Gadfly65

February 2014

Hello, Womenarts. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Sophie D. Ogutu, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Your account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended for publicity and/or promotional purposes. If you intend to edit constructively in other topic areas, you may be granted the right to continue under a change of username. Please read the following carefully.

Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, website or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity. The edits may have violated one or more of our rules on spamming, which include: adding inappropriate external links, posting advertisements and using Wikipedia for promotion. Wikipedia has many articles on companies, groups, and organizations, but such groups are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia to write about themselves. In addition, usernames like yours are disallowed under our username policy.

Am I allowed to make these edits if I change my username?

Probably not, although if you can demonstrate a pattern of future editing in strict accordance with our neutral point of view policy, you may be granted this right. See Wikipedia's FAQ for Organizations for a helpful list of frequently asked questions by people in your position. Also, review the conflict of interest guidance to see the kinds of limitations you would have to obey if you did want to continue editing about your company, group, organization, or clients. If this does not fit in with your goals, then you will not be allowed to edit Wikipedia again.

What can I do now?

If you have no interest in writing about some other topic than your organization, group, company, or product, you may consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead.

If you do intend to make useful contributions here about some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:

• Add the text {{unblock-spamun|Your proposed new username|Your reason here}} on your user talk page.
• Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with a new username you are willing to use. See Special:Listusers to search for available usernames. Your new username will need to meet our username policy.
• Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:
  • Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
  • Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

If you believe this block was made in error, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.

Daniel Case (talk) 18:18, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Discussion re: banning

Hello User:Womenarts, User:Demiurge1000, and User:Daniel Case. Womenarts wrote the ArtAndFeminismWiki@gmail.com address about this situation, asking for advice; this user created their account as part of the Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism which we organized. We advised her that her edits were in conflict with NPOV and pointed Womenarts to Wikipedia:Autobiography, and that Womenarts should not edit pages in which they have a conflict of interest, but we also pointed out that we think that the process that transpired here was not very clear or informative or fair. Just to recap, here is her good faith response on Demiurge1000's talk page, to which no one actually responded. User:JamesBWatson said they would respond, but there is nothing on the talk page (I checked the revsion history as well, nothing). Instead Daniel Case banned her. I feel like this is a prime example of someone doing something very wrong without knowing it is wrong (e.g. not maliciously), but not being explained why it is wrong, and being kicked out instead. This is the gender gap in action. There has to be a better process than an immediate ban. Also, if the pages that Womenarts wants to be created are legitimate pages that should be on Wikipedia, can they nominate it by adding it to the list of articles to create? or does that run against the principles as well?--Theredproject (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm in part to blame here, as I have a tendency to leave standardised templated messages (like the one at the top of this page) without necessarily having the time to respond in detail (or promptly) to the queries that result from them.

Wikipedia username policy says that the Womenarts username is unacceptable. The account would need to be blocked pending a rename request even on that basis. Whether a block on the basis of promotionalism is equally justified, seems a little unclear. It has perhaps been handled rather mechanically and unsympathetically, and for that I apologise.

Having said that, Wikipedia has a serious problem with COI editing (and indeed with paid advocacy editing), and what went on here rang lots of alarm bells. Ogutu seems very unlikely to be notable on the basis of being someone who has organised multiple multi-day conferences with several hundred people (including "big names") attending. I've done that - on a slightly larger scale - and I'm not notable. (I too, like Martha, have also run free websites that have provided valuable information to many thousands of people, and that hasn't made me notable either.)

And yes, if Ogutu is organising events in conjunction with Womenarts and is "the contact person in Kenya for Women Arts", then Womenarts (the CEO of the organisation) has a conflict of interest when writing about Ogutu on Wikipedia. It's hard to see why this provoked surprise.

Writing on someone's user talkpage "I am recognized as an expert and a trailblazer in my field" perhaps understandably set off an automated filter that detects self-promotion in userspace. And maybe it set off Daniel's mental filter for promotional accounts as well. Can you see why?

I should also point out that Womenarts admits she's received notifications about conflict of interest before, so this is not quite as out-of-the-blue as you depict it.

Now, the clock is ticking on the article about Sophie D. Ogutu, so I suggest if you (Theredproject) think it can be saved then you should object to the PROD nomination, and then we will probably end up at AfD.

By the way, a lot of male artists (or maybe their public relations people or fans or helpful grandchildren) have a great deal of trouble when trying to get articles about them on Wikipedia - I've dealt with quite a few and it has not always been pretty.

Creating articles about female artists is a good idea. If unsure about notability, or if one has a conflict of interest, doing so via WP:AFC (or, less usefully, WP:Requested articles) is appropriate. Whether the WomenArts website is a reliable source for such submissions would be decided at WP:RSN. If there are 1600 female artists covered by the website, then presumably many of them are not directly involved in the organisation itself, so starting with those would be less controversial.

Wikipedia policy does not prohibit editors from submitting an article at AFC about an organisation where they have a conflict of interest.

Now you see why I don't often have time to write out my thoughts in full rather than leaving standardised templates... --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:02, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Demiurge1000, thank you for the response. It is not substance but process that I am pointing to as a problem. I fully agree that the edits in question are COI, and uncited, but none of that was explained to the editor. I do understand the necessary use of template text, but as you have noted, it ends up feeling mechanical. I was unaware that using the name of an org as a username is against policy (good to know). I also was unaware that one could use WP:AFC for good faith efforts to create articles where one might have COI: that is very useful info. User:Womenarts are you clear on what your next steps are re: requesting a new user account via the code above?--Theredproject (talk) 22:52, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

To further explain this from my perspective as the blocking admin: under the username policy, an account which has the same name (save a real personal name) as a subject of an article they are editing in any way is to be blocked on sight. No exceptions. Aware of what was going on here, I considered whether I could find some other resolution but there was no getting around it. So, with regret, I blocked—as I have done many times before and since.

If this user wants to change name to something that meets policy while editing the same articles about individual artists, I have no problem with an unblock to that end. Daniel Case (talk) 01:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

what an appalling block, even more so, since the admin knows better. the name policy is an excuse to bite newbies. no wonder the 6 month retention of editathon editors is zero. quoting house rules to someone who is long gone new is dysfunctional. consider, after all the newbies are bitten, how long until you are bitten and hounded? this is the future: declining editors; article improvement and references added only at editathons, or by the shrinking editor base. when you leave will you turn the lights out? Duckduckstop (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello User:Demiurge1000, User:Daniel Case and Theredproject - Thanks for your comments above. To clarify the sequence of events from my perspective - back in March 2011 (3 years ago), I made a one-line entry in Sophie Ogutu's listing which seemed to be accepted. I tried to enter a paragraph about WomenArts/SWAN Day, and I got a message saying I had a conflict of interest. I spent a couple of hours poking around in the Wikipedia documentation at that time - I found it confusing and I gave up. I saw the article about the Art & Feminism Meet-up last week, which had a list of feminist arts organizations. WomenArts is a feminist arts organization and we maintain information about other feminist arts organizations and so I added four entries with links to relevant pages on my website. I did not get any responses to the links I posted last week, but the day after I posted them, I got a message from Demiurge1000 about the sentence I had posted on Sophie Ogutu's page 3 years ago. I wrote a response to Demiurge1000, and then the next day I got the message from Daniel Case with a big red X on it saying that I had been "blocked indefinitely."

I hope you can understand that this was completely incomprehensible to me. I had not tried to re-post any articles about WomenArts. My total contribution to Wikipedia is one sentence in Sophie Ogutu's listing that I wrote 3 years ago and the four links that I added to the Art + Feminism site last week. I am a person who has dedicated my life to the non-profit arts sector for almost 40 years at this point. I made a good faith effort to respond to Demiurge1000's letter. When I got the letter with the angry red X on it instead of a response to my letter, my immediate thought was, "Men do not want my voice to be heard and they will do their best to silence me." I realize that may not have been your intention, but that is the sad reality for me and for most women in many aspects of our lives. Before I started WomenArts, I ran mainstream arts organizations. It was much easier to get grants and publicity for those organizations than it is for WomenArts. My writing and thinking skills did not decrease when I switched jobs - it is simply that there is pervasive institutional sexism and racism in the foundation world and the mainstream media. The employment statistics in every art form reflect that gender bias. I have some trepidation about even trying to post on Wikipedia because I have read the articles about women's listings being hacked and women being harrassed and threatened because of their Wikipedia listings.

I am also surprized that Wikipedia does not seem to distinguish in any way between non-profit and for-profit ventures. I can understand that you don't want for-profit ventures creating self-promotional listings, but WomenArts is a 501(c) non-profit and so we are strictly regulated by the IRS, and we have to prove to them every year that we are doing work that fits their definition of "charitable." We are governed by boards of directors instead of one individual, no individual can invest in us and "make a profit", our financial records are public information, and we are not allowed to advocate for individual political candidates. There have been decades of right-wing attacks on the non-profit sector, and so most non-profits, especially arts organizations and women's organizations, are seriously under-staffed and under-funded at this point.

If I understand the rules, I could post things as "SpaceAlien99" but not as "WomenArts" because that is the name of the organization I work for, but I don't think this rule makes sense for the names of non-profit organizations. There is a difference between "self-promotion" and "promoting a non-profit." Since Wikipedia is a non-profit, you must be aware of the fundraising and other challenges, and it would be great if you could build something into your system to help other non-profits. It is a small thing, but I think if we could use our non-profit organizational names for our Wikipedia postings, it would give us a little more visibility and help the general public see the valuable work that so many non-profits do. Every non-profit that files an IRS 990 Form (i.e. every non-profit with income over $25,000) is automatically included in the directory at www.Guidestar.org, and so it would be easy for Wikipedia editors to validate an organization's non-profit status or review their financial records. Perhaps you could have some certification process where the non-profit organizational names would be approved and then people could use them.

Thanks to all of you for your efforts to create a comprehensive online encyclopedia. It is a great endeavor, and I hope that I will be able to add to it at some point. Womenarts (talk) 19:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

i think the issue at stake here is how gender bias can be hard to see. the technocracy pushes a certain kind of process, a certain kind of bureaucracy - like the way they talk about "culture fit" in silicon valley, which is just code for white, heteronormative, male, and affluent. that this position is default, natural, invisible, and everything else is other. if "everyone can edit" Wikipedia, why have processes in place that reproduce exclusion? is there really no bandwidth for beginner's mistakes, or does this vigilance belie something else? another iteration in the long history of of misogyny and exclusion in lefist/libertatian/radical movements? certainly, we are all on the same page that in this instance, there is a conflict of interest, and that it is important to maintain standards of verifiability, relevance, etc for wikipedia to be a meaningful resource. but how can it be of value to the commons if it's not a real reflection of it? --Failedprojects (talk) 19:36, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

"There is a difference between 'self-promotion' and 'promoting a non-profit.'" You might want to read this essay that further attempts to explain why we don't distinguish between profit and non-profit promotional efforts. Daniel Case (talk) 23:04, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

This user's request to be unblocked to request a change in username has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Gadfly65 (block log • active blocks • global blocks • autoblocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Requested username:

Gadfly65 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Request reason:

I understand that I was blocked because my user name was the same as the name of the non-profit where I am the Executive Director, and for adding a link from the listing of a woman artist, Sophia D. Ogutu (also known as Sophie Dowllar), to an article on our website where she was honored as one of seven Super SWANS ( http://www.womenarts.org/2011/12/14/dec_14_2011-2/ - note that the original link was posted in March 2011 and it went dead when we reorganized our website in March 2013.)

I do not think it is accurate to call this self-promotion since my intent was to show an honor that the artist had received. This was one of my first posts on Wikipedia, and I chose the most recent thing I had written about Sophie, although in retrospect I can see that this page seems like self-promotion to you since it was designed to help her raise funds. Sophie is an extremely energetic human rights activist, theatre artist, and Support Women Artists Now/SWAN organizer. WomenArts did an interview with her in 2010 (see: http://www.womenarts.org/2010/03/18/sophie-dowllar-interview-2010/), and Deborah Santana (founder of the Do A Little Fund) visited her in Africa and did a guest blog about Sophie and SWAN Day Kenya for us in 2012 (http://www.womenarts.org/2012/03/28/special-guest-blog-about-swan-day-kenya/). Women artists face terrible sexism in Kenya, and so her success with SWAN Day is ground-breaking. She is also notable based on her human rights activities (including jail time as a prisoner of conscience) and work as the President of the Kenyan chapter of World March of Women (http://www.worldmarchofwomen.org/index_html/en)

I would like to be able to write articles on Wikipedia about women artists and about gender parity issues in the arts since those are my areas of expertise. (See my bio with a link to my full resume here: http://www.womenarts.org/about-us/staff/ ) I have compiled a lot of helpful information on the WomenArts site - see for instance our list of articles about employment discrimination in the arts at http://www.womenarts.org/womens-employment-in-the-arts/, our list of directories of women artists at http://www.womenarts.org/funding-resources/women-artist-directories/, or our list of women's theatre companies at http://www.womenarts.org/funding-resources/theatre-womens/. I am also the main writer for the WomenArts Blog where I write about women artists who address social issues in their art and about employment discrimination and gender parity issues in the arts.

I understand that I cannot cite my own website, but I think that others should be allowed to cite the WomenArts blog as a reference since our blog articles are carefully researched and we are a reliable news source in our field. The mainstream media (especially newspapers) have been steadily cutting their arts coverage over the past two decades. There is a lot of media coverage of hit movies or television shows, but very little coverage of serious artists, male or female. If your standards of "notability" require "routine coverage" in mainstream media or academic studies, then you are effectively eliminating most contemporary artists in all art forms from Wikipedia. I am not sure if that was your intention.

This coverage issue is especially bad for women artists and artists of color. For instance, Martha Lauzen, a professor at San Diego State University and the Director of the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television, did a study that found men write 70% of the film reviews and that 47% of the papers have no women reviewers. http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/Thumbs%20Down%20Report.pdf Her conclusion was:

"The findings of this report suggest that film criticism in this country’s newspapers is largely a male enterprise, echoing the predominance of men working on screen and behind the scenes in the film industry. In short, men dominate the reviewing process of films primarily made by men featuring mostly males intended for a largely male audience. The under-employment of women film reviewers, actors, and filmmakers perpetuates the nearly seamless dialogue among men in U.S. cinema."

Thank you for your consideration. ````

Accept reason:

Allowing username change to requested username. Please put this request in at Wikipedia:Changing username as soon as possible to avoid re-blocking. Daniel Case (talk) 02:48, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Possibly relevant to the above discussions. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for unblocking me, User:Daniel Case. I appreciate it. Since I only have a couple of edits so far, is it better to do a Clean Start or to Rename? Thanks for your help. Womenarts (talk) 07:07, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I think you'd be OK with a rename, especially if you want to edit the same articles, as it preserves your edit history. Daniel Case (talk) 18:17, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Discussion re: Sophie D. Ogutu's Listing

Dear User:Demiurge1000, User:Daniel Case and Theredproject, Could one of you "object to the PROD nomination" (whatever that means) on Sophie Ogutu's listing so that someone will have a little more time to deal with it. I wrote to her yesterday to let her know that her listing was pending deletion. I think her listing was originally created by WikiProject Africa and I am not sure if she has done any other entries. She is not very familiar with all of your rules. Also, she is Africa where her computer access is much more limited than it would be in the U.S. Service is slower, there are frequent service outages, and she is working from Internet cafes instead of her home. I have spent several hours on the Wikipedia site over the past few days trying to make sense of all of your rules. It would be very expensive for her to make a similar effort since she is paying for her service by the hour. She tried to make some entries herself since the deadline was so close on her deletion, and Demiurge1000 has sent her the standard COI note. I have written to her to ask her to work with WikiProject Africa instead of making the entries herself. It seems unfair to give such a short notice about the deletion of her listing when she is in a country where computer access is limited and life in general is very different from the U.S. For instance, she organized SWAN Day 2008 during a period of martial law and turmoil following the Kenyan presidential elections when it was actually illegal to congregate. If you are truly trying to make Wikipedia more inclusive, I think you need to consider factors like this in your guidelines. Also, was a notice sent to WikiProject Africa and other authors of the page saying that the entry was pending deletion? It seems like that would be the fair thing to do. Thanks for your help with this. Womenarts (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Done, and now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sophie D. Ogutu. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:22, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject informed. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:26, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Demiurge1000 Womenarts (talk) 07:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

It appears that the user that made the edits to Ogotu's page in the last 24 hours, is also the same user that created the page: Special:Contributions/Nyarkendu; the Ogutu page is one of only two that that user has contributed to. That user also appears to be the primary content contributor to the article: see history hereTheredproject (talk) 17:05, 21 February 2014 (UTC)