Carboncounter1

September 2019

Hello, I'm Wham2001. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Halo (safety device), but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Wham2001 (talk) 06:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello Wham2001. You have removed the paragraph about Woven Technology but this contains an original halo design concept from 2014 that precedes the information on this 'Halo' page. The introduction mentions that the Halo was based on a Mercedes project however this statement does not have a citation. As you have removed my post due to lack of citation why are other posts allowed to remain when they are lacking evidence and citations? I think this should be reinstated. Thank you. Carboncounter1 (talk) 09:58, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your message, Carboncounter1. As a tip, you can ping an editor with a registered account by writing (for example) {{ping|Wham2001}}, and they will get a notification that you have done so. You should also indent replies on talk pages with a colon character for each successive indent level: if you look at the source for this page you will see what I mean. The wiki markup language is a bit laborious as a way of writing forum posts, but you quickly get used to it.

Getting back to the article, I am sympathetic to your point, but I think that this is a conversation that we should be having on the article talk page, where hopefully other editors with expertise in the topic will find it and can provide input. So may I ask you to post your message there? In the meantime I will remove the unsourced comments regarding Mercedes from the article, since you have challenged them.

Two more things. Firstly, what I think that the article really needs is better sourcing. Ideally that would come in the form of academic journal articles about the halo, but could also be reports in established technical magazines, etc. The key thing is that they should come from sources with an established reputation for care, accuracy and fairness, and that they should be independent of anybody with a direct interest in the subject. You can find our policy on reliable sources here. I don't have time to search for any such source right now, but if you know of such or can make a search posting results at the article talk page would be very helpful.

Secondly, if you have a conflict of interest (e.g. if you represent Woven Technology) then you should not edit the article directly. Instead you should follow the instructions here about disclosing your COI and making edit requests on the talk page. I have that page "watchlisted", so I will see any edits that you make there, as hopefully will other editors.

Best wishes, and thanks for entering into a dialogue about this, Wham2001 (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I see that I crossed wires with your post on the article talk page: thank-you for that. I'll reply there. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 20:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I'm new here as you have recognised. I found my way to the talk page before I read your notes. Yes is the answer to your COI point. I haven't worked out this process yet and would be grateful if you would update this.

Back to the article - it is not clear where the invention came from. Various media articles refer to an article at Auto Motor und Sport (around 24 Feb 2015) that has since been removed. That article was quoted as saying that Mercedes proposed a solution to the Technical Working Group. However, a subsequent article in Autosport Magazine Feb 22 2018 quotes Niki Lauda as saying that it came from the FIA. The discrepancy is intriguing. Thanks for your feedback. {{ping|Wham2001}} Carboncounter1 (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the COI, you should mention it at the article talk page, so that anybody else chipping in there knows about it, and you should avoid editing the article directly. There are more rules if you're being paid specifically to edit the article, something that's in general strongly discouraged on Wikipedia.

I was unfortunately not clear enough about the ping template: you should copy and paste it without the nowiki tags, which were just to make it appear in the page rather than pinging me!

The Motor und Sport and Autosport articles sound interesting, and I would ask you to mention them at the article talk page; somebody may have access to copies. If there is a discrepancy between what reliable sources say the general rule is that we explain both sides of the story, giving them appropriate weight according to the weight of content in the sources. This is explained in (yet another, sorry) policy, the neutral point of view policy, which is one of the central cornerstones of how Wikipedia articles are supposed to be constructed. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 06:54, 10 September 2019 (UTC)