Hi! Talk to me!--USEPA James (talk) 21:17, 14 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Username edit

Hi. When did you ask for advise on your name on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names? Could you give me a link to the page in the history as they don't seem to be archived anywhere. Someone has asked that you get blocked under the username policy and I'm trying to get a sense of the history. Thanks Secretlondon (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for bringing this up here, Secretlondon. I have provided the information you request on my user page since pretty much Day One. The link to Beeblebrox is the one you'll be interested in, I think. I have to say I am fascinated by this crackdown on me instigated, I believe, by an editor who has considered me "the enemy" since I first showed up here on 22 June 2011. Let me know if you have additional concerns or questions. USEPA James (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
This is preposterous - I didn't have anything to do with this Gandydancer (talk) 10:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the clarification. It was wrong of me to assume you could have anything to do with a gaggle of COI accusations that popped up all the sudden. USEPA James (talk) 12:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
The drama surrounding a complaint about my User name has apparently been resolved. [[1]] Thanks to bobrayner for this exquisite response:

The name makes it clear that this is an account with ties to a particular organisation (USEPA) but that it's controlled by one individual (James). It provides all the imformation that we could realistically expect from an account-name. If the villagers expect an editor to wear a COI bell around their neck as they walk around the village, so that everybody will recognise the affliction from afar, will the village council now punish the editor for noise pollution? bobrayner (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

USEPA James (talk) 15:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hello James - I see you have been very successful with your ability to give a balanced and unbiased account of Clothianidin. Right now Imidacloprid and Imidacloprid and bees is filled with half truths and disinformation. Can you help me edit these and get the balanced factual information put on here. This material is very important to trees (most which are not bee pollinated) and wikipedia is having a negative effect on peoples viewpoints of the product. Thank you tcprosser

Thank you for your comments. While I would like to help improve other Wikipedia articles, there is only so much time anyone can devote to this kind of work. I am currently focused on clothianidin, which has for a while now been under "advocate control." And, as you know, am defending myself against a startling number of accusations from advocate editors who disapprove of my presence and everything I do here. Should this situation change (and I hope it does), I would be happy to see what can be done on the imidacloprid page. USEPA James (talk) 19:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
Related to this, you might like to look at WP:MEDCOI, which addresses this sort of username. (Someday we might even get this fairly common practice described in the main policies.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

MEDRS edit

About your comments at the Manual of Style/Chemistry pages: WP:MEDRS is not the same page as WP:MEDMOS. You might want to correct your links to reduce confusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I'm afraid I assumed that WP:MEDRS is appended to WP:MEDMOS, so used MEDMOS to refer to (what I thought was) everything under it. I'll be more careful to make the distinction in future. USEPA James (talk) 17:57, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
It's easy to get confused. The English Wikipedia is extremely complicated, and it probably doesn't help when the "old hands" rely so heavily on very similar initialisms in everyday chat. There are a few (like CITESELF vs SELFCITE, which until last month pointed to very different pages) that I have to go look up every time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Past involvement in pesticides edit

Hi James, would you please say whether or not you have been involved in any decisions which could bias your opinions on the neonicitinoid pesticides or present an appearance of impropriety; in particular, have you been involved in decisions or publications which might be considered discredited if a link between those pesticides and bee colony collapse disorder is proven? 66.225.195.47 (talk) 23:08, 8 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

As you were previously told at the WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard, working for the EPA does not constitute a conflict of interest in Wikipedia's terms. Unlike what you may be used to in the real world, simply having a close connection to a subject is not a conflict of interest on the English Wikipedia. To violate the WP:COI guideline here, you have to be actually (1) harming Wikipedia (2) for the purpose of helping yourself in the real world. Both conditions must be fulfilled to have a violation, and in this case, it appears that neither condition is fulfilled: Disagreeing with you about these chemicals does not constitute harming Wikipedia, and the idea that someone's career depends on what Wikipedia says about these chemicals is silly.
If you have concerns about the content dispute, then you need to pursue it as a content dispute, which means requesting help at the WP:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard and being willing to accept the answer you're given there even if you don't like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 9 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
I'm not suggesting that working for the EPA constitutes a conflict of interest, but I've been watching this unfold, and if you haven't taken a close look at what's been happening, you should. An answer to my question would resolve my questions about the specific conditions you've described. If the question is inappropriate, let me know why and I'll withdraw it, but if not, I think it deserves an answer. 66.225.195.47 (talk) 02:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Fixed your talk page archiving edit

Hi! I took the liberty of fixing the auto-archiving settings at the top of this page. --rchard2scout (talk) 12:57, 6 September 2021 (UTC)Reply