Talk:Smile Train

message: Notice that none of the references added for this edit, which added the list of Special Ambassadors is actually a functioning reference.  In other words, the list is completely unreferenced.  Either the references need to be fixed or the list needs to be removed. 842U (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Special Ambassadors

message: The majority of recent editors to the article fit this pattern: they show up, expand the article greatly in a pro-Smile Train fashion, make no remarks when making their edits, make no other edits to any other article, and then disappear without responding to comments on their talk pages.  Are these sockpuppets?  Here is a list of editors who fit the profile: 
1975athomas, Buddha29, Sharonwestwoods, Smiller44, Whalenkis, Jhmumford, and Thesmiletrain.  What gives? 842U (talk) 21:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Editor credibility

message: I made several changes to the Richmond Times section. This headline should not be bolder than the others. It should be the same font as all of the others. Also, it was not a "campaign," it was simply one ad. So this title should now simply be Richmond Times. To change the headline back, please find proof of a campaign. Additionally, I added the American Insitute of Philanthropy ratings as they were also in this article and are relevant to this section. Should you choose to remove this, please justify. Additionally, Bill Magee refused to respond so I corrected that part. The organization itself responded. To recent users who have made changes, please also be sure to note your possible conflict of interest before making edits. 923Y  —Preceding undated comment added 22:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI, the fonts for headings and sub-headings are chosen automatically, by the software; they are not user controlled.  As a subheading of a category, the font is darker but slightly smaller, and without the underlining.  You can see this feature on this page... for example "Special Ambassadors."  I've added a reference with quotation, which you can see in the footnotes, pointing out the sentence in the article with Mullaney's intention to run the ad more than once, hence he has "initiated a campaign".  The article states Magee "declined an interview," the article has been amended accordingly. Heads up: the two sentences (starting with "The American Institute of Philanthropy guide gave Smile Train a B-) are lifted directly from the Virginian Pilot article, verbatim. As examples of cut and paste plagiarism, they were removed. The info can be either rewritten or attributed as a direct quotation and reintroduced (better in the finances section?). 842U (talk) 02:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Finances and Richmond Times

message: Claims of the number of surgeries performed by Train rely on a reference to a Frekonomics blog post by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.  However Levitt notes that he is a historic supporter of train and refers to an earlier post in the same blog.  In that post, Levitt mentions spending an evening with Train where he supposedly learned of the claims by Train.  These claims may well be acurate and true but how are we to know when they are relayed by a Train supporter who learned them from Train itself.  This citation might as well cite Train's website itself.  I think the claims should be reworded to say "Train claims. . ."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kydp (talk • contribs) 17:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: References for Claims

message: I've removed the field of flags from the article.  It seems like it would be a headache to constantly maintain, and conceptually it doesn't inherently add any more info than saying "more than 80 countries". - Here Under The Oaks (talk) 14:27, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flags 

message: The org's logo doesn't say "The" Smile Train any more, just "Smile Train".  What's the proper way to update that? -- 75.151.145.57 (talk) 00:31, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logo outdated 

message: There was a "criticism" section here a long time ago, which seems to have been removed. I'm placing criticism here in Talk for future reference:
Charity Watch has questioned some of the company's financial claims, also criticizing the $420,209 compensation package of Smile Train's President & Co-Founder, Brian Mullaney.[30]. Although the charity responded that "100% of Mr. Mullaney's compensation, benefits and all travel expenses are paid for from the temporary restricted funds set up by the founding board members to cover overhead and fundraising (non program) expenses," Charity Watch asked: "How can 100% of his salary be paid for by a fund that is restricted for only non-program expenses? All else aside, if Mullaney's compensation were lower, then more of the temporarily restricted funds could be available for other expenses."
Charity Watch's criticism goes on to say: "Money is fungible, regardless of its source; what is spent on one function is not available for another function. The bottom line is that more donations could go toward treating children with cleft palates if the charity were operating more efficiently, regardless of whether or not some donors earmarked their donations for overhead."
Further criticism appeared in an article in The Examiner (June 25, 2009), entitled "Smile Train's tactics with Oprah, financials raise serious questions."
Givewell.org expressed concern on the company's lack of transparency and accountability, stating: "We do not have the information we would need to be confident in the effectiveness of Smile Train's programs, particularly regarding quality control of surgeries and education in the developing world. We also do not have a clear breakdown of how funding is spent by program (as over 30% of program expenses are spent on a program that we can't identify a description for)."http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/Smile-Train
Charang1 (talk) 05:22, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Criticism is allowed, but copy and pasting from other sources is not. Make sure it is written "in your own words" then put it back in the article. --Marianian(talk) 23:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism Not Allowed? 

message: I made a few minor improvements to the article and added a COI template to this talk page, which discloses that I am working for Smile Train via Glover Park Group as part of my work at Beutler Ink. Here is a diff displaying the changes I made to the article (no major content changes). I added two relevant categories, corrected the company's name once by adding a space, corrected linking to New York City in the infobox (and removed the logo width command), corrected the spelling (punctuation) of "Washington, D.C.", formatted references, and changed the tense of one sentence. Please let me know if you have any concerns about these changes to the article. Thanks! -Inkian Jason (talk) 18:39, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent improvements 

message: On behalf of Smile Train, I have another request for an update the article. I would like to request the addition of two pieces of information to the article's "History" section. 
Currently, the article does not mention World Journal of Surgery 2016 independent study, which was conducted using data from Smile Train patient records. I have proposed an addition to the article, with formatted referencing, below:
Also, I would like to request an addition regarding Brian Mullaney's departure from the organization in 2010. In order to keep the article in chronological order, I think this text would be best placed in the "History" section, between the 2008 Pan African Anaesthesia Symposium and the 2014 "The Power of a Smile" campaign. Please see the following proposed text along with formatted references:
I am open to different wording if you have any suggestions. Thank you for your consideration. SM at Smile Train (talk) 14:28, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Effectiveness paragraph with citation added as written. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:49, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

text: The endless palace intrigue between the out of touch board versus the domineering executive (depending on which side you take) is the nature of the governance of most non-profits. I'm uncomfortable from a false light/WP:BLP perspective with including such mudslinging when it falls short of criminal charges. Feel free to resubmit that one separately though if you want to get another editor's take. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:49, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:   Thank you for taking time to review this request. I understand your concern and am open to other wording: I’d included the explanation for the management changes thinking that editors would prefer this detail, but the main point I’m seeking to add is that Mullaney departed from the organization. There are many articles discussing the relationship between Mullaney and Smile Train, so I am just trying to update the article to address his departure as part of the company's general history. SM at Smile Train (talk) 18:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request re: additions to History  

message: On behalf of Smile Train, I'd like to propose one correction to the article's "Partnerships and supporters" section. Currently, the article reads, "... through these local partnerships, the organization is able to provide free surgery for children any day of the year, with more than 120,000 surgeries each year."
However, I propose the following text instead: 
This language follows the source, which is already used in the article. In other words, the source no longer verifies the current article's claim, so the language should be updated accordingly. (No change to the inline citation is required.) 
Again, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I appreciate your assistance in advance. SM at Smile Train (talk) 14:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: , reworded and updated. (Traditionally I do rewordings as "done" but, based on the conversation above, maybe that's the custom on this article.) RevelationDirect (talk) 23:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:   Thank you for responding to my request. I appreciate your time and willingness to help. Would you mind updating the above template by changing "requested edit" to "requested edit|P" to show that the request was partially implemented? Thanks again! SM at Smile Train (talk) 18:16, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request re: frequency of Smile Train surgeries  

message: I submitted a more detailed request above, but never heard back about a simplified addition to the article's history section acknowledging Mullaney's departure from the organization.  As I said before, there are many articles discussing the relationship between Mullaney and Smile Train, so I am just trying to update the article to include his departure as part of the company's general history. In order to keep the article in chronological order, I think this text would be best placed in the "History" section, between the 2008 Pan African Anaesthesia Symposium and the 2014 "The Power of a Smile" campaign.
Please see the following proposed text along with formatted references:
:
Again, I am open to different wording if a reviewer has a specific suggestion. Thanks for your consideration. SM at Smile Train (talk) 14:33, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, Shari here again to "ping" this message and let editors know that I am still looking for help. Are either  or  available to review this? SM at Smile Train (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request re: Mullaney's departure 

message: On behalf of Smile Train, I have another request for the article's History section, this time regarding the information on Operation Smile. The "Smile Train and Operation Smile" subsection heading seems unnecessary. With the heading in place, it seems to place a lot of weight on the interactions of the two organizations. Based on RevelationDirect's input on a previous request it sounds like the level of detail about the two organizations' interactions right now might not be appropriate at all in the article. 
So, I have two suggestions: 
1. I wonder if editors would be open to the idea of removing the  "Smile Train and Operation Smile" heading and incorporating the details into the History, chronologically? 
2. I propose the following wording update, to re-organize and condense the information to a simple, encyclopedic overview: 
; Before
: 
: 
; After
: 
: 
; Reason
: First and foremost, the section should be in chronological order. The content is also overly detailed, so I propose trimmed wording that is less contentious and contains the most relevant information to the company's history. I propose changing "initiated an ad campaign" to "placed an ad", which is more accurate.
: In the second paragraph, the first sentence is left alone, but the second has been updated with slightly different wording. I propose this wording per User:RevelationDirect's comment above regarding the nature of the governance of most non-profits. I don't think it is noteworthy that some directors stepped down, but it is worth noting the appointment of a new executive director.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for any assistance in advance. SM at Smile Train (talk) 14:35, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, Shari here again, also "pinging" this message to let editors know that I am looking for help here too. Would either  or  be able to review this, also? SM at Smile Train (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request re: Operation Smile 

message: On behalf of my employer Smile Train, I have a final request for two updates to the article, including: 1) removal of the "citation needed" tag from the opening paragraph and 2) the addition of Gregg Sulkin as a supporter.
1. Currently, the opening paragraph has a "citation needed" tag about the organization's size. I'd like to offer the following sources to verify that Smile Train is the largest organization providing cleft lip and palate repairs for children. Please see the following formatted sources below, which can easily be copied and converted to inline citations:
* 
* 
* 
I am sure there are other sources that could be used, but hopefully these will work. Is someone willing to update the article by adding sources appropriately and removing the "citation needed" tag on my behalf? I prefer not to edit the article directly given my conflict of interest.
2. Can Gregg Sulkin be added as a supporter within the current list in the Partnerships and supporters section, given the following sources?
* 
* 
* 
Thank you for your assistance. SM at Smile Train (talk) 14:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request to 1) remove "citation needed" tag and 2) add Gregg Sulkin as a supporter 

message: I may spend a short while improving this article; it looks like it's been very manipulated in the past and then largely abandoned. As a consequence, parts of it look like hopelessly out of date PR. For now, I'm just going to point out that Charles B Wang, 'key personnel' is long dead. So I've changed that. Emmentalist (talk) 20:45, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Article needs extensive updating