Talk:James F. Jones (educator)

message: I tried to improve the page by keeping out large, very poorly negative sections of the article which could be considered BLP violations in favor of a "criticism" section.  If you disagree that this isn't the way to go please tell me why. Thanks! Winner 42  Talk to me!  01:36, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: But much of the rest of it is criticism too. It seems to me that the article in its present form is highly unbalanced and verging on an attack page. It needs going through in detail by someone with knowledge of the American college system who can weigh up the value of the references and represent the contrasting views. Edit warring should not continue: Noyster  (talk),  19:19, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems a number of editors are editing in an attempt to bias the article against Jones. Winner 42  Talk to me!  20:37, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

text: Your edits  removed huge amounts of cited material. Many of your additions were self-cited, POV and/or WP:PEACOCK. -- Softlavender (talk) 02:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV issues and Original Research

message: At least one major contributor to this article appears to have a close personal or professional connection to the topic, and thus to have a conflict of interest. Conflict-of-interest editors are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly, but are always welcome to propose changes on the talk page (i.e., here). You can attract the attention of other editors by putting  (exactly so, with the curly parentheses) at the beginning of your request, or by clicking the link on the lowest yellow notice above. Requests that are not supported by independent reliable sources are unlikely to be accepted. 
Please also note that our Terms of Use state that "you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation." An editor who contributes as part of his or her paid employment is required to disclose that fact.  Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:25, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflict of interest 

message: Where is the information about Jones’s education. His schools and degrees? And the information about his career before Trinity College? All of this information is in the public domain yet does not appear here. And information about his books and publications?
As this entry is written it just appears to be a place where people unhappy with a few of the policies he was charged with carrying out can come to Bitch and Moan. (NOTE:Presidents do not make policy, Boards do.) And, as with so much on the internet it is all done anonymously. I would expect better from a vehicle claiming to have an anti-harassment policy! Unbiased Editting (talk) 13:25, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: In the reliable secondary sources discussing Jones that I'm aware of, his education is hardly discussed. I couldn't find anything about his career before Trinity College either. You're welcome to present sources (which won't be in the "public domain", but that's not necessary) if you know of them. It's unsurprising that controversial actions get more media coverage than uncontroversial ones. Huon (talk) 14:37, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

text: I don't know anything about Jones or these incidents, , but I felt that I had to revert your edits because they did not appear to be based on reliable, published sources that readers could check verify the material. References such as "Woodward Academy Records" are not sufficient. Are these records published? How would a reader check them? Please see Wikipedia:PUBLISHED and Wikipedia:Verifiability for guidance on this. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:08, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

text: Unbiased Editting, are you saying that James F. Jones is your husband? Softlavender (talk) 23:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

text: The footnote on the Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran doesn't just say the name of a college, it has a link to a webpage, where presumably (when that footnote was added), it had information on the subject. It doesn't at this point, but that's because that page now has information on the current president... but with the web address attached, someone could easily pull up the past version of the web page (from a web archive source) to verify the claim. (Were someone to maintain that article, they would add a link directly to the archived version.) If the college websites list Jones, then the URL (web address) of the specific page that does so would make an excellent reference. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

text: To address a specific question included: yes, subscription-based sources, or sources that are behind some other sort of "paywall", are indeed acceptable. If there are multiple sources for the same information, we do prefer the free over the at-cost, and the online rather than the offline, but all are acceptable options. (As for the different sourcing goals here as opposed to scholarly work, that arises because the goals are quite different. In broad strokes, scholarly work tries to be the creation of knowledge, encyclopedia work the summation of knowledge.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:22, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

text: , to emphasise a point made by Nat, offline sources are pefectly acceptable, so "adding any information where one would have to go beyond the internet to verify" is fine. We even have a page explaining this: Wikipedia:Offline sources. The point is that sources have to be published in some form or rather, which rules out private university records. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  50 years of missing information 

message: Hi, in order to revert the massive changes made by the COI SPA, I've WP:BOLDLY reverted the article to the state it was before that user came on the scene. Obviously good-faith edits were made in the interim; I hope experienced editors will not mind redoing their policy-based edits. Thanks, Softlavender (talk) 19:28, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a complicated one, this - we've had COI SPA edits and edits by others trying to address genuine BLP concerns. The former need to be dealt with, but let's take care not to undo the work to make the article BLP compliant. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:36, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it has been resolved now. Collect reverted my wholesale mass revert and replaced it with a less POV version; I then corrected some facts and added one or two points. Softlavender (talk) 22:41, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There is still some overlap between the content of the career and criticism sections, which I think could be merged into a single career section. Cordless Larry (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Softlavender (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting the COI SPA