Talk:Renaissance Books/Archive 1

Accuracy tag

I added {{accuracy}} because the facts in the article don't match this source. And I'm pretty sure the airport location hasn't been there since 1979. --Fang Aili ^talk 17:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The facts in the article do match the source you link to (60,000 volumes at the airport, etc.); and I've provided a cite for the store's having been there that long, since I don't have my old employee identification badge from July of 1979 handy to scan for you. --Orange Mike 01:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Article creator has/had COI

Ironic, ain't it? - I Spy COI (talk) 21:40, 10 May 2013 (UTC)— I Spy COI (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

So what is this, retaliation? --| Uncle Milty | talk | 23:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC) ::Full disclosure, maybe? Mangoe (talk) 14:20, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Brand new user (name), with that particular name, whose only edit is to point out one particular uncontroversial instance of COI? Nah, certainly no motive there. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 14:30, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't you be addressing the content of the post rather than focussing on who may or may not be saying it? John lilburne (talk) 17:57, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

It has been addressed. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 18:27, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Your conflict of interest has not been addressed, you have simply chosen to ignore it. You have been here long enough to know the rules and you are not averse to ensuring that others abide by them but you obviously feel that you are personally able to ignore them when it suits your purpose. That you work at this bookstore and have not just edited the page but created it in the first place is a clear conflict of interest, and your inability to acknowledge that raises four issues.
1) The conflict of interest guideline is there to ensure that editors are not only neutral in their point of view but are seen to be so. You cannot possibly be neutral about the place at which you work and the fact that you do not realise that suggests that you either fail to understand what the policy is for or you think you are simply too important for it to apply to you. I suggest you reacquaint yourself with the policy in its entirety.
2) The rules are there for the good of Wikipedia, to ensure that we move together towards the goals set by the foundation, not to satisfy your ego, so if you are not able to be a team player and stick to the rules then maybe you need to reassess your future involvement in the project.
3) Failure to declare your clear conflict of interest whilst simultaneously hounding others in an aggressive and impolite manner for doing the self same thing you are trying to defend in yourself makes you a hypocrite. You have on your user page a question asking visitors whether they think you suitable for RfA, and this makes it clear the answer is no, you are not and are not about to be any time soon.
4) All of the above should cause both users and other editors to question your honesty. You pretend to a moral position you are unable to sustain and yet consider yourself suitable to judge the merit or otherwise of the work of other editors striving to write an encyclopedia. People with honesty issues should not be editing an encyclopedia and have no business looking over other editor's shoulders at their work. Cottonshirtτ 08:52, 21 May 2013 (UTC)— Cottonshirt (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

As I said to the previous newly-created single-purpose account determined to create a scandal where none exists:

1. I created that article long ago, when I was green here myself, but even then using solid references, and fully disclosing my COI on my user page. Nonetheless, I would certainly never do something like nowadays; and I have long since stopped editing that article.
2. This matter was discussed in full by the community before I was entrusted with the Mop and Bucket of adminship; and the consensus was that my behavior had been more than acceptable.
3. My almost decade-long record here displays that from my first edit, I was clearly not here for spamming purposes; which is not the case for the spammers and COI editors I warn and/or block.

I am perfectly willing to discuss my history as an editor here, regardless of the motiviations of the person raising the issue. While I do have my suspicions as to the possible identity of the drive-by accuser(s), so what, big deal: admins must take responsibility for what we do, or we don't deserve to be entrusted with the Mop-and-Bucket. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:16, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Rather than resolve anything, your replies to my comment raise even more issues:

1) You have added to my post the SPA tag, claiming that I have made, "few or no other edits outside this topic" and included in that a link to a page dealing with, "single purpose accounts". Neither of those things are true of me. I have been an editor here for over five years and have made nearly two thousand edits on a broad range of topics from police brutality, athletics, BLP's, films, novelists and various others, long before this "topic" came up. Pretending that I am responding to your behaviour as a single issue account is fatuous nonsense, obviously designed to deflect attention away from the real issue. This is simply more dishonesty from you and does nothing to allay concerns about your suitability to be an admin.

I have stricken that tag, Cotton, since it is not clearly correct; I hereby apologize for its overhasty use, since I was confusing you with the various s.p.a.s who have been hounding me since the Rachel Johnson incident. --Orange Mike | Talk 12:17, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

2) You fail to deal properly with the issues I raised and instead focus your invective on this spurious claim that I am a single issue account and on wildly inaccurate speculation about my motivations and identity, none of which has anything to do with the topic under discussion. For the record, I am an editor who believes that the rules apply to everyone, and that Wikipedia would be considerably improved if more people took the trouble to ensure that they not only know what the various guidelines and policies say but adhere to them in an honest spirit of mutual cooperation. Your behaviour here, and in particular your repeated dishonesty, does not support your claim to be doing either of those things.

3) You accuse me of trying to, "create a scandal where none exists", and in this you are clearly mistaken. I am not trying to create a scandal, I am trying to get a dishonest editor who claims on his own page to have, "no tolerance for people who commit marketing" and yet here you are marketing your own place of work. Would it actually hurt for you to admit that you did something wrong, instead of trying to pretend that it is those who notice your hypocrisy and dishonesty who somehow have something to apologise for?

4) Why don't you try addressing the problem, instead of attempting to dishonestly denigrate the person who has brought it to your attention?

5) You claim to hold the view that, "admins must take responsibility for what we do" and yet you also claim that, "I thought I'd been as clear as possible by putting it right there on my userpage" when the obviously correct place to declare it was right here on this article where the conflict occurs. Declaring where you work on your user page is self-evidently not "as clear as possible" at all, and you know it. Your claim is just more dissembling.

[1] Cottonshirtτ 22:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I hold no brief for or against Orangemike, but in fairness to him this is what Wikipedia's COI policy was at the time he wrote this. It seems pretty clear to me that he didn't breach the policy as it was then, and it's hardly fair to blame him for failing to adhere to the 2013 policy in 2006. 78.149.172.10 (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The irony of your comment is illuminating. After OrangeMike accuses me of being an SPA, another editor drops in to the conversation to defend him, and said editor has an IP account, has made less than 20 edits in three years and yet casually drops in to Jimmy Wales talk page for chat and knows that Flow (which I had never heard of before today) is going live in a couple of months. The only article you have ever visited more than once is a BLP for some obscure Northern Ireland actor where you dropped in some irrelevant fluff about some un-sourced charity work, for which you appear to have the only known copy of his speech. Hardly a contribution to encyclopedia building that encourages confidence in you not being an SPA yourself. Since we are all supposed to assume good faith here I will not openly accuse you of being a sock puppet, but since you clearly misrepresent what the discussion is actually about I would prefer that you didn't insult my intelligence by expecting me to take your comment seriously. Thank you.

Since OrangeMike has said that he will be, "perfectly willing to discuss my history as an editor here" we'll move on to that. Let's start with Rachel Johnson. Using her own name, the lady openly corrected some very minor factual inaccuracies on an article about herself. As you well know, there is nothing in BLP that says a person cannot edit an article about themselves, as long as those edits are factual and not controversial. In fact, BLP specifically says, "The Arbitration Committee has ruled in favor of showing leniency to BLP subjects who try to fix what they see as errors or unfair material." Leniency is not how anyone would describe what happened to Rachel Johnson.

She deleted one sentence that claimed, falsely, that she did not complete her degree, and she updated the newspaper she works for and the publication date of a novel. These are not controversial edits but useful additions to an encyclopedia, and the way to deal with this is not to revert the useful additions and then stomp all over her efforts and block her from editing. Not content with having turned her against Wikipedia, you then follow her back across the Atlantic and log on to an English newspaper to comment on an article where you successfully point out to a much wider audience everything that's wrong with your approach. Maybe, if you had politely worked with her to ensure the article about her was both factually correct and properly sourced the version of the story in the Evening Standard might have been about how committed Wikipedia is to the truth, how open they are to community collaboration and how refreshing it is to see such a spirit of international cooperation. We might also have won another fifty new editors. Instead, we get an editor in a weird orange suit stalking an attractive young woman over the internet to disparage her professional conduct making both you and Wikipedia look foolish in the eyes of the world. And yet you still think that you are the authority on COI. You are not the solution here Mike, you're the problem. With friends like you, Wikipedia does not need enemies. Cottonshirtτ 07:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

So my assumption that this was all about retaliation was correct. Thank you for the confirmation. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 10:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia would be proud of you. It is so much easier to make baseless assumptions that confirm your own bias than to bother with any of those annoying fact type things, isn't it? For example, were I to assume that your defence of OrangeMike means that you approve of his methods and that you think it perfectly acceptable that he banned Rachel Johnson from editing Wikipedia just because she thought her degree score was a fact worth including in her article, you would no doubt think that a baseless assumption on my part, wouldn't you? Thought so. Thanks for your erudite and considered addition to the discussion. Cottonshirtτ 17:15, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought I'd been as clear as possible by putting it right there on my userpage

Yes, I do still work for Renaissance (very part-time), as I have since 1978. This has been plainly stated on my userpage since day one. All other such matters, I believe, are addressed in my reply directly above this statement. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:19, 21 May 2013 (UTC)