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I wanted to disclose that the subject of the article is my father. My name is Karl Ross and I am son No. 2 from marriage No. 2.

I am doing this to help preserve my father's legacy as a civil rights and peace activist and to provide a reference for his poetry, songs and other artistic pursuits. Some of his friends and admirers are putting together a collections of his poems for possible publication.

Like my dad and older brother (Sean), I am a trained journalist with a degree from the University of Missouri and 15 years professional experience (Miami Herald, et al.). I have been employed in the public sector for the past 14 years as an ethics investigator.

I'd be happy to answer any questions this might raise. Thanks,

Welcome!

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Hello, Kross305, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was User:Kross305/sandbox, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.


One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Marchjuly (talk) 20:54, 26 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kross305. Let clarify a couple of things about the template I added above and Wikipedia in general.
  1. Since your dad is, well, your dad, you would be considered to have a conflict of interest with respect to anything written about him on Wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't expressly prohibit COI editng, but it does highly discourage it because it can (and does) often lead to some serious problems. The best thing for you to do would be to take a look at Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide and follow what's written on that page as closely as you can.
  2. Having a COI doesn't mean that there cannot ever be a Wikipedia article written about your dad. If he's able to satisfy the criteria listed in Wikipedia:Notability (people), then such an article can be written; whether you should be the one to write it, however, is a different matter. Since you're currently working on just a draft for a possible article, you'll be given a bit of wiggle room when it comes to the relevant COI guidelines, but things will change quite a bit if the draft does someday become an article. My suggestion to you would be to submit your draft for review at Wikipedia:Articles for creation when you think it's ready because this will give an experienced Wikipedia editor a chance to assess and point out any problems with it. Wikipedia editing is quite different from writing for a newspaper; although your experience at the latter might serve you well for the most part, you've probably figured out there are quite a lot of things about Wikipedia that you don't yet understand. An AfC reviewer can help you work through any Wikipedia-type problems the draft might had. Of course, you don't have to submit the draft for review, but drafts vetted at AfC do seem to have a better chance of avoiding deletion than those which are not submitted for review. If you want some general tips on how to write a Wikipedia article, take a look at Wikipedia:Your first article. If you want some more specific advice, try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Civil Rights Movement, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Journalism or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography.
  3. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, so nobody is going to know whether you are who you say you are for sure. Other editors will assume good faith and try and work with you as long as you do your best to edit in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Every editor is a volunteer and many are going to be less will to work with you if they feel you're editing for the wrong reasons.
  4. You sorta kinda declared your COI above on this talk page, but ideally such a declaration should go on your user page instead; there are a couple of ways you can do, but once again on User:Kross305 is where you want to do it. The Template:Connected contributor should be added to the top of the talk pages of any articles you are editing in which you have a COI. In this case that would be to User talk:Kross305/sandbox. You should follow the instructions given in the template's documentation and compete the template parameters as best as you can.
  5. You need to understand that you will not have an claim of ownership or final editorial control over any Wikiepdia article written about your dad. Most editors will leave you be to work on the draft (unless there are some serious problems which need attention), but everything changes once draft has been upgraded as an article. You dad sounds like he did some great things and I can understand your desire to prevserve his legacy, but memorializing someone is not what Wikipedia is really about. Once something is added as an article, it's pretty much there for anyone anywhere in the world to edit at anytime; Wikipedia hopes there edits are in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines, but even negative content can be added per Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Law of unintended consequences (see also Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing even though you're not technically writing about yourself) as long as it's done so in accordance with those policies and guideline. If the draft is someday upgraded to article status, you be expected follow WP:COIADVICE and WP:PSCOI#Steps for engagement if you want major changes (i.e. anything not considered WP:MINOR) made to the article.
  6. Some of the image files you uploaded to Wikimedia Commons have licensing problems. Although Commons and Wikipedia are part of the same Wikimedia family, they are separate projects with their own policies and guidelines. Commons will only accept content which complies with c:Commons:Licensing, and "own work" only applies to photos that you yourself have taken. As explained at Wikipedia:Help desk#Trying to upload photos, please assist, it is the permission of the original copyright holder which needs to be verified for Commons to keep a file. Please see c:User talk:Kross305 for more information on what is needed for Commons to keep the files you uploaded.
I hope at least some of what I posted above is helpful. If you've got any questions about any of it, feel free to ask below. If you've got any general questions about Wikipedia, feel free to ask at the Wikipedia Teahouse. One last things, whenever you post something on a talk page or noticeboard, please try to remember to WP:SIGN your posts. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC

Kross305 (talk) 13:04, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Marchjuly and thank you for the input. This is all new to me and a bit confusing, but I am enjoying becoming a Wikipedian. It has been a while since I've written anything for mass consumption. That said, I'd be happy for you or any other editor to have a look at my submission and to get some additional feedback. I do have an inherent conflict (love, not money), but I am trained to be objective and to write in a neutral style. That doesn't mean I won't quote other people -- i.e., Carl Bernstein, James Meredith -- who have nice things to say about my dad. That is also why I have taken pains to document and source as much of the content as possible. I believe there are more than 30 citations from eight to 10 independent sources, including the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream publications.

My biggest challenge, frankly, is learning all the conventions for interacting with other Wikipedians like yourself, but I am willing to learn so thank you once again for your interest and please do have a look at my draft article. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks, Karl Kross305 (talk) 13:04, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again Karl. Even though you're editing out of love, you'd still be considered to have a COI with respect to anything written about your dad and thus be expected to adhere to relevant COI policies and guidelines whenever you edit.
If you'd like to submit you're draft for an WP:AFC review the thing to do would be to add Template:AFC submission/draft to the top of the draft. The template contains a button "Submit your draft for review!" that you can click whenever you think the draft's ready. This will add it to the queue of drafts waiting to be reviewed. The entire process may take a bit of time, but eventually an AfC reviewer will get to it and assess it. If the reviewer feels the draft is ready for article status, they will WP:MOVE it to the article namespace; if not, they will explain why and perhaps provide suggestions on what needs to be improved. Being rejected doesn't mean a draft can never become an article, it just means that it's not quite ready at the moment. Drafts can be re-submitted as many times as necessary as long as they continue to be improved. The only time resubmitted drafts tend to become problematic is when the creator simply keeps on sumbitting the same declined version over and over again, but that's more of an behavioral matter than anything else.
What you're currently working on is technically referred to as a userspace draft. It's perfectly OK to do so, but, in general, the preferred namespace for AfC submissions is the draft namespace. You can move your work to the draft namespace yourself by following the instructions in WP:MOVE, or you can leave it for an AfC reviewer to do so when they review the draft. There are some minor differences between "userspace drafts" and "drafts", but USDs tend to be considered more of a personal work-in-progess whereas drafts are considered to be more of a community work in progess; in other words, most experienced editors tend be more inclined to leave a user alone to work on their USD (absent any major policy or guideline violations) and more willing to help out on something in the draft space if they feel they can help bring the draft upto article standards. The draft namespace, however, is not meant to host content indefinitely; it's meant to be a sort of holding pen while an article navigates through the AfC process. So, drafts which go unedited for six months or more may be speedily deleted by an adminsitrator per criterion WP:G13.
As an experienced writer, you probably have developed your own particular style or follow a certain style guide. Since Wikipedia is edited by people from around the world from different backgrounds, etc., there's really no predominate single writing style that Wikipedia follows. In general, all articles are expected to adhere to Wikipedia's Manual of Style as closely as possible, and this MOS tries make it easy for everyone to contribute. So, some of the things you're used to doing might not be the way Wikipedia wants them to be done. One quick example is the use of the word "lauded" in the lede sentence of the draft; this has the look of WP:PUFFERY and is not something usually suitable for an article written in Wikipedia's voice. The thing to remember when writing an article is that you are bascially summarizing content which independent/secondary reliable sources are saying about the subject in your own words; so, even though you are doing editing, you are writing in Wikipedia's voice. There will be no-byline attached to the article which means anyone reading it will see it as being written by Wikipedia, not individual editors. This is why WP:NPOV needs to be adhered to as best as possible. You also need to be aware that Wikipedia doesn't allow WP:PLAGIARISM or even WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASING; obviously, there is simply only so many ways you can write certain article content, but anything which is deemed to be a copyright violation tends to be dealt with quite harshly and swiftly by administrators.
Short quotes can be used for encyclopedic purposes per MOS:QUOTES, but adding too many or otherwise gratutious quotes can be a problem per WP:QUOTEFARM. Not everything which is factual or verifiable about a subject is worth including per WP:NOTEVERYTHING, and the same goes for "name dropping". Your dad probably meant lots of people over the years (and many of them may even have Wikipedia articles written about them), but whether they all deserve to be mentioned (even just by name) is something that might require some serious thought. Adding details to an article is usually a good thing, but excessive detail is not.
If you want to see some examples of what are generally considered to be "good" Wikipedia articles, take a look at WP:FA and WP:GA. FAs and GAs are not perfect articles for sure, but they do undergo a more formal review process and tend to by of better than average quality, at least for Wikipedia. Some editors find that looking at FAs or GAs is a good way to learn about how articles are expected to be written, formatted, etc.
Right now, all of your focus seems to be on working on getting an article about your dad added to Wikipedia. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but single-person accounts (SPAs) tend to see only the individual trees in a forest and not the forest itself. The intentions of SPAs also often get mistaken for being more WP:NOTHERE than WP:HERE by other editors which can sometimes lead to problems. Wikipedia has over six million articles and all of them are pretty much WP:IMPERFECT. The project could probably benefit from someone with your experience simply picking random articles and trying to fix any problems they might have. Not only will the project benefit from you doing this, you will also benefit in that you will see how other more experienced editors apply relevant policies and guidelines, which in turn you can than apply to the draft you're working on. Even if you make edits which others end up reverting, you should at least learn why your edit was probematic. Expanding your contributions to things other than the draft will also show other editors that you're really here for Wikipedia and not just for you.
Once again, if you've got any questions about any of this, feel free to ask below or at the Teahouse. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Kross305 (talk) 20:30, 28 August 2019 (UTC) Thanks again, Marchjuly I appreciate the input, and will make further revisions based on your comments. I can substitute "best known for his role in publicizing" the March Against Fear as opposed to "lauded" if that sounds more appropriate. I could argue that "lauded" is not an exaggeration when considering that Meredith himself stated: "The Mississippi March Against Fear was a big deal primarily because of him ..."[reply]

However, I understand that it is best to be understated at times. I couldn't tell if you read the entire article or just the top of it. Are you suggesting I should, for instance, remove the reference to MLK thanking him for his efforts on behalf of racial equality? I could also remove the reference to him growing up down the street from Shel Silverstein if that might be viewed as gratuitous.

Yes, my dad did know a lot of people, but I'm not including certain prominent individuals for the sake of name-dropping.

I don't think there's much doubt my dad will meet the notability test. I have received some favorable responses from collaborators on a Wikipedia chat group, as far as that is concerned. And like I said earlier, he's been featured in numerous mainstream publications.

I'm also thinking about asking Aram Goudsouzian to review the draft article since he is perhaps the leading authority on the "March Against Fear," and he interviewed my dad extensively in researching his book "Down to the Crossroads." Perhaps he can lend some additional insight. Whereas I readily admit I have an inherent conflict as it relates to my father, I would not be submitting an article about him if I did not truly believe that he made a significant contribution to humanity and that his contribution(s) should be shared with others.

That said, I am eager to continue with the editing process and expect that further revisions will be made. As you are probably aware, I did "Submit for Publication" an earlier draft. Should I also request an AfC review concurrent with that?

I do find the process confusing, but am trying to navigate as I go. I am also interested in collaborating with Wikipedia in other ways, but am still trying to get my legs, so to speak. I figure that the experience gained from my present submittal will assist in that respect. I was a journalist for 15 years, and I do enjoy the process of pulling together research into a coherent article.

Lastly, I am in the process of trying to obtain rights from the Associate Press for the photos of my dad tending to Meredith's wounds after the shooting. Those photos were taken by Jack R. Thornell, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for the photo of Meredith on the pavement. I have confirmed this with an AP photo editor in Miami and she referred me to the AP Images office in New York for further guidance.

I'm also trying to identify the origin of the other two photos that have been in our family's possession all these years. The AP editor said it is likely they were taken by United Press International (UPI), which sold all its images to Corbis in 1991. Corbis is managed by Getty Images, so I will reach out to them to see if somebody there can identify the rightful owners.

In the meantime, I can upload more recent photos that were taken by friends or family (with their permission, of course). Still, it would be nice to have the photos of my dad and Meredith since those are the ones of greatest historical significance.

I hope I am on the right track, and do appreciate your feedback. Please advise as to how to improve the proposed article and move the process forward. When I submitted the article for publication I received a message this could take six to eight weeks. Will I be hearing from an assigned editor at that time? If not, what's the best way to continue to collaborate in this process?

Thank you, Karl

Hi again. If you can obtain the exclusive copyrights to the images you want to upload to Commons per some sort of copyright transfer agreement with the original copyright holder, then email Wikimedia OTRS and perhaps Commons will keep them; if, however, you're only able to obtain shared copyright ownership, then I'm pretty sure the permission of the other copyright owner(s) is also going to be needed. Furthermore, any type of verbal permission, "for educational/Wikipedia/non-commercial/non-derivative use only" type of permission, etc. is not going to be acceptable. English Wikipedia does allow some copyrighted content to be uploaded as non-free content, but only certain types and only when it's use satisfy Wikipedia's non-free content use policy. Some types of images, such a Getty and Corbis images, are pretty much never going to be accepted as non-free content as explained in item b of WP:F7 and item 7 of WP:NFC#UUI.
You can ask anyone you want to review the draft off-Wikipedia, but you need to realize that will have no bearing to anything that happens on-Wikipedia (no matter how much of an authority they are on the subject matter per WP:EXPERT). My suggestion to you would be to try and seek assistance from editors belonging to the Wikiprojects I mentioned above or perhaps from editors via WP:PR. While I do think that your dad is most likely Wikipedia notable per WP:BIO, the article will ultimately need to be written, formatted, etc. in accordance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.
I am only aware of the one draft (User:Kross305/sandbox) that you're working on, and it has not been submitted for any kind of review (at least not that I can see). Do you remember what the "earlier" draft was? Multiple ongoing drafts about the same subject matter is something that really sould be avoided because it just confuses things. If you did previously submit another draft about your dad, then you should try and track it down (there should be a link to it somewhere) and merge the two together. If the other draft was submitted to AFC for review and declined, then it's OK to still work on it as long as it hasn't been deleted. If it was deleted, just explain things to the administrator who deleted it and ask them to restore it. If, by chance, you used another account to create the other draft, but don't remember the password to that account or just want to start everything from scratch, then that's OK too as long as the other account is not currently blocked and you just didn't create this account to get around that block.
The AFC process takes as long as it takes. Drafts wait in line until an AFC reviewer gets to them. Right now, it looks like there's quite a backlog (eight weeks or so with 4000+ submissions waiting to be reviewed); so, it could take some time. I believe reviewers just randomly review drafts in order; so, no reviewer is assigned a particular type of draft; moreover, multiple reviewers may look at drafts which have been submitted multiple times.
Having a draft reveiwed via AFC is not mandatory, and drafts can be moved to the article mainspace by their creators; however, as I stated above, this doesn't mean that the "article" will last long. Since you've got a COI, you probably shouldn't be the one to move the draft. Try asking for feedback at the WikiProjects I mentioned above, at the Wikipedia Teahouse or even one of the active reviewers at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. Sometimes when a subject seems to be clearly Wikipedia notable, but the draft just requires cleaning up; another editor will step in and move it to the mainspace for the creator without sending it through AFC. If you do personally ask a reviewr to look at it and they decline to do so, don't take it as meaning they are rejecting the draft; they just might prefer to let the AFC process run its course and be fair to everyone else who's waiting in line for a review.
I've only skimmed through the draft; for the most part is seems OK, but there are some things (formatting and otherwise) that probably need addressing.
  • You should move the photo of your dad near the bottom of the page to the top of the page and use this for primary identification purposes, perhaps as part of Template:Infobox person or another one of the infoboxes listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Infoboxes.
  • The "Family History" section seems to contain a lot of almost certainly true but extraneous and unsourced details which is not needed per WP:NOTEVERYTHING; moreover, this type of section is typically found at the beginning of the article right after the WP:LEAD section.
  • The section headings seem a bit not WP:NPOV in my opinion; for example, instead of "PR Man With a Twist", maybe something simpler such as "Public relations career" might be better and instead of "James, he's got a gun" maybe "March against Fear" would work better per MOS:HEAD. In addition, please take a look at MOS:SECTIONCAPS.
  • Opinions on how to write/organize a biography vary and chronologically seems to be fairly standard, but there are others ways too per WP:BTIP and MOS:BIO. This is where looking at some FAs and GAs can be helpful.
  • You should also try and combine your references using WP:REFNAME if possible; it's OK to cite the same source multiple times, but there's no need for a separate reference entry each time. You also shouldn't use embedded citations since that style has been deprecated per WP:CS#Avoid embedded links. Try and also understand that adding lots citations doesn't always improve a draft's chances of being accepted per WP:BOMBARD.
  • Finally, sometimes the chances of a draft being accepted can actually be improved by removing any unsourced or excessively detailed content and simply sticking with the basics that can be verified per WP:V and WP:RSCONTEXT.
Looking at the page history of the draft, you created it January 2018 and bascially left it unedited until July 2019 when you started working on it again. During that more than a year period between edits, you also made no other edits (at least not with this account) anywhere on Wikipedia. This is OK, but it's one of the reasons why other editors are going to see you as being a WP:SPA who might be really editing for reasons other than being WP:HERE. This is another reason why I think branching out a bit and working on things besides the draft will end up being to your benefit. Some other editors looking at your contributions history may wonder whether you're simply going to stop editing altogether once the draft has been resolved one way or the other, and thus they may be less willing to help you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:30, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your thread has been archived

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Hi Kross305! You created a thread called Trying to upload photos, please assist at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread.

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August 2019

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Information icon Hello, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. This is just a note to let you know that I've moved the draft that you were working on to Draft:Sherwood Ross, from its old location at User:Kross305/sandbox. This has been done because the Draft namespace is the preferred location for Articles for Creation submissions. Please feel free to continue to work on it there. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. Thank you. -Liancetalk/contribs 20:17, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: Sherwood Ross has been accepted

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Sherwood Ross, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. If your account is more than four days old and you have made at least 10 edits you can create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Missvain (talk) 00:01, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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