User talk:Harald Forkbeard

Please see the result of the AN3 complaint at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Harald Forkbeard and user:CorporateM (Result: Protected). Your edits raise concern that you may have some personal animosity against Sageworks. I protected the article and removed the unsourced negative claim "without the explicit permission of the business owners". It would be normal that any data releases would be covered by signed contracts between Sageworks and the firms whose data it acquires. Do you suppose that Sageworks routinely violates those agreements? Should Wikipedia be making that claim? Wikipedia is not a vehicle for personal POV. Please ensure that your further edits are neutral. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 23:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Sageworks does not obtain explicit permission from business owners to collect and resell their company data. Instead, it obtains the info from the professional advisers, who are not the actual owners of the data. At the least, this data gathering and reselling strategy is highly suspect.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 00:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

So in your opinion, Sageworks could be sued for the way they handle customers' data? EdJohnston (talk) 02:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I am convinced that Sageworks will be sued as soon as some of the business owners find out their data was obtained and resold without explicit permission. It's a matter of time only.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 18:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Should we state, in Wikipedia's voice, that Sageworks might be sued for the way they handle customers' data? EdJohnston (talk) 18:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

We should state the facts about Sageworks tricky data collection and lack of consent from the business owners. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 20:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Do you have a source, other than your own opinion? Are you involved in any of these lawsuits or planning to be involved? Jehochman ^Talk 20:30, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The reference^[1] has already been provided, and reviewed by editor doncram on the Talk Page. Please review the discussion there on the subject. I have nothing to do with any law suits.

You miss the point of this discussion. Sageworks engages in questionable data collection without express consent from the business data owners. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 02:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Please quote the actual language of the source article that confirms this conclusion. Use double quotes to show the words that you are quoting. And let us know the page number where you found this. EdJohnston (talk) 02:21, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Please visit the Sageworks Talk page and follow this discussion, complete with the quotes from the reference made by editor doncram.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 05:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

This is obscure company. Are you involved in these lawsuits as a party, lawyer, or some other capacity? Your tone suggests you might be. If so, you need to stop being involved on Wkipedia. Jehochman ^Talk 05:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Harald, I see no quotes that confirm your point either here or at Talk:Sageworks#Lawsuits and sources. You need a published quote which states that Sageworks is misusing customer data. EdJohnston (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Quotes already provided by editor doncram on Talk:Sageworks#Lawsuits and sources. Visit this page and read doncram's comments!.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 19:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Once again, please visit the Sageworks Talk page for the quotes.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 19:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Reposting comments from Talk:Sageworks#Lawsuits and sources made there by editor doncram:

Thanks C and HF and J for discussing here. I'm not sure if this is what HF means, but footnote on page 8 of Asker, Farre-Menser, Ljungqvist (2014, forthcoming in Review of Financial Studies, which HF links above, states "Commercial users of the Sageworks database only have access to data aggregated by industry and region. This alleviates potential disclosure concerns on the part of the private firms. Only a few academic researchers, ourselves included, have had confidential access to an anonymized version of the underlying firm-by-firm data." And on the same page,

Sageworks provides data for private firms.7. Unfortunately, Sageworks masks firm names, though each firm has a unique identifier allowing us to construct a panel.8 The main drawback of anonymity for our purposes is that we cannot observe transitions from private to public status in the Sageworks database. We will later describe how we assemble a dataset of such transitions from other sources. Sageworks obtains data not from the private firms themselves, which could raise selection concerns, but from a large number of accounting firms that feed data for all their unlisted corporate clients into Sageworks’ database. Selection thus operates at the level of the accounting firm and not of their clients. Sageworks co-operates with most of the largest national accounting firms as well as hundreds of regional players, but with proportionately fewer of the many thousand local accountants who service the smallest....[emphasis added by doncram]

You have not drawn attention to anything in the Asker et al. article which states that Sageworks is misusing customer data. Asker et al. never state that data is being used beyond the permission given by the customers. EdJohnston (talk) 00:48, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

You are missing the point. Once again: Sageworks collects and resells data without consent from business data owners. This must be stated in the article. Let Wikipedia readers draw their own conclusion.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 02:33, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Ten days later...in my opinion EdJohnston is exactly right. There is no source saying that Sageworks obtains and resells data without consent, or that original business-owners are being duped or not being informed by their accountants or other advisors who might pass on their data. It is just your and my suspicion that such is going on. Please see my comment just now at Talk:Sageworks. There is compromise language in that, the most which can be said. --doncram 02:35, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Your recent editing history at Sageworks shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you get reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Amaury (talk) 23:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

The reverts were initiated by two other editors. They have already exceeded the 3RR rule. There is persistent effort to hide an important element of the company behavior that, in my view, must be revealed in the article.

I don't think it is fair to have my edits reverted, given the ongoing dispute.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 23:23, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Within the last 24 hours, I see only two reverts from @CorporateM and one from @McDonald of Kindness. However, I see three from you, which is in violation of 3RR. At this point, it doesn't really matter who started it, what matters is that you try to reach a consensus on the talk page. Cheers! - Amaury (talk) 23:28, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. McDonald of Kindness (talk) 23:48, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

You have been blocked temporarily from editing for edit warring and violating the three-revert rule. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the following text below this notice: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.

During a dispute, you should first try to discuss controversial changes and seek consensus. If that proves unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection.

Kuru (talk) 01:35, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You must have missed the lengthy discussion on the Sageworks article talk page. All reasonable effort was made to resolve the dispute there. Request that you remove the block, or block all warring parties.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 01:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kuru: Please advise why you singled me out for blocking as opposed to including user CorporateM who started the reverts. Also, I noticed that your question regarding the paid contributions by this user has been ignored. The dispute has been ongoing and I contributed to a very lengthy discussion on this [] talk page.

I don't see how this block is fair - you should have blocked all the warring parties as the consensus has not been reached, despite all reasonable attempts.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The block was placed so that you could familiarize yourself with the three-revert rule. But, if you really think that the block is unfair, just copy and paste {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} (don't copy and paste it from the editing window by the way), as said in the notice. Also, replace your reason here with the reason that you want to be unblocked. McDonald of Kindness (talk) 20:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I removed the question related to paid editing as the editor in question has explicitly declared that there is no conflict of interest here. As this particular editor has, in the past, been completely overt with identifying paid edits vs. normal contributions, I don't really have a reason to doubt it. If you have some proof that there is a real undisclosed paid interest in violation of our terms of use, I'd love to hear it and will take action. Please note that his disagreement with your edits is not "proof"; repeatedly questioning his motivations as opposed to disputing the quality of the edits seems more like a personal attack. I'm not a fan of paid advocacy, but my hands are bound by community consensus on the topic.

If you're looking for feedback on your block and your editing style, I can promise you that making edits you know do not have consensus is a very poor idea. At this point, even one revert that is clearly trying to re-insert material you know is not supported may draw an edit warring block. It would probably be a very, very good idea to limit yourself to the article's talk page until you have a clear consensus from involved participants. Your only edits to that talk page on the 10th were to question motivations instead of working on compromise material.

If you need feedback on the content itself, I'd be happy to provide it. I would prefer to remain uninvolved on the content unless there is a complete impass, however. Kuru (talk) 00:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kuru: Please review the Talk Page: [] for a very lengthy discussion of the issues. You will find plenty of contributions from my end before March 10, 2014. User CorporateM has been warring over the page content for quite some time. He should be blocked as well, for fairness sake. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

The article has been proposed for deletion three times by various users, including myself. The deletes were deflected by what appears to be a small army of Sageworks staff and paid agents, please see the sockpuppet discussion on the Talk Page.

So there has been a long history of promotional effort on the part of Sageworks staff or affiliates going back years. Perhaps you should take a look at the content and the discussion before drawing conclusions.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 01:23, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Please see my comment added to #Your editing at Sageworks section above, and my comment at Talk:Sageworks. I'd be happy to talk out any of this further with you, on Talk pages here or by email or skype or phone. For any of the latter three, please send an email to me to get started. Email using a link for that, at left side of my User and User talk pages, links which are there because I choose to set my account preferences to allow emails that way (i note yours is not set that way, which is fine). If you email me, the only privacy you'll lose is that I will get to see your email address (i guess whatever is the address you gave to Wikipedia). And I will email you back and you will have my email address.

I'm happy to talk about the editing at Sageworks and the other editors involved there. And I do recommend you go edit in other topic areas for a while, and expect you'd gradually get more comfortable about the other editors and what they're doing and saying at Sageworks and its Talk page. But actually further or instead, i would like to explore with you, off-Wikipedia, how i and maybe you could take some steps to possibly confirm and expose what you are concerned and pretty sure about (while i am concerned and suspect, but am not sure about). I'd like to hear more about what and how you know, and i'd share what i could possibly do. Anyhow, new assertions cannot be stated in Wikipedia (which has to give the accepted, general views usually, while it can sometimes report factually that other views are held by some). New assertions have to come out first in blogs and news stories and other types of publications. No problem if you're not interested or it's not convenient or whatever, about emailing. I'll watchlist here and would see replies about other stuff. And you can post at my Talk any time, especially if it seems I might have missed something here. Cheers, --doncram 02:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good, and I appreciate your constructive approach here. Let me outline the gist of the issue here:

The whole premise of getting a hold of private company data is fraught with controversy. Private business owners consider any data on their companies to be a closely guarded trade secret. So it's disclosure is a big no-no.

In addition to the competitive nature of such data, it is highly variable. The main reason is 'creative accounting' often employed by the private business owners to minimize taxes and maximize returns at the same time.

Inconsistency of such data is due to the fact that there is no uniform standard compliance that applies to private companies. This is in sharp contrast to public firms who must adhere to the Generally accepted accounting principles in their financial reporting.

So we have essentially two key issues with private company data collection:

1. It is not available from the business owners.

2. It is inconsistent and, therefore, unreliable compared to the regulated public company financial data.

Which brings us to the Sageworks discussion. I suspect that they know quite well the difficulty of extracting the proprietary financial and operational data from private business owners. As to the quality of the data, the caveat is firmly built into their Terms of Use.

So they devise a clever tactic of going around the business owners and approaching their accountants. It would seem they incentivize them somehow while keeping the business owners in the dark as to what's done to their private data.

The researchers you and I used as the reference, appear to be yet another naive party. They want the data, but have few qualms about the legitimacy of its collection or its quality.

Whenever the issue concerns financial services, my suspicion threshold is raised immediately. As it should be for any intelligent editor, given what we have all witnessed in the 2008 Great Recession.

Sageworks appears to be engaging in rather tricky data gathering and sale of information of questionable quality without proper authorization. That is a major problem with their business model.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 21:37, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I've edited the Sageworks article a lot now, hopefully accomplishing what was suggested could be done at its Talk. I'll agree with you that it does seem it would be relevant, for any user of the Sageworks data, to know how the accountants are "incentivized". I don't know. Perhaps it could be the case that the accountants get reports of comparables for each client they put in, and they share that with their clients, and that the clients are all aware and approving and they all signed up for getting such reports beforehand (and approved giving their data). Opt-out provisions might exist. And there are other possibilities. Anyhow, I think i'm done with what can be said using sources in the Sageworks article, which must be neutral and not suggest suspicions. And otherwise i don't want to comment more here, tho i'm open to offline discussion. I do advise walking away from this topic for quite a while, and getting other experience in Wikipedia.

I wonder if you'd like to participate in more AFDs...I was following and participating in a lot of them for a while, which is how I noticed Sageworks. I would check in at wp:AFD and click on the link from near the top of that page, to jump to the newest AFDs. And also I would browse at Category:AfD debates (Organisation, corporation, or product) and Category:AfD debates (Places and transportation). There's a wp:AFDstats tool which you can use to keep track of how you're doing, sort of. See this application to your participation in AFDs so far, which just is the Sageworks one. See report on my most recent 500, which documents that i am an "inclusionist", usually arguing for "Keep". I enjoyed finding sources and helping to develop marginal articles, and I learned a lot from others' comments and votes.

What else are you interested in? If in business-related topics, that's an area where Wikipedia coverage is relatively weak, and there's lots of room for your attention to make a positive difference. Feel free to give me notice at my Talk page if you ever want me to come look at an article or whatever. Cheers, --doncram 22:43, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Harald. I noticed diff of what you mean right away, and was a bit irked by the edit summary, which was pointy and over-stated. Because there has been a ton of COI and POV editing at that article before, and CM should really know that already, although CM was not involved until just recently. Hmm, I would be happy to say so at CM's Talk or at Talk:Sageworks. But really we don't need the POV-check tag there calling for others to come in, methinks. Also CM is really not associated with the firm, absolutely not; he edits like that consistently across hundreds or thousands of firm articles. And yeah, mea culpa about going on with academic/scientific type stuff in the article. That is what I was interested in and thought was relevant, when I first noticed Sageworks when browsing AFDs.

Is there anything else we could work on for a bit? Hmm, that Mat topic is not for me, and I don't know the language(s), but I am interested in history, cities, geography, more about Russia-related topics (i was there (via Wikipedia) recently. :) Or anything you'd be interested in? I notice the Valuation (finance) article is okay, but it could use some fixes and some extension. Or participate in some AFDs? Your opinion of CM would go up if you'd participate in Category:AfD debates (Organisation, corporation, or product) where I think CM does, and if find yourself often voting the same way.

I need to get off Wikipedia for a week right now, though.

By the way, your Username showing as a redlink would look sort of bad to some editors, who might tend to dismiss your views a bit just because of that. You could just put a redirect #REDIRECT [[User talk:Harald Forkbeard]] from there to your talk page.

cheers, --doncram 07:28, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Please get yourself familiar with wikipedia policies about original research. All information added to wikipedia must come from reliable sources. Wikipedian's knowledge is not a valid reference in wikipedia. You are editing wikipedia for over a year. As I see you have already been in a long conflict because you don't understand this fundamental policy. Time to learn the rules or you will eventually get yourself blocked from editing. -M.Altenmann >t 02:36, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• You must be joking. I did provide the translation in its entirety. What else do you need exactly? Have you any idea how silly this sounds?--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 02:50, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

  You did not provide a reference to a reliable source. -M.Altenmann >t 03:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I am unable to provide a reference to myself. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• My translation has come from an unreliable source? I am a native Russian and English speaker, completely bilingual who has provided a contribution to Wikipedia. What exactly did you provide other than interference and bewildering reverts? Please explain yourself.

  User:Harald Forkbeard and his words are not a reliable source per wikipedia rules. My contributions for the last 3 years you may find here. -M.Altenmann >t 03:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I am still confused as to how to 'source' my own translation. Any ideas? --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• And quit with the threats, it is hostile and highly unbecoming of an editor on a shared medium. Need I remind you, you don't own Wikipedia.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 02:52, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

  Your answer suggests that you are refusing to learn and follow wikipedia rules. I am not threatening you: I don't have a power to block people. I am warning you. Take the warning or face the consequences. If you don't understand the rules, ask the questions. -M.Altenmann >t 03:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Please don't read anything into my words. You are threatening. Lighten up and explain what you are looking for. Or do you have trouble understanding the conundrum here: How do I provide an independent reference to back my own translation?--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Multiple personal attacks by user:Harald Forkbeard that derail a RfC-M.Altenmann >t

Yikes. I've just visited there quickly. To Harald Forkbeard, I came to visit here to suggest you could tone it down a notch...it is in my Control-C Control-V cache that you wrote "Please tone down the offensive, combative attitude. If you want to work on developing consensus, it would help to show other editors some respect and defer to their opinion. So far, you have made no such effort.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 03:18, 2 August 2015 (UTC)", and I was going to say something about you taking your own advice, as what you've said has come across as offensive to another editor.

IMO, Altenmann was brusque(sp?) to start with but did open the RFC with neutral question(s) and was politely receiving comments. A showed they would have preferred to hear different comments, but A is receiving them, and there is a consensus building. So it is not necessary or good to be very harsh back, please. Actually maybe the whole spirit of this discussion is derailed by the subject, mat, which appears to be deliberately rude for effect. Mat is interesting to learn about, but let's not practice anything near it in Talk pages! (Not saying there was swearing, but hoping we could all be more polite.)

I absolutely hate wp:ANI. I hope you would agree to help extricate all from that venue, perhaps if you could see your way to making some apology there...your comments have seemed harsh/offensive to another person, and while you can feel they were justified, there's no reason for any of us to hurt another here, we are all volunteers. My personal issue about Wikipedia is bullying that goes on (not saying that is correct language for here). In general I think if someone feels they are being bullied (or treated harshly) that the rest of us should accept that is how they feel, and take steps to avoid furthering that experience. --doncram 04:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Your recent editing history at Veganism shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Jytdog (talk) 19:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. Remember that when adding content about health, please only use high-quality reliable sources as references. We typically use review articles, major textbooks and position statements of national or international organizations (There are several kinds of sources that discuss health: here is how the community classifies them and uses them). WP:MEDHOW walks you through editing step by step. A list of resources to help edit health content can be found here. The edit box has a built-in citation tool to easily format references based on the PMID or ISBN. We also provide style advice about the structure and content of medicine-related encyclopedia articles. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note. Jytdog (talk) 19:55, 8 October 2017 (UTC)