, and could finally arrive at a version all editors will agree to, and will agree to restore when random drive-by edits move the article very far away from that agreed-upon version without justification. Perhaps this would be asking too much of you, since you seem more inclined to scrub the article of any negative information at all, but I hope you'll try. It's really not productive, or an effective use of anyone's time, to allow this article to keep alternating back and forth between tabloid sensationalism and no (or next to no) information about a chapter in its history that, without question, did affect it very profoundly. Nor is it even an effective strategy to try to delete all negative information, since there are evidently enough editors who will inevitably come along and restore it, either in its same form or, more likely, in one you'll probably like even less than the version you deleted. Cheers, – OhioStandard (talk) 15:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- I definitely like your approach. My emphasis is on a balanced article. If there are two paragraphs on the 30 year history of Overlake or any other institution, it doesn't make sense in this case that half the text cover a single ugly moment. This article is about Overlake, not Bob Moorehead. If someone thinks there is enough notoriety (which I doubt) to create a Bob Moorehead article, that would be an appropriate spot to detail the books he's written, his career, his controversies,etc. Look at the description of Bill Clinton from his own article: "Later he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a scandal involving a White House intern, but was subsequently acquitted by the U.S. Senate.[12][13]" That's one sentence. Nice neutral language "scandal involving" captures the moment without dwelling on the unneeded particulars. If that showed up in my child's text book about Presidents I would think that was appropriate. If they had a picture of the spot on Lewinski's dress, I would say that was way out of line and tabloid like. --WikiReader527 (talk) 23:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for your reply. You make a good point, here. I think it'd be worth bringing up on the talk page. I'll probably have a bit more to say about this subsequently, as I'm somewhat short of time just now, but in the interim you might like to check your e-mail. Best, – OhioStandard (talk) 09:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
- I posted it over there. Do you get an alert when someone responds to you, or just when anyone edits a page? Can Wikipedia send me an email alert like Facebook does?--WikiReader527 (talk) 19:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for your reply. You make a good point, here. I think it'd be worth bringing up on the talk page. I'll probably have a bit more to say about this subsequently, as I'm somewhat short of time just now, but in the interim you might like to check your e-mail. Best, – OhioStandard (talk) 09:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
- I saw. I hope you don't mind that I broke it out into a new section, entitled "Weight, balance, and neutral point of view". We needed a section for that dicussion, anyway.
- Wikipedia's alert system is rather primitive compared to Facebooks. First you have to add a page to your "watchlist", if you haven't already done so. ( Either the article or the talk page suffices for both. ) Then you have to check your watchlist periodically; by default it will report changes from the most recent seven days to your watchlisted pages, although you can change that setting. Also, every change to the entire page will appear on your watchlist; it's not more granular than that. Finally, I've noticed there's some sort of bug in the system; it does "miss" changes, for some reason. You can always look in "history" for any given page you're interested in, though, to discover what changes have been made. I think there's even a "show all changes since mine" option, but I'd have to dig a little to find that.
- I don't at all mind trying to answer any further questions, but I'll also just mention that if you get stuck, the very friendly volunteers at the helpdesk are a great resource, as well. The quality of assistance one gets there is generally very high and, depending on what time of day you post, and on how obscure your question is, you'll usually get an initial reply from at least one person within 30 minutes, and usually much sooner, e.g. within five or ten minutes. I certainly made extensive use of their gracious assistance when I was first starting out here, and still do post questions there (as well as answer a few) from time to time, when I can't find what I want through other means. Best, – OhioStandard (talk) 00:07, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Ichthus: January 2012
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I notice that you aren't currently subscribed to Ichthus, the WikiProject Christianity newsletter. Witha new format, we would be delighted to offer you a trial three-month, money-back guarantee, subscription to our newsletter. If you are interested then please add your name tothis list, and you will receive your first issue shortly. From June 2013 we are starting a new "in focus" section that tells our readers about an interesting and important groups of articles. The first set is about Jesus, of course. We have also started a new book review section and our own "did you know" section. In the near future I hope to start a section where a new user briefly discusses their interests.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 21:02, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
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