User talk:Harald Forkbeard

discussion on Sageworks article

Hi, there's some active editing and discussion going on about the Sageworks article at Talk:Sageworks, and you're invited to participate. Some editors commenting in the recent AFD have already been invited by another editor, and i am just making a point to contact the others, including you, to avoid any appearance of selectivity. --doncram 22:55, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

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. --CorporateM

Hi Harald Forkbeard, I commented at the Edit Warring noticeboard. Could you please discuss the lawsuits topic at Talk:Sageworks#Lawsuits and sources, maybe restarting from the beginning, so other editors following the Sageworks article can benefit?

And, also, if you would humor me, would you please disclose about whether or not you have any connection to Sageworks or competitors, at the bolded "Association(s)" point within Talk#Sageworks#editors associated with the subject? (as other editors have done)?. I asked same of CorporateM and explained a bit more at User talk:CorporateM#Your Sagework court case reverts. sincerely, --doncram 11:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Severe misuse of Wikipedia

You appear to be misusing Wikipedia to attack a company, Sageworks. If you cannot edit from a neutral point of view, you will have to stop. Wikipedia is not a place to publish personal reflections on data security or to publicize non notable court cases. Jehochman ^Talk 10:37, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

That's a bit harsh. Jehochman, I think you have it wrong at least partially. The perspective at Talk:Sageworks about data security is more from a different editor, Physitsky(sp?). The article and Talk page suffered from sockpuppets and undisclosed COI editing for a long time, and finally now there is decent discussion happening, and the data security stuff has been mostly resolved by that I think. Jehochman, please do comment about the data security and lawsuit topics at the Talk page. --doncram 11:38, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I've seen this editor edit warring to install poorly sourced or unsourced content. I also see them entirely editing the article with a negative slant. NPOV is mandatory. Jehochman ^Talk 13:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Please provide proof of edit warring and unsourced content that I inserted. Bald accusations won't do. I do not appreciate the authoritarian tone in your comment on my page. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 18:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Explaining sources

Hi Harald. Sorry if I came in a bit brash before. In my defense, it was 5 a.m. for me!

Here is the explanation of sourcing on Wikipedia I promised. Please keep in mind, I'm not here to argue about them; rather I encourage you to read the policies and guidelines themselves and maybe ask someone else for help if you have any questions (someone you are not in an editing dispute with).

WP:PRIMARY discusses primary sources. A primary source is published by someone closely affiliated with the events being covered. On company articles this can include the company website, annual reports, press releases, but also judges, lawyers, competitors, non-profit advocates, patent records, court records, and others that may be independent from the company, but are not independent of the events being covered. Acceptable uses for primary sources include infobox data like revenues, number of offices, etc, to supplement a secondary sources and other common sense applications.

Secondary sources are the very lifeblood of Wikipedia and should be the primary basis of all Wikipedia page. They often research and interpret primary sources. They include academic, reporters, historians, books and others that are considered credible, independent sources and are not in any way involved in the events being covered. You can add almost anything to Wikipedia that is covered by a credible, independent, secondary source.

Tertiary sources Tertiary sources like Wikipedia and other encyclopedias source content from secondary sources, repeat their information and cite it. Some professionally edited tertiary sources can be used with caution, though Wikipedia itself should never be cited.

Hope this helps. CorporateM (Talk) 20:26, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Good. Realize that for an obscure company there will be lack of secondary and tertiary sources due to lack of general public interest.

Sageworks article does not appear noteworthy enough to be included in Wikipedia:

The information is either sparse or of being created by the company's insiders.--Harald Forkbeard (talk) 20:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

There is an expectation to use lower-quality sources on articles where the available sources are weaker, but never should primary sources be used for such bold statements. If there is not an abundance of secondary sources, either the article should be made very short to reflect that, or it should be erased completely. But since the AfD was just closed as KEEP, that's already a done deal. You can however circle back in a few months and re-nominate it for a deletion discussion if you like. Even though I disagree, there seems to potentially be a reasonable amount of support for it. CorporateM (Talk) 22:35, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Your editing at Sageworks

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 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)

March 2015

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)