Medidog1951

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Introduction edit

Latest comment: 8 years ago12 comments2 people in discussion

Hi, I'm a 65 year old free-lance editor on scientific subjects for numerous media outlets and I'm based in Germany. My field of expertise is in media (broadcast and print), environment, science, technology and aeronautics. I'm an active member of the IFJ (International Federation of Journalists) and mentor to young colleagues starting in the field. If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know here, though I do not check this frequently.

Thank you.

--Medidog1951 (talk) 23:59, 20 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Medidog. All your edits to date are about Tim van Beveren ‎and his movie, and you became active just as the article was unlocked (it had been locked due to an edit war), and you made extensive changes to the article without discussion, which is just prone to set things off again, so I reverted them. The changes were fairly sophisticated yet your account is brand new. So...

Please state your relationship to existing account holders who have been working on the article (please see WP:SOCK), and please describe your relationship with Tim van Beveren. Thanks. btw I am giving you notice of our conflict of interest guideline. You can reply here, below the notice. I am watching this page.

Hello, Medidog1951. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 01:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hello Jytdog,

funny, we both have dogs at our ends. :-)

Seems that Mr van Beveren has become a hot subject here, - which was to be expected.

No, I have no affiliation with him, I just saw his film on Monday night in a movie theatre in Berlin and attended the discussion afterwards. I have to say it is a great piece of very balanced and proper journalistic work, something you do not see very often these days, especially not in our trash TV. Therefore I decided to watch it again yesterday and then start editing on the article, which apparently has been under some scrutiny and unjustified fire, now that I know what it is all about. I have to say that I’m quite puzzled how some editors here are changing wordings without having any clue about this film nor have they seen it.

I happen to follow the subject of contaminated cabin air for some time, as it has become quite an issue in Germany lately and as a politically mature citizen I still read the papers and know how to conduct research on my pc. Just last Monday the biggest Union (ver.di which would compare to “Unite” in the UK) did release a statement on the latest medical-scientific findings. I have seen the entries here and studied the articles in preparation of the viewing and noticed that this part has not been reflected yet. Also my elderly brother happens to be a former partner of a big law firm in good old Britain and I had a 1 hr telephone conversation were he explained to me these Coroner specifics in the UK. The notice of this Coroner is quite a powerful official document, isn’t it? Is there anything wrong with that? If so, please tell me.

And having been around here before, I believe I am quite familiar with your self-imposed code of ethics, which unfortunately sometimes is imposed quite "over the edge" by some bustling “wanna-be editors“ who seem to consider themselves to be the watchdog of thruth and wisdom, but in fact have no clue what they are talking or writing about. This sometimes reminds me on a book I have to read to my grandchildren. It’s written by Astrid Lindgren and called Pippi Longstocking. The main character (a little girl) sings a song with the following lines: “two by three is four, widdewiddewit and three makes niner!! I will change the world, widdewiddewit into how I like it.” - Hope you get my drift. If not it must definitely be the translation.

Well, take that from someone who has been writing about all sorts of subjects for almost his entire life, including books and lectures and now enjoys his retirement and playing with his grandkids.

Any questions? Go ahead. --Medidog1951 (talk) 04:14, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your reply. Your story makes sense, and I appreciate you telling it. In general it is great to be WP:BOLD in Wikipedia, but the situation we have at the article about the movie is very bad right now. We have someone here who claims to be representing van Beveren (yes) and we have a retired air safety guy who believes this syndrome is a bunch of bunk, and they have been going at it like crazy. Neither of them are experienced editors; neither of them understands our sourcing policies and guidelines, nor our guidelines for behavior. As I mentioned the article was locked because they were reverting each other (like you and I are doing now) instead of talking on the talk page, calmly, based on Wikipedia's actual policies and guidelines, and I have been trying to use that time to get them both to calm down and to orient them to how we actually do things. I am asking the same of you. Please do not be bold and make changes right now or you are very likely to set off the war again. Can you please do that? One of the things we say here is that there is no deadline and it is way more important right now that we avoid drama so we can work constructively together to improve the article.

If you like I can give you some guidance as to the relevant policies and guidelines so when we start working on the article, your work can be well grounded. May I provide that to you? Jytdog (talk) 04:24, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dear Jydog.

I really don't care about edit wars here. I do care about the misrepresentation of facts. The edit war, as I see it, was about an article about "aerotoxic syndrome" and not the film, which is a total different story though somehow related, as they deal with the same subject. But what applies to one article must not necessary apply to another, especially if it is another "sujet" as it is here. I do NOT appreciate your changes, as this version - you reverted it to - is simply a disgrace and all these changes made by one editor have nothing to do with this film.

Yes, it seems that someone believes that this is all some mind bugging invention of martinas, but I believe we can make the nice diplomatic statement: apparently it is not! This s about a film and as such it is factual (the film- not necessarily its plot) So, I was editing the film article which I believe I may do after I have seen the film twice now from a quite objective viewpoint and I was trying to bring it into shape. So PLEASE DO NOT interfere with that as I hate to do the work more than twice and please undo your changes yourself. I do not want to start an edit war here at all, but I have no problem to discuss this with those who make the changes themselves and not hurting ahead of others. Your kind support is highly appreciated. Thank you very much. --Medidog1951 (talk) 04:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hm. OK well it is time for Wikipedia 101. Above all we are community of editors. You have to care about working with other editors, or you do not belong here. Wikipedia has several pillars and first among them is WP:CONSENSUS. We take working with others and playing well with others very seriously here. We also take editing per the policies and guidelines seriously. If everybody ignored them this place would be a Mad Max world, and it is not. Editing carefully per the policies and guidelines is even more important on controversial articles, and you have decided to make your initial entree into WP directly into a hot and messy dispute. Which is pretty unwise. People stumble into things like all that time - it happens, but I am trying to give you a heads up and warn you here, so you can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. And really - if you continue charging ahead you are going to end up blocked and if you keep on after that you will get banned. Seriously. Please slow down and learn how things work. Jytdog (talk) 04:43, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dear Jydog. I'm very relaxed, but I still have a quick mind. I just don't see how you would like to achieve a consensus among some editors who have no clue what this film is about as apparently they have not seen it?! Come on, this is totally out of proportions. And I honestly believe it is not in the best interest of this Encyclopedia if people who do not know the subject, such as in this case something very visible (to those who had the opportunity to see it yet) to mix up factual information, because they believe they don't like it or do not believe it. I think this responsibility bears with the original editors. If people here would edit what they are capable of editing (such as for example an article about a book, a historic event that they did research, a topic that falls within their personal expertise and so on: all fine. But you can never get a consent among people on different parts of the world with different access to the subject at hand. So again, I consider that I made my point and I kindly ask you again to refrain from making inappropriate edits in this article, - or have you seen the film - we are talking about, yet? Well, I have and apparently another editor also, but yes I agree this article was not optimal yet. therefore I took the time and started working on it as I am used to.

--Medidog1951 (talk) 04:59, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dear Jytdog, referring to what I wrote previously I consider our discussion to conclude that we agree that you will kindly revet the article to my last editing state so I can continue to work on it? Your acknowledgement will be highly appreciated.

--Medidog1951 (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

What you write about the consensus policy is counter to everything that we stand for here, and I am disturbed that you seem to have no concern for the relevant sourcing guidelines and policies, nor the very high likelihood that you are going to set off the edit war again. Please do respond to the following - you have written a couple of times that you have been around WP for a long time. Under what user names have you edited? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 05:19, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dear Jytog, you are obviously referring to articles about scientific subjects, politics, persons, definitions. Please read a few articles about movies and you will see that because of the nature of such artwork it is not possible that everybody volunteering here can make the same kind of contribution, especially if he doesn't know the subject. This is different when a film is released as DVD or VoD or on TV. Thereby a much broader group of editors can work on it as they are "on the same page". This seems to be the major obstacle here.

I have noticed that the film is soon to be released in the UK which may make it a bit easier, as probably 1. more English native editors may see it, 2. media may pick it up in their reporting and other references will become available. But I'm simply convinced that it is of no value at all if people get involved into disputes about subjects that they do not know. Very simple. Has nothing to do with wiki policies. So far you have not made any valuable point nor raised any valuable argument as to the subject and the changes that I did to the article and that you took the freedom to revert to another state. All you were concerned about is an "edit war" with somebody else that may be set off again, and that this individual - when I go through the article history started. The wording on talk pages about the subject is quite aggressive by this editor and not much reflected. We may also start a discussion here if the moon circles the earth or the earth the moon and with contributors like this we may end up the we are the center and everything rotates around the earth. So, excuse me? An probably imminent "edit war" does give you the right to revert an article into a state of misrepresented facts and defamatory wording which has nothing to do with the subject at hand? Well son, I don't think this is appropriate, neither at Wiki nor in the outside world. But I you feel this is right, why don't you take the entire article offline then?

BTW: I think you know quite well that there is no requirement whatsoever for anybody here to disclose identities. What are you? Thought police? Did we travel back in time accidentally to 1984? --Medidog1951 (talk) 05:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

We have a policy against being here under more than one account. See WP:SOCK. I asked if you have had other accounts. I have not asked for your real world identity, and I never would do that. Jytdog (talk) 06:13, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Standing ovations! I think we got one of the authors to the stage that he is fed up with Wiki and did take the article off. Not nice, but I can understand his motivation. I will try and contact him in German. But have in mind: you have made changes that are not warranted at all out of a "precautionary mind" fearing an "edit war". Well, I have to conclude: seems it is a waist of time here. The quality of wiki articles and the attitude here has overall deteriorated. A pitty but on the other hand: wiki just entered puberty.

--Medidog1951 (talk) 06:58, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

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