User:EFerington

Who I Am

I am a full-time, professional writer, editor, and consultant. I have made quite a few Wikipedia edits that are not related to my work. For example, I started by cleaning up an article flagged as a "rough translation" on a topic related to telephone service in Catalonia. More recently, I've taken to adding section headings for those articles that are flagged as needing section headings (on random, unrelated topics, including Cheryl Tiegs, architectural sites, a football stadium, Vietnamese military scouts, and an early automobile brand--although that is not a complete list). Often I'll do a little editing as well as adding the section headings. I've also updated titles for an author where only an older list of titles was included, bringing the list up to date.

When my edits are work-related, I always note this on the talk page for that article. I will also note the existence of such edits here in the COI section:

Conflict of Interest (COI) re Folger Shakespeare Library

[Again, I am listing this in keeping with the wikipedia COI guidelines, which encourage full disclosure of any conflict of interest to provide transparency.]

Folger Shakespeare Library. Folger Shakespeare Library is one of my long-time clients and hired me to address the (pre-November 14, 2007) article on them, which had been marked by others on Wikipedia with the following flags: "the tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate" and "this article may require clean-up to meet Wikipedia quality standards." Parts of the pre November 14, 2007, version of the article, especially at the beginning, seemed to be drawn from Folger (or other) public relations materials that were not intended for reference use. These materials tend to be more general and, naturally enough, not neutral (too positive).

My idea was to adjust the content so it is more neutral (eliminating the public relations tone) and contains more factual information similar to that provided for other independent research libraries. Although the institutions aren't analogous in every detail, I tried to emulate the existing Wikipedia entries for the Huntington Library and the Morgan Library in terms of the level of detail and more neutral tone. (Huntington, Morgan, and Folger were themselves contemporaries, and the institutions do have many parallels today.)

Emily Jordan Folger. Over time, I became increasingly concerned that there was an article for Folger Shakespeare Library and for Henry Folger, but not for Emily Folger, who in many respects co-founded the library. Working on my own, I contacted the Wikipedia Drawing Board to check whether it would be okay to write a new article about Emily Folger. The person who responded agreed that she seemed to meet the notability criteria and felt it would be okay for me to proceed, provided I revealed the COI in the talk page for the new article -- which I have done. I'm glad to have added this new piece to Wikipedia.

Michael Witmore. Folger Shakespeare Library asked me to work on a neutral biographical entry for Michael Witmore, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, following the numerous Folger programs of the year 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. He and the Folger Shakespeare Library were discussed in a variety of news and feature reports before, during, and after that anniversary year, on Shakespeare topics, related "early modern age" subjects, and related modern topics. Witmore is also a digital humanist, and I wanted to flag this as well. I have tried to find and include detailed sources for all of the content, which I've cited in references, to use a neutral, objective tone, and to include connections to other Wikipedia articles, including "Digital humanities" and others. I tried to emulate the existing Wikipedia entries for other directors of rare books libraries, museums, or other cultural institutions in terms of the level of detail and neutral tone.