Wow high and mighty much? I haven't had chance to look into this; but I bet I know what I will find. Someone being a bit of a jerk to him, which has led to having to take this approach. Which is about rebutting Wikipedia rather than the source which we cited. Rather than whining about him we need to see the problem; it's an attitude problem HERE. Tom Morton On 8 Sep 2012, at 14:53, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

Depends on the explanation I suppose. But "reliable source" is jargon too, in many cases. We do have difficulty communicating with non wikipedians. Not in a bad faith way; it is hard to communicate with others. I just think we are too quick to blame the subject for "not understanding us". When it cuts deeply both ways. Tom Morton On 8 Sep 2012, at 16:29, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:

On 10 September 2012 17:04, Ken Arromdee &lt;arromdee(a)rahul.net&gt; wrote: Oh, I don't know, they keep saying he should get a Nobel Prize as a novelist, so perhaps his command of the English language is above average. There is a nuance. The issue appears to be something different. Roth's biographer wanted the existing secondary sources zapped from the article as simply worthless, and we couldn't accept that. Roth's unpublished view as funnelled through his biographer might have had to have waited until the biography was published, in which case we would have cited it without trouble. Via what appears to be an OTRS mail Roth was given what appears to be the wrong advice, phrased in terms of secondary sources. As WP:ABOUTSELF<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ABOUTSELF> tells us, Roth simply had to get his view published; which he did. The caveat in the article by 20 August was actually enough to cast great doubt on the other story about his inspiration, at least for any attentive reader. It is traditional to hang all sorts of other considerations on these incidents, but from the point of view of getting the case study straight, it isn't that helpful. Charles

On 10 September 2012 17:32, Ken Arromdee &lt;arromdee(a)rahul.net&gt; wrote: snippet he quoted in the New Yorker; which was not the whole mail, just the part he decided to quote. The mail as a whole may have been more accurate. It looks as if there was some mutual incomprehension. If you go to the bank and ask for a loan, and say "I fully intend to pay it back", the bank may ask for collateral (on which they can rely), without saying that they don't believe you. That is the nuance differentiating "credible" and "reliable", if you want. I didn't say that it was Roth's fault that the mail he got apparently gave excess weight to secondary sources. I'm not in a position to say that it was the fault of the author of the mail either; and OTRS volunteers run the risk of blame, often unfairly IMX. There has been the usual pile-on blaming the community as a whole for a lack of courtesy. I was contesting that by trying to infer where something went wrong here, so that we get an accurate case study. The result stands as perfectly good in encyclopedic terms, as far as I can see. The furore about daring to doubt an author's word seems to need bringing down to the actual facts. "Failed us": I don't agree with that. Adverse publicity based on inaccurate rendition of the facts is bad reporting. We suffer bad reporting quite frequently. Charles

No it doesn't. I'll give you good odds on me being right. Because I see the same thing week after week. Tom Morton On 8 Sep 2012, at 16:35, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

It's not a crazy train of thought though; people naturally feel they are the authority on their own opinions. We usually don't do brilliantly in explaining why that doesn't work. Because we start with explaining reliable sources, and often glaze over the most important bit. I DO see these sorts of issues all the time. When I log into OTRS there is sure to be at least one. I've taken to explaining that Wikipedia only summarises other sources. So inaccuracy needs to be addressed either with a retraction from the source, or another source appearing to rebut it. This is much more palatable than "your word isn't a reliable source". If for no other reason than the phrasing sounds like your impugning the reliability of him/her as a person. Tom Morton On 8 Sep 2012, at 17:00, Charles Matthews &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote:

So you're suggesting he is lying about that? The words he quotes seem genuine. But I can't identify where they came from; not OTRS?? Tom Morton On 8 Sep 2012, at 17:17, Charles Matthews &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote:

This is the comment I made to The New Yorker article: If you, or anyone else, has a similar problem please contact the Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team Directions are on that page in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Volunteer_Response_Team We are sorry this matter was not handled better. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikip… Now, a factual inquiry, if he had done that would this problem have been solved? Or would he still ended up trying to bully us? Fred

On 8 September 2012 14:53, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: The content he was trying to "dictate" was a statement about what his inspirations had been. I think it is reasonable for him to expect us to take his word for that. The only problem was that we needed him to put his word on the matter somewhere we could cite. Once he did that, we changed the article and cited the new source. I've only read the BBC article, so I don't know all the details. I expect there was a failure of communication at some point - either us not telling him what he needed to do in a clear, consise and respectful way, or him not being willing to listen and respect our policies. Without looking into the details, I don't know it was in this case, but there have been previous cases in both categories.

We need to treat all subjects and potential subjects of articles with respect and take their complaints seriously. An OTRS referral might have helped. The material is not oversightable, but would fall within reports of article errors. Fred