User talk:Kategrant

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[edit] Speedy deletion of Fistula foundation

A tag has been placed on Fistula foundation requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be a blatant copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must include on the external site the statement "I, (name), am the author of this article, (article name), and I release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later." You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Slp1 (talk) 22:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" is strongly discouraged. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. RaseaC (talk) 22:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


Hi Kate, Thanks for the message on the talkpage. Though I am sure that what you say is correct, I am not sure that your message there will be enough, because as you know, people can pretend to be anybody online. You really need to follow the instructions above, and change the website, giving permission there. There are other options too, listed above, the easiest being rewriting the article so that the phrases are not the same.

However, you also have a conflict of interest about this topic, and as a result you should read those guidelines as well before doing anything else. This also affect your edits on the other article you have been editing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a place to promote things (even an organization that seems to me to be very worthwhile indeed!), as RaseaC has pointed out. This might also be of interest: [1] Sorry about this, but it is probably worth looking into the policies further before pursuing edits here. Welcome though, and hopefully this won't put you off too much! Slp1 (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

  1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
  2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
  3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);
    and you must always:
  4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you. In particular you need to stop adding unsourced information about Catherine Hamblin and your organization to the Obstetric fistula article. If you can find a reliable source that Catherine Hamblin is "the pioneer in modern day fistula surgery" then it may be an appropriate edit in the context of a paragraph about the history of the surgery, but these repeated edits [2] [3] [4] [5]coupled with regularly putting the link to your organization high (or higher) up the list of external links [6][7][8] is setting off alarm bells. Please carefully examine your motivations for doing these edits, because it looks like you are trying to promote your organization, and this is not allowed here, as has been noted above. There are various suggestions about how you can contribute in the Business FAQ page recommeded above. --Slp1 (talk) 21:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


Dear Editor: As you may be able to tell, we are new to Wikepedia. I use it all the time as a resource, and think it is a wonderful public resource. But, I am new to the creation of material We are trying hard to conform to the standards which are reasonable.

We are not trying to promote our organization, we are trying to provide information relevant to obstetric fistula. We have tried to address the need for citations as best we can and to keep Wikipedia's standards in mind. We would appreciate more information about several edits made to copy we had submitted, trying hard to conform to Wikipedia guidelines.

For example, yesterday I added a link to the UNFPA's webstie, that described Dr. Hamlin has a fisutla pioneer and went into further detail about her work and contributions. UNFPA is the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and is recognized as the key mulitlateral organization on Women's reproductive health. Please let me know why this was taken down and why the UNFPA would not be considered a credible source for this description.

Similarly, twice I have added information about the impact of Oprah Winfrey's attention to fistula as being a key variable in creating public awareness. In order to address the citation question, I provided links to substantiate the reference. I do not understand why the references to Nicholas Kristof have been retained but the ones to Ms. Winfrey have been deleted. When discussing what has created both awareness of fistula and the consequential public support for treatment and prevention it would be a critical ommision to leave out the impact of Ms. Winfrey's shows on the topic. I would appreicate it if you could explain this to us.

Another example: I have twice tried to include a simple description of what our organization does after the URL in the External Links section, saying simply that we are a nonprofit dedicated to prevention and treatment of obstetric fistula. We do not understand why that simple description of our mission has been deleted while other organizations in the same external links section have been able to include descriptions of their organizations. Please help us understand this inconsistency.

Lastly, I had moved our organizatin URL up in the external links section, only to have it moved back down the list. While I can see why this appears self-serving, it really is not. I have placed us in order of our size, based on scale, number of donors, number of women treated for fistula. Thus I put us after the UNFPA site. We are though larger that the other fistula organizations, so it seems odd from an objective point of view that we would be placed far down the list behind organizations that are comparitively very minor is scale, scope, and impact. Please help us understand this too.

We look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely, Kate Grant Executive Director The Fistula Foundation kate@fistulafoundation.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kategrant (talk • contribs) 18:40, 11 January 2008


First let me thank you for using this talkpage to discuss your edits, rather than just reinserting things. Discussion and getting consensus is an an important part of the Wikipedia process, and helps a lot to correct misunderstandings. While I am at it, two other pieces of information is that it is always good to sign your posts on talkpages with four tildes (or by pressing the little signature icon in the blue bar above the edit window), which inserts your user name and the time and date of your post. And always aim to add edit summaries about your edits: you do this in the edit summary box under the edit window and above the "Save Page" button. It helps other editors a lot to understand what you are doing and why if you do these things.
I certainly appreciate that there can be a very steep learning curve here on Wikipedia, and will try to help as much as I can.
  • The UNFPA website says that Dr. Hamblin and her husband "pioneered fistula repair in Ethiopia" not that she is "The pioneer in modern day fistula surgery". And it praises 5 other "outstanding Fistula 'Pioneers'". I am not sure why Dr. Hamblin would deserve 3 mentions in the WP article and these other 5 none at all. As I mentioned above, if she really is the modern day pioneer of fistula surgery, then it might be appropriate to have her mentioned as part of a larger section on the history of the surgical repair through the ages, but not just dropped in, without any context and without any reliable sources to support the claim and make it verifiable.
  • re Oprah Winfrey: can you find any reliable sources to verify your suggestion that "the impact of Oprah Winfrey's attention to fistula as being a key variable in creating public awareness." Or Nicholas Kristof's articles for that matter? Some medical journals, newspapers, books that point this out? The link you provided was to Oprah's website, and just shows that she did a program about your organization. This section seems to be original research as well as being very American-centric in a global encyclopedia. Do people in Australia or India know or care about about Oprah's shows? Did the shows affect them too? In any case, this article is about a medical topic: I seem to recall Katie Couric having a well-publicized colonoscopy but note that this is not mentioned in the colonoscopy article.
  • Placement of your organization in the list: you initially placed your organization first in the list, and after this was changed (and a promotional description deleted) [9], you repeatedly moved your organization into second place instead. Your claim is that you are putting them in order of organizational size. That might be a reasonable decision to make, though you did not explain your edit on the talkpage or in an edit summary. But if that was your reasoning, why didn't you do the research to put the rest of the links in order of size? That would be helping the encyclopedia,(even if alphabetical order might be more natural) whereas simply repeatedly moving your link up the list and expanding the description continue to imply that you are, quite naturally as an executive director, trying to promote the Fistula foundation.

The links given above make various suggestions about how to edit with integrity if you have a conflict of interest. I would particularly suggest that you stop adding or modifying anything to do with Catherine Hamblin or the Fistula foundation (broadly defined) in any article. If you have suggestions for improvements to make, suggest them on the discussion page of the relevant article (there is a tab at the top of each article), and let other editors make the decision about where the information is relevant or notable enough to include. I hope this is helpful and please let me know if I can help in any other way. Slp1 (talk) 14:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)