User talk:Richards1052

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Welcome!

Hello, Richards1052, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! 

You're off to a great start here; I looked at the articles you've been flagging and wholly agree. Unfortunately it's a bit out of my expertise. If we flag them, hopefully someone will come by soon and fix them up, but if this is an area you know something about, why not take a crack at it? =) That is, after all, the wiki way.

Cheers! --Dvyost 08:21, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Communist stuff

Hi Richard. I read your post on the new user log. Is this the user you are referring to? - Akamad Happy new year! 11:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

By the way, are you aware of the Judaism WikiProject? Thought you might be interested. - Akamad Happy new year! 11:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article history

Hi Richards,

Just got your e-mail. Sorry I missed the first one--for whatever reason, Yahoo has been redirecting them to my bulk folder. Anyway, the easiest way to see who's worked on a particular article is to click the "History" tab up above by the edit tab. That will show you what editors have contributed and when.

Hope that helps--don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions, though it seems my talk page might be a better venue until I get my e-mail sorted out. =)

Cheers,

--Dvyost 16:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Viewing another user's contributions

Hi, I saw your note at WP:NUL. See Special:Contributions/Richards1052? It's a list of your contribs. To see anyone else's, just put their name in the URL instead of yours. HTH. pfctdayelise 04:18, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] www.richardsilverstein.com

I've removed a number of links to your own blog. Please see WP:V and WP:COI Duplicity (talk) 14:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:V again, specifically the section: Self-published sources (online and paper) WP:SPS. The policy states "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources." I believe you when you say you are an expert in the field and have many articles published in the L.A. Times, The Guardian, American Conservative Magazine, and that you are quoted in the NY Times. However, it is important that you link to those articles and not to your own blog. With that in mind, I will begin removing links to your blog again. Duplicity (talk) 21:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I see you asked on Wikipedia:Help desk how you can see which articles you edited that I then reverted. The easiest way is to look on my user contributions page Special:Contributions/Duplicity, scroll down until you see the relevant articles, and click the diff links to see the changes I made. Looks like I did all the reverts on November 20. Incidentally, this is also how I found and reviewed every article you have edited. I've held off on removing your links for now because I don't want to start an edit war, but please note that several other people have begun reverting your changes, also for going against wikipedia style guidelines. Duplicity (talk) 21:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not CLAIMING to be an expert in my field. I AM an expert. My blog is not a vanity enterprise nor is it designed to enrich me personally. It is a resource based on original research in a field in which I was trained academically and have earned advanced degrees. There is no difference between work I publish in my blog and in publications like the L.A. Times, Haaretz, etc. In fact, I often publish works in my blog which I've published in publications. ANyone who reverts my changes is treating me in a prejudicial manner and I object to this treatment. Richard (talk) 11:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] December 2007

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did to Idan Raichel. Wikipedia is not a collection 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 attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. Thank you. Jauerback (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Richard. It's great that you attempted to contribute what you considered a helpful link to the Idan Raichel article. Ultimately I don't think it needs to be there, though. Did you read the documentation on external links? Your blog is mostly an appraisal of the music, rather than encyclopedic information, and it is among many reviews that I'm certain people can find with a web search. About claiming that it allows music to be heard that otherwise is unavaialable to most readers, (a) it is firstly unclear the legal status of the file linked from your blog, and the regulations specify that "Sites that violate the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked."; (b) Idan Raichel and his publishers make available the music they choose to on their web site and elsewhere; (c) much of his music is able to be heard from the Sheger Videos page in external links, although its Copyright status is also unclear. I hope this is not too hurtful a response! Every Wikipedian has moments where others disagree (often justly) with their taste in material. jnothman talk 11:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Richard, the above comment sums it up very well. Jauerback (talk) 13:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Jnothman: It is not true that my blog post is "mostly an appraisal of the music." The post places Raichel's music in a social and political context that is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article. My post deepens knowledge about who Idan Raichel is and what his agenda is both as a musician and social commentator on Israeli society. I have certainly read the section on External Links & find nothing there that says I have done anything wrong. If you feel I have I would appreciate your quoting a passage rather than merely providing a link and implying that I have.Richard (talk) 11:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] January 2008

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Sarajevo Haggadah, 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. I've removed the link you posted today to your own blog. Duplicity (talk) 16:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Instead of talking in riddles, why don't you point out what precisely my conflict of interest IS regarding the Sarajevo Haggadah article. I have no connection whatsoever to the Sarajevo Haggadah other than thinking it's a wonderful story. Again you raise shibboleths like "conflict of interest" w/o providing a scintilla's worth of evidence that there IS any. If there is have at it & point it out.

Furthermore, the External Links rule page says the following:

one should avoid...Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority.

I am an authority on the topics I write about. As I've noted I've published articles in Haaretz, The Jewish Forward, American Conservative Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Beliefnet, & other sites & publications about Israel, Israeli-Palestinian peace and other subjects in my blog posts. I have also produced radio programs about Israeli & Jewish music for public radio. I do original research both for the articles, radio programs, and blog posts. If I wasn't an authority I wouldn't write about them.

Richard (talk) 11:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Richard

Hi Richard, Saw your post over at phil weiss's. I comment at your blog about once a year or so.

Your impressions about the rules, and those of the people you have been arguing with aren't 100% precise.(I helped larn the rules to one of your interlocutors, btw, at a time when he was seriously in danger of being booted out.) Blogs from recognized authorities are OK. Of course, you have no COI - that rule was not made for cases like yours, your links fit under EL etc. Wildly inappropriate disputation over the "reliability" of sources is an increasing problem - I've seen muuuch more absurd cases than yours seriously considered by sane people. The culture has gotten much more anal retentive and bound by rules which are often insane, self-contradictory or impossible to apply (especially if read literally or in non-Wikipedian English.) And so it's become fashionable for usually newer contributors to "wikilawyer" and call people on things before they really understand the rules themselves - frequently because they had this silly treatment themselves. I'd say that with your increasing recognition you and your blog are becoming much more of a recognized source, e.g. since the New Yorker quote. I was just recently thinking about which blogs in the mideast area would usually fit our arcane RS guideline, and yours came to mind as one that should, and that I would go to bat for. (Right now the insane "consensus" bright idea is to put the part about blogs in WP:V. )

I hope you noticed that other people (e.g. Roland Rance) put some of your perfectly appropriate external links back in. Anyways, if you need help, you could call on me, although I am only intermittently available. Would write more but no time.John Z (talk) 18:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)