Talk:Barry Wellman

message: This needs a serious edit from someone not connected to the subject!  Is he making his students maintain this?  This bio is longer than Merton's-one of the most important personalities in sociology.  It's also longer than Don Tapscott's-the researcher from Toronto who really is the most public figure in internet studies.
:I wouldn't call tapscott a researcher in internet studies, he is more of a writer that relies on research, there's a difference.  I also wouldn't call him most public, i'd call him relatively well known, but generally over-cited, but such is life.   as for the merton and tapscott articles, please spend some time improving them, k, thanks.--Buridan (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: hmm nope sorry, quality and verifiability trump coi in my book and i bet most people's.  we have documented, verifiable material here of substantive quality and that seems to be generally agreed.  thank you for playing. --Buridan (talk) 22:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Many of the references in this article are to websites either managed by Wellman or organizations he is connected to. Should we question the reliability of these? --MultimediaGuru (talk) 17:24, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Why bother? Wellman is about as notable as an academic can get, and that--at least in my opinion--makes whatever is posted on his website pretty reliable.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality of References 

message: I second (or third, or fourth) the remark that this article is absurdly promotional and needs extensive revision by someone who is not connected to the subject. The article's past editors should refer to WP:COI, and expert editors who review the article should be skeptical of the neutrality of the article's routine editors. This article's current state is a travesty in view of Wikipedia's policies on neutrality. Readers cannot and should not rely on it to provide NPOV information on the subject. Antiselfpromotion (talk) 18:06, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've edited this article, and I'm not connected to Barry Wellman. He's an important academic, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, no less. Your edit summary on the article page seems to be an attempt to "out" another editor. Let me suggest that you not do that again. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 18:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I had believed that his and his friends' extensive editing of this article was public knowledge but later noticed that you and others have attempted to keep specific conflicts private in the past. Thus, I have already contacted Oversight and requested that my comment in question be deleted. I continue to object to the editing of this page by people with conflicts. I am not questioning the subject's notability, but the article is windy and of dubious value as currently written; I am however certain that if I attempted to address the problems myself, I would meet opposition from those with significant conflicts who have a personal interest in inflating the subject's reputation. Wikipedia's own reputation suffers because of the influence of editors like many of those who are responsible for this page. Like the promotional article for Danah Boyd, which has also been edited and defended by Belagio99, it reflects very poorly on Wikipedia. Antiselfpromotion (talk) 18:54, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right that self-promotion is a huge problem here--anyone edits, and administrators are over-stretched and can't really push the self-promoters back. Where you are wrong is that Wellman is an egregious case. I'm an academic economist, and Wellman is a sociologist, but even I have read some of his papers and even I have interacted with plenty of people who know him. He's that well-known. The more complete his article, the better. Danah Boyd, on the other hand, is someone outside of my ken. Let me add that I've noticed that you are going after other articles related to Wellman, and I would advise you to broaden your interests a bit.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 22:30, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have nothing against Prof Wellman personally, and my other edits were aiming to correct the same problem as the one underlying this article. I will not pursue them further, to avoid the appearance of bias, but I earnestly wish that Prof Wellman himself would adhere to that same standard. I do not know whether this article is an egregious case of self-promotion compared to other examples of it, but the resultant article here is more of a CV than an encyclopedia entry. I am not claiming Wellman is undeserving of any academic reputation he has earned; I am instead claiming that the article about him needs to be guided by a purpose other than to highlight that reputation for his own satisfaction or that of people who know him. If his reputation is sound, the article should be able to survive without such a firm guiding hand from him and his close associates. Given that you are an economist, compare the entry for Roy Harrod with this one. I am personally inclined to think the length there is more appropriate given the relative general encyclopedic importance of the subject, but length is not even the main issue. Compare the modesty and fairness of that entry with this one. To take an example from within sociology, the article on Robert K. Merton is longer, but it is fairer and more appropriately modest in context for someone whose academic significance is, after all, orders of magnitude greater than that of Prof Wellman. The 'concepts' discussed in the introduction to Merton's article are known to the public and have influenced the course of academia outside Merton's particular field. The citations in Wellman's article do not even begin to demonstrate that he is known, or that the 'concepts' claimed to be associated with him have had significance, to nearly the same degree. I do not doubt he is a moderately well-known academic, particularly in his field. As I wrote previously, I am not questioning notability here, only emphasis, style and particular choice of content. The conflicts themselves, moreover, are embarrassing and reflect poorly on the process by which the article was built. Antiselfpromotion (talk) 23:38, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Socialism wanted everyone to be equal, and made everyone equally poor. To say that Wellman should have an article of the same quality as Roy Harrod might be correct, but the way to rectify the imbalance would be to make the Harrod article fuller, not the Wellman article thinner. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 01:44, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Or simply to follow Wikipedia editing policies and rewrite this one from a neutral point of view, avoiding undue weight to some of the topics therein. The alternative is to allow a personal CV to stand in the place of an encyclopedia article. Regrettably, I do not think proper editing is possible until those without conflicts of interest, including the subject himself, refrain from editing the article. To make one minor but concrete suggestion, a proper editor would start by removing the third paragraph in the introduction: the various minor professional awards are not notable, and the subject's membership in the Royal Society already, even at this early stage in the article, has been stated with due concision. Antiselfpromotion (talk) 01:58, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds reasonable. If you show respect for the work other people have already done here, probably no one will object to your edits. Would just recommend that it is better to rewrite than to delete... --Anthon.Eff (talk) 02:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

text:   And comments like "I am instead claiming that the article about him needs to be guided by a purpose other than to highlight that reputation for his own satisfaction or that of people who know him." are verging on libel - I venture a guess that you have no actual knowledge of what purpose people editing this article have in doing so, so I would strongly second the recommendation that you step back.  Also, please keep in mind that Talk pages are also subject to BLP restrictions.   Tvoz/talk 07:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  That is a distortion, and I believe you are either misconstruing my remarks or misunderstanding the BLP policies and the legal nature of libel. My argument is about the purpose that ought to guide the page, one that is entirely consistent with, and indeed required by, Wikipedia's policies. The relevant conflicts of interest themselves are available for anyone to discover by reviewing the history of this article and its Talk page. By the way, nobody suggested that I step back: I offered to do so myself to avoid even the appearance of conflict or bias. Many editors who have worked on this page are not as disinterested, and that is a matter of public record manifestly evident from the history and in some cases through outright admission; it is not an attempt to offer new information or to 'out' anyone in particular. Please do not level accusations of libel without informing yourself appropriately. Antiselfpromotion (talk) 09:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The recommendation that I was seconding was from Anthony.Eff above who said "I would advise you to broaden your interests a bit" which I read as a suggestion to step back.  I certainly may have missed where you made that offer - so if that's the case, my seconding was unnecessary, and I'm glad to hear it. As for libel, I said "verging on", meaning approaching or at the brink of libel - not a legal argument, just an observation: Imputing motives to other editors can be dangerous territory - and not in keeping with BLP policy when you're talking about the subject of a biographical article.  Cheers Tvoz/talk 19:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Promotional, windy, and of dubious value 

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thread_title:  Unidentified Acronym (ICT) 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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