User talk:Hans-Dieter Sues

Welcome!

Hello, Hans-Dieter Sues, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Hans-Dieter Sues, 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.)

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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, visit the Teahouse, 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! Nat Gertler (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Mr. Gertler,

Thank you very much for your message.

Somebody developed a page for me, which included incorrect information. I also suddenly received a warning that the text looks too much like a resume. Then I received an email message from an editor who offered to edit my page for $600, which I refused.

Could you help me to (1) remove the existing page and, if possible, (2) develop a new one?

Best regards,

Hans Sues Hans-Dieter Sues (talk) 10:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You were wise to refuse the paid editing offer; such solicited edits are generally done outside of Wikipedia rules and are often poor quality edits that get reverted anyway.

I am avoiding editing the article myself because I, too, have a conflict of interest; I run a small publishing line, and the Smithsonian (well, its gift shops) is one of my larger customers. I don't want people worrying that my editing is biased by my trying to curry favor with your employer. But I can make some suggestions.

Don't worry too much about things like the "resumé" warning on the top of the page. These are not statements about you, they are statements about the state of the article, and are there to encourage editors to improve the article.
If you would simply rather there not be a Wikipedia page about you, that may be achievable. There are people who are so obviously notable that Wikipedia would be a poor encyclopedia if it did't cover them (say, George Washington), and people who are so unnotable that it would be pointless to cover them (the girl next door who is always leaving her bike on the sidewalk), but there is definitely a range of people that we could have an article on but don't absolutely have to, and for folks in that range there is absolutely some deference to requests from them to delete the page. A quick glance at your page, and I suspect that such a request would be turned down, that you may be too important in your field to omit... but it could be tried in any case. If you want to go that route, I can help you with that.
If you wish the page to remain but be corrected and improved (and that's generally how we handle things; not totally remove and rebuild), you are fully allowed to add messages to the page Talk:Hans-Dieter Sues, which is a page for discussing editing the article about you. There are at least some editors now "watching" that page who will see your requests and suggestions. Some tips: If there's some factual error ("Sues is made primarily of cheese") and you point out it's in error, if the statement is in the article without a source, it's easily deleted. If it's in the article with a source, then it would help to either mention concerns about the reliability of the source -- if the source is "Bob's Blog of Dreams", then yes, it's easily done away with, but if the journal Nature is claiming you're made of cheese, we would take that with more seriousness -- and/or provide a reliable source that has more correct information ("Sues is not made of cheese" -- Scientific American.)
One problem with the page in its current state is its sources. For facts that establish the notability of the subject, we want to lean on reliable, independent, third-party sources. At the moment, the bulk of the article is referenced to either things you wrote or things the Smithsonian put out, and while the Smithsonian would be considered a good source on most topics, when it comes to you they are not independent and so we can trust them on things that are not particularly boastful ("Sues is 5-foot-7 and attended Springfield High School") we cannot trust them on things that make you look good and notable ("Sues is the most mighty paleontologist ever, and he makes all the ladies swoon"... or even "Sues has discovered several new, fresh dinosaurs.") You may well know of places where other people have written about you and your work, and pointing us to them would be of use. (Online sources are preferred not because they are more reliable, but because it's easier for us to check them.)

I hope that some of that helps. Feel free to leave further questions in this thread, or on my editor talk page (you'll find the link marked "talk" in my signature on this message) and I will try to help as I can. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Nat,

Many thanks for your helpful reply.

I do not want to brag but I am generally considered a leading expert in my academic discipline based on my discoveries, record of scientific publications and positions in the American museum world (even though, as I just saw, Wikipedia deems me as "low importance" :-D). It would be nice to have a page because I get a lot of inquiries from the general public, especially kids, based on hundreds of interviews, YouTube videos, numerous appearances in documentaries, and a recent program on WiredTech.

If the Smithsonian Institution is not a reliable source I really wonder what qualifies as such. I have in fact discovered quite a few new species of dinosaurs, which I reported in peer-reviewed professional journals. Are they acceptable third-party sources?

I understand your conflict of interest (although the commercial arm of the Smithsonian ignores the institution's experts). Do you know someone who can assist me in setting up a proper page?

Best, Hans Hans-Dieter Sues (talk) 19:01, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hans,

The Smithsonian Institution is a wonderful source for a wide range of topics. They'd be a fine source to write about Timurlengia euotica. They'd just not be a good source for saying "our guy discovered ol' Tim-eu!", because they have incentive to blur things to make themselves look good. But, say, this newspaper article about your discovery? A perfectly fine source, even though they're getting the info from you and the Smithsonian, because the Associated Press does not have such incentive, and we would expect them to check things or at least to run a correction if some problem were found. They are independent of you. If anyone-who-is-not-your-employer has done an in-depth piece about you, that would be a fine thing to have.

Your peer-reviewed articles are useful for saying that you've written articles about thus-and-such; they are less good for saying that you discovered thus-and-such, but it shouldn't be hard to find someone else citing your discovery which would make a good source. Often, in such cases we will put up a paired set of references, the first being an independent source saying "Hans discovered this in his paper" and the second being the paper itself. (Your article might also reasonably have a list of select publications, so that direct links to a few articles might be included, although you've clearly done enough that we wouldn't want to have a full list, it would just overtake the article.)

Again, my advice for you on getting the article taken care of is to put your concerns and suggested sources on the Talk:Hans-Dieter Sues page (which should not be confused with this page, User talk:Hans-Dieter Sues -- every article gets its own talk page to talk about editing the article.) If you do that, I'll put up a post over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs and/or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology (those are places where editors interested in working on articles related to palaentology and dinosaurs gather) recommending that folks go look at your comments and try to improve the article.

(And yes, my "conflict of interest" is not apt to have any actual conflict to it... but to keep people trusting me, it's best to avoid the appearance of conflict.)

Believe me, I understand if this is a bit frustrating; there's a Wikipedia article about me and I'd love to just dive in and hammer it into shape, but if you worked as an editor here, you'd quickly see that there are a lot of folks looking to twist this place in their favor, so we need some controls even if those end up limiting those of pure heart and intent. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:12, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your reply, Nat.

I have checked out these links, but I am still not clear what is to be done. AP and other news services base their articles on what I tell or our public media people tell them. Most journalists nowadays do little if any research to follow up on stories. (I have done hundreds of such interviews over the years.) Over the years I have had numerous reporters call me up who told me that their editor had told them to contact me and had not the slightest idea why they had to do that. Thus, they are hardly independent.

I have checked out Wikipedia pages for a number of colleagues and found no unifying style; many violate rules set by Wikipedia. I get a distinct sense that it is all a bit arbitrary. I will keep looking for someone who can help. Best, Hans Hans-Dieter Sues (talk) 17:30, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]