I posted earlier about this brouhaha, but evidently because I had not yet subscribed, the
message is in limbo. So there may be another one coming on this situation. I would truly
appreciate some feedback from those who are more acclimatized to Wikipedia. The summary:
I was contacted over a year ago by an author who was working on the Frances Farmer article
for Wikipedia. He had linked my web article "Shedding Light on Shadowland" and
recognized I had a certain expertise in this subject. He invited me to come to Wikipedia
and begin revising/correcting the Farmer article (as well as others that linked to it),
which I happily did. Prior to this, I had never even heard of Wikipedia (sad, but true).
Over the past year, I have pretty much completely rewritten the article, adding a lot of
salient information and correcting a lot of misinformation in the article, trying at all
times to keep it completely factual, non-sensationalized and as free of POV as possible.
I should state here for the record that my Farmer research has received worldwide
attention and served as source material for several books and newspaper articles, as well
as documentaries on both NPR and A&E Biography. So I feel, hopefully rightfully, that
I know whereof I speak on this subject.
About two days ago a user named Wyss started making wholesale edits to the article, which
in and of itself doesn't bother me at all--if you look at the edit history I have let
many a revision pass if it contains factual information. However, several of Wyss'
edits contained outright factual errors. I don't want to pester you with details, but
if you go into the edit history, you will see my first fledgling attempts to correct
them.
I then posted to her Talk page (evidently incorrectly, as I did it at the top and
didn't sign it, which completely set her off), asking her please to fact-check her
material before posting it. She then posted vaguely threatening messages to my Talk page,
including such sinister sounding lines as "I don't know what you're up
to" and "I'm watching this page." She then reverted her edits back to
the incorrect version. She also denied she had made any errors. I ultimately provided
her with a URL of her edit history, describing the errors she had made, and hopefully
showing her that she had indeed made them.
When I posted this to her Talk page, she, actually quite laughably, posted to my Talk page
calling me a "bonehead." She then, rather incredibly, spent the next several
hours denying she had called me a "bonehead." (I know, it's ridiculous, but
it gets better or worse, depending on how you look at it).
So anyway she has continued to edit, adding completely wrong information repeatedly. She
also began wholesale copying of my copyrighted article "Shedding Light on
Shadowland," which I, again, posted to her talk page about, warning her that she was
pushing the limits of Fair Use and that she was facing possible legal action if she
continued quoting my research without citing it.
This is where is gets incredible to me: she then had me banned indefinitely for
"making threats and harrassing." Interestingly, the person who banned me then
immediately went "inactive."
Now Wyss on both the Farmer talk page and her talk page is accusing me of having
"cloned" her, whatever that means, and of harrassing her anonymously. I have
made NO anonymous edits to any article prior to my editing privileges being revoked, and I
certainly do not have the Wiki-knowledge to clone someone's user page. As Wyss
herself took me to task for, I couldn't even post to her Talk page properly, and I
have to struggle to make edits to Wikipedia.
I state for the record I am a near-50 year old husband and father who, quite by accident,
ended up spending 20 years researching Frances Farmer and who gained a certain renown as a
Farmer expert. My web article has been read by tens of thousands of people and commented
on by such notable people as Leonard Maltin and Washington Post reporter Jack El-Hai.
So here I am, "banned" from Wikipedia, still struggling to correct Wyss'
incorrect edits (though I am "banned" I can still edit--maybe someone can
explain that to me), while I also am suffering from what I personally consider to be her
near-slanderous comments that I have "cloned" her and/or harrassed her. She is
also now claiming that I am not Jeffrey Kauffman and I did not write "Shedding Light
on Shadowland." Hopefully my email address is some proof for you, but I also refer
you to my website:
http://jeffreykauffman.net/<http://jeffreykauffman.net/>
I even posted to the Farmer Talk page what I believe has happened: I am rather well-known
in the Farmer fan community and I know for a fact there are several others who have been
following Wyss' incorrect edits for the past few days. These are all younger folk,
the Cobain contingent as I call them, and they certainly have more Wiki-knowledge than I.
It is quite possible that Wyss is being targeted (wrongly, as I myself posted on the Talk
page) by one of these people, but I again state it is *not* me who is doing this.
In the meantime, Wyss has just in the past 10 minutes added several more inaccuracies to
the Farmer article, which, when I try to correct them (providing source material, as I
always attempt to do), she immediately reverts back to her incorrect versions. All the
while insisting I'm not "me."
I would very much like someone to offer me a little help. If I have done anything wrong,
I apologize. But I have worked for a very long time to make sure only the facts about
this actress are published on Wikipedia, and it pains me greatly to see someone come along
and destroy over 12 months' of very careful, considered work.