User talk:Sharlene Thompson

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[edit] A post which has caused some spam problems

Wiki Survey

My colleague and I are conducting a study of wikis with health information pages. To participate in the survey click on https://websurvey.jmu.edu/ss/wsb.dll/27/wikipedia.htm


Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Notinasnaid 18:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please stop adding this to articles immediately. It is highly inappropriate for you to spam Wikipedia articles like this. If you continue I will indefinitely block this account. Gwernol 18:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


Please stop adding inappropriate content to Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a bulletin board for you to post solicitations. Fan-1967 18:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


Please forgive. The links were not intended to be SPAM. I am new to using wikipedia and new to the rules.
We actually received permission to post a link to our study on wikipedia article pages and to email users from Jeandré du Toit.
Do you have any suggestions regarding how we could let the community know about our study?
Sorry to have caused offense.
I'd be okay with you adding these to the talk pages of articles, but not to the articles themselves. So, for example, you could add a request to Talk:Multiple sclerosis but not to Multiple sclerosis. Thanks, Gwernol 18:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The permission you received was, almost certainly, ill advised. In fact, it would be only one of the Directors of the WikiFoundation (Wikipeida's official owner of record) who might have, alone, granted such permission, but I think even that is questionable. I suspect you've been led astray by someone who does not understand the nature o fthe Wikipedia. You probably should have been directed to the Village Pump, or one of the other community pages (links in the rightmost column on most pages), to inquire of the WP community whether your survey was acceptable content for WP, by the only relevant test, a consensus of WP editors. Suggestions for an acceptable posting location will likely be forthcoming, though I myself can't quite think of one just now. WP is not set up for inquiries of its editors or users. Perhaps you could ask for ideas about setting up such a mechanism? Or write a proposal for one such?
In any case, your placement choice for the article I found was exceptionally poor. It was the first text in the article, placed well above all other text, even above the italic disambiguation header, and implied that the survey was more important than the content of the article. Perhaps it was, but the assumption with which we all operate here on WP is that we are engaged in writing an encyclopdia, and that alone is the standard by which all (at least in theory, and as much as can be managed, in practice) is measured. It is likely that the placement was what particularly evoked immediate and vehement requests that you stop.
You may find that your relationship with the Wikipedia, and its editors / operators / users may go swimmingly if you find an article or topic on which you are informed, and contribute some content, or revise some existing content. You too will probably find yourself acting protectively about the Wikipedia.
I have also indented your reply post above using the ':' convention. I trust there will be no objection. And it would be well if you singed your posts with the 4 twiddles (ie, ~) in a row convention. ww 19:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Here is the reply I sent to the original OTRS request:
“

We would welcome such research. It may be best to conduct phase two on the users' talk pages instead of the article talk pages, tho placing invitations to participate on the article talk pages would be fine - maybe linking to your or Sharlene's user pages where more indepth information could be posted.

Please also see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikidemia> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Medical_disclaimer>.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this, or edit my user talk page at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jeandr%C3%A9>.
--
Jeandré du Toit
--
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org
---
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.

 ”
I think the misunderstanding came from Sharlene not distinguishing between article pages and "users' talk pages" and "article talk pages". Sharlene please have a look at the Wikipedia tutorial, and sorry for the misunderstanding. -- Jeandré, 2006-10-30t21:36z
Specifically, see Wikipedia:Namespace and Help:Talk page. -- Jeandré, 2006-10-31t08:24z
I have to say, this doesn't seem like a suitable use of either personal or article talk pages. What does it have to do with the development or improvement of an encyclopedia? Would a commercial company's survey be acceptable, and if not why not? Before this discussion, I would have considered all of these as candidates for deletion. Can you point at the Wikipedia policy that is relevant here? Notinasnaid 08:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I've been involved in something like this before, see User:Cormaggio#My research. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia and Wikipedia:User survey. Users are free to remove the requests, but I've seen many Wikipedians trying to help out research like this instead. -- Jeandré, 2006-10-31t21:26z

See also WP:AN#Spam surveys on talk pages. -- Jeandré, 2006-12-15t11:46z

[edit] Survey

It might be nice for interested users if you put some information about your survey/study onto your userpage (found at User:Sharlene Thompson). Good luck! Mak (talk) 18:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above (a redlinked talk page is a bit off-putting for someone who wants other editors to volunteer information). Also, I'd like to know how you are determining what editors are "frequent contributor to Wikipedia on health topics." I don't believe I am (and so was confused by your message), but I do revert vandalism a lot and as such, probably have ended up with a lot of edits to health topics. But I don't recall any major contributions and I don't have any special knowledge. You might want to try to refine your criteria. Dina 18:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, please post information about how you determined which editors are frequent contributors to medical articles - I was solicited, but my contributions are primarily the repair of disambiguation links pointing to Fatigue, most of which were medical articles whose contributors had used simple [[Fatigue]] links, not realizing that there is also a major topic under fatigue (material). My contributions are not major, despite the fact that they are plentiful. Perhaps, for future surveys, you can refine your user search methods to include whether edits are marked as minor or not -minor edits should count for much less. Nihiltres 19:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] spam

please do not spam user talk pages (you hit mine twice). perhaps a posting over at Wikipedia:Village Pump may be more appropriate. JoeSmack Talk 18:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Find out

How anthropologists work. Rich Farmbrough, 20:33 4 December 2006 (GMT).

[edit] huh?

  • We noticed that you are a frequent contributor to Wikipedia on health topics.

That I was a frequent contributor on health topics is certainly more than I suspected. Michael Hardy 20:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree...! Budgiekiller 21:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please use take more care with your message

Hi Sharlene. You left a message on my talk page about a survey. I see above that you've already had some difficulty here because you were not familiar with the site. I'd like to request you spend a little bit more time familiarizing yourself with conventions before you add messages to even more users. Since you aren't actually helping us build the encyclopedia, it seems like asking you to pay attention to our conventions is not unreasonable. In particular I noticed that you're posting to the pages of users (including myself) who don't really consider themselves to be frequent contributors to health articles. Your message (and the survey) might get more response (and seem less dismissive of the editors you are mass posting to) if it reflected a wider understanding of editor behavior. Also, when you start a new subject on a user talk page please but the sub header between sets of double equal signs == Health Wiki Research == so that is doesn't merge into other conversations on the same page. Thanks. And good luck with survey. --Siobhan Hansa 22:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please stop postings to multiple users and repeatedly so - becoming spam & harassment

I think you need to stop your postings to Wikipedians to partake in your off-site research project:

  • It is unsolicited and certainly not what people signing up to wikipedia might expect. It is effectively spamming.
  • I fear your research methodology is catastrophically flawed and any conclusions draw by the study will be valueless - the problem being that your sampling should insist that any one individual contributes just once to the survey, yet I've just had my 3rd invite ! See 4th December, which was my second time I completed the study (I naively assumed that this would prove to be a different series of questions from that which I had been previously asked) and now 14th December. If however you are applying user identification to competed questionnaires in order to later exclude duplicated submissions, then your contacting of the same subjects repeadedly is at best just sloppy, but at worse being unecessary therefore consitutes spamming harassment. However your survey's front page states "anonymously recorded" so multiple recording from the same subjects would seem to be possible.
  • Your failure to follow conventions is being disruptive. The convention is to start any new discussion thread with a section header. These are so indicated by enclosing the title in double equal signs '== Header ==. Why should I, or any other Wikipedian, be distracted from our work to improve the encyclopaedia just to fix the mess you are making of our talk pages ? You have been advised repeatedly (above) to become familiar "with conventions before you add messages to even more users". We have a policy of not biting newcomers, as a requirement of assuming good faith for those who are here to work on the collaborative project. You though are not contributing to the project.
  • In your postings you state "The project was approved by our university research committee and members of the Wikipedia Foundation." - please could you give some details on your supposed official Wikipedia Foundation approval. David Ruben Talk 02:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
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