Talk:Daniel Lee Nickrent

Conflict of interest

Of the text written at this point in time, the major contributors by text are: MargaretRDonald · 32,525 (96.2%), Nickrent · 576 (1.7%), Citation bot · 530 (1.6%), @Melcous: · 84 (0.2%). At 1.7% (576 bytes) of the text, the article hardly reprepesents a conflict of interest issue. The major contributor, MargaretRDonald (96.2% text), has no familial, or financial connection to Daniel Nickrent, but had become aware of him and of the need for an article about him through her interest in Loranthaceae, an area in which Dan Nickrent is a major researcher, one who requires an article because of his major contributions to the field. (Because of this, I intend to remove the "multiple issues" template, and the "conflict of interest" templates currently within the article.) MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:12, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

MargaretRDonald thank you for clarifying that you do not have a conflict of interest to this article. It would still be useful for Nickrent to follow the WP:COI guidelines including making a proper disclosure and refraining from directly editing the article. The "resume like" template should not be removed from the article as this issue remains and further editing and/or discussion needs to take place. Thanks Melcous (talk) 07:15, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

@Melcous:. The "Career" section has been rewritten in an attempt to make the article read less like a resume. Please review (and change) so that the distracting template can be removed. MargaretRDonald (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I had forgotten to say, that I invited Daniel to review the text and to correct any errors of misinterpretation I had made in trying to describe his career from the documents publicly available, and that is why he made the very few modifications to the text seen in the summary of contributions.MargaretRDonald (talk) 10:05, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks MargaretRDonald. Two things - the template is not there to be 'distracting' but to invite editors to improve the article, so it should remain as long as it needs to. Secondly, the fact that you are in contact with the subject of the article could possibly be seen in and of itself as a conflict of interest - wikipedia articles are not "owned" by anyone, including their subjects. The article should consist of what is written about Nickrent in reliable, independent, third party sources, rather than from anyone's personal knowledge. Melcous (talk) 12:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks @Melcous: the invitation (as stated) was not about "ownership" but rather in the spirit of biographies of living persons. The article is fully referenced, but it is always the case that one can misread/misinterpret a source, and in fact in a couple of cases because of my unfamiliarity with the USA and its universities, that was indeed the case. MargaretRDonald (talk) 12:15, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I would add that I am not "in" contact with Daniel Nickrent, but rather that I contacted him (using the email address available from his papers) for precisely this purpose , and this purpose only. MargaretRDonald (talk) 12:43, 2 December 2019 (UTC)