User talk:Mms minis

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Mms minis, 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 take 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) 21:07, 9 July 2017 (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 all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, 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) 21:08, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia[edit]

Hi Mms minis I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing. Your edits to date are all about Cliff Hyra and have violated Wikipedia policies. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, Mms minis. 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, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

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

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. 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. 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 Cliff Hyra's campaign, 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. After you respond (and you can just reply below), 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. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not directly affiliated with Cliff Hyra's campaign. I am not compensated in any shape or form for or by the campaign. In the spirit of full disclosure, I did volunteer to help collect ballot access signatures, and I am a registered member of the Libertarian Party. Mms minis (talk) 10:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for replying! Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense.

And you seem to have figured this part out, but at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages. That is how we know who said what. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 18:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your answer, and for answering so calmly (some people get really mad, ack)

Based on what you have wrote above, I want to make sure are aware of issues with advocacy in Wikipedia, which we get a lot of in Wikipedia, especially around politics. (current US politics topics have led to many "Supreme Court" cases here in Wikipedia, which is what those "discretionary sanctions" mentioned above, are about.)

There are a lot of things that Wikipedia is not (see What Wikipedia is not) and one of the things WP is not, is a platform for advocacy. Please especially see the section, WP:NOTADVOCACY. "What Wikipedia is Not" is something very essential to the very guts of this place. People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead people to kind of skip over the whole process of learning how Wikipedia works, and trying to drive content into Wikipedia ... and sometimes people end up getting into fights with other people, without really understanding what we do here.

It takes some time to learn how to edit... so please give yourself time to learn. The welcome message above provides our standard introduction, and I created User:Jytdog/How as a condensed-as-possible, all-in-one-place introduction..... but any way you go, you will eventually find your way! Thanks again for responding so nicely, and good luck! Jytdog (talk) 19:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So just so I understand correctly, I am not supposed to post anything on that subject? I don't see how anything I posted was anything but factual. All were essentially from the same sources that were already listed. I just added the missing information. None of it was opinionated what so ever. Respectfully Mms minis (talk) 04:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You have said you have no COI so you should feel free to edit directly! The key thing for you, is to beware of the advocacy you are bringing to WP - please make sure that any content you add to WP is based on, and cited to, high quality reliable sources, and that the content neutrally summarizes those sources, and gives appropriate "weight" (space in the article) based on what the reliable sources themselves say. Jytdog (talk) 12:43, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]