Talk:Daniel J. Barrett: Difference between revisions

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I have been advised by User:Ronz on User_talk:Djbwiki to provide some evidence of notability. OK, here are some based on the subtopics in my article.

• Wrote six technology books listed on my article page. One of them (Linux Pocket Guide) has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.
• I can provide citations of around 30 reviews of my books, including Slashdot, Linux Journal, Desktop Linux, OS News, Internet World, SunWorld Online, Hotwired Magazine, Sys Admin magazine, etc.
• Wrote a monthly column in Keyboard Magazine for two years on music and the Internet, called "Net Smarts." January 1997 - December 1998. (Not found online, but here's some proof I found.)
• Wrote a monthly column in COMPUTE! magazine on computer humor from March - September 1993.
• Appeared on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw on June 12, 1998, as a featured expert on Internet security for consumers.
• My book "Bandits on the Information Superhighway" was featured on the Discovery Channel "Cyberlife" show #404 on April 25, 1996.
• Appeared on CBS Radio (WCBS News Radio, New York City) on May 23, 1996, for an hour-long interview on Internet security for consumers. I can provide similar citations for 14 other radio shows.
• I have been interviewed for newspaper and magazine articles in the Financial Times of London, Network World, Salt Lake Tribune, Datamation Magazine, Information Today, Interactive Marketing News, Oakland Tribune, The Morning Call, USA Today, Springfield Union News, Rocky Mountain News, Boston Globe, Springfield Union-News, Daily Hampshire Gazette, New Jersey Star Ledger, and the Huntsville Times. I can provide citations, though most articles are not online.

• I founded the Gentle Giant web site on my own, and it was subsequently adopted by the band as their official site. (Proof: the site is declared "official" on all the "35th anniversary" US CD releases from DRT Entertainment.)
• I assembled the CD compliation Edge of Twilight for Polygram Records, including track selection, liner notes, etc.
• I co-compiled the rare-tracks CD Under Construction for the band, listening to the music in advance and selecting and ordering the tracks.
• I am thanked by name on both official Gentle Giant DVD releases, Giant on the Box and GG at the GG.

This might fall into the "You Had To Be There" department, but during the 1990s my BLAZEMONGER articles were being seen by tens of thousands of Commodore Amiga users on Usenet. They were collected on the Fish Disks too. It became part of Usenet lore and was well-known within Commodore engineering. If you google for BLAZEMONGER today, you get thousands of hits.

(Incidentally, I did not write the Blazemonger wikipedia page, though I made some light edits after discovering it.)

As a software engineer, I created ESP, the Experience Sampling Program, a free, open-source application for research scientists, funded by the National Science Foundation.^[1]

Does this help?

Djbwiki 06:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the helpme tag, because someone else has removed the {{subst:prod}} tag. At the moment, the article is not being deleted, and the information you've given here has been helpful in establishing notability and verifiability of the article. I hope that helps!

I have removed the PROD tag since the article meets notability and verifiability requirements. AvB ÷ talk 08:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:COI, it seems the appropriate thing to do in a Vanity case such as this is to delete the content from article space and move it onto Daniel Barrett's user page. See here for more info. Any thoughts? -- Levine2112 ^discuss 16:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please consider this statement from the COI page: Who has written the material should be irrelevant so long as these policies are closely adhered to. The imputation of conflict of interest is not by itself a good reason to remove sound material from articles. AvB ÷ talk 23:31, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a reason to blank the page. Djbwiki has been extremely cooperative so far. --Ronz 01:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a matter of Wikipedia policy which is clear on how it handles autobiographical material and vanity. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 06:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Levine, you seem to be doing your best to imitiate Ilena's crusade against Barrett and his affiliates. I suggest you stop. There is no reason to do remove the material under COI. JoshuaZ 07:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, am I misunderstanding Wikipedia's WP:COI#Autobiography policy? This has nothing to do with Ilena's crusade so I don't appreciate the bad faith. This is a matter of clear policy violation... my guess is that DJBWiki was unaware of this policy when he created an article about himself. I am willing to concede though that if we did follow the policy and blanked the page and copied it to DJBwiki's user page that another editor without the COI issue would simply come along and re-inrtoduce the material. That of course would be okay provided that they too don't have a COI issue with this article. I am not trying to be argumentative or difficult. I would only like to see Wikipedia policy executed properly. (By the way, if I am wrong in my understanding of this policy, please explain it to me for future reference. I certainly bow to your expertise with Wikipedia policy, JoshuaZ.) -- Levine2112 ^discuss 08:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are misunderstanding the policy. There is no requirement in the policy to engage in such red-tape when the version is fine. Again, as AvB quoted "Who has written the material should be irrelevant so long as these policies are closely adhered to. The imputation of conflict of interest is not by itself a good reason to remove sound material from articles" There is no POV orother issue here, so no need to remove material. JoshuaZ 08:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, I bow to your experience here, JoshuaZ. For the record though, this is what I was reading:

Don't write about yourself or about the things you've done or created. If you or your work is notable, someone else will notice you and write the article. In some cases, Wikipedia users write articles about themselves when the more appropriate action would be to create a user page. In these cases, the article is normally moved into the user namespace rather than deleted.

Perhaps you may want to amend this policy so future editors won't get tripped up on this issue. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 08:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"when the more appropriate action would be to create a user page" mainly refers to users who (probably) fail notability requirements and have created an autobiographic article. It happens fairly often, mostly new users; moving the article to their user page may lessen the blow after they have spent hours refining a true vanity page. AvB ÷ talk 14:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it should state that in the policy. Right now there is no way even to infer that this only applies to non-notables. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to bring this up for discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict of interest. AvB ÷ talk 17:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent idea. But you would then have to say that based on the current policy, I acted completely fair here. I will bring this up on the COI talk page per your suggestion. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 18:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, no. WP:COI does not suggest that articles be deleted or userfied if they meet Wikipedia policies and guidelines, even if written by the source. They only suggest that articles which do not meet the guidelines should be deleted or userfied. I think you've been acting under a plausible interpretation of the policy, but, if you were to follow through on this, we would have to ban people from editing anything they were interested in editing. Doesn't seem very productive. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I am in discussion right now on the COI talk page about the ambiguity. The admins there are very helpful. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 21:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) The discussion is here: Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Policy_ambiguity. Looks like this article has been handled appropriately and we can continue. --Ronz 00:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion has been archived to Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest/Archive3#Policy_ambiguity. -- Ronz  02:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that this site meets RS, this link [[1]] could be used for some verification? Shot info 11:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a start. I'm betting there are some book reviews that would make good sources, maybe even one with a paragraph on the author. --Ronz 16:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some reviews. I haven't posted them on my main page because I cannot judge whether this is self-promoting or not. Would they be appropriate?

• Slashdot
• Linux Journal
• Linux Security.com
• OS News
• USA Linux Users Group
• Internet Tools for Lawyers

I can provide more if desired.

The oreillynet.com Author Bio provided by Shot Info (above) is official, but FYI I wrote it on request from O'Reilly, so it might not be the best reference due to COI.

Djbwiki 01:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to say hello. I don't want anything to do with what is going on above. I find your page interesting, needing work, but still interesting. My husband is an IT manager and has been for over 20 years. I think you have shown a lot of accomplishments. Good luck from a new editor, --Crohnie 21:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Crohnie, nice to meet you! Djbwiki 02:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The main author of the article (Djbwiki) has identified themselves as the topic of this biographical article. The article is therefore auto-biographical. The neutrality of the main author is therefore questionable. Evidence of a NPOV should be provided or neutral external evaluation of the content of the article should be sought. The rapidly increasing auto-biographical content of the Wikipedia is a matter of serious concern. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.12.45.75 (talk) 00:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autobiography

This issue was settled back in 2007 on this very talk page. I am removing the tags inserted by this anonymous user. --Djbwiki (talk) 16:15, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I really do not care enough about this to argue. But ask yourself: Don't you think it would be more honest to let readers know from the outset that they are reading content that is mainly autobiographical? 118.12.45.75 (talk) 15:44, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. I note that, while he has made some edits on some other pages, I note that by far the majority of user Djbwiki's contributions to the Wikipedia are edits of his page and that of his spouse. He also started both pages. 118.12.45.75 (talk) 15:37, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If there are new problems, please identify them. --Ronz (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the content is nearly completely autobiographical, hence the AUTO tag is justified. If the point of view has been proven to be neutral then, sure, COI cannot be justified. But just looking at the edit history shows that it's mainly edited by Djbwiki. This is the strict definition of COI. Djbwiki do you really believe that you can have a neutral point of view about your own biography? 118.12.45.75 (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Full disclosure: I do not know Djbwiki or his spouse and have no vested interest in the content of these pages. I merely think that autobiographical content needs to be tagged as such, until the conditions for removing the tags have been satisfied. 118.12.45.75 (talk) 15:50, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are tagging the article for the reasons you discribed at Wikipedia_talk:Autobiography#A_modest_proposal. Please stop. --Ronz (talk) 16:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The AUTO and COI tags are justified until the content can be proven to have a NPOV. 118.12.45.75 (talk) 02:38, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's not how it works, but then you know that from your proposal: Wikipedia_talk:Autobiography#A_modest_proposal --Ronz (talk) 03:47, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have already explained to you that that was written before I understood that there is already a mechanism for identifying autobiographical content in the Wikipedia, namely the AUTO tag, so could you stop referring to that text, please, and back up your claims with reference to actual statements of Wikipedia policy, as I am attempting to do. Would this not be more productive? But this discussion should take place in the Autobiography talk page and not here. 118.12.45.75 (talk) 03:54, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And I'm saying you still don't understand. Work it out at the Autobiography talk page. In the meantime, expect to be corrected by other editors when you try to work out the proper use of such tags and tagging. --Ronz (talk) 04:09, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From my point of view, it looks like you have not properly understood the distinction between a conflict of interest and biased content. But again, this is better discussed at the Autobiography talk page, where I had already asked for a third opinion, for starters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.12.45.75 (talk) 04:17, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:FOC and WP:DTS --Ronz (talk) 05:01, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another approach would be for @Djbwiki to include a statement somewhere in the page, preferably in the introductory section, acknowledging that he is himself the creator of the page and has continued to be a (the) major editor. This would make the page more honest and transparent. 118.12.45.75 (talk) 10:18, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]