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Question

Hi. Do you have any personal connection to the Massachusetts school system, by any chance? Also, as to providing cites, please see wp:BURDEN. Thanks. --Epeefleche (talk) 04:55, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I prefer to remain anonymous so I generally avoid answering questions about my off-wiki life. I don't have a COI w/r/t Americans for Peace and Tolerance, if that's your question. Regarding WP:BURDEN, understood, but the sentence was already supported by the reference cited for the previous two sentences. As a general matter, when I see unsourced material my preferred approach is to use cn tags unless something is obviously unverifiable. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:06, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Now that I read WP:CITEKILL#Needless repetition more closely, I see that it doesn't apply since that material hadn't been cited. Sorry for the miscommunication. I could have sworn I've seen something saying that it's not necessary to cite every single sentence... Maybe somewhere in WP:CITATION... --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:13, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The reason for my query is your name was close to the name of someone in the article, the addition of which we were discussing. As to wp:burden, it's an editor choice whether to use a tag or not per editor discretion, but not to re-add challenged uncited material without the proper ref. WP:CITEKILL#Needless repetition in any event is just an essay. And given that sentence get moved around and inserted in between others, it's common sense to ref it -- and especially not to ref it because a ref used in a Prior sentence is what you have in mind. Epeefleche (talk) 06:51, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

No connection. Fleischman isn't my real name. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 07:09, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Just a coincidence, then. Epeefleche (talk) 07:16, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

ALEC sources

Hello Doc: Rather than add my clutter to the article talk page, I'll comment here. I think you are mixing the concept of Primary/Secondary sources with how sources are cited and/or identified. Take a look at WP:RS. Note it talks about sources as being three concepts: "the piece of work itself (the article, book); the creator of the work (the writer, journalist), and the publisher of the work." The "piece of work" is the Moyers show; the "creator of the work" is Farley – he said the words, Moyers did not create the words; the "publisher of the work" is Public Affairs Television. So the Moyers show & PAT remain as secondary sources, but because Farley said the words, his words about ALEC are a primary source. Those words don't change in terms of primaryness even if Moyers published them. In any event, I do appreciate the support in getting the piece removed, pared down. – S. Rich (talk) 01:21, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

The creator of the work was Moyers, not Farley. Moyers arranged the interview, set up the shot, asked the questions, and made the editorial decision to include that Farley footage in his piece. If Moyers interviewed Farley the old fashioned way and then typed Farley's words into a newspaper story it would be the same thing. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 04:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

No. Take a look at WP:LINKSINACHAIN. Moyers is a secondary source, but he's using primary source material. Moyers may have asked the questions, but he did not give the answers. And it is the answer that someone wants to put into the article. When we extract that primary source material and put it into articles, it remains primary – and it remains subject to WP editing primary source guidance. In the newspaper analysis, the editing might say "According to Moyers, Farley said 'ALEC is lobbying in Arizona and I want to ...'." The Moyers newspaper article might be an acceptable and noteworthy secondary source, but it is built with primary material. We must use caution when using that primary material. – S. Rich (talk) 04:43, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree 100% with LINKSINACHAIN. Regardless, writing something like "According to Moyers, Farley said..." is double attribution, and I can't think of any scenario when that would be necessary (let alone encyclopedic). What you're talking about is a total overhaul of every article in Misplaced Pages quotes individuals. Unless I'm missing something. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 04:50, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Take a look at the next section: the love-letters in the museum example. Farley's words are the love-letters and Moyer's story is the museum. (An overhaul of WP is hardly necessary, because for the most part the quotes we read from individuals are used carefully. In the ALEC article we have a non-noteworthy quote added for the sake of bad-mouthing ALEC.) – S. Rich (talk) 05:06, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Farley didn't write a love letter. He said some stuff during an interview with a professional journalist. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 15:04, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Then he recited a love letter. It went like this: "How do I love ALEC? Let me count the ways. I love ALEC to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight...." The stuff he says and the stuff he writes is Primary. This is so because he is a legislator, perhaps lobbied by ALEC, who was promoting his bill that involved ALEC. There is nothing wrong with it being Primary, we just have to be circumspect when using it. – S. Rich (talk) 16:48, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a primary source from a secondary one. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:54, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Barrett Brown

I have partially undone some of your edit to Barrett Brown. Please see WP:IC and semicolon. WP:IC clearly indicates the consensus is that "Inline citations are often placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph." (Emphasis in original.) The article on semicolons is quite clear that "While terminal marks (i.e., full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks) mark the end of a sentence, the comma, semicolon and colon are normally sentence internal, making them secondary boundary marks. The semicolon falls between terminal marks and the comma; its strength is equal to that of the colon." In other words, a colon does not mark the end of a sentence, and any citations given after the a period after a semicolon are valid for information given before the semicolon. Hence, the citations to VICE and The Dallas Morning News are applicable. Those sources are clearly not WP:PRIMARY. Therefore I have partially reverted your edit. Int21h (talk) 20:43, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

This really belongs at Talk:Barrett Brown. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:01, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Proposed revision for Heritage Action article

Hi, I'm looking for editors to review a revised draft I have prepared for the Heritage Action article. I wanted to ask you if you might be interested in reviewing what I've prepared since you worked on the page quite a bit late last year. My work on this article has been undertaken on behalf of Heritage Action so please do take my conflict of interest into account when reviewing what I've written.

I would appreciate feedback I can use to improve my draft if you have concerns. Ultimately I am looking for an editor who will replace the current version of the article with what I have prepared. I do not want to make any edits to the article because of my COI.

I've left a detailed message at Talk:Heritage Action explaining the differences between my draft and the current version. The message also links to the draft in my userspace. Thanks, Morzabeth (talk) 02:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for disclosing. My WP time has been very limited lately. I'll think about it. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 06:50, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I completely understand if you're busy elsewhere. Please let me know if you know of any other editors who might be willing to offer assistance. Morzabeth (talk) 17:36, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikihounding

It appears to me as if you are WP:WIKIHOUNDING me. It is making me uncomfortable that you appear to be "following me around" and making edits on pages just after I've made edits on those same pages. For example, you've recently made these ten edits , , , , , , , , , on pages just after I've made an edit, and you haven't made prior edits to any of those articles. Is there a reason you are doing this? I'm embarked on a massive re-categorization project for Category:Non-profit organizations based in the United States, and it's not clear to me why you are following me around. Schematica (talk) 19:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable, but if you review WP:WIKIHOUNDING you'll see that it only applies to efforts to confront the "target" editor or inhibit their work. I'm not trying to get in the way of your re-categorization project at all; in fact, I applaud it. We're both trying to improve these articles in different ways. I see no reason for either of us to stop. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:31, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Lucy Burns Institute article and AFD

Hi DrFleischman. I am having some trouble seeing some of your edits at Lucy Burns Institute and in the associated AFD, as helpful. I see you and perhaps others have made a lot of edits removing material and sources from the Lucy Burns Institute article, including while this AFD is running. I see mention at the article's Talk page of removal of Guidestar as a source in one diff, and I notice this diff removing other sources. The extent of this seems unproductive during an AFD. Yes, I understand that "self-published" sources and sources from related entities are not independent, and, yes I understand that the organization might perhaps report fraudulently to Guidestar and to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, however much I doubt that. Dismiss all these sources in discussion at AFD, as regards whether they contribute to establishing notability or not. However, use of self-published and associated sources is allowed, is helpful in articles. We can use PRIMARY sources, with care, and it is especially appropriate to use the organization's own materials expressing their goals, to say what the organization expresses as their goals. And factual matters like whether or not they opened a webpage covering school district elections or not, can probably be determined by seeing the webpage itself. It is okay to use a "self-published" source as source that they did that, when it is not disputed and can probably easily be verified. It is not necessary and it hurts the article to remove good sources on the organization's aims, accomplishments, etc., as long as those are not seriously in doubt.

Also, if you are contesting a source, I believe it would be much more courteous to question it at the article talk page, with or without removing it from the article, and if you remove it from the article it would definitely be more courteous to copy it to the Talk page for discussion. Brief edit summaries do not suffice, and I disagree with judgment reflected in some of the edit summaries, too. For example I disagree with edit, and the edit summary, of this diff which introduced misstatement in fact. I believe i should probably comment on this as a problem within the AFD, as it necessary for any closer to know that there has been active contention in the article itself, and the current article does not reflect the full availability of material and sources to develop the topic. However i'll watch for a reply here first, for a bit.

Also, isn't it in general a good idea to refrain from removing sources and material from an article during an AFD? I think there is a guideline along those lines, or maybe it is just essay-level advice? It's okay to have differences of opinion about the notability of the organization, but we should agree on the fact that the process of the AFD itself should not be undermined, i hope. --doncram 20:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for writing. You've packed a lot of issues in so I apologize if I don't catch all of them. Here are some points to consider:

• Regarding ABOUTSELF sources, I never suggested that we can't use them. Most of these sources were removed by Schematica, and I even told that editor they may have gone overboard with the deletions. That said, we must still comply with WP:ABOUTSELF, which means, among other things, that such sources can't be used in self-serving ways (such as to promote the subject). My deletions of ABOUTSELF sources were only for uses that I deemed to be self-serving. Also, as you sugggest, none of these sources should have any bearing on a notability-based AFD because notability is based on coverage in independent sources.
• Regarding other sources I deleted, I only deleted ones that I believed were unreliable, and I did my best to identify the basis for my belief. You or anyone else is free to revert me as part of the normal WP:BRD cycle.
• There's no guideline saying that broadly accepted editing practices such as BRD are suspended whenever there's an active AFD. Morever, I didn't even start the AFD, Schematica did. Schematica has been searching for and adding sources that he believes bolster the subject's notability. This is appropriate behavior during an AFD, and it's also equally appropriate behavior to remove sources that violate policies or guidelines so that other participants in the AFD aren't misled when they review the sources.
• Regarding your request to contest all sources on the talk page first, the best I can do is refer you to BRD. BRD is supported for a reason, it allows the community to get stuff done without every uncontested issue getting bogged down in lengthy discussion. The goal is to build an encyclopedia, not to talk about building an encyclopedia.
• Regarding LBI's 990, I saw you said something in an edit summary about me creating a misstatement but I couldn't figure out what you were referring to. What was/is the misstatement?

Feel free to interlineate your responses as you deem appropriate. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:04, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I actually haven't ever removed any self-published sources at Lucy Burns Institute. If you take a look at the edit history, you can see I've only added sources, both self-published and secondary: , . DrFleischman has removed sources, both self-published and secondary. , , , . I've never been told that I'm going "overboard" by removing self-published sources, probably because as you can clearly see in the edit history for the article, I've never removed any. Schematica (talk) 01:04, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

You are quite right, my mistake. In any case I only removed sources that I thought were unreliable or that didn't appear to support the content. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:41, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Possible BLP violation at Lucy Burns Intstitute

I have real and deep concerns at the recent additions at LBI talk. The assertion that there is a "husband and wife team" is echoed nowhere in the refs provided. It strikes me as paternalistic at the least. Further it is a BLP violation to take this sort of original research and assemble it via synthesis into these assertions. The talk pages are just as subject to BLP guidelines as article pages. Please consider removing this addition. Capitalismojo (talk) 16:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

This material is highly relevant to the subject matter and well sourced. What you're calling "synth" is standard on talk pages. Without this sort of analysis the community would be unable to have informed discussions about these sorts of matters. If you want to pursue this then take it up at BLPN. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

September 2014

DrFleischman are you an employee of NBC OR the United States Government? Your edits/cuts seem to seem to push their view.173.67.158.36 (talk) 10:15, 12 September 2014 (UTC)