User talk:Reagle/Archives/2017

Message from students Spring 2017

Hi Professor Reagle! I hope you're having a good start of the weekend. I'm in two of your classes this semester and you mention you're pretty awkward so I guess we'll get along pretty well. A couple of things about me: I am graduation in the Spring \o/ - I am originally from Brazil, I've traveled to over 30 countries, lived in 4 of them, therefore I speak pretty "decent" four languages! :-) I love photography, painting, and writing about random things. I'm also very honest and I don't really care what people think about me too much so you'll notice if I don't understand something I will literally keep asking until I do (even if it makes me look dumb) - and I am also pretty honest with my comments! I think both classes has been very interesting so far, so I look forward to learning more! - Haivanessa (talk) 22:13, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Haivanessa. BTW is your username related to the Havanese dog breed? (One of my favorites.) -Reagle (talk) 04:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Professor Reagle, I hope you are a good start to this semester, and that you are enjoying the first long weekend of the semester. I am in your Online Communities Class, and so far from reading the syllabus and preparing for it, it seems like it is going to be a very interesting class. I am senior and this is going to be last semester in Northeastern University. Looking forward to meeting you and the rest of my classmates on Tuesday. - Salmanbinsultan (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Salmanbinsultan, see you soon. -Reagle (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, Hope you're having a nice long weekend! I really enjoyed being in your class a few years ago, so I'm definitely looking forward to this semester. Although this Wikipedia stuff seems a bit daunting, I'm hoping that it will just take some time to get used to! See you soon. - Marinamano (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Marinamano, and yes, daunting but you'll get the hang of it. -Reagle (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, I hope you had a great long weekend! I just got back to Boston from New York City for my birthday, which was an awesome time! I'm excited to be finishing my last semester with another one of your classes, and I think it's going to be a great capstone. See you tomorrow in class! Thanks, M.vesey (talk) 21:04, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks M.vesey -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle! I hope your weekend was great. As a quick introduction, I'm a graduating senior on the four year track. I've worked doing social media in the past, and am excited to learn more about online communities and platforms. I just finished the readings for class tomorrow--A/B testing is something I've always wanted to learn more about, and I really enjoyed the readings. So far I'm excited about the class and energized to learn more about Wikipedia as well as online communities as a whole! -EH9890 (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks EH9890 -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, I hope you enjoyed your weekend. I am excited for our class tomorrow and a discussion on A/B testing. I hope you get a chance to review my technology proposal, so that I can be approved to use my laptop in class for notes. I'm very excited for this class a whole, as I just came off a co-op where I was on the corporate communications team working primarily on updating the company's intranet platform. Let's see if I can successfully join the Wikipedia community. Acosta94 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:56, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Acosta94 -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, Hope you had a wonderful long weekend! I'm excited to have you as a professor again as I really learned a lot in your Digital Age class. Any chance you would bring Casper to class one day? As a fellow dog lover I would love to meet him! See you tomorrow in class! -Sabbatessa (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:09, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Sabbatessa, yes, you can propose a class poll on Casper or visit after class :-) -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, Looking forward to class tomorrow after the long weekend! I am very excited for this class as I enjoyed having you a few semesters ago in your Communication in the Digital Age class. Although it was ~2 years ago, I am happy that you still follow similar teaching techniques through the use of your online syllabus and wikipedia work! Similarly, since my last class with you I have worked at two tech companies, one small start -up, and I am currently working at HubSpot doing a lot of email marketing work! Looking forward to carrying over a lot of skills from this class to my professional life! (P.S, I agree with Sam and think you should bring Casper into class!) Sperry21 (talk) 02:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Sperry21, I've had two other students who now work at HubSpot; I'll ask offline if you happen to know them -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor! I took class with you in the Fall of 2015, which feels like it was forever ago! Since that time I have studied abroad in Florence Italy, and worked at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in New York City. It is definitely strange being back on campus, but I am excited to complete my final semester and to dive back into classes. I really enjoyed having Digital Age class with you, and I feel like this class will challenge me to be more cognizant when working online and discussing communities both online and offline. I look forward to it, thank you! Halserena (talk) 16:58, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Halserena, thanks! -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, I am looking forward to working with you this semester. I enjoy your teaching style and believe that the class will both be interesting and challenging. I havent had a class with you before but have heard great things about you as a person and as a professor. I honestly never knew that wikipedia was so complex, and only ever used it as a source of information. I find it also a little ironic that this course is based on using wikipedia as a platform, when all teachers growing up didnt like us using wikipedia as citations for our papers and research. I like how this class relates a lot of material to what is happening in our society today and the current events that are happening around us. It makes class more interesting and makes it feel like it is a class that can actually be useful and applicable to real life. I can't wait to see what is in store for the upcoming semester and I will see you in class. Jared Fong (talk) 17:02, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Jared Fong -Reagle (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Professor Reagle, hope this message reaches you well. I'm looking forward to another great semester investigating the internet and the effects this vast source of information has had and is having on our society. I'm looking forward to learning more about Wikipedia as an internet community specifically and understanding how to write using shortcuts and WikiMark up. -User:NUrb93

Thanks User:NUrb93 -Reagle (talk) 14:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Hi Reagle, saw your talkpage, too many words, not enough kittens

Coolabahapple (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipsy (company)

You must be joking. The sources are the subject's own site, business-directory listings, Youtube videos, a publisher's marketing page, another Wikipedia article, and an investor-advice column, as well an article on the company's marketing and profiles of the company founder. And according the edit history, you reviewed this. --Calton | Talk 15:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Calton, yes, it is weak, but it is a starting point from I want the students to get experience collaborating with Wikipedians to improve the article. It could easily be moved to Draft namespace and provided with feedback. That'd be the non-jerky way to treat newcomers. -Reagle (talk) 19:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

IP block exemption

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Reagle/Archives (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

When I'm using a VPN for privacy and security I'm sometimes blocked from editing Wikipedia. My username is my real name and I only edit logged in. Reagle (talk) 12:14, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Decline reason:

As explained at WP:IPBE, the IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing can only be granted to a user "who has genuine and exceptional need, and can be trusted not to abuse the right". You failed to show any "genuine and exceptional need". Vanjagenije (talk) 07:45, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Unethical perhaps

Your course ~appears~ to me be unethical, if I am understanding what you are doing correctly. I said a bit about this here. I am bringing this to the education notice board btw. Will post a notice here when I do so. I hope you respond there. Jytdog (talk) 20:42, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Incidents#Course_doing_anthropology_on_the_WP_community Jytdog (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Wow, I just found out about this and I am livid. Next time ask my permission before forcing me to participate in your experiments. - Bri (talk) 02:23, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Bri, there is no experiment, I've replied on the noticeboard. -Reagle (talk) 12:26, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Difficulties with Spring 2017

As a book author, Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia, you have been praised for understanding and explaining Wikipedia. Therefore it saddens me to see how much trouble your students are having this semester.

You are wise to ask students to start by finding reliable sources. But Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources isn't enough. The full list is significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the topic. You do have a link to Wikipedia:Notability in your course materials, but your students need to avoid articles that have been written from press releases and online websites that look like magazines but are marketing sites. These are not independent. See Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources. Rheab16 ran into problems with KathleenLights and Sperry21 with Ipsy (company) because the references are all marketing materials. If students are going to write articles in commercial areas they will find that the marketing materials are designed to swamp Google searches.

Your students refer to editors they have interacted with as moderators. We are not a newsgroup or blog with postings to be moderated. We are all encyclopedia editors here. Editor is a term used at newspapers and magazines as well for those who determine if content meets the guidelines of the publication. Wikipedia editors are expected to understand what an encyclopedia is and what belongs here.

I would like to supply a bit of context for the reactions your students have been getting. This March saw an unusual number of problems with official and unofficial classes writing for Wikipedia. One problem I fielded was the usual appeal from one anguished editor {"this is due Friday and hasn't been accepted"} whose class had been assigned writing an article about "a woman in your community you admire, even your mother". I tried to tell the student it wasn't her fault, that her instructor had made an assignment that couldn't be completed. We are more touchy than usual this spring.

That is why the differences in your class between 2016 and 2017 seem so surprising. Jytdog wondered if you were running an online community experiment with us. I think you are running an online community experiment at the expense of your students. As part of your course objectives you say Furthermore, you will have experience with the development and challenges of online communities via hands-on interventions (including experiments with your own online networks and contributions to Wikipedia). This semester you removed most of the indicators that tell us at a glance your students are part of a course run by an experienced WikiEd instructor. It seems you wanted to increase the Wikipedia "challenges".

2016 class

• used the WikiEd dashboard - Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Northeastern University/Online Communities (2016-1-SP)
• students had a WikiEd dashboard template on their user pages showing course enrollment
• students put Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox at the top of their sandboxes before starting articles
• the Talk page of each article states that it was part of a WikiEd project (in some cases this was removed later)

2017 class

• used a table on a subpage of your user page - User:Reagle/Online Communities 2017-1-SP
• students had differing self-written descriptions of the class on their user pages with no link to WikiEd or your table, making it appear that the instructor was unfamiliar with Wikipedia assignments
• student sandboxes did not use the WikiEd template
• the article talk pages make no mention that they are part of a WikiEd assignment

I hope I am wrong about your motivations. But if an article on the response to newcomers at Wikipedia using these students' experiences as data turns up on your list of publications at Google scholar, I will be very disappointed. StarryGrandma (talk) 01:50, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi StarryGrandma, thank you for your message. In short, I moved from using the WikiEd dashboard because, as one of the early adopters, I repeatedly encountered bugs and changes that really complicated the assignment, semester after semester, for little gain. (All of this was constructively discussed with WikiEd folks as was forgoing the system this year.) The uniform templating was the one thing I missed the most. Should I teach this again in 2018, I will resume use of the dashboard in the hope that it has stabilized. -Reagle (talk) 06:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I just read Starry Grandma's message, and I think he/she said it well, and sensitively. I have read a bunch of the student responses, and they seemed to have no awareness of community Notability standards. If you were to spend a bit of time on that it would help on a bunch of levels, including avoiding disappointment and confusion over "attacking newbies" vs "removing non-notable subjects".

I have written a kind of narrative primer that I use pretty often to help new users get them oriented to WP. I ~think~ people find it helpful. It is at User:Jytdog/How. After the run-through of policies and guidelines, there is a section on creating a new article. I think your students would benefit from it and I will copy it here:

If at some point you want to create an article, here is what to do.

1. Look for independent sources that comply with WP:MEDRS for anything related to health, and WP:RS for everything else, that give serious discussion to the topic, not just passing mentions. Start with great sources -- think New York Times not "some blog" and not the company's website, and think New England Journal of Medicine, not Biology and Medicine. (The latter is published by OMICS Publishing Group which is the most often discussed predatory publisher . Be aware that predatory publishers exist, and don't use articles published in journals that they publish; you can check publishers at Beall's list.)
2. Look at the sources you found, and see if you have enough per WP:Golden rule to even go forward. If you don't, you can stop right there.
3. Read the sources you found, and identify the main and minor themes to guide you with regard to WP:WEIGHT - be wary of distortions in weight due to WP:RECENTISM
4. Go look at the "manual of style" guideline created by the relevant WikiProject, to guide the sectioning and other style matters (you can look at articles on similar topics but be ginger b/c WP has lots of bad content), and create an outline. (For example, for biographies, the relevant project is WP:WikiProject Biography and for companies, the relevant project is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Companies/Guidelines and for health topics, see WP:MEDMOS Always follow the main manual of style at WP:MOS)
5. Create the article in draft space, following the process described at articles for creation for your first few articles.
6. Start writing the body, based only on what is in the sources you have, and provide an inline citation for each sentence (or paragraph) as you go.
7. Make sure you write in neutral language. The most rigorous way to do this is to use no adjectives at your first go-round (!) and add them back only as needed. Also write simply. Not informally, but simply. Try to write so that anybody with a decent education can understand.
8. When you are done, write the lead and add infobox, external links, categories, etc
9. Consider adding banners to the Talk page, joining the draft article to relevant Wikiprojects, which will help attract editors who are interested and knowledgeable to help work on the article. If you have a COI for the article, note it there.
10. The completed work should have nothing unsourced (because the sources drove everything you wrote, not prior knowledge or personal experiences; there should be no original research nor WP:PROMO in it.
11. Submit your article for review by clicking the "submit your draft" button that was set up when you created the article. You will get responses from reviewers, and you can work with them to do whatever is needed to get the article ready to be published.

there you go. Does that make sense? Jytdog (talk) 23:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, first, in the future, I'll personally do a better job on the notability front---my inclusionst and eventualist proclivities notwithstanding.

To the more general issue of helping newcomers and students get started, I greatly appreciate your effort to document all of that, thank you. However, one of the difficulties with Wikipedia is there are usually four or five documents or ways of doing something; so I'd be hesitate to create YAP (Yet Another Page). The source editor is annoying (IMHO) so we now have the visual editor. Which is very good now, but you still need the source editor for talk pages, so now the newcomer has to learn two systems. And don't even get me started on Wikipedia's citation mess and how to cope. On the sourcing front, WP:GNG is useful, but when you add the guidelines WP:Reliable and WP:Independent it can get to be overwhelming---especially if you are using these WP:shortcuts. I have the geeky YAP tendency that if there's any confusion or uncertainty, add more documentation and links (my syllabi are a case in point). This is great for other experienced users and geeks, but not so much for newcomers and normals.

WikiEd has been doing a great job of developing accessible information in a way that newcomers can grok, including the booklet and tutorial. But my students, for example, in their reflections will note that even that is a lot of info at the start, so there has to be a balance of informing and experimentation---which is why the sandboxes are great, students really appreciate that.

Once the semester wraps up, I plan to make a simple suggestion for improving the classroom handout, specifically the "Choosing an article" page. (One of the many things that put this semester off kilter is that I had a larger than normal class and didn't have enough copies of the booklet at the start of class.) The tutorial, which all my students did, looks good and on-point and has good quiz questions [1][2]. I'm thinking of having them do the tutorial again 1/3 of the way into the project... -Reagle (talk) 10:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I hear all that. The "choosing an article" page for the education folks is aimed at people in some academic discipline (like a microbiology class). The third bullet under "don't" is the one that comes closest to dealing with N; for somebody working on an academic topic that bullet would probably get them over the N hump. Students in your class who chose pop culture topics weren't prepared for the articles they proposed getting rejected. And people who are creating articles for the first time really should use WP:AFC, not go from their sandbox to mainspace. Jytdog (talk) 19:00, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog that's a great point about how pop-culture topics are likely to be perceived differently. No one is going to think the nematodes have a sock-puppet promoting them, but an article about a Beauty YouTuber will be seen differently. -Reagle (talk) 19:27, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

:) To be clear, what i care about is high quality, NPOV content and what i come across all the time is content driven by advocacy, promoting X, that is badly sourced and fails NPOV. Advocacy can be driven by passion (fans of X) or COI (I work for X) and you can't really tell why an advocate created the bad content content -- only that they were writing as an advocate. Jytdog (talk) 19:38, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

COI and classes

Am interested in your thoughts on this issue, which I raised over at the ED incident board. Am asking you as somebody who loves WP and uses it in their class. Here is the "thing" - would you please think about this a bit, and comment on it?

In general when people come to WP with a COI, they tend to: a) write poor content, driven by their external interest b) not care very much about WP policies and guidelines (they are here due to their external interest, not because they understand or are engaged with the mission of WP and the policies and guidelines through which we realize the mission) and c) they tend to behave badly -- their goal is to get their content into WP and they will fight like hell to get it to stick.

When I deal with editors like this, I first ask them to disclose their COI, and once they do, I try to educate them about what COI is in WP, why it is problematic, and how we manage it. I also try to educate them a little about the mission of WP, what its policies and guidelines are, and how this place works. (I offer to tell them more, and if they say yes, that is where i usually use User:Jytdog/How) In the initial conversation I am careful to say that people are welcome to be involved in content where they have a COI -- and that we sometimes get great content proposals from people with a COI -- but they need to be aware of their external interest and how it is different from WP's mission, and act accordingly. Which includes not editing content directly (which resolves so many behavioral problems that arise from people trying to force their content into WP!) and remembering when they discuss content, that their COI creates a different perspective on the content and process. (COI is not a bad thing! It just needs to be understood and managed)

I am struck over and over by the parallels between the behavior and editing of classic COI editors (people who work for companies or are paid editors) and student editors.

And when I think about it abstractly, it makes sense. Students who come to WP have a fundamental conflict of interest. Their external interest - the actual "game" they are playing -- is the class (they need to get a good grade in it, so they can finish their degree, so they can get on with their lives). The class has requirements and deadlines that provide the context in which they are working in WP. They often are in teams, and the teams often act as MEAT/TEAM to try to force their content into WP (and actually operates as a kind of "bubble" for the students on the team, keeping them in their "class" game), and they even have an external authority that they try to appeal to in content/behavior issues, who also (ahem) shows up per MEAT to argue for them without declaring the connection, or declaring it like it actually gives them some authority here in WP ("I'm the professor. Leave my students alone!" which is just.. wrong on so many levels). All of those relationships, goals, deadlines, etc are external to WP. To really put a point on it, the Terms of Use and WP:PAID policy each talk about editing for "compensation". That word was chosen carefully, as people get "paid" in many ways. Strictly speaking, in the case of students, the compensation for their WP work is of course a grade, which they need. Grades can be seen as a form of currency for students - good work is highly compensated with high grades and poor work with low grades. Either way you 'get" something.

I understand the goals of the education program and I understand why instructors get excited about the idea of incorporating WP work in their classes, but in my view the failure to think clearly about COI issues leads to problems. The posting of the class banner and people identifying themselves as students does serve as a great declaration of the COI.... but people don't actually think of it that way, and there is no thought to the COI in anything that follows.

I think the education program could be a lot more successful and productive for everybody involved (both the classes, the encyclopedia itself, and the editing community), if the COI issues were thought through and managed better throughout the whole thing.

What do you think? (I will note that many people are horrified by this, as they view COI as something dirty and about money, and education as something grand and altruistic. That is a misleading and kind of sloppy frame to put on the discussion but people often can't get past it) Jytdog (talk) 20:11, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, I think the advice for instructors is good advice. For myself, the grade is informed but not determined by how their article is received; there is also a reflection component which contributes to the grade. So if someone, for instance, got deleted for WP:Notability but I otherwise thought they did a great job and/or they show they understand the issues at play in their reflection, they can still get an excellent grade. -Reagle (talk) 10:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Students in the class get penalized if they don't participate in WP, right? The frame and motivation are about something external to WP. That is the heart of the COI matter. Jytdog (talk) 11:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, it's not that I don't see your point. Poorly considered grading policies can lead to a misalignment of interest, conflict even. But I think the education program also facilitates and takes advantage of complementary interests. Plus, lots of people have varied "interests" for contributing to Wikipedia: they want to learn, enjoy the community, share what they know, improve their research skills, improve their writing skills. Edit-a-thons want to improve topical coverage. I could posit how each of these motives could lead to a conflict ("you exercising your crappy writing skills is wrecking Wikipedia!") There's an empirical question of the relative balance to how these motives complement and conflict, a value judgment about what we think is acceptable, and the instrumental question of diction: Can we change the denotation or connotation of COI and are we better served by focusing on bad grading policing or labeling all classroom activities as COI?

I think "COI" will continue to have a negative connotation, and courses should be disclosing their status in any case, and I think it better to focus on specific maladaptive practices. -Reagle (talk) 12:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Look, you can face the fact that you are leading students into WP and not explaining their own framework to them, or not. The more you and other instructors don't do that, the more negative experiences your students will have, semester after semester. You can blame it on the community biting newbies all you want. You are deeply complicit in their negative experiences. I don't see much point in continuing this but I appreciate the time you took in any case. Jytdog (talk) 13:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Brooke Saward

I hope you understand why I am not prepared to engage with the editor vandalising my page. He or she is not the first editor to resort to personal attacks, but most simmer down and engage appropriately. In this case, however, the editor decided more of the same was needed, which amounts to conscious trolling. If I'd seen these edits on someone else's page, he/she would be just one step away from a block, and might still be if this behaviour is picked up by a different admin.

Now, you are correct that there was an AFD on this, but as you know it was about notability only and reached no consensus, so the notability of this blogger is questionable, but not a matter for discussion without a further AFD. However, the article was correctly identified as spam by Jytdog, with the comment "Entirely promotional, almost entirely self-sourced or unsourced" and I deleted on that basis.

Looking at the issues, the article did not provide independent verifiable sources to enable us to verify the facts and show that she meets the notability guidelines. It is now Wikipedia policy that biographical articles about living people must have independent verifiable references, as defined in the link, or they will be deleted. Sources that are not acceptable include those linked to her or her websites, press releases, social media and other sites that can be self-edited, blogs, websites of unknown or non-reliable provenance, and sites that are just reporting what she claims or interviewing her. The "References" were her Instagram, her WORLD OF WANDERLUST site (full caps of course) and sites that were mainly just interviewing or quoting her.

The article should be written in a non-promotional tone. Articles must be neutral and encyclopaedic. Examples of unsourced claims or self-sourced presented as fact include: best known for... offers travel and lifestyle tips, DIY projects, recipes and reflections from life in Australia.. Saward has collaborated with different global hotels, fashion and technology brands... she has traveled to over one hundred countries... offers tips and suggestions for those looking to live a more adventurous life... one million page views per month... over half a million followers... a platform where fans can read more about her story and get inspired to travel... insider tips from road trip rules to airport fashion, offering guides of where to go, what to do and how to get that holiday feeling without even leaving home... The goal of the bakery is to offer a refined all-day patisserie... gained a lot of social media importance since it opened...

If I wasn't aware that the main editor was a student, the tone and battlefield mentality would have led me to assume it was an autobiography or other WP:COI, but it seems to be more fandom than COI. I haven't pinged the editor concerned because it's likely to be viewed by him/her as throwing more fuel on the fire, but you are welcome to do so if you think it will serve any useful purpose Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:24, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Jimfbleak thanks for the response and if you have additional issues with the student let me know. My question was about the deletion; my concern is that claims of promotionalism can be unnecessarily confusing and inflammatory. In an unrelated case, a student's submission was declined as spam. I could explain to her that many of her sources were not considered sufficiently reliable and independent (which was also stated), but she knows her intention was not to create "Advertisements masquerading as articles" and even included a section on a controversy---that was the section with the strongest source. I tell students Wikipedia gets lots of spam which can make some Wikipedians quick to dismiss/delete. I would amend that by saying, "even the Appearance of corruption must be avoided." -Reagle (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That's a reasonable point, but the wording for speedy tags tends to come from standard templates, and in practice it's not normally feasible to determine whether POV text is a promotional or competence issue. As I said, if I hadn't known better, I would have assumed that the deleted article was self-written by its subject. Dozens of autobiographies and articles about companies or products are written by companies or their agents every day, and most are deleted on notability or promotional grounds, genuinely unintended promotion from a non-COI editor is actually quite uncommon Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Jimfbleak, understood. When I have some time I'll look more closely at the templates and see if I can make some suggestions on this front. -Reagle (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for email, I edited from a diff and inadvertently removed Jytdog's edit, which he has now restored, so no harm done Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:03, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Sunday July 16: New England Wiknic @ Cambridge, MA

Sunday July 16, 1-5pm: New England Wiknic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" at John F. Kennedy Park, near Harvard Square, Cambridge, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck. Sunday July 16 New England Wiknic (also on Facebook) 1–5pm - come by any time! Look for us by the Wikipedia / Wikimedia banner! We hope to see you there! --Phoebe (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Fear of missing out

Hi, I need your help with editing a specific part of value "the Fear of missing out":
According to history section of that value, the term "FoMO" was coined by Author Patrick J. McGinnis.
But if to be accurate, the trem "FoMO" was coined by Dan Herman, a marketing strategist, in 2000.
Patrick J. McGinnis discussed this phenomenon in 2004.

Can I edit the History section accordingly?

Here are some articles which support these facts:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/mind-healing-conquer-fomo-fear-missing/
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/07/29/fomo-history/
http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/31288/operation-fomo-three-ways-to-turn-customer-envy-into-engagement

Thanks Shon476 (talk) 12:41, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Shon476 If you raise this issue on the article's talk page, I'll be happy to follow up there. However, I've refrained from editing the article because I've written a secondary source about the same topic (a journal article) and could be seen to have a WP:COI. Also, things would then get complicated in terms of sourcing.

I have both of Herman's original documents and he does mention "fear of missing out" (2000) and "FOMO" (2002). Although the 2000 article is published by a reputable third-party, the 2002 was self-published.

I think it might make most sense to reference/quote my article about the history and provenance. -Reagle (talk) 13:22, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I'll raise this issue on the article's talk page as you offered... Shon476 (talk) 15:35, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Ways to improve Lokai (company)

Hi, I'm Mduvekot. Reagle, thanks for creating Lokai (company)!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. This is a courtesy note to let you know that an article you started has been significantly altered by a user who may have a conflict of interest, User:LokaiPR.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

Mduvekot (talk) 15:46, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

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