User talk:RetiredNewsProducer

Welcome![edit]

Hello, RetiredNewsProducer, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! --Jytdog (talk) 23:54, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of discretionary sanctions[edit]

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

--Jytdog (talk) 23:54, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edit war warning[edit]

Your recent editing history at Michael S. Smith II shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Jytdog (talk) 00:27, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Promotional editing[edit]

Please stop adding promotional content to Michael S. Smith II. Please read WP:PROMO and WP:NPOV.

Also some of what you are doing, is what we call here in Wikipedia original research, where you cite a primary source (something like the congressional record) and comment on it. Please don't do that. We just summarize sources, and we prefer independent, secondary sources. The genre here is "encyclopedia" -- it is hard for new editors to wrap their heads around this sometimes. You might find User:Jytdog/How useful, to get oriented to how Wikipedia works, and why it works that way. I hope you will take a moment and read that.

Happy to discuss. Jytdog (talk) 18:56, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You have accused me of promotional editing and requested my account be blocked. You should consider that adding information about allegations of a racist tweet, as published by HuffPost, is not promotional editing. You are clearly making a baseless accusation.

Using talk pages[edit]

When there are disagreements, we discuss them. This is your talk page, and I have posted some notices here and tried to open discussions with you. I also opened a section at Talk:Michael S. Smith II to discuss your desire to have a "controversies" section.

It is essential to talk about disagreements. The mission of Wikipedia is to create articles that provide readers with accepted knowledge, working in a community. That only works when we talk to each other. Jytdog (talk) 18:57, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia[edit]

I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing, which is mostly about health and medicine. Your edits to date are all focused on Michael S. Smith II, and are promotional. Lots of people come to Wikipedia with some sort of conflict of interest and are not aware of how we manage it.

Hello, RetiredNewsProducer. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

Comments and requests[edit]

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. Unmanaged conflicts of interest can also lead to people behaving in ways that violate our behavioral policies and cause disruption in the normal editing process. Managing conflict of interest well, also protects conflicted editors themselves - please see WP:Wikipedia is in the real world, and Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for some guidance and stories about people who have brought bad press upon themselves through unmanaged conflict of interest editing.

As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Smith, directly or through a third party (e.g. a PR agency or the like)? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, please disclose it, and if you are editing for pay or the expectation of being paid, you must disclose that. After you respond (and you can just reply below), if it is relevant I can walk you through how the "peer review" part happens and then, if you like, I can provide you with some more general orientation as to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Jytdog (talk) 19:50, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We have a process to manage conflict of interest, which is standard in all kinds of serious publishing. It is very apparent, that you have chosen to ignore and attempt to evade that process so far. You can change, and start to behave differently. Assuming that what is apparent is true..... if you want to be active in WP the best thing to do is == at the talk page of the original account, disclose your conflict of interest, acknowledge the sockpuppetting, promise to follow the COI guideline in the future, and ask to be unblocked. Depending on how cleanly you do that, an admin will decide to unblock the account or not. Jytdog (talk) 21:37, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion[edit]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident with which you may be involved. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 19:56, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You are pretty obviously the same person who has edited the Smith page before and who has been indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetting and abusing Wikipedia for promotional purposes. I linked to these two things above, but please do see WP:Wikipedia is in the real world and also see Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for news reports of people trying to abuse WP for PR purposes. Jytdog (talk) 20:08, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I did not manage an account used to edit this article. Nor do I understand why referencing news stories about the subject of this article that provide details about the subject's career are being characterized as "promotional" when such practices are consistent with Wikipedia's standards for demonstrating a subject's noteworthiness. Given that a report by the subject having been entered into the Congressional Record is more noteworthy than a HuffPost piece about a the subject's offensive tweet, it seems rather odd that you have repeatedly removed this information from the article. Further, this suggests you may have a conflict of interest in editing the article, which appears to have been vandalized around the time in which the subject entered into a "feud," as one journalist put it, with Sebastian Gorka.

What you write here is not credible. You are making the exact same edits as the blocked account (for example the entering into the congressional record of the report). Please reconsider your response. Jytdog (talk) 21:23, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your characterization of my edits is not accurate. The information I have provided about the subject is gathered from reputable, noteworthy sources (thus the Wiki articles about these reference sources), which I have reviewed after conducting searching for information about the subject using Google and Yahoo search engines. None of my edits present inaccurate information.

Furthermore, your aggressive and tedious edits of my additions suggests you have a personal interest in the contents of this article. Wikipedia is full of articles which do not provide sufficient source materials for content. It is most interesting to watch you spending so much time removing additions to this article when these additions include references to such source materials as reports published by major media organizations.

NOTE: Your use of the term "pundit" to refer to the subject provides ample indication you have a personal interest in the content of this article, as use of this generally derogatory term reflects negative biases. The term "pundit" is not used in the article referenced for the sentence.

Please thread and sign your posts. This is as basic as "please" and "thank you", and your ignoring this shows disdain for the norms that govern behavior here. You "thread" by putting colons in front of your comment; you "sign" by typing exactly four tildas at the end. The Wikipedia software converts the colons into indentations (one for each colon) and it converts the four tildas into a datestamp and link to your username. Jytdog (talk) 21:39, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I noted above, I work on conflict of interest issues widely in Wikipedia. Your editing is, sadly, very typical conflicted editing - adding excessive detail, name-dropping, etc etc. Jytdog (talk) 21:42, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am new to Wikipedia and do not yet know how to thread and sign posts. My inexperience with these practices does not mean you contributions should be questioned.

Your additions, which have entailed use of derogatory language about the subject, and your deletions of noteworthy information about the subjects work, as well as your addition of such non-noteworthy and extraneous details as a sentence about the location of the subject's office all suggest you have a personal interest in this subject (ie, Conflict of Interest).

I just explained to you how to do it, and you persisted in not doing it. You have only disdain for WP and are abusing it for promotion. I am quite confident you will soon be indefinitely blocked. About working in South Carolina, see this edit note. Since you removed that content, I have removed the unsupported content in the infobox about Smith's residence. Again, you are not here to build an encyclopedia per our policies and guidelines but are very clearly a block-evading, conflicted sockpuppet. I have no more to say here. Jytdog (talk) 21:55, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was remiss in not noting your following addition to the article is a Run-on sentence: "Along with consulting for various government agencies, he tracked terrorist activity on social media and commented on it, and became known for this and was called on as a pundit by various media groups."

Your edits on July 1, 2018 and your use of another account to make similar revisions will result in a sock puppetry inquiry

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).

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

Request reason:

My account has been blocked because another editor has falsely accused me of promotional editing. My additions to an article include information about a HuffPost story about the subject of the article having issued a racist tweet. That is clearly not promotional editing. Further, after I noted the editor who has accused me of promotional editing made an addition to the article which suggests this editor has a personal interest in the subject (ie, the editor added a pejorative term (pundit) to describe the subject that is not used in reference sources accompanying the relevant sentence) the editor became very aggressive in policing the article's content. My edits have introduced information derived from major media news reports; not opinion columns. These additions have been made to provide important details about the subject of the article per major news organizations' reports. The editor who has accused me of not properly sourcing edits is in error, as reflected in the edits history. In addition, another party who is responsible for blocking my account has accused me of "abusing multiple accounts" without any evidence. Further, both parties have suggested I have improperly edited an article by adding information which previously appeared in an earlier edit of the article. As this information is derived from generally accepted sources used in Wikipedia articles (ie, major news stories) this appears to be a capricious complaint.

Decline reason:

Procedural decline only; only one request is needed at at time. 331dot (talk) 09:59, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.

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).

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

Request reason:

My account has been blocked because of a false claim of sockpuppetry. This false claim was issued after another editor has falsely accused me of promotional editing (see details in previous unblock request). Both parties have claimed my account is a sock puppet because I have added information to an article which was previously removed. This information is derived from major media news stories, and it was identified by me after I conducted searches of the article subject's name using common search engines' news search features (ie, Google and Yahoo). Adding information to an article which is available in major media news reports is a common practice among Wikipedia editors, and is used to establish living individuals' noteworthiness. My adding such information is not evidence of sockpuppetry. I believe this accusation has been issued because the above discussed parties have personal interest in the subject of the article I have edited, and are policing content in the article due to their interest in generating negative biases about the subject among readers (see discussion of an editor adding a pejorative term (ie, pundit) when this term is not used in reference materials accompanying the sentence in which it appears).

Decline reason:

Upon reviewing, I must agree with the validity of the block. Since you deny you did anything wrong at all despite it, that is reason enough to decline this request. As Drmies states below, there are several other reasons that indicate unblocking you is not a benefit to this project. I am declining this request. As you were told above by Jytdog, you will need to request to be unblocked from your original account, addressing all of these issues. 331dot (talk) 10:04, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.

I won't deny your unblock request and will leave it to the next administrator. However, it seems clear to me that even if you weren't blocked for sockpuppetry (and the evidence is strong), you should be blocked for a battleground attitude, for edit warring, for COI editing, and now also for making ridiculous conspiracy-style accusations. Finally, your verbiage is not in itself blockable, but is, in my opinion, clear evidence of mischief. Drmies (talk) 02:50, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]