User talk:Oppositorium: Difference between revisions

Hello, Oppositorium. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for article subjects for more information. We ask that you:

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation‘s terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicizing, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. I’m posting this message because your participation on Wikipedia (and, 7 years ago, on Wikimedia Commons) appears to be aimed exclusively at publicizing Thomas Knaus. Largoplazo (talk) 23:50, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Largoplazo, thank you for your message and for pointing out the relevant Wikipedia guidelines. I am familiar with the conflict of interest (COI) rules and fully understand the concerns you raise.

I would like to clarify that my intention was not to promote or publicize Thomas Knaus, but to correct and update clearly outdated factual information (e.g. regarding institutional affiliation following a university change), which had remained unchanged for some time despite being publicly documented in reliable sources. I initially waited and hoped that these changes would be incorporated by other editors, but as this did not happen and additional information had become outdated, I decided to update the article accordingly. All changes were made with the aim of improving accuracy and verifiability. I provided independent, reliable sources wherever possible so that the community can review, verify, revise, or remove the information as it sees fit. The edits are explicitly intended as suggestions and a starting point for further independent checking and improvement by other editors, not as a final or authoritative version.

Of course, the Wikipedia community is free to reassess the content, replace sources, add missing information, or revert changes if they are deemed inappropriate. If it is preferable, I am also happy to move future suggestions to the article’s talk page and submit them as edit requests instead. Thank you again for your guidance and for your work maintaining Wikipedia’s standards. Best regards. Oppositorium (talk) 01:14, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Your response seems to be relevant to only two of the ten articles you edited. In the other eight, you didn’t update any information, you just added references, in a few cases to statements where a source was already cited. Largoplazo (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Largoplazo, Thank you for taking the time to look more closely at the edits and for your clarification. You are correct that in several cases I did not change the wording of the articles but added additional academic references. This was intentional. In scholarly practice, adding reliable sources to existing statements—especially where claims are unsourced or only supported by a single reference—is considered good academic and encyclopedic practice. It helps strengthen verifiability and allows readers to consult multiple perspectives or more detailed background literature, rather than relying on a single source. In some cases, the existing citation supported a general claim, while the added reference provided a more explicit theoretical framing or empirical grounding that may be useful for readers who wish to explore the topic in greater depth. My aim was therefore not to alter the narrative of the articles, but to improve their sourcing and robustness in line with Wikipedia’s emphasis on verifiability and reliable sources.

That said, I fully understand that the community may differ on how much additional sourcing is appropriate in a given context. If the added references are considered redundant or unnecessary, I have no objection to their removal and will defer to the community’s judgment. Thank you again for the careful review.

Best regards Oppositorium (talk) 22:11, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(I’m replying in this thread instead of below because they’re basically the same conversation.)

Because Wikipedia editors are almost all anonymous and Wikipedia is such a highly used source, we often have problems with people trying to abuse the project to advertise their own products, promote themselves, or otherwise abuse the project. So we’re very wary of editors adding links or references to their own materials, especially without discussion and open acknowledgement that they’re associated with the materials. This includes academics as we also have had many academics abuse Wikipedia to promote themselves.

In general, the best practices are (a) communicate with other editors in the Talk page(s) of the respective article(s) and (b) practice radical transparency so that no one can claim to be uninformed or surprised. It’s almost always better for an editor with a conflict-of-interest to make a suggestion or request in a Talk page and then wait for another editor without a conflict to make the edit. Yes, that means that sometimes the suggestion or request will get turned down or significantly changed by another editor. But that’s just how it works here in this incredibly large, diverse, and strange community of volunteers who rarely know one another and often have difference views, opinions, and experiences. ElKevbo (talk) 22:54, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If you continue editing Wikipedia solely to promote works by Thomas Knaus without explaining why it’s appropriate for an editor to only edit Wikipedia to promote a specific author, you will likely be blocked. Please reconsider your actions and their impact. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 00:20, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ElKevbo, dear Kevin. Thank you for your message. I would like to clarify an important point, as I believe there may be a misunderstanding? The edits in question were not related to updating my own biography or article, but to thematic articles in areas I have been working on academically for many years. When reviewing these articles, I noticed that some relevant scholarly perspectives were underrepresented and that certain claims could benefit from additional, reliable academic references. I assumed that Wikipedia generally welcomes well-established, peer-reviewed literature where it can improve sourcing, balance, and conceptual depth.

All references I added were selected solely based on their relevance to the topic and were limited to appropriate English-language academic publications. My intention was not to promote a specific author, but to contribute sources that may help readers and editors better contextualize ongoing debates. I explicitly welcome critical review of these references. If the community concludes that this theoretical or empirical work does not meaningfully enrich the article, I fully accept that the references may be removed. I appreciate scrutiny and discussion, and I am happy to continue future contributions via talk pages if that is preferred. Thank you for your careful attention to maintaining Wikipedia’s standards. Best regards Oppositorium (talk) 01:27, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]