User talk:209.168.221.213

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You have new messages (last change).

Please do not replace Wikipedia pages with blank content, as you did to Meritas. It is considered vandalism. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks.


Please do not edit the user pages of other contributors without their approval or consent, as you did with User:Jaysweet. It may be seen as vandalism. --Jaysweet 20:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Dr. Blass -- I would prefer not to contact you via the e-mail address provided on your website, as I would like to keep my own e-mail address private. However, if you would like to speak to me, please feel free to do so via my Wikipedia talk page (you previously edited my user page, which is a no-no). --Jaysweet 20:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Response to your questions on my user talk page

Dr. Blass,

Let me address all of your points, beginning with my desire to conceal my e-mail address.

I am not insisting on remaining entirely anonymous. My name is James Sweet. My Wikipedia account name is Jaysweet because I usually go by the nickname Jay.

I do not wish to give out my e-mail address to strangers, primarily because of the risk for spam. And in any case, my e-mail address would not make me any less anonymous to you, because it is on a free webmail service and is very similar to my Wikipedia account name.

I do not wish to give out personal information beyond my full name, because frankly, there are a lot of crazies out there and I wouldn't want someone with an ax to grind to track me down in real life and create problems for me. (The fact that you have threatened other users with legal action certainly does nothing to ease my concern in this regard!)


Next, my primary issue with "your page," as you call it, is best summed up by the way you refer to it: "my page." Please see this article about what Wikipedia is not, specifically that it is not a free web-hosting site. By creating a poorly-sourced universally positive autobiographical article about yourself, you have created the impression that it is more like a Piotr Blass MySpace page rather than a true encyclopedia article.

The fact that your creation of the page coincided with the start of your 2006 gubernatorial election campaign, together with the fact that you quote your version of the Wikipedia article prominently on the election campaign website, contributes to the perception that you are doing this merely as a shameless act of self-promotion.

If I am wrong about your reasons for creating the article, I apologize -- but you must understand why people are perceiving it this way.


Lastly, regarding your question, "what is mhem's problem?", I will answer in general regarding both mhem and the other users who you have accused of having a vendetta against you: Many Wikipedians are incredibly passionate about the quality of information in Wikipedia. They argue that unsourced material, articles about non-notable topics, and self-promotion are all very destructive to a goal that they have worked long and hard to acheive. For the reasons I already cited above, they felt that your article was an act of self-promotion and took action, as per standard Wikipedia policies, to discover whether it should be deleted. Note that this was not an attack on you -- this started when some users questioned the validity of the article, and began a standard and well-defined procedure wherein Wikipedians collectively reach a concensus on whether an article is worthy of inclusion or not. That was a question to the community, not an attack, as you seemed to perceive it.

And that's where things got nasty. You responded to this procedure by erasing the "proposed for deletion" tag, which is a direct violation of Wikipedia policy. You then accused people of attacking you for political and racial reasons, which is a very strong card to play and certainly will cause people to become understandably incensed -- and you must realize this was an escalation in rhetoric that you yourself initiated. You also threatened users with legal action, which is strongly discouraged by official Wikipedia policy.

Dr. Blass, I don't want to make you feel that I am picking on you, but there are also several other instances where you violated various Wikipedia policies that I have not even bothered to mention. I understand why you are frustrated, but you must understand that Wikipedia is a place with existing rules. You cannot simply ignore those rules because you disagree with them.

Frankly, I myself disagree with a lot of Wikipedia policies, too. But I am not the one writing the checks. As long as Wikipedia is a free, donation-supported, ad-free service, I will abide by the rules set by the owners of the website.

During this entire process, you have been ignoring those rules, and when users attempted to assist you in understanding the process, you accused them of making a personal attack on you. That's really not going to win you any friends.


Dr. Blass, here is what I would suggest to you: Ignore the article about you for now. Unless you really did create it in order to assist your election campaign, it should not be that important whether there is a Piotr Blass article today, or if it iis created six months from now instead. Instead, I think you should spend some time participating in the editing of other Wikipedia articles that you find interesting but that are not related to you or your profession. I think that will be a good way for you to get used to Wikipedia policies and the general process for reaching consensus on Wikipedia.

If after doing that for a while, you still feel you want to try and do an auto-biographical article, perhaps you can try again. But as it is now, your accusations have created so much bad blood, I frankly do not see any way to avoid the deletion of the article as it currently stands. I am sorry to tell you that, but this is the lay of the land as I see it.

Best of luck to you in your campaign! Oh, and by the way, it is generally appreciated if you sign each post in the talk page by including two dashes followed by four tildes, i.e. like this: --~~~~. This will put a timestamp and user name following your post, and will make it easier for users to follow what has happened. Just adhering to this simple guideline will make people take you a lot more seriously! I hope that helps!  :) --Jaysweet 22:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Dr. Blass,

I am sorry it took me so long to realize this, but I just noticed that you -- coincidentally, I assume -- were the person I warned about blanking the Meritas page. Now, I believe that page probably should be deleted, because it appears to be nothing more than an advertisement for a non-notable company. But, you must follow Wikipedia procedure in requesting deletion. Notice how I put the {advert} and {prod} tags on the article. There is also a way to put a "Speedy Delete" tag on the article, but I am still a little inept about some of these things :) In any case, I am attempting to have this article deleted through the proper channels.

I am curious -- why defend a controversial article such as your own, but blank the Meritas article?? Is this some kind of vendetta of your own??

Dr. Blass, your contributions to the field of mathematics do seem to be valuable, and as such I would like to help you to understand how Wikipedia works. But you have to work with me here :) I'm very confused by some of your claims and some of your actions. I hope to hear from you on your or my talk page so we can figure this out! --Jaysweet 05:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

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