Talk:Ron Dembo

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recent reverted edits[edit]

I'm opening a thread here for discussion of an edit an IP editor has been trying to make, which was repeatedly been reverted as vandalism by Victoriagirl (talk · contribs). The edits are clearly not vandalism although they lack good sources. I have requested Victoriagirl to come here to explain what is going on -- hopefully any misunderstandings can be straightened out. Looie496 (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

-- thank you so much for your help Looie496, Victoriagirl if you need more sources for Ron's Bio please let me know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.223.182.122 (talk)
IP editor, when you put a message on a talk page, please sign it by adding ~~~~ at the end -- thanks. Looie496 (talk) 20:32, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I made no mention of vandalism when first reverting the edits made by 206.223.182.122 (talk · contribs). The first to describe them as such was Tedder. After further investigating the edit history, I came to the same conclusion myself. In short, rather than address the issues that had been raised, including the removal of citation requests, 206.223.182.122 (talk · contribs) had simply reverted to his/her version of the article[1][2][3] without edit summary or participation on this page.
I think it goes without saying that sources are required. In fact, they have been requested. Victoriagirl (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the vandalism button in twinkle, but in any case the editor was removing fact tags and continually re-adding information that smelled like spam. Really, I marked it as vandalism because it'd already been added and reverted once. I'd rather see articles get BETTER than worse. tedder (talk) 20:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I must point out that this exchange indicates considerable conflict of interest issues. I suggest the 206.223.182.122 (talk · contribs) and Kamcgregor (talk · contribs) might wish to follow the Action laid out on the Conflict of Interest page. Victoriagirl (talk) 20:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Victoriagirl, can you please let us know which points will need sources. We have added some 3rd part sources to this version:

Dr. Ron Dembo is the Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, an organization dedicated to a mass reduction in global environmental impact. Zerofootprint provides software and services to individuals, governments, universities, and corporations that measures and manages carbon footprint and engages employees and citizens worldwide in combating climate change. Zerofootprint came in first place and won Gold in the Climate Change category at the Canadian Environment Awards in 2008.

Prior to founding Zerofootprint, Dr. Dembo was the Founder, CEO, and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a start-up to the largest enterprise risk-management software company in the world, with offices in fifteen countries and over 70% of the world's top 100 banks as clients. Algorithmics was consistently voted as one of the top 50 best-managed companies in Canada.

Dr. Dembo has also had a distinguished ten-year academic career at Yale University, where he was cross-appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. Dr. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance. Dr. Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freedman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson, and released in May 2007.

In May 2007, Dr. Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community. In July 2007, Dr. Dembo was inducted as a charter member of the Risk Who's Who. Dr. Dembo’s alma mater, the University of Waterloo, honoured Dr. Dembo with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. He is also a member of the University of Waterloo’s Deans Advisory Council in the Faculty of Environment, and a member of the Board of Advisors to the President at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Dr. Dembo is also the Chair of the Information Technology committee of the Board at Mount Sinai Hospital, and is a member of the Board of Governors of University of Toronto’s NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) program.

thanks again for all your help. 206.223.182.122 (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Victoriagirl, tedder, thanks for responding. If the text were full of peacock terms and puffery I would agree with you completely, but I'm having difficulty seeing any serious problems in that regard. A COI is always a red flag to be alert, but it doesn't invalidate an edit that meets Wikipedia's RS and NPOV criteria. I understand why you reverted and it makes sense, but since we are dealing with a very inexperienced editor here who seems to be making a good-faith effort, would it be okay for this to provisionally go in at this point? Looie496 (talk) 21:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the inexperience and enthusiasm for the subject, but there IS quite a bit of borderline puffery that make it smell like an advert: "distinguished ten-year academic career", as well as the information about Zerofootprint. How about leaving it here on the talk page until an experienced editor (preferably copyeditor) can integrate it into the article, rather than replacing the existing article with this version? tedder (talk) 22:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thoroughly disagreed. It is good-faith contribution. The style of wikipedia is not widespread in the world. There is nothing wrong the person writes the text as a resume. Your job is to clean up what you see, some other person cleans up what he sees, etc. Wholesale revert is grand lack of courtesy. Twri (talk) 00:23, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
First, the fact that the edit is similar in content and style to those of Kamcgregor and 007003s raised justifiable suspicion. Second, the user's edits eliminated long-standing citation requests. Third, revisions made by myself and tedder were accompanied by edit summaries - which were all ignored. Fourth, the user provided no explanation for reverting our edits. For these reasons, I disagree that our reverts demonstrated a "grand lack of courtesy". While I recognize that inexperience may provide a possible explanation - I also recognize a very real conflict of interest. I'll see what I can do to improve the text below. Victoriagirl (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Revised version[edit]

I agree that the submitted version is not puffery-free. It would be easier to work within the article, but how about the following version as a starting point (subject to necessary sources being provided):

Dr. Ron Dembo is the Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, an organization dedicated to a reduction in global environmental impact. Zerofootprint provides software and services to individuals, governments, universities, and corporations that measures and manages carbon footprint and engages employees and citizens worldwide in combating climate change. Prior to founding Zerofootprint, Dr. Dembo was the Founder, CEO, and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a start-up to the largest enterprise risk-management software company in the world.

Dembo has also had a ten-year academic career at Yale University, where he was cross-appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance. He is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freedman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson, and released in May 2007.

In May 2007, Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community. In July 2007, Dembo was inducted as a charter member of the Risk Who's Who. Dembo’s alma mater, the University of Waterloo, honoured Dembo with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. He is also a member of the University of Waterloo’s Deans Advisory Council in the Faculty of Environment, and a member of the Board of Advisors to the President at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Dembo is also the Chair of the Information Technology committee of the Board at Mount Sinai Hospital, and is a member of the Board of Governors of University of Toronto’s NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) program.

Any reactions? Looie496 (talk) 01:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you start with that, I'll modify it a little bit- for instance, all or nearly all of the ELs can be replaced with ILs. It'd also look better if the paragraph mentioning Yale was slimmed down, but I'm willing to do that on the article page.
Ultimately, my objections were due to replacing the existing article rather than improving it. It makes it look like an editor with a conflict of interest. I just don't want to see us throw this other version up, spend time improving it, and then have complaints that it isn't the exact same as the consensus from the talk page- OTOH, it isn't worth rewriting the article 100 times on the talk page either! tedder (talk) 01:12, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After a good half-hour working with the above, I discovered that the text was lifted from the Zerofootprint website. While I don't have any problems working with a new text, I'm afraid I'm not interested in providing a ground-up rewrite. Victoriagirl (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for introducing me to the world of Wikipedia. This is my first edit, and I honestly had no idea what it would take to edit an article. From now on, should anyone put forth an argument that "anyone can edit on Wikipedia" I know from experience to passionately disagree! :) I apologize for not adding sources in the beginning and re-posting the article several times before creating a discussion. All I am trying to do is to update Ron's Bio with more current information. I am not sure where to get more sources, then I already have, as this similar Bio is the one that is used on many publications. Thank You Victoriagirl for editing the article. Can we post this edit in the interim until someone decides to re-edit? Thanks again. 206.223.182.122 (talk) 13:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that your first edit has been so difficult. May I suggest looking into the links tedder provided as a welcome on your user talk page? While I did spend some time editing the text provided above, all was thrown away after I discovered that the text I was wikifying was copied from the the Zerofootprint website. as such, posting it (even with my changes) would have run against WP:COPY and WP:NOTMIRROR. Victoriagirl (talk) 14:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concern. The Wikipedia article is the first thing that comes up when you Google "Ron Dembo", this is not the most up-to-date Bio, so all I was doing is making it more current. Although, the content of this Bio is similar to the zerofootprint.net website, it is because it is a reflection of the factual Bio. Do you suggest I re-write it using different words? The information is still exactly the same, as all the points referenced have occurred. Thanks again 206.223.182.122 (talk) 15:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My advice is to not re-write using different words, but to create a new article (perhaps building upon the one currently in place). You may also want to avoid following the structure of the Zerofootprint website. I think it would be wise to keep this in mind (taken from WP:COPY): "Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely." Victoriagirl (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While you shouldn't rewrite copyrighted material, the opposite is true with the existing Ron Dembo article on Wikipedia. Instead, make improvements to it. tedder (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your suggestions. I'll get back with a revised version. 206.223.182.122 (talk) 13:12, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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