{{helpme}}
Wikipedia placed a tone flag on the Tom Blackaller article. I think the flag was prompted by words such as handsome, colorful, mischievous. I think the flag is inappropriate, as there is wide-ranging published evidence that a major reason Tom Blackaller is still being given tribute 20 years after his death was precisely because of his colorful personality. Would appreciate other observers concurring and/or removing the tone flag.
Wikipedia also placed a flag about lack of citations. I edited the article to include the internal reference linking that Wikipedia prefers. These sources include reliable external sources such as the New York Times and national monthly magazine Sailing World. However, the flag remains... how does it get removed? --Olivaglobal (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
- Hi Olivaglobal,
I wanted to both try to answer your questions and point out a couple things for you. First off so that you understand the Wikipedia process tags such as the two you mentioned are placed onto an article by other editors on the encyclopedia when they feel they are needed. Our normal policy is that they can be removed by anyone after they feel the issue has been resolved and then if someone disagrees they can put it back on. I like to leave tags on if I'm the one who put the info in so that a fresh set of eyes can look at it but that's a personal choice. So with that said: if you feel that the issue is resolved then feel free to remove the template (if you edit the page you'll see words surrounded by curly brackets such as {{tone}})
There are however some issues with the article as written. Unfortunately words such as handsome and mischievous imply a point of view which Wikipedia does not consider to be encyclopedic. In general you want to try and write any articles in a neutral tone I.E "was a world-champion American yachtsman" not "was a handsome world-champion American yachtsman". The issue with Reliable sources is another issue which you have obviously started with but could use more sources that I have a feeling can be found. Uncomfortably some of your sources don't completely meet that standard (such as the forum posts) In general if another location references a reliable source you want to go back and reference original source, for example: If the forum posts references an LA times article then you want to go back and check that article and reference IT if it has the info you want (and if it doesn't you want to find another source).
You may want to read a couple other pages about sources as well including the page on citing sources which explains how you can source the articles a little cleaner then you currently are ( I may go in to help clean it up a little later if you don't).
I also noticed that your username may violate our policy on usernames because it appears to be related to a company (www.olivaglobal.com). I'm putting a template below this with some more information but you want to read that carefully and if your the only one who's using this account you will want to change your name so that you don't run into our advertisement/promotional username policy. If more then one person uses this account then you need to look at the roll account policy in the same spot. If your editing this article for a client your also going to want to read our conflict of interest policy and our page on best practices for those with a conflict.
Let me know if you have any more questions either here or on my talk page and I'll be happy to help out, you can also put another {{helpme}} template on here to alert me and everyone in the IRC help channel. or come and talk to us live on IRC.Jamesofur (talk) 00:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
On a sidenote: while it is always good to "sign" your comments on talk pages with ~~~~ as you've done you do not want to do that on an article page like you did on the Tom Blackaller because we avoid any sign that someone may be claiming ownership of an article since anyone is able to edit it and make it better. Jamesofur (talk) 00:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Edit Conflict: while adding this I realized you removed the helpme template and request but I still wanted to get this here so that you could see my response :) Jamesofur (talk) 00:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because: org name or roll account. If, after reviewing that policy, you believe your username does not violate policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you can file for a change of username, or you can simply create a new account and start using that one instead. Thank you. Jamesofur (talk) 03:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
- Hi Jamesofer
Thank you very much for the clarifications. Very helpful. No, I am not getting paid to do this. I am a freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle doing a story on Tom Blackaller and was apalled to see no wiki on the guy. Since I had to do the research anyway to come up to speed, I figured I would capture his history here. This was my first article from scratch, so your explanations were helpful.
As far as my username, I guess I just didn't read the guidelines carefully enough. Yes, Oliva Global Communications is my company name, though I am a sole proprietor and the only one using this account (and again, not getting paid for this). Oliva is my real name, and I use olivaglobal as my username for twitter, facebook, my SFGate.com blog, and other sites, so it didn't even occur to me that there would be an issue. I suppose I will go through the 'change username' process.
On signing the article, thanks for telling me the protocol. I had assumed it would be important to sign all writing and edits in articles so that the parties involved in publishing the information could be completely known. There's quite a difference between claiming ownership and simply keeping track of authors, but WP must know what it's doing.
I'm still somewhat at a loss about how to handle things that are completely salient, factual, and widely acknowledged, though impossible to mention with neutral words. Blackaller was very similar to Ted Turner in terms of his charisma and his often obnoxious, sophomoric, egotistical or controversial behavior. The record is pretty consistent that all observers note these behaviors as central to Blackaller's fame. Similarly, these things are mentioned or alluded in Ted Turner's wiki. I'm pretty much out of time to spend editing this, so maybe I'll leave it up to others.
Thank you again! --Olivaglobal (talk) 05:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)