User talk:Gerry Max

Welcome

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That's boilerplate, as you may have guessed, but more personally I'd like to thank you for your work on Richard Halliburton. I would ask you to please include an WP:edit summary, a brief description of what your change consists of. It helps other editors track your work, and make improvements in a tidy manner. If you need any help, drop me a message on my talk page. BrainyBabe (talk) 18:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

more on Richard Halliburton

I have realised who you probably are -- doubly welcome! Would you care to apply your expertise to Richard Halliburton#Publications? BrainyBabe (talk) 19:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to BrainyBabe: I have attempted to sharpen up some of the sections. Thank you for your invitation to do so. I have not given attention to the notes, as I first found them, but will turn to them soon.

And Moye W. Stephens

Would you care to contribute to Moye W. Stephens? You will notice that the talk pages of articles, both moyes and halliburton, contain unanswered questions which your expertise may well be able to help solve. But I do encourage you to read around the Wikipedia policies first. For example, Help:Edit summary! BrainyBabe (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

July 2011

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to add soapboxing, promotional or advertising material to Wikipedia, as you did at Richard Halliburton, you may be blocked from editing. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:54, 29 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The apparent and the actual

Hello, Gerry Max. Because the last thing I want to do is cause "emotional distress" to anyone, I have struck the portions of my comment at User talk:Dabomb87 to which you objected. Please note that I had used the word "apparent" quite deliberately to qualify what I said because I was not prepared to make any accusation involving you. If you look into the history of these articles, there has been an abundance of suspiciously similar edits involving the same content this year. Most misunderstandings can be cleared up if the users in question use the relevant talk pages instead of reinserting disputed content with little or no explanation. I'm glad that's finally happening, and I'm sorry if you got caught up in the "dragnet". Rivertorch (talk) 19:02, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Rivertorch,

I truly appreciate your kind, thoughtful response. I regularly check the sites where I have knowledge and have provided texts. I want them to be the best that they can be--authoritative, factually reliable, up-to-date, well-written, ably cross-referenced, and absent of preachiness or tendentiousness. Once again, thank you. Sincerely, Gerry Max

New book on Moye Stephens

I see you have recently contributed to Talk:Moye W. Stephens. Do you have the new biography of him, and would you be able to help clear up the article? As it stands, it is a complete mess, without adequate citations. BrainyBabe (talk) 10:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello BrainyBabe, Received your message about the Moye Stephens article. Thank you for the welcome consideration. Barbara Hunter Schultz is probably the leading authority on Moye Stephens, and I heartily recommend her for the challenge. Her book Flying Carpets, Flying Wings - The Biography of Moye Stephens, which I have a copy of and have read, is the result of a number of years of tireless research into the man. Recently I heard her deliver a first-rate talk on Stephens and his eminent career in aviation at the Oshkosh Air Show, arguably the biggest air show in the world, with plane activity in the area for a week surpassing that at O'Hare Field. I consider her a top-notch aviation historian. She has written one other book of which I am aware, entitled Pancho, on Florence "Pancho" Barnes, who, incidentally was a friend to both Richard Halliburton and Moye Stephens. Barbara Schultz personally interviewed Moye Stephens for her book, as well as his son Moye Jr., among many others associated with Moye's career. She made a thorough literature search of both the primary and secondary sources on the subject, and she owns the actual itinerary maps carried by Stephens in the Flying Carpet Expedition. Key areas of Richard Halliburton as well as modern travel history research and knowledge would be much poorer without Schultz' contributions. Her wikipedia name, I believe, is Schultzbarbara, and she has contacted editors about her own submissions. I am pretty sure she would like to fix the article up. My own book Horizon Chasers - The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney (McFarland, 2007) is in its 4th printing now. I am at work on a follow-up, tentatively entitled The Voyage of the Sea Dragon, about Halliburton's last, fateful expedition. Sincerely, Gerry Max

Gerry, thank you for getting back to me. It can be productive when a published author chooses to contribute to Wikipedia, and I hope we can collaborate to help build excellent articles about the people and subjects we are interested in. As you know, this encyclopedia works on a basis of assuming good faith. Already, you have broken the norms of Wikipedia many times. Some of these directly affect the quality of the article, and some affect the smooth running of the community. I will assume that these are honest mistakes on your part, and I am willing to work with you to help you appreciate what is and what is not acceptable. A few points to start with:

Please log in, and sign each post using four tildes, these signs ~. That automatically creates a datestamp, among other benefits.
Reply to a discussion where it was started. I wrote to you here on your talkpage, and you chose to respond on my userpage. That is either a deliberately idiosyncratic, bizarre, provocative, disruptive choice, or a mistake. I will assume that you intended to reply on my talkpage, but you will see at the very top of that page my stated preference and intention to conduct conversations where they arise: in this case, here on your talkpage.
Use an edit summary for each change you make to a page. I made this point to you over three years ago, on 30 April 2008, and yet I notice that last week you made many edits without summaries (and some with them).
It would be a courtesy to other users to fill in some information on your userpage. Stating the titles of the books you have written, and your qualifications, may help protect you against charges of impropriety, particularly conflict of interest.

If you want my help, which I am willing to give freely, please assure me that you intend to follow these basics of constructive and polite editing on Wikipedia.

Thank you for pointing me towards User:Schultzbarbara. I notice that she too has been warned for inappropriately attempting to insert material from her own research into Wikipedia. There is a right way, and a wrong way. I, and others, will help you if you wish to learn the right way. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]