User talk:Adv4Ag
Hi!
Any constructive comments are welcome. Adv4Ag (talk) 16:35, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
advocacy has no place on wikipedia[edit]
Advocacy for anything other than improving Wikipedia has no place on Wikipedia. See WP:NOTADVOCATE. Please consider changing your mission to "improving Wikipedia's coverage of agriculture-related topics". Additionally, "advocating for agriculture" could mean anything from working very hard for reform (e.g. banning GMOs), to maintaining the status quo, to working to decrease the role of government and regulators to allow agricultural innovation to cycle more rapidly than it currently does (e.g more GMOs, more chemicals, etc etc). The phrase doesn't tell anybody anything. By including "advocate" in your username and your self description, you are also waving a big red flag that says "I do not understand Wikipedia; do not trust that anything I write is NPOV". Please reconsider the goal of your work here and possibly changing your username and userpage. Jytdog (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- That said, if you understand farming from the inside and want to bring great sources and truly NPOV content to ag articles, that is a perspective that is sorely lacking in Wikipedia, and you could do a lot of good. But it will be a long haul and you will need to have lots of conversations and be very solidly grounded in Wikipedia's vision (and I mean that), as well as Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, to be successful. If you are not solidly grounded, you are going to make yourself and a lot of other people very unhappy and you will probably fail to win consensus for the kinds of edits you will want to make. You have started out on the wrong foot but I really hope you find your way. I'd be interested in hearing your story, if you care to share it.Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for your comments! While I'm not sure I agree that a username should disqualify me from WP:AGF, especially since there is no violation of WP:U, I will consider your suggestions. Being aware of the potential for NPOV violations is the reason that I never make an edit (other than minor for things like spelling) without first getting feedback on an article's talk page. Adv4Ag (talk) 19:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- It is true that there is no violation of WP:U, most of what I talked about above is about basic orientation on the one hand, and public interaction/strategy on the other. However, I just realized that you might actually have a COI. There is a strict policy on outing so I will not ask you any direct questions. But if you will continue putting up with me :) let me give you yet more unsolicited advice. There are 3 main possibilities here. 1) If you have a financial COI (like, you work for the American Farmer's Association and are paid to edit Wikipedia) you should be more forthright about declaring it and you should strictly follow the WP:COI guideline. 2) If on the other hand your interest is more general (like you grew up a farm but do something else now) I would urge you to re-think your work here as I described above (about which I will say more in a minute). 3) If it is more vague.. like maybe you are actually a farmer or something, and do not directly benefit from editing ag articles in general but might benefit financially from better public perception of industrial ag (for example, you could financially benefit if you were an organic farmer and pumped up organic articles), you might consider going to WP:COIN and asking an admin if you can disclose your details offline and ask for advice about how you should proceed here (my opinion, if you were a farmer, would be that you could freely edit any article in ag, but if there were an article about your farm in particular, you should not edit that. Others however might think differently, so getting good clear advice would be the way to go). Overall, it would be a shame if you un-necessarily limited yourself on the one hand, or failed to properly disclose, on the other. Here is the "more" about 2) above.. pretty much everybody who edits on Wikipedia (with the exception of paid editors) does so because they care about the topic. And if you care about a topic, you generally have a POV on it. Caring and having a POV do not disqualify you from editing and don't even need to be declared. However putting your POV above Wikipedia's goals is a problem and leads to POV-pushing which is a bad thing, and is why I said that your userpage waves a red flag. So in brief, if you have an actual COI you should declare it clearly. If you don't have one, you should get rid of the "advocate" business (both as part of your goal and in your self-description) as it is really off-putting and is also just not where your head should be. If you are somewhere in the middle, you should get guidance about how to work here. Good luck!Jytdog (talk)
- I am perfectly willing to apologize for any perceived offense regarding an opinion posted on a talk page, and have done so. However, I don't believe it necessary to apologize for being "off-putting." By your own definition (and WP:COI), I have no conflict of interest to disclose. In my opinion, if you are not an admin (which I feel you should disclose), then you are engaging in a form of bullying which, while not technically against Wikipedia policies and guidelines, is not in the community's best interests of civility. Adv4Ag (talk) 00:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
- Ack you are missing my point. First I am sorry for offending you and making you feel bullied. I explicitly said that I will not ask you any real-life details about you - you don't have to answer to me at all - not one little bit. I am not trying to bully you at all. I think you would work much like I do at getting more real information into Wikipedia about ag. But whatever you want to do here, you will have to get consensus, and getting consensus means making deals with people who think differently from you. Putting people off by coming at them as an "advocate" is not a great way to make deals. Stating that you are an advocate also self-limits you, which I find strange, especially if you have no actual COI. That is all I was trying to say. Good luck! Sorry again that i offended you. Jytdog (talk) 00:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
- I am perfectly willing to apologize for any perceived offense regarding an opinion posted on a talk page, and have done so. However, I don't believe it necessary to apologize for being "off-putting." By your own definition (and WP:COI), I have no conflict of interest to disclose. In my opinion, if you are not an admin (which I feel you should disclose), then you are engaging in a form of bullying which, while not technically against Wikipedia policies and guidelines, is not in the community's best interests of civility. Adv4Ag (talk) 00:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
- It is true that there is no violation of WP:U, most of what I talked about above is about basic orientation on the one hand, and public interaction/strategy on the other. However, I just realized that you might actually have a COI. There is a strict policy on outing so I will not ask you any direct questions. But if you will continue putting up with me :) let me give you yet more unsolicited advice. There are 3 main possibilities here. 1) If you have a financial COI (like, you work for the American Farmer's Association and are paid to edit Wikipedia) you should be more forthright about declaring it and you should strictly follow the WP:COI guideline. 2) If on the other hand your interest is more general (like you grew up a farm but do something else now) I would urge you to re-think your work here as I described above (about which I will say more in a minute). 3) If it is more vague.. like maybe you are actually a farmer or something, and do not directly benefit from editing ag articles in general but might benefit financially from better public perception of industrial ag (for example, you could financially benefit if you were an organic farmer and pumped up organic articles), you might consider going to WP:COIN and asking an admin if you can disclose your details offline and ask for advice about how you should proceed here (my opinion, if you were a farmer, would be that you could freely edit any article in ag, but if there were an article about your farm in particular, you should not edit that. Others however might think differently, so getting good clear advice would be the way to go). Overall, it would be a shame if you un-necessarily limited yourself on the one hand, or failed to properly disclose, on the other. Here is the "more" about 2) above.. pretty much everybody who edits on Wikipedia (with the exception of paid editors) does so because they care about the topic. And if you care about a topic, you generally have a POV on it. Caring and having a POV do not disqualify you from editing and don't even need to be declared. However putting your POV above Wikipedia's goals is a problem and leads to POV-pushing which is a bad thing, and is why I said that your userpage waves a red flag. So in brief, if you have an actual COI you should declare it clearly. If you don't have one, you should get rid of the "advocate" business (both as part of your goal and in your self-description) as it is really off-putting and is also just not where your head should be. If you are somewhere in the middle, you should get guidance about how to work here. Good luck!Jytdog (talk)
- Thanks for your comments! While I'm not sure I agree that a username should disqualify me from WP:AGF, especially since there is no violation of WP:U, I will consider your suggestions. Being aware of the potential for NPOV violations is the reason that I never make an edit (other than minor for things like spelling) without first getting feedback on an article's talk page. Adv4Ag (talk) 19:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- That said, if you understand farming from the inside and want to bring great sources and truly NPOV content to ag articles, that is a perspective that is sorely lacking in Wikipedia, and you could do a lot of good. But it will be a long haul and you will need to have lots of conversations and be very solidly grounded in Wikipedia's vision (and I mean that), as well as Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, to be successful. If you are not solidly grounded, you are going to make yourself and a lot of other people very unhappy and you will probably fail to win consensus for the kinds of edits you will want to make. You have started out on the wrong foot but I really hope you find your way. I'd be interested in hearing your story, if you care to share it.Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)