Academicjc

{{adminhelp}}

Dear Administrator, I need your help. I am the subject of a Biography of a Living Person and I would like it to be deleted as soon as possible. The page was posted on 8/1/11 by John Mugge, multimedia specialist for the academic division at Butler University. However, I approved the content. In recent months, the article has attracted the attention of an anonymous user who has been very vigilant in his effort to modify the content of the article in ways that are defamatory and inaccurate. This person's additions to the article are focused on one particular incident from my entire career, as if that incident defines my professional life. Earlier this week, at the request of John Mugge the article was taken down. However, it was immediately replaced with an "attack page", that was quickly removed by an administrator and replaced with the current version. This current version resulted from the editing wars. These editing wars are quite tedious and I simply cannot invest the time required to consistently remove inappropriate content. Therefore, I respectfully request that the BLP about me be removed from Wikipedia immediately and that no other BLP about me be allowed on the site. Thank you very much for considering my request. Jamie Comstock Academicjc (talk) 17:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments passed to the ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Jamie_Comstock  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 21:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Dr Comstock, I am very sorry that this situation has arisen about your article. It is practically an object lesson in how Wikipedia should not work. We have a strong policy on WP:Biographies of living persons, which is taken very seriously, we have rules against editing with a WP:Conflict of interest such as Mr Mugge has as your employee, and we have rules against WP:Edit warring, precisely in order to avoid this kind of situation. I find it hard to understand how this was able to go on for weeks before it was noticed - if either side had asked for help it would have been stopped at once.

We have no wish to allow a Wikipedia biographical article to be a vehicle for attack, but nor should it be an autobiography or merely regurgitate official sources. Criticism for which there are reliable sources will not be omitted simply because the subject doesn't like it, but nor should it be given undue weight. There is advice at WP:BLP/H for the subjects of Wikipedia articles, and a "notice-board" at WP:BLP/N for discussion of issues arising. I have already posted there (see the item about three or four up from the bottom of the page) to bring your article to the attention of users experienced in this area.

I "protected" the article yesterday - locked it against editing - in order to stop the edit war and give time to warn the participants and alert others. I have now unprotected it again so that others, not directly involved, can work on it. Please instruct Mr Mugge, as I have already advised him, that as your employee he may express his views on the article talk page, declaring his interest, but should not edit it directly.

You have asked for the article to be deleted, because you cannot invest the time to monitor it. You should not need to do that; now that the issue has been raised there will be many eyes on the article and any recurrence of the attacks will noticed quickly. Deletion of material is regarded as a last resort, and articles are not normally deleted at the subject's request. If you wish to pursue this, the only way would be by means of a deletion discussion, which I will initiate if you insist, but in my judgement the community's verdict would be that the article should be kept and improved.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:56, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I suggest you consult this link to request deletion in a way that establishes your identity (thus the authenticity of the request) in a way that isn't possible via use of a normal account (where anyone could claim to be you). Deletion requests that go through that channel have a better chance of success (though still no guarantee). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

{{adminhelp}}

Dear Administrator,

Once again I am writing to request your help in deleting the Biography of a Living Person about me. I initially made this request via my talk page in February. I also made the request by writing to the foundation administrators. Some of the administrators advised to wait and let uninvolved editors make improvements to the page. I have followed that approach. Since then, several people have made adjustments and improvement to fill in content. Earlier this month someone rearranged the headings and added content that filled in my professional background. A few days later, one of the regular editors of this page removed that information and described it as self promotion. Although I do not fully understand Wikipedia's editing standards, it seems that a biography of a living person should include information about the subject's work at all major employers, not just for one employer, particularly when the career spans more than 2 decades. I continue to wonder a biography about me should include detail about what happened while I worked at Butler but not include relevant detail about other institutions? Once again, this brings to light my concerns about monitoring this site for editing wars and the need to de-conflict the opinions of anonymous editors who are making changes to this page. So, I am repeating my respectful request for you to delete this article about me. Or, as an alternative let the professional biographical information be filled in so that it is more complete. Thanks you for your consideration. Jamie Comstock Academicjc (talk) 18:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Although I am not an administrator and cannot directly assist you in deleting the page, I did re-add good material that SanchoPanchez removed. I will work to make sure that SanchoPanchez realizes that he doesn't have ownership of the article. At the same time, I believe the incident with the blog is notable enough to leave in the article, so long as it is accompanied by other neutral information, such as a "Professional Biography". Athleek123 01:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your timely response to my concerns and to your balanced approach to editing. Academicjc (talk) 01:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome, and I will continue to watch the page for further changes to make sure the article remains neutral. Athleek123 01:50, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Regrettably, the editing issues continue, it seems by uninvolved editors. But, still they are now disputing the appropriateness of content that has gone untouched for over a month. On January 31, 2012 SanchoPanchez commented that he was fine with this article being deleted. So, I am hoping that we can all agree to just delete this page and let us all get on to more important matters. Please put this article up for deletion. Academicjc (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The changes that were made were minor. Yes, they are disputing the notability of certain details, but that is how Wikipedia works. Articles on celebrities or political figures might get changed thousands of times in one day, bringing up issues with content that hadn't been addressed before. On top of that, the person removing the unnotable content was an administrator, the same person who you are asking to delete the page. The removal of one sentence of unnotable material doesn't create a need to nominate the article via AfD. Also, just because SanchoPanchez agrees to delete the article, doesn't mean that it should be deleted. Resolving this dispute most likely will not end up in a compromise via AfD, but instead, the Wikipedia community will take the article into its own hands and continue to improve upon it by removing unnotable content and adding notable content. Thanks for your understanding, Athleek123 18:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your reply. I really need continued help. At the time you looked at the article, the changes may have been minor. But, now the content that you restored has been taken out again. Even mention of my being author of a blog has been removed (I didn't understand this deletion).

This dual involvement from editors is due to the fact that I wrote directly to JohnCD on his talk page asking for help. I did this because I had not gotten a reply to the admin help request I wrote at the first of June. After writing to John, I figured out what I had done wrong on my Admin Help request and it got posted. You replied quite quickly (which I apprecicate). Meanwhile, John received and graciously replied to my message on my talk page (see below). You will see my reply to him below, as well.

So, what I have are editors/administrators who disagree, which is not altogether surprising. But, it is a bit frustrating and leaves me not knowing what to do other than to continue to ask that this BLP be deleted. It highlights a four year period of my 25+ career and it focuses on one indicent during that four years. The account of that incident is sourced primarily by an essay, that is a personal interpretation of events and is more about the University than me. And, as I mention below (and one of the references also says) the University didn't sue a student. In addition to this inaccuracy, I didnt' step down in November.

I appreciate your encouragment to be patient. I truly do. But, this has been going on since last fall, even though I only became aware of it in January. Patience is difficult to muster when this BLP about me continues to include innacurate and incomplete information.

Based on comments on this talk page below, it seems that some think speedy deletion is not a viable option for me. So, I have to decide whether or not to continue to be patient with the editing process, post the article for proposed deletion, or write to the foundation via certified US mail. Do you have advice for me? Do you feel strongly enough about your initial re-enstatement of the material that fills in my professioinal biography to take that action again?

Thanks for your continued patience with me and for your consideration of this earnest request for help. Academicjc (talk) 02:57, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Reply to your message on my talk page

If you want to make a formal request for the deletion of the article, you should do so by email to the address given at Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Delete or undelete, from an email address associated with the University. This is because we cannot be certain that someone from an anonymous account is who they say they are.

The volunteers who deal with those emails may agree to start a deletion discussion, but deletion would only happen if such a discussion shows a consensus to do so, and I think that is unlikely - the senior positions you have held mean that you are not in the category of "relatively unknown, non-public figures" whose requests to delete their article will be considered.

I have to say that if you feel you are "still in the position to have to monitor the article daily", you have entirely the wrong view of Wikipedia. It is not a "notice-board" site like Myspace or Facebook, where people expect to monitor and control articles about them. The situation last January, with an ongoing edit-war, was disastrous; but that was stopped, and the history of the article since then looks to me like normal article development. It is a perhaps a matter of concern that Sanchopanchez (talk · contribs) is what we call an SPA - a single-purpose account who edits only this article; but so also are Jmugge (talk · contribs), who was on your staff, started the article and was part of the edit war, and more recently DS041198 (talk · contribs) who made a large addition written in what from Wikipedia's point of view are promotional terms, and Midwest456 (talk · contribs) who has surfaced today to restore material another user had removed. I notice that Sancho (who expressed in one of his earlier edit summaries a concern that the article should not be "an exercise in public relations") did not edit for nearly four months until DS041198's addition. Since then, some of the material has been restored, other (non-SPA) editors have become involved, and no doubt a compromise will be reached. Again, this is normal article development.

Overall, the history of this article seems to show steady attempts by SPAs, at least the first of whom was working for you, to build this up into something like a PR piece, resisted by Sanchopanchez, and moderated by uninvolved editors. Wikipedia is extremely resistant to being used for any kind of PR or promotion - just how resistant is hard to explain to people in the PR business, who find it impossible to avoid "puffery" and write in what we consider a neutral tone - and I think it likely that if Sancho had not been around, someone else would have done the same. Questions like the amount of material to include about your earlier career are normal content disputes, to be settle by discussion on the talk page, and do not require administrator intervention.

You ask: "Please do not let this "anonymous" editor continue to be in control of my public persona." He is not; but nor are you, or Jmugge, or DS041198. My advice is: stop worrying about the article; don't check it every day, or every month; don't expect it to look like an official biography - that is not what Wikipedia does. If any of your staff are editing it, tell them to stop. (If Jmugge had read the policy on WP:Conflict of interest, he would have been warned of Wikipedia's law of unintended consequences). If you or they have minor complaints or suggestions about it, raise them on the talk page. If you have a serious complaint, of course, ask me, or post another {{adminhelp}} (not {{tlx|adminhelp}}, that's why the last one went unanswered).

I am afraid you may not find this reply satisfactory, but I am not "Wikipedia"; I will ask Drmies (talk · contribs), an experienced administrator who has been involved with the article, to read your message to me and this reply. and add anything s/he thinks may be helpful.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 20:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• John, I think you covered all the bases. I can only reiterate that Wikipedia is not to be used for promotional purposes, nor for its opposite. (Note: I wrote my answer before I realized what "Academicjc" meant--so don't take offense at my neutrality.) When I looked into the article, many moons ago, it seemed to me that this person was of marginal notability (according to our guidelines, such as WP:GNG and WP:PROF). For a professor/scholar, despite claims like "she is an active scholar", which are more appropriate in a tenure application than in an encyclopedic article, I don't see any evidence of notability per PROF at all, and notability (for our purposes) comes mainly from the scandal. It's in that regard that an argument for deletion can be made--WP:BLP1E could be invoked, and WP:UNDUE could be used to argue that the best verified content is negative and that therefore the article can be deleted. (If I sound tentative it is because I am working from memory and because deletion is often a judgment call reached via editors' consensus--and because, like John, I am not "Wikipedia".) What I can categorically say is this: in its current form, the article cannot stand. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 21:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

John and Drmies, Thank you for your reply. I learned the hard way, that it is important to "google" myself about once per month. So, I do that, and when I do, I check the activity on this BLP about me. I also check if some one sends me an email that it has substantially changed. I do not have it tagged for monitoring for all the reasons John explains. With that said, I would appreciate it you were a bit more empathic. You know my identity, which puts you at an advantage. But, I am guessing that neither one of you are subjects of a BLP and that you do not know what it is like to have a person with a grudge against editing your BLP. It is unsettling, particularly during times of professional transition. Please understand.

Now, let me first clarify that John Mugge has not reported to me since Jan 1, 2012. I do not believe that he has been involved in any of the editing of this article for months. As I have previously stated, I was not even aware of the editing wars until after the first of the year because John did not tell me about it. I had serious family conerns related to my father's health(he has sinced died) and John thought he was helping me by keeping this BLP situation from me. He may have naively posted the initial content and then, participated in the editing, but he was a Wikipedia novice, and meant no harm to me or to the Wikipedia orgainzation. I have had virtually no contact with him in months and would be surprised to learn that he would have taken up editing of this article. To his credit, when he initially posted the article he used his own name, not having any idea that his involvement would be questioned.

I am not interested in using Wikidpedia for promotional purposes and, as you know, as soon as I was made aware of this situation in January, I asked that the article be removed. I am embarassed by this show of attention and, frankly, concerned that some of the folks editing this article either obvioulsy hold a gudge against me or are trying to help me, and it is backfiring.

As the record shows, I am still asking that the article be deleted or that, in the very least, the content fairly represent my 25+ year career. Highlighting only what happened at Butler does not provide an objective biography of my professional life to this point. So, I am surprised that Driems undid what other uninvolved editors had restored. I believe this is unfair to me.

The "scandal" (as Drmies labeled it)was "complicated" by personnel and FERPA issues and the Watts essay does not provide an unbiased or accurate account of the incident. The Watts essay is a personal reflection of the incident based on his interpretation of the information available to him, which was incomplete. Some of the uninvolved editors seemed to realize this, early on. But, the article is still being used as a source.

If the student blogger incident is to be mentioned at all, it seems that it belongs in an article about Butler, not in an article about me, as other uninvoled editors have argued. Also, for the record, Butler did not sue a student. The University filed a "John Doe" lawsuit to obtain the identify of the an annymous blogger who turned out to be a student. So, this part of the BLP about me is not accurate. But, I wouldn't expect uninvolved editors to know that, given references Sanchopanchez provided.

Also, I find it ironic that this BLP about me mentions that, while I was Provost, the University gained national attention for this student blogging incident -- when also while I was provost, the university actually did gain national attention for having a men's basketball team that did back-to-back final four runs. The attention -- which was astronomical -- was focused on a mid-major university, with high academic standards, also having a successful athletic program. I was interviewed by print and broadcast outlets about how we maintained the academic-athletic balance. This is just one -- albiet the biggest -- other event that happened at Butler while I was provost. So, I continue to be preplexed about why some wikipedia editors think the couple of articles about this blogging incident are so notworthy, particularly in a BLP about me, when I was not a source in any of the articles and only mentioned because the blog happened to be critical of me, along with many others.

With that said....my question is ....what do I do now? I am trying to keep this all in perspective. But, the truth is that I know Sanchopanchez's identity and he knows that I know it, as he emailed directly with John Mugge back at the beginning of the year. Given the interest he shows, however, his identity is probably obvious to you as well.

I am truly learning as I go along here and simply do not know how to proceed. What I wish is that this article about me was never posted. Since we can't undo that, I am, once again, asking that it be deleted. It contains inaccurate, incomplete information about me and as a result is damaging to me. And, it has more negatively biased now than before, due to today's editing. To me this is grounds for a "speedy deletion".

Please help me by deleting this article about me. Thank you. Can you do a speedy deletion? Please advise. Academicjc (talk) 01:25, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• There is no possibility of speedy deletion; the proper route to request deletion has been pointed out above by JohnCD. As for tone and content--no, I don't have an article, but I am in fact a tenured professor so I know a little bit about this topic. Moreover, I've made a few edits here on Wikipedia and created a couple of article, including a few on academics. You may feel that the "scandal" belongs in the Butler article, but it has your name all over it. What you don't seem to appreciate is that one particular aspect of this biography was covered in reliable sources (independent of you and the institution you worked for) and the other aspects, which undoubtedly are much more important to you (and probably to many others) are not. In this project, we have to go by what reliable sources offer us, especially in BLPs. That you don't agree with my edits, well, I'm sorry to hear that, and that other editors made different edits and let certain things stand is not my responsibility: my job is to write and edit these articles according to our guidelines. Good luck, Drmies (talk) 04:15, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Drmies asked me to comment about the notability of JC. Acting president is not president -- it might if it were a substantial tenure as such, but this appears not to have been the case & so she does not automatically meet WP:PROF as president. We do not automatically regard provosts as notable, though in some universities they are-- it's a matter for individual decisions. I doubt it would be so considered here. The next question is whether the subject is notable under the other provisions of WP:PROF, for example by academic publications. I need to find a CV for that. I will look in the next few days.

The legal case is in fact an important one and has available very adequate references, beyond those listed in the article--see the material cited in ref 5. It would be appropriate content within the university article & I shall add it. (That article needs a good deal of work--it's basically outdated PR), JC was indeed involved, but I would certainly not include her name, as she is not central to the encyclopedic interest of the issue, which is the university action against the student, not which academic officers initiated it--and if anyone wants details, they can easily enough be found in the references. (I feel I must respond to one specific question about accuracy. As I read the sources, I think it clear the university did sue the student--that it may have done so in order to justify a subpoena for the bloggers name in order to pursue its own disciplinary action, rather than actually proceed to court, would appear to me to make the matter even more troublesome, as an unjustifiable use of legal process.) I'm not sure the case warrants a separate article on it; it would however warrant a redirect to the section in the university article when I write it. If JC is notable otherwise, in the article on her I probably would regard this matter as excessive weight—though apparently Drmies may not agree with me. In that connection, I note JC was acting in a public role & the sources are reliable, so at most it would need deletion, not oversight.

I regret we have no way to remove the article--if indeed removal is justified, except an afd, which will unfortunately just increase publicity here. This might be one reason to try to see if there is other notability; if so, and Drmies agrees about the relevance of this material, the article can be protected against changes by people coming here just for that purpose, for whatever time is necessary (I should mention that I am still a year later dealing with the aftermath of another case--a much more troublesome one, since the charges against the individual, though published by RSs, appeared not to be true. DGG ( talk ) 05:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much to you, Drmies and DGG, for taking the time to respond to my questions, concerns and comments. Aside from the talk you see here, I am a Wikipedia novice and am learning a lot about appropriate processes through your willingness to interact with me and from reading the policy sections you suggest to me.

I have a couple of remaining questions. (1) Concerning mention of the blog -- I thought I read that for a BLP sources authored by subject of the BLP can be referenced and used. So, I am not sure why reference to my professional blog: Advancing the Higher Education Agenda is inappropriate. (2)Some of the information that was deleted was supported by news paper articles in reputable papers, which seems like what would constitue a reliable source. Could that information be re-added without objection? (3) How do we address the concern that the "professional biography" section of the of the article mentions only Butler, and not any detail about the other institutions at which I worked? It seems that your concern about including this information was that it was supported by "internal sources". But, not all of it was. So, again, it seems that the information supported by external sources should be allowed to stand.

Regarding the request for deletion guidelines: I appreciate you directing me to the links which provide information about this. Last February I wrote to the info-media e-mail address. Because that message was private, I could include much more information than I can in this public forum. After more than a month got a kind and helpful reply that provided me several options. I opted to wait to see for a while, actually being afraid to start the current type of editing that we are involved in now. It may be time for me to select a different option.

Much of the background of the blogging incident is not suitable content for this forum, given the personnel issues involved. However, there is one thing I can say at for sure is that the university did not sue the student, despite how confusing the article on this topic may be. It didn't happen. Also, this incident may "have my name all over it" because I was criticized by the blogger, because I was Provost at the time, or because Watts mentioned my name in his article. But, that doesn't mean that I supported the university action on this matter. That link can not be supported by the sources provided. My last request is that you please give this some consideration.

Once again, I thank you for providing to me some suggestions that regarding how to proceed. And, I thank you for your service to Wikipedia. I may be frustrated because I am just learning how to navigate this system and because of my obvious concern about the content of this BLP about me, but I also am grateful for the time you have invested in helping me. I would appreciate your response to this last set of questions so that I know how to proceed.

I also have asked for help from another editor -- the one who re-instated the content about my professional backgroun, as the talk page will show. My hope is to use the collective guidance and advice to find the best way to proceed. Thanks very much. Academicjc (talk) 16:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)