Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 56

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Joel Palmer

Stale
 – User who added information hasn't edited since June 2009 and there is no clear connection between the IP and the subject of the article. Edit removed as an advert. OlYeller21Talktome 21:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Joel Palmer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
  • Conflict appears in section entitled "Later Years and Legacy". At issue is the following line: "Living relatives include Mr. David Herschorn, who currently attends the University of Berkeley and is writing a memoir of Joel Palmer."

I am raising this, as a relative of Joel Palmer with awareness of many other famous relatives of Joel Palmer that are not listed in this report on Joel Palmer and that are not otherwise seeking to obtain publicity for a memoir that may be in progress. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.64.87 (talk) 21:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a clear link between any editor and Joel Palmer. Is he editing the page? If so, is there any proof such as an editor where the editor declares who they are (Joel Palmer)? OlYeller21Talktome 21:47, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
41.226.122.156 added the portion in June 2009 and never edited again. I'll watchlist the article but I consider this to be a stale case. OlYeller21Talktome 21:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Krayem Awad

Dear collegues, I think this article is not written in a Neutral point of view. We had a note in German WP, Austrian Artists where a new artsit has been put in. I never heard from this man, so I looked nearer. The editors name was Rosapfeifer and this is a one porpose account. And so I looked if this artist is relevant or famous according to our kriteria. I found out, that he is not (I am especially working in the field of contemporary art in German Wikipedia). He had no exhibition in any important museum, only some group exhibitions or small culture-halls in the country. There are many books mentioned. The books are without ISBN, so these are folders or flyers from galleries. The only two books with ISBN are from the EMI-Verlag, and when you ask what kind of publisher this is wondering why there are oly books of Kayem.- you finally come to the artists studio adress and and a woman named Rosa Pfeifer. In my mind there is a self-marketing campaign using Wikipeia for marketing. Sorry for my broken Englsh and thank you for your attention.--Robertsan (talk) 16:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Robertsan. Thanks for taking the time to bring this to our attention. I want to make sure I understand correctly. Are you saying that a de.WP user named Rosapfeife who has a close connection to Emi Kunstverlag, is promoting Emi on de.WP? I can not find a user whose name is close to Rosapfeife on en.WP but I will do more searching. There is no clear en.WP equivalent version of Liste österreichischer bildender Künstler but I have alerted Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts of the situation and asked for their assistance. Krayem Awad looks like it has had several IP editors and some fluffery in the article but I don't see in a problematic users, clearly. I'll watchlist the article and stay on top of it. Thanks again for the report. OlYeller21Talktome 16:38, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi thank you for your statement. I think, there is a maketing campaign to push the artist. Krayem Awad is an artist, but he is not really famous. A woman called Rosa Pfeifer is also connected with Emi Art publishing, which has the same address as the artists studio and which also can be found of being the editor of the artists website. So there is a close connection between Rosa Pfeifer, the artists website and Emi Publishing. Maybe the editor in en WP took the information from the website of Krayem, but he should not (one never should take the own website of a person). The statemetns in the WP article are not correctly verified, they are verified by books of Emi publishing. (now there are cn marks in the article). The artist had an education in another field and there is no teacher named at the University of applied arts Vienna. Was he in a class, got a diploma, or is he a hobby artist with a good marketing concept? If you look at the books and links, you find a lot of Wikipedia-based books, but not a museum catalogue. Then the article says he is a poet. Where are his books? The national library finds one with 48 pages of paintings and aphorism, it seems to be self-published. In my mind the article is to pretend a famous artist. But is he much more than a busy hobbypainter? No museums exhibited his work, no great art historicans or art criticers have written about him, no independent art magazin has written about him. I found the name in en WP because of one edit in the list of Austrian artists (made by an account rosapfeifer), and he had a red link and no article, and then I use to proof if the artist is relevant or not. We list just relevant artists. At least I found the English version. So the cn signs are the right way to get things clear I think. --Robertsan (talk) 21:02, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center

User:LongBeachCVB, as in Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, is editing the article on the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center. Edits have included information promotional in tone such as this. 72Dino (talk) 18:35, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Username received a deserved indef block from Alexf. The article looks good as far as advert/POV text goes. I'll watchlist and report back here if the problem persists. OlYeller21Talktome 19:14, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba

Dear WIKI-Administrators,

The editor "User:Stevenj" deleted the most part of the content of the Wikipage "Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba" dedicated to the great modern russian mathematician A.A. Karatsuba who was died recently (in 2008). This page was created by his collegues from different countries and existed from 2008. The "User:Stevenj" gives the comments which show that "User:Stevenj" has private and non-objective relation to A.A. Karatsuba and his results. Please, help to defense the content of the article "Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba" in the editions to 01.01.2012. We ask to defence the Wiki-article "Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba" from such vandalism! 91.79.175.170 (talk) 18:55, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what my conflict of interest is supposed to be; I have no relationship with Karatsuba, nor do any of the edits discuss me or my work or that of anyone I know personally.
The issue is that there have been a pattern of similar problematic edits by multiple (WP:SOCK?) accounts and IPs [e.g. Riemann'sZeta, 83.149.209.253 Algoritmist, 91.79.192.32, AliceNovak, Ekaratsuba (who linked to and may be this daughter of Karatsuba?)], concentrated at Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba, Divide and conquer algorithm, Karatsuba algorithm, Karatsuba phenomenon, and Fast Fourier transform (FFT), which:
  • Push contentious claims, contradicted by numerous reputable sources, that Karatsuba invented the first "fast algorithm" (period, not just for convolution), and that Karatsuba originated the concept of divide-and-conquer algorithms (denying algorithms like Merge sort pointed to by Knuth and others as predecessors of the idea, and denying the accepted fact in the literature that Gauss invented FFTs in 1805).
  • Have filled the Karatsuba bio article with unsourced biographical information, marked as unsourced for some time without improvement, and simply reverting removal of the unsourced information without improving the sourcing.
  • Have filled the Karatsuba article with a detailed summary of essentially every mathematical result that he published, citing the original papers as sources. This is problematic (WP:PRIMARY) because we really should have secondary sources to establish the notability of individual academic results. Moreover, for results like the Karatsuba algorithm that are indisputably noteworthy and have numerous secondary sources, we have a whole article on that topic so the biographical article should link there rather than reproducing a summary of the algorithm (and giving a second place to push the slanted view that this is the first divide-and-conquer algorithm), or in general they should be placed in context in the appropriate mathematical article.
I removed the problematic material and left a short summary that could be sourced appropriately. More could be added back, given appropriate sources and adherence to WP:NPOV, but unfortunately the (sock?) accounts have chosen to merely revert the deletions and/or re-insert rephrased versions of the problematic unsourced claims.
— Steven G. Johnson (talk) 14:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Looking at the Russian version of the page, there is probably quite a bit of content that could be bought across, including photos, biographical material and educational details. The focus of this page should be the person, not the algorithms which have other pages. It would also be useful to give a dates for the introduction of the algorithms. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Stuart's comment, in the sense that more details may deserve to be added to our own article on Karatsuba. He is clearly an important mathematician. The Russian Wikipedia article can be viewed at ru:Карацуба, Анатолий Алексеевич. Even non-Russian speakers (like myself) who can read mathematical notation can get something out of it. The style of that article indicates that some of the same editors might have been active there. Unfortunately the defenders of the over-promotional version of the English wikipedia article have deviated from policies and guidelines by abusing multiple accounts. A discussion is now occurring at the request for unblock filed by AliceNovak. See User talk:AliceNovak#March 2012 for details. EdJohnston (talk) 23:26, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
There's no question that Karatsuba is a notable mathematician, and sourced, neutral biographical information on him would be welcome in the article. Unfortunately, the Russian article looks like a direct translation of the old version of the English article (or, more likely, the English article was directly translated from the Russian), with similar content and sourcing problems. — Steven G. Johnson (talk) 21:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

There is now a fully fledged edit war on the page as it's come out from protection. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Radu Varia

This was uploaded last month by Dr. Stephan Poen, an individual who admits he did so "as official representative of Mariana Nicolesco and Radu Varia for their image on Wikipedia". I then stubbed it so it would only be based on sourced material. I agreed to restore his version provided he brought it into line with the many policies it breaches; evidently, that has not happened.

At the same time, for the article on Varia's wife Mariana Nicolesco, I restored an earlier version, but later brought back Poen's version with the same understanding.

Given that Poen has a stated conflict of interest and seems incapable of writing biographies up to our standards, what should we do? It seems inadvisable to just let these lie around in their current form. - Biruitorul Talk 14:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I've added a COI tag to both article. I don't read Romanian but a Google Translate of the edit you linked not only declares a close connection but it also looks like there's a legal threat:
"you can avoid unwanted interpretations but may be subject to appeal to the competent bodies that protects the dignity, rights and freedoms"
Are there any admins around that can handle this? If not, I'll report it over at WP:ANI soon. I think the user was attempting to converse in good faith but in my opinion, the threat can't be ignored. OlYeller21Talktome 15:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
What he wrote was "your attitude evidently might contain interpretations that can be brought to the attention of competent bodies that supervise national values and the image of Romania"... "[by restoring my text], you can avoid unwanted interpretations that can be the subject of appeals to competent bodies that supervise the dignity, rights and freedoms of citizens". Personally, I laughed off the pomposity of that, and he doesn't actually mention what these "bodies" are (nor did he when I pressed him), but if you think this needs reporting, that's up to you. - Biruitorul Talk 15:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Very pompous. I'll see what an admin thinks. Personally, I'm not inclined to work with anyone that threatens people with anything. Especially when we're all donating our time. To me, "competent bodies that supervise the dignity, rights and freedoms of citizens" means some judicial body but if he has stepped down off his pedestool since then, I wouldn't lose any sleep over moving on. OlYeller21Talktome 15:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, he did become a lot more conciliatory once I restored his texts. For me personally, the main thing at this point is not to go after him for something he said over a month ago (provided he doesn't start again), it's getting us rid of those awful texts. - Biruitorul Talk 16:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Bedfordshire Police

User:BedsPolice appears to be a single-purpose account. All contributions to date have been to the article Bedfordshire Police, removing unfavourable content and adding a great deal of mostly uncited, unencyclopaedic, subjective promotion: diff. I don't know much about the details of Wikipedia's conflict of interest and username policies, and I don't really have time to learn it all at the moment. Nonetheless, edits from this user to this article keep appearing in my watchlist and I wonder if anyone else has noticed or cares. I imagine there are precedents for Wikipedia engaging constructively with public bodies about their portrayal here. Are there any experts here willing to get involved? Ben (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I took the first step of reporting the username for a WP:USERNAME violation. The username has been blocked indefinitely. I'll check out the article and report back. OlYeller21Talktome 20:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Fantastic. Thanks for your quick and decisive intervention. If User:BedsPolice really does represent the force, they can get in touch and discuss future edits. --Ben (talk) 22:57, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Bernie Farber

Since April 2010 User:Pampina has made 56 edits, 2 on a user talk page, 5 in regards to the Canadian Jewish Congress, 2 in regards to Shimon Fogel and the remaining 47 to Bernie Farber or the associated talk page. Farber is the former CEO if the Canadian Jewish Congress, Shimon Fogel is his successor in a new organization that CJC merged into. It would appear, based on his editing history, that User:Pampina may have a conflict of interest due to his relationship with the the articles he exclusively edits. Vale of Glamorgan (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Georgealozano posting own papers

Papers were published in Medical Hypotheses which at the time was a non-peer reviewed paper "if it looks good, we'll publish it" The papers therefore not a reliable source. I have left a COI note on his talk. Thanks Jim1138 (talk) 00:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:SELFCITE is a tricky one. I agree that some of the edits are a bit problematic, but others like this are absolutely fine, and should in fact be encouraged - the reference being added is cited >300 times. SmartSE (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
These are consistently tricky situations, especially where some of the references are clearly helpful. I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done except dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. a13ean (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Are non-peer reviewed journal articles helpful? I usually consider them suspect at best. If they are good, why are they not peer-reviewed? I removed them (with the help of Materialscientist). Should I replace them? Thanks Jim1138 (talk) 02:34, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Dobrosav Milojević

User:Dejcha (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) appears to have created Dobrosav Milojevic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) three times - Dobrosav Milojević (slightly different spelling) was deleted as a copyvio and an Article for Creation was declined as non-neutral. I am concerned that this user is Mr. Milojevic - he has uploaded a number of images of paintings by Mr. Milojevic and under the licensing terms he has described them as his own work. If this is the case, Mr. Milojevic is creating his own biographical article, which is a clear COI issue. The user has not responded to talk page notices. GabrielF (talk) 21:41, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Tomas Barfod

The author admitted being the assistant of the subject on the article's talk page while con testing the prod. -Aaron Booth (talk) 23:14, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Viagogo

Lots of SPAs, IPs and others "sanitizing" this article and removing sourced information relevant to criticism. Some of the removals are reasonable, but others are a problem. Black Kite (talk) 08:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

IndieTVIndustryInsider

It's a bit stale now, but still worth keeping an eye on. Basically, a PR-whitewash by the studio that produces this UK TV show. The given IP belongs to said studio. All diffs are here: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/IndieTVIndustryInsider/Archive. WilliamH (talk) 16:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Vicky Budinger

User:TheOnlyMissVicki has identified herself as the subject of the article.[1][2] She has deleted information from the article, including external links to newspaper articles about her.

I'd like to get more eyes on the situation, to see if her removal is in order with policies, or is just an attempt to clean up any undesired information from the article. —C.Fred (talk) 18:16, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Some of her edits are clearly non-constructive, like removing the reflist from the Budinger article.[3] I've reverted and warned over that. I haven't reverted again over the external links that she removed;[4] that's one of the edits I'd like looked at. —C.Fred (talk) 18:20, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

They seem like legit BLP concerns to me. Seeming as the subject appears annoyed at the crappy article and that there are very few sources about her, I've nominated the article for deletion here. SmartSE (talk) 19:09, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Department of Corrections (New Zealand)

The user is strongly interested in problems with the New Zealand criminal justice system and has been editing articles (mainly the two above) to reflect his views. After these edits were noticed several regular New Zealand editors looked at the articles and reverted much of what he has done and tried to engage him. Eventually he has admitted that he is Barry Horton Roger Brooking and has written a book on the subject and various other activities.

However he has refused to admit that he has a conflict of interest in the subject or that his edits reflect that COI. He has also accused myself directly (and possibly another editor) of being employed by the Dept of Corrections. His edits continue and I am getting a little frustrated, perhaps somebody from outside NZ might be able to help. Most of the discussion is on the Talk:Department of Corrections (New Zealand) page. - SimonLyall (talk) 07:16, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Mr Lyall has outed me a second time by placing a link to my book above. He harrassed me the talk page of the Department of Corrections and that conversation was deleted by Beeblebrox. He now continues to harrass me here!!! Being knowledgeable on a particular subject does not qualify as a conflict of interest. Perhaps someone would consider implementing wikipedia's harassment policy against Mr Lyall.Offender9000 (talk) 04:18, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I would ask that editors review the talk page (and participant's edits) to see exactly who outed who and who may (or not) have a conflict of interest rather than going off statements here. - SimonLyall (talk) 04:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Since User:Offender9000 is repeatedly charging SimonLyall and myself with COI, I've added us to the userlinks above. I don't see the User:Offender9000 has posted any evidence, however, and it's not a claim I support. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I have gone through the edits and can confirm that Offender9000 outed himself as follows: he introduced a reference in this edit and identified himself as the author of the work cited in this edit. To me that is self-outing, surely: once individuals have identified themselves, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest in appropriate forums. However, I am a little confused as the name referred to by SimonLyall above is not that given on the web page of the work cited. Some material on talk page was removed as it related to outing so I am asking the admin to comment on this.Babakathy (talk) 12:45, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure why I'm using the name above rather than the name of the author. Barry Horton is a misspelling of the name of an acquaintance of mine. No idea why I put it in above, my mind must have wandered at the time. Sorry for the confusion - SimonLyall (talk) 19:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I have been involved in this, but solely in my capacity as an admin and oversighter. The edits that were removed were edits where attempted outing by Offender9000 of other users was present on the page. I removed the entire section because article talk pages are for discussing articles, not the users who edit them. Offender9000 did in fact out themselves by openly admitting authorship of some of the refs they were adding, so there is no issue there. As I have told these users multiple times, what is needed here is a re-focus of this discussion to comment on proposed edits instead of each other. COI is merely a factor to be considered, the value of an edit or the source used to verify it is in no way dependent on who made the edit, so I would again ask that these users comment on content, not each other. I've repeatedly suggested to the involved parties to pursue some form of WP:DR, and I've protected the page to stop their edit warring. I don't know why none of them seem interested in soliciting a wider range of opinion through DR, but that is what needs to happen if this ever going to be resolved. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:11, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
    We were going to see how this all turned out. I was hoping that somebody could at least point out to Offender9000 that he has just a little COI here since he is unable to acknowledge that or that it is relevant. While he was no doubt hoping that once we were all exposed as employees of the Dept (see below) he would be free to make sure the articles were "correct" - SimonLyall (talk) 19:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
    Have been working on analysing the edits, will post soon. I also wanted Beeblebrox's comments on the outing issue before making any mistakes myself.Babakathy (talk) 06:05, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Analysis

  1. I have tried to make a review of 425 accumulated revisions by 9 users (mostly Offender9000). The old version is the last edit before Offender9000 started editting. The newer version is the last edit by Offender9000 before Stuartyeates or SimonLyall started editting. I think. I hope that gives me an overview of the material contributed by Offender9000 which is under discussion.
  2. Offender9000 introduced a reference to the book Flying Blind in this edit and identified himself as the author of the work cited in this edit. To me that is self-outing, surely: once individuals have identified themselves, such information can be used for discussions of conflict of interest in appropriate forums. This view is confirmed by the admin who looked into the outing, Beeblebrox here. Following the link inserted by Offender9000 in this edit, the author of Flying Blind is Roger Brooking, which is pertinent to analysis of the edits.
    I DID NOT OUT MYSELF. I merely acknowledged that I, Offender9000, was the author of Flying Blind. AT NO STAGE DID I ADD MY NAME TO ANY DISCUSSIONS. Wiki states: When investigating possible cases of COI editing, Wikipedians must be careful not to reveal the identity of other editors. My name was added to the conversation by others including in this conversation here. Beeblebox deleted an entire section after I pointed out that Mr Lyall and Mr Yeates had outed me. You have also outed me in your analysis. THIS CONSTITUTES REPEATED HARRASSMENT Offender9000
    Actually you added your name to the article here: [5] . Daveosaurus (talk) 10:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
    This is a clear case of self-outing, which Beeblebrox confirmed. The precise wording of the policy is Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person voluntarily had posted his or her own information, or links to such information. Offender9000 did both by making a post identifying himself as the author of Flying Blind, inserting a reference that provides the name of the author, and by posting links to a website which prominantly displays the name of the author. Babakathy (talk) 06:42, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
  3. The detailed analysis is here.Babakathy (talk)
  4. Roger Brooking has a clear agenda in reforming the NZ prison system and in opposing penal populism, which he pursues in Flying Blind , online, in complaints to broadcasters and so on. From what I read in this article, it needs reform - but that is not the point. Roger Brooking is an alcohol and drug counsellor in Wellington and he provides comprehensive alcohol and drug assessments on offenders - the edits I have gone through argue that these assessments are far too few. Roger Brooking thus has some financial interests associated with the political agenda: as a provider of these assessments and to increase sales of Flying Blind .I am in no way suggesting the financial interests are behind the political agenda or are more important than the politial agenda to Roger Brooking, I am only saying they exist.
  5. The edits advance the political agenda of Roger Brooking and do not contain opposing voices.
  6. If Offender9000 is the author of Flying Blind (as per his self-outing discussed in my introduction), there is a clear COI with both the political agenda advanced off-wiki and the financial interests. This is a clear COI.Babakathy (talk)
    This is a very, very, very long bow to draw. There is big difference between having an interest in a particular subject and having a conflict of interest. Do you want to know how much I make from the sale of each copy of Flying Blind - $1.50. Does that mean ALL the information I provide is irrelevant because I might sell one more copy of the book and earn $1.50. Mr Lyall was deleting everything. One has to wonder why - is it possible he has a conflict?Offender9000 (talk) 07:55, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
    As regards financial interests, they exist but I have explicitly said I am not suggesting they are more important than the political agenda.
    I stand by my point above that the edits advance the political agenda of Roger Brooking and do not contain opposing voices. That is a serious conflict of interest per the guideline. Note that it is the nature of the edits and the fact that they advance an off-wiki interest that constitute a COI, not the mere fact of the edits. Babakathy (talk) 06:49, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
  7. In summary, while I have a lot of sympathy for the positions advocated by Offender9000 in his edits, the edits are very POV (thus against policy) and the COI is clear and inappropriate (thus against guideline).
  8. Finally, if either of the other two users involved are employed by the Department or closely associated with it, that would be a very clear COI indeed - but I have not looked through their edits yet. Babakathy (talk) 06:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
  9. I have updated my analysis to over the edits by Stuartyeates and SimonLyall and I do not think edither of them is editting in violation of WP:COI, no COI. Babakathy (talk)
    Here is the evidence: "Try an reflect on why we are editing this article vs why you are editing this article (hint: it is not because we are employed by the Dept) - SimonLyall (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC) In other words, Mr Lyall acknowledged that he and Mr Yeates work for the Department but subsequently refused to confirm it when asked. Anyone who didn't work for Corrections would have no hesitation in denying it. Instead they repeatedly ask me to prove it - so that then they could accuse me of outing them. I have no need to prove it - because they already outed themselves... Offender9000 (talk) 07:44, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
    Neither Stuartyeates nor SimonLyall has admitted any such thing in any edit I have seen. (The phrase you cite does not mean what you claim it means.) Also note that at WP:OUTING it states:

    If you see an editor post personal information about another person, do not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information. Doing so would give the person posting the information and anyone else who saw the page feedback on the accuracy of the material.

    So, indeed, it is proper for the editors to refuse to confirm or deny your claims.
    On the article talk page, I suggested that you try to summarise your points in a short, neutrally worded, well sourced paragraph. Instead, you added more jouralistically worded advocacy. In future, if you want your edits to stand, I suggest that you follow the neutrality guidelines that other Wikipedia editors are expected to abide by. Daveosaurus (talk) 10:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
    WP:COI focuses on the edits, not merely on the editors. The precise wording is Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers.. The analysis that I posted of the edits carried out by Stuartyeates and SimonLyall suggests that comply with WP:NPOV and do not as such constitute editting to promote an outside interest, so there is no breach of COI guideline.Babakathy (talk) 06:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
  10. Finally, if the material added by Offender9000 is removed on the basis of the COI and POV, the earlier version has issues of POV (only one statement I think) and WP:COPYVIO that need addressing, as posted by Offender 9000 here.

I am an uninvolved editor and not an admin. Babakathy (talk) 09:35, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow thats is a lot of work. Thanks for looking into this - SimonLyall (talk) 22:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for this work. I apologize for restoring a POV statement, it was a genuine accident. I have an edit on the talk page of what I think needs to be done to the article, but I'm not going to have time to start that this month, because I'm in the middle of coordinating the local section of Wikipedia:WikiWomen's_History_Month. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:19, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I have previously asked Offender9000 to stop referring to me as "Mr Yeates." Stuartyeates (talk) 07:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

April Masini

Upon coming across this article, I noticed that this page was written primarily by one author (with edits by only two others before I made a small correction). There may be a COI issue as the page has been written by a (possibly paid) PR person. Bromeliad39 (talk) 17:16, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

What makes you believe that when a new article (this one has been in the main namespace for barely a week) is written primarily by one author, that this means that the author in question is a public relations person? Perhaps the editor is simply a fan, or a woman trying to correct the substantial systemic bias that results in far fewer women authors having article on Wikipedia? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Just throwing it out there: It's Womens History Month and one more woman writer on Wikipedia is an excellent addition, if you ask me! The page I've written is important to me, and I've worked very hard on it. The content is fine. I've even invited you (Bromeliad39) to have your input on the page but you keep attempting to have it nominated for deletion. Also, I've had multiple Wikipedia editors review the article for compliance reasons. After actually reading the article, any one could determine that it is objective, non-promotional and completely free of any conflicts of interest. Not sure what else you need, especially since the content is there. GMHayes (talk) 14:26, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Markus J. Buehler

This page reads like a CV. It has an excessive amount of detail. Also it uses technical lingo. For example it refers to principal investigators as PIs. I looked and most of the edits are made by various IP addresses. Each of which has edited this article almost exclusively. See that this one <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/173.76.235.107> edited other pages but only to add or edit mentions of Buehler. Even if this is not a conflict of interest, I think the article could still use some help. I hope this is the appropriate way for me to deal with this. Thanks. Mathnsci (talk) 05:49, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know why I can't get the link to work. The article is here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_J._Buehler>.Mathnsci (talk) 05:53, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I fixed the link: {{la|Markus J. Buehler}}. Johnuniq (talk) 07:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Mathnsci, I suggest that you just try to WP:BOLDly fix the article. Many of its problems could be due to simply not knowing a better way to write it, and even if there is a close connection between the subject and the IP, the ultimate solution is still the same: someone like you needs to improve it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Bedbug infestation

Recent edits by newly registered User:BedBugz (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) seem to indicate an agenda involving bedbugs, a mattress retailer called Sleepy's, and a Connecticut newspaper, the Hartford Courant. Can someone else please take a looksee? Thx. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:21, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Send this guy the bedbug letter. sorry but I just had to --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Grand Hotel (Brighton)

A user going by the name GrandBrighton has been making edits to the Grand Hotel (Brighton) article. They appear to all be in good faith, but would like someone who has been around a little more recently than I have to take a look and see if these edits meet WP guidelines. Frmatt (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

  • Yes, all of the main body text edits seemed reasonable for a newbie editor, albeit some were problematic on style or generic editorial judgment. The REAL COI happened in the change to the website URL for the hotel. It was changed to an official-looking URL that redirects to a third party booking site, that presumably takes a cut for bookings. I've tidied the article, and changed the link what I think is to the hotel owner's page. Studerby (talk) 20:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Bose Corporation

Starting from February 2006, Phoenix79's work at the Bose Corporation article has been skewed very strongly in the direction of adding positive information and deleting negative information. As such, Phoenix is operating against WP:Neutral point of view, and his actions give every indication of an editor with a serious WP:Conflict of interest. Here are the major themes he has been involved with (earlier diffs listed first):

Phoenix79 has also created a wide range of Bose product articles and templates:

Phoenix79 has been edit warring on most the above articles and the following that were created by others, most of these by 1292simon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log):

To be fair, Phoenix79 is also interested in Suffolk, England, and in the Smashing Pumpkins, the Great Powers of the world, football clubs and matches, etc. He is not a single purpose account, but his long-standing edit warring activities in regard to Bose Corporation have pushed me implacably to the conclusion that Phoenix79 is paid by Bose. Especially problematic are his constant reversions of information about Bose lawsuits, lack of THX certification for Bose products, and pushing to have Bose audio products defined as high-end gear when there are opposing reviews. These are business concerns, and they indicate someone who is linked to the business. Binksternet (talk) 23:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the templates created by Phoenix79, the information contained within them about product start and stop times is not supported by the supplied references. Certainly there are going to be very few production stoppage dates supplied by any Bose source—like many manufacturers, they do not invite attention to the death of a product, rather, they point forward to the next product.

  • Template:Timeline of Bose wave systems – There is no source for the "Acoustic Wave power microphone" starting in 1986 or stopping in around 2007. There is a source for the "Acoustic Wave music system" starting in 1984, and another for it starting in 1985, but none for it stopping in 1992.
  • Template:Timeline of Bose headphones – There is no source for the "Triport CD Music System" starting and stopping, there is only a dead URL for a notional "Bose Owner's Guides for Headphones and Headsets" which is no longer hosted by Bose. An owner's guide never tells the owner when the product stopped being made.

The rest of the templates suffer from similar problems. Much of the information shown on the templates is not available to anyone outside of Bose. Binksternet (talk) 00:34, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

On the basis of his posts to Bose Corp, only, my impression was a one eyed fanboi with a bad case of WP:OWN, and no idea about collaboratve editing, but yes that seems rather hard to explain. Not impossible, but hard.Greglocock (talk) 00:40, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
You have edited with/against him for a couple of years longer than I have. Your opinion counts highly. Binksternet (talk) 01:33, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm an independent editor and I know almost nothing about the topic. A couple of the edits worry me, particularly [107], [108] and [109], removing well-sourced criticism is deeply problematic. The main underlying issue with the article is that no attempt is made to explain why there is such an unusually large gap between the proponents and detractors of the companies' products. Without a solid grasp of that the Technical data not published and Opinions about Bose sections seem like he-said-she-said. This in turn leads to the low-intensity edit war that we're seeing. Note that the Legal action section in the current article cannot be compared to a Criticism section, as it seems that the litigation was initiated almost entirely by Bose (or if that's not the case it needs to be made clearer). Stuartyeates (talk) 05:46, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Seriously? You have to be kidding! Just because you don't like Bose and its products doesn't mean that others shouldn't nor enjoy them. I just hate how negative everybody skews everything on the web distorting from reality like I said before
"if you have ever tried to talk to people on forums you would know what I mean by haters. The only real way to know is close your eyes and listen to them yourself. If you dont like it then fine; If you do then fine. The problem is I have found many people make up their mind before they hear a single note. Don't ask a blind man to tell you about Van Gough if he has never had the pleasure to see his art. He could tell you the history of the paintbrush or how he was influenced by this artist, etc. But he cannot tell you about the emotion that the painting brings to his life or how it talks to his soul. These are speakers for goodness sake, you listen to them, you then listen to others out there. You figure out what would work best in your home and then make your decision. I mean have you heard some of the MartinLogan Electrostatic speakers? They are jawdroppingly good... but they have prices that make Bose look shockingly cheap. So you have to figure out how much you are willing to spend and what you are willing to give up to get what you are looking for, and sometimes you have to spend more to get the sound that you like, but still have a room for kids to run around"
For one thing, do you really think that a company like Bose would pay one person to edit these pages? Hell I'd love it if they would because then I'd have more help over here. Not just have one person but twenty or thirty accounts all editing the page. It would sure make consensus easy (b.t.w. Dr. Bose if you're reading this 1. send me reinforcements 2. you owe me sooooo much back pay :P) As to the other points check Bose Product Support The site changed a while back, but you'll see that they still list both start and end dates. For example TriPort® CD music system Sold from 2005 – 2007 or Acoustic Wave® music system (model AW-1) Sold from 1984 – 1992, etc. Wow I actually researched the products! I will say that I did actually call them up once to not only ask a few questions but to ask for images to upload and to see if they would help contribute. They answered my questions and politely said no. I think they said something like people can think what they want... Honestly that really annoyed me.
As to your other points I think that every day lawsuits like "In 2010, Bose sued 51 people in the U.S. and Canada who sold counterfeit Bose headphones on eBay" or the few trademark infringement lawsuits are just silly. EVERY large company has those (sues OR sued trademark has 3,050,000 hits sues OR sued fake has 9,330,000 results). It is every day business and is just so Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill that it shouldn't merit inclusion. I even included examples from other speaker companies that have had similar lawsuits[110][111] and pointed out that they are not included on the articles page. Or as I pointed out before "Why isn't the Sony page littered with thousands of lawsuits since it started in 1946? Easy it is trivial and not notable." Now, the Lawsuit that went to the supreme court, now that one is really notable & I think quite interesting! As for THX it is dependent on the room size, so if you don't have a THX room you aren't guaranteed THX sound. But I notice that most audio pages here don't denote if something has THX. THX is just one of many different testing standards out there and one that for Home theater is it meaningless.
As for your other assertions with links you provided above you will note that many were removal of Weasel words [112]; WP:NPOV [113]; Blatent WP:Vandalism [114][115]; WP:NOR [116]; and lets not forget or violated all 3 WP:Verifiability/WP:NPOV/WP:NOR [117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126]... Wait you have got to be kidding me...
I was going to go on and list EVERY citation you gave but then I discovered that you not only included obvious vandalisms but you duplicated many links... in the same category to make it look like there were more... And many that you included I was not even a part of of the reason it was added (e.g. High End) I was just restoring after a vandalism... AGAIN... And in the particular case of High End I said back in 2007 " I do not believe that Bose in general is considered to be makers of High End audio products as a whole. But some of what they do sell is Considered High-End in those particular areas" It was only included because another user found hundreds of sources saying as much.
The problem with these pages are that many people who edit them don't actually own Bose only read about them on the web. So they only hear the echo chamber of people bashing Bose. The main page is a great example of that. When I first edited this page it had many assertions that were unverifiable and used sources that were also unverifiable to back the claims. But now I have noticed that people have become quite cleaver with their words. Changing well established sentences ever so slightly so that they are slanted to the negative. So "Bose became the first company to be named official Olympics sound system supplier" changed to " Bose became the first company to pay for the title of official Olympics sound system supplier". Their was no need for that change but it is one of many changes that I believe violates WP:NPOV.
My goal has always to bring these articles to the level of Apple Inc. with all their subpages (iPod iPod mini iPod photo iPod shuffle iPod nano iPod Hi-Fi Apple Mighty Mouse Xserve RAID iSight Power Mac G5 Xserve MacBook Pro iMac Mac mini iBook MacBook, etc.) and to hopefully have as many fans as apple has editing here on the Bose pages... that has yet to happen. So until then I will continue to edit these pages improving them and hopefully "if I build it [they] will come" -- Phoenix (talk) 06:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
"Bose became the first company to be named official Olympics sound system supplier" changed to " Bose became the first company to pay for the title of official Olympics sound system supplier". is a perfectly good edit, if the second statement is true. Buying exposure is one thing, being selected on technical merits is quite another. the way the first is written sounds like technical acclaim, instead of grubby commercial reality. Greglocock (talk) 07:24, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
grubby commercial reality? And how do you think statements like that are supposed to show WP:NPOV? The text you cited is just a WP:OR, and frankly biased WP:NPOV. Nothing in that statement talked about winning due to "technical merits". We just don't know how Bose got that title. It could have come from a few ways: by Bose petitioning for the title; because the local olympic committee decided to go with Bose speakers & gave them that as an incentive; maybe Bose charged them less to supply the sound if they got that title. Do you know? No. You have a bias against the company so you assume that is what happened. It is just unwarranted and unneeded. -- Phoenix (talk) 08:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
So if it unreferenced add a cn tag, as is normal wiki procedure. If it isn't true it should go. My statements on a talk page don't have to be NPOV, that is just being silly. I can't help thinking your whole attitude over all this stuff is silly and counterproductive. i'm aware you can edit properly, but when it comes to bose all reason seems to vanish. Sad, but then i like winding people up, which is also a bit sad. Greglocock (talk) 08:19, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
It is referenced & I did remove the unreferenced part. It is that simple. I pointed out the error and it still gets reverted. If people dont want to listen/read how can I communicate? "Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering". - Margaret Wheatley. As to your point about my other edits on wiki, it is a learnt response for this article. For some reason most wiki editors on this article have a bias, and they are 9 times out of 10 biased against Bose, as you yourself have even admitted. -- Phoenix (talk) 08:33, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Net result? No evidence of a COI, and all this stuff should be hatted by someone. Cheers. Collect (talk) 08:28, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, back to the mud wrestling Greglocock (talk) 09:13, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't agree. Even after Phoenix79 demonstrated that the Bose website gives a range of dates for the linked products, that only clears the templates. The long-term edit-warring behavior, centered around brand- and business-related aspects, still stands as strong evidence for COI related to Bose. At the least, I am looking to curtail Phoenix's ability to engage in edit warring on Bose articles per WP:COI#Non-controversial edits rather than saddling him with an outright topic ban. Binksternet (talk) 16:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
When I said before "I have tried to emulate what thousands of apple fanboys have done for Apple knowledge on wikipedia hoping that others would help expand this part also." you said "The comparison to Apple is inapt—Apple has fanboys but Bose does not."[127] So your assertion is that Bose either sells what $2 billion a year to either: 1. its own employees or 2. people that hate their product but buy it anyway.... Yea so in your mind there is no way that anyone could actually like Bose... After all it is such a small company that hardly anyone has ever heard about them. Please get over your own personal bias and realise that people might actually enjoy what you so clearly despise. Wow I just realised, you have been edit warring on this article for years now... constantly inserting negative comments about the company and removing information stating otherwise... Wow that proves that you work for a Bose competitor. It all makes sense now... <sigh> (p.s. that last part was obvious sarcasm). -- Phoenix (talk) 10:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Since when do only fanboys buy products? Consumers do. I bought a Bose AM-5 stereo loudspeaker system in 1987 and I am still listening to it, right now in fact, the two satellite speakers flanking my computer monitor. (And I can well afford to replace them but I have not.) I don't hate Bose products but I recognize that Bose has a unique position in the industry, feared by its competitors in such a manner that it stands out as the first example. No other audio products company exceeds the reputation that Bose has for aggressive lawsuits. That is the fact I wish to carry across to the reader. Binksternet (talk) 14:56, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I support the call to restrict Phoenix79 to non-controversial edits. He continually accuses other editors of not using the talk pages, then he still reverts changes when they are justified in the talk pages. He also games the system by making massive edits justified by either vague name-dropping of WP policies or identifying minor scapegoat issues. This is not behavior that supports a collaborative environment for other editors.1292simon (talk) 23:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

R. J. Williams

I tagged this article for a possible COI and for sounding like an advert/resume a few weeks ago. I haven't had much time to work on it since that time. In the past day or so, two IPs have popped up to edit the article. One just left a mild complaint on the talk page about the tags and another removed both tags entirely without bothering to fix anything. I honestly don't know what specific user has the COI here as it appears this article has gone unchecked in quite awhile, but I suspect someone is puffing this article up in an attempt to advertise Williams' company. My question is, how should I go about cleaning this article up and bringing it up to encyclopedic standards? I'm tempted to just stub it - detail Williams' acting career and briefly mentioning his adult business ventures and calling it a day. Pinkadelica♣ 04:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Based on the the comment on the talk page I think that was plenty reason to revert the notes that Pinkadelicia made, but she went ahead and deleted them without trying to talk it through. I'm not going to get into an edit war here, as I see she already has issues with an edit war from another page this month that she tried to revert. As you can see there are several 3rd party citations from very reputable publications that support every single thing on the page. Whats even more confusing is she mentions when she claimed the COI that she has no idea which user the COI stems from--that is reason enough to just leave this page alone as stubbing a page that has been in existence for over 6 years and has numerous citations doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.29.214.195 (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

First, just because something is sourced does not mean it belongs in the context of Wikipedia. The fact of the matter remains that this article sounds like an advertisement for these companies when it should only detail why Williams is notable. I don't have to know what specific editor has the COI in this instance, it is clear that someone does based on the state of the article and all of these "new" comments complaining about two tags placed on the article. Oh, and no one has to "leave this page along" - anyone can edit Wikipedia. Since I've yet to change one word, I've no idea what you and your various IPs are on about at this point. Pinkadelica♣ 16:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

The fact that you came out of the blue and are threatening to "just stub" a page that has been around for a long time and nobody else is complaining about leads me to believe this is something personal you have with the subject matter and that in turn is where the COI truly lies--- I'm just sayin....... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.71.25.198 (talk) 17:21, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I would have to have an interest in the subject to have a conflict of interest. Since I don't personally know the subject or anything about the company nor do I work for either, there goes your half baked theory but way to assume good faith there, IP. I'm also not the first person to bring up the fact that the article sounds like an advert. There's a message on the talk page that brought up the issue quite some time ago and it was tagged as such. Considering the article has very few edits to it and is not a high profile article, I'm not at all surprised that it has been "left alone". Just because it has does not mean what is written is supported by any kind of policy. That said, I'm done communicating with these various IPs about this issue. I came here to get insight about how to fix the article and all I'm getting is vague personal attacks. Pinkadelica♣ 20:42, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree with OP -- the tone is not neutral at all, could use a rewrite. a13ean (talk) 21:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I've just done some poking - got rid of a few copy-pastes from relevant home-pages but the article is littered with dead links... I don't particularly see any evidence of a conflict of interest - but it's certainly got a POV problem and is generally in need of improvement...Fayedizard (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus

I have put this on my talk page, under the heading Conflict of Interest statement:


As my user-name suggests, I work - part-time - for the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI).

My intention in writing about the ESI is not to promote it but to record its existence and purpose. A page about the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus already existed (albeit in outdated form); any such page which failed to mention the ESI (which is new), or various other campus developments, would risk looking dusty and untended.

In my rush to tick the Wiki-box, I used the wrong content and tone. By declaring this interest now, and adding only plain and factual information, I hope the ESI's presence here will go uncontested, and be gradually added to by others.


This is the text - from my sandbox - which I'm proposing should go on the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus page:


The Environment and Sustainability Institute.


The Environment and Sustainability Institute, commonly abbreviated to ESI, is a £30 million interdisciplinary research centre whose remit is to find solutions to problems of environmental change. It has three research themes: clean technologies, natural environment, and social science and sustainability. Its building completes in October 2012, and will house up to 100 researchers, professors, lecturers and PhD students. Professor Kevin J Gaston was appointed inaugural Director in November 2010 and took up his post in May 2011.

JpESI (talk) 15:12, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The page University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus is crying out for independent references. As near as I can tell all the references are the the institution or to allied institutions. If you want to improve the page, you really need to start there, because without independent references the notability of the topic is in doubt. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:28, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Viglen, Bordan Tkachuk and user:Bordant

Viglen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Bordan Tkachuk (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and editor Bordant (talk · contribs)

Repeated deletion of a referenced, but uncomplimentary, section about Bordan Tkachuk's work with Viglen.

Andy Dingley (talk) 15:36, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Second deletion:

Andy Dingley (talk) 17:07, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Formula One

The Formula_One article is full of false citations from BadgerGP and Adam Mills - Adam Mills works/runs/produces BadgerGP. The citations give the impression that BadgerGP was responsible for news releases regards SKYF1. When the link is clicked you arrive at the BadgerGP website where they have placed affiliate banners. The original news release was from a reputable news source, BadgerGP/Adam Mills merely took part in a public meeting along with many many other people, can they all claim that this is their work? There is a wiki article for BadgerGP that has many errors and has been flagged, this is not the correct method to gain trust as a news worthy source to fix mentioned errors. Citation 111. ^ Mills, Adam (13 December 2011). "Q&A with Sky F1". BadgerGP.com (Badger GP). Retrieved 21 December 2011

Incidently the news for reference was released in 2012! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klineton (talk • contribs) 01:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit Request: Minor Change to Info Box on Peabody Energy Page

Hey everyone,

As I posted on the Peabody Energy article's talk page, I have a WP:COI and was wondering if someone could look over a proposed edit for the company's financial information in the info box. The current information in the info box is from 2010 and not from a reliable source, so I was hoping someone could update the info box with more recent, better sourced figures, which I included on the talk page. I appreciate any help. Thanks. Namk48 (talk) 20:32, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

White Himal Television

Only the user Whitehimal has edited White Himal Television. The username is obviously against policy, and the article is clearly COI based on the username. CittaDolente (talk) 00:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I think you mean Whitehimal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - they have been blocked. WP:UAA is a better place for requests like this btw. SmartSE (talk) 22:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Double Cola

Username and additions to the article indicate they're affiliated with the company. Edits include lots of words and phrases selected to promote the company and product, no sources cited for the additions they've made and addition of an e-mail address to obtain further information on locations the product is available. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 10:51, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Per my unblock and her talk page, she has agreed to stay within policy and guidelines. She has been "strongly advised" to avoid editing the article itself. I don't think further action is needed at present, but extra eyes would be helpful. --TeaDrinker (talk) 21:15, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Stephen Kinnock

User is removing sourced sections of the article that present Stephen Kinnock negatively. A search on Google for Stuart Bentham and Stephen Kinnock show this page which indicates Stuart Bentham is married to Stephen Kinnock's sister. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 17:43, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Tyler Stenson

User name is the same as the article name. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 20:08, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Richard File

User's edit summaries claim that they are the person the article is about. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Sexual Selection

A few years ago, I published a couple of alternatives to the current theories in sexual selection, in peer-reviewed journals. I added a brief paragraph to the WP article on sexual selection describing those articles, but other editors have said it violates guidelines on conflict of interest because it's self-promotion. As I read the rule, peer-reviewed publications do not violate this guideline, as long as I cite myself in modest and appropriate ways. Please clarify for us. Thanks.--BooksXYZ (talk) 21:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia to promote a theory that has had next-to-no recognition in the field in which it applies may however sometimes be seen as self-promotion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Andy, thanks again. See my other comment to you.--BooksXYZ (talk) 20:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
An alternative is to provide the information to the talk page, and ask other editors to add it to the article. Then it's much harder for people to say that you're promoting yourself (although even that hands-off approach doesn't stop people who have a vested interest in the article saying something else). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, that's what I'm worried I may be facing. Wikipedia editors do not need to be getting into disputes among scholars. That's what I'm trying to keep these editors from doing. My take on it is that Wikipedia is the most comprehensive review of human knowledge ever assembled. When there is any doubt about differing theories, a good review should err on the side of inclusion. Paper & ink are no longer limitations. --BooksXYZ (talk) 20:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
'Paper & ink' may not be limitations, but article length is. More to the point though, Wikipedia readers expect our articles to cover the topic with a broad brush, as it is currently seen and described in mainstream sources - for this reason, we base general article structure on secondary sources, rather than discussing every single primary source available. If there was any evidence of a significant 'dispute among scholars' concerning your theory, it might well be worth mentioning in the relevant article - but there appears not to be. For your theory to get recognition in Wikipedia, it will need to have been recognised elsewhere - which is to say commented on, cited, and discussed in secondary sources. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

InvestUS

Claims on their user page that they work for the company InvestUS and has created a highly promotional article about the company. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 10:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Alexander_Misharin

A small follow-up to the edit war I had to go through last autumn.

The context: User:Ssr erased the "Controversies" section at the A. Misharin article. That led to some disputes, obviously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_52#Alexander_Misharin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive138#Alexander_Misharin The problem was, Gov Misharin is the employer of Mr S.S.Rublev (and Ssr admitted that he is S.S.Rublev and that he is employed by A.Misharin). Mr Rublev's position is kind-of internet "press-secretary". Kind of COI, right? Previously, Ssr and his colleague E.Zorin were involved into similar edit wars on the Russian Wikipedia.

The new part: recently there was an e-mail leak scandal. Basically, it came out that A.Misharin maintained a net of paid commenters posting under fake identities. Raw e-mails are published at slivmail.com. An article at politsovet.ru cites a leaked document saying: "В блогах успешно работают Сергей Рублёв и Евгений Зорин" (Segrey Rublev and Evgeny Zorin work on (other people's) blogs successfully.) So, basically, those two doctor their employer's public image openly, while their junior colleagues use fake/anonymous accounts. Gritzko (talk) 12:58, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

(disclaimer: I don't read Russian) Challenging issues. My approach would be: (a) detail what the tensions are in the Sverdlovsk Oblast which affect his job as governor, talking about the tensions then gives a framework for talking about his responses to those tensions and the responses to and impact of those tensions; hopefully this avoids the he-said-she-said structure so common (and inappropriate) in biographies (b) use, where ever possible, english-language sources that editors here can read and treat the removal of reliable english-language sources as vandalism. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:41, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Note - This issue has been brought here before. [132] OlYeller21Talktome 19:45, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

JMCAD

Infobox in the article gives the author's name as Yuriy Mikhaylovskiy. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:09, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

McKinsey & Company

This ip address which seems to derive from the subject company has three times blanked an entire section today. Since the blanking is unexplained and since there appears to be a conflict of interest, I thought it prudent to list this here. FULL DISCLOSURE: I recently tagged some of the content with citation needed templates; I've explained my rationale on page talk. It appears that two company editors have been editing in this area, and I've been mentoring a freelancer who has been playing it straight (WikiProject:Cooperation); this editor also has self-identified as having a paid interest in this subject. BusterD (talk) 04:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Please note these edits are not sanctioned by McKinsey and we take this behavior very seriously. McKinsey is committed to adhering to Wikipedia's core principles and agree that this behavior is inappropriate. It runs counter to internal McKinsey guidelines and we are taking immediate action internally to make sure unauthorized edits cease immediately. Dbrown762 (talk) 21:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I am the said freelancer and Dbrown762 is Devin Brown from McKinsey. I took the liberty of looking into all the contribs from this IP address. As a result I made this small change, I noted but did nothing about an old 2007 edit, but would suggest Wikipedians review and consider reinstating the content removed here. It appears to be a good faith effort in 2011 to remove uncited criticism with a [citation needed] tag, however there is an available citation here. I am not personally aware of whether the companies mentioned were McKinsey clients or not, but McKinsey and I agreed to proactively review the IP address' edits solely to bring to light any edits that could give the appearance of impropriety. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 16:22, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Christopher P. Lynch

According to his userpage, Mhong2011 self-identifies as an executive at one of the companies run by Christopher P. Lynch, and his edit contributions have been pretty much as a single purpose account for the promotion of Lynch. This editor is starting to show some serious ownership issues - after noticing a recent addition of a pile of additional promotional content to the article, I removed that and rewrote the article in a much more neutral tone, with proper sourcing and citations; however, Mhong2011 keeps reverting to his preferred promotional version, which is not only poorly formatted, but also has many sourcing issues. I feel this needs more eyes on the situation. MikeWazowski (talk) 05:34, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

While Mhong2011 is currently blocked for edit-warring, I fear he is trying to evade the block - a new account (Lovemellon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)) has shown up to continue the promotional edits, as well as trying to scrub the COI template from the page. I've opened a sockpuppet investigation, but I could really use another set of eyes on the article. MikeWazowski (talk) 16:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

First Utility

Edits seem to be mainly promotional. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 12:06, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment editor has only made one edit so to say 'edits seem to be mainly promotional' is a large leap and lacking in good faith. The one edit is not wholly complimentary about the company and is reliably sourced. NtheP (talk) 21:03, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Subir Chowdhury

Extensive edits by two anon IP addresses belonging to

  • ASI Consulting Group (the article's subject's business), and
  • Someone in the Detroit, Michigan area (the article states the subject lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit).

Edits include:

  • Removing improvement templates without explanation: [133], [134], [135]
  • Repeated removal of content in an apparent attempt to conceal the article's subject's relationship with the author of one of the sources: [136], [137], [138]
  • Promoting his books for sale: [139], [140], [141], [142]
-- DanielPenfield (talk) 19:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Shaahin Cheyene

Has made edits to the article removing sourced information critical of the subject. Has also created an article (Excelerol) for a product created by the company owned by Shaahin Cheyene. This new article reads more like an advertisement than an encyclopedia entry. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 20:02, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes - and the Excelerol article is making unsourced claims, contrary to WP:MEDRS. I suspect that much of the content for the ludicrously-long list of ingredients is simply unattributed copy-and-paste from Wikipedia articles too. Speedy deletion has been contested by User:Herbaldoctorz (note the name), who has only made significant edits in regard to the Shaahin Cheyene article - again suggesting a possible COI. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
See also: WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Fareast eagle. Staceymont and Herbaldoctorz are only two of several WP:SPAs, probably sockpuppets, promoting the man and his products, and airbrushing out inconvenient mentions of his past business ventures. Scopecreep (talk) 23:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Previous product puff for this company was deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vapir Vaporizer. Scopecreep (talk) 00:03, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Phunware

User has twice added promotional-only information to the article. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Sheba Karim

User is possibly the subject of the article, judging by the user name and user's addition of a long list of where stories have been published, a number of which aren't listed on the official site. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 22:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs

User:Toimad's Talk page indicates he's Imad Farrah, a PASSIA employee. Yesterday he vastly expanded the PASSIA article without any secondary sources.—Biosketch (talk) 08:18, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

…and with a lot of copy-paste from the organisation webpage - I've removed a load on the way past but not had a chance to properly look… Fayedizard (talk) 14:27, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Stephen Dalton (photographer)

User has same surname as the subject of the article they've created. The article uses lots of promotional words and all but a small section is unsourced. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Slight clarification - Lee is Stephen's son. [143] Fayedizard (talk) 13:10, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

California State University, San Bernardino

User:Csusbnews has identified itself as the public affairs department of the university here. Unsourced information has been added to the university article by the university. 72Dino (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Needs studious depuffing - all I did was remove one of the many brochure images - I do not think Wikipedia is supposed to be a college recruiting brochure? Collect (talk) 14:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Inside Edition

User name indicates user might work for the subject of the article. Edits made have been promotional in nature. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Depuffed a bit more Collect (talk) 14:28, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Chris Kelly (British politician)

There have been several attempts to remove material relating to a scandal about Chris Kelly and his use of his Parliamentary email account to find a job for his sister. These edits are all from IP addresses registered to the Houses of Parliament. I have proposed the material is retained in the article on the article talk page but I would prefer several eyes on this case as Jayen466, who has been published as recently having meetings with the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party has decided to also get involved and remove the same material. Thanks Fæ (talk) 18:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

The "scandal" is, as far as I can see, one article in the Daily Mail, and a complaint from a Labour MP that Kelly used a parliamentary e-mail address for a private matter. I can't see that any reputable biographical dictionary would devote 20% of a parliamentarian's biography to something like this, and neither should we. --JN466 19:24, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
The DM is a reliable source in this instance. It was originally sourced to my beloved Private Eye. The 20% figure may reflect the fact that he has had a not particularly interesting parliamentary career. I am disturbed by the HOP editing, wherever it occurs. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Would you have a link for the original Private Eye story? I think you may be confusing this with another story that was in the article once, and removed by Scott Mac. And while it's a bit daft to have the same conversation in two places – this seems to be something that only the Daily Mail took an interest in. There is fairly wide consensus that The Daily Mail should not be used for controversial information in BLPs; recent discussions at RSN have tended to conclude that its reliability is borderline, that it's better to cite other papers, and that if there aren't any others reporting on a particular Daily Mail story, the material probably has little business being in an encyclopedia article in the first place. The Daily Mail is at the bottom of our reliability and relevance scale. In my view, inclusion puts too much weight on a very minor episode which the Daily Mail very much tried to make something of, but which no one has claimed broke any laws or parliamentary rules, and no one else seems to have taken much interest (unless you insist on counting the Stourbridge News, a local free newspaper). Wikipedia is not a tabloid. Cheers, JN466 21:34, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
This was my original addition to the article. It was PE issue 1280. [144] Gareth E Kegg (talk) 22:08, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
So the e-mail thing was in Private Eye as well, was it? Looking at your diff, with respect, that was a pretty weaselly addition. "Following his election it was revealed that Kelly had emailed all Conservative MP's asking if they would give his sister, Nicola, a secretarial job. Kelly was accused of abusing his position." What is that doing in an encyclopedia? I could understand if it had been something discussed in multiple broadsheets, or had had any significance whatsoever, but as it is, it is just petty, and an example of what I called WP:ADAM here. Also see [145]. JN466 08:18, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Jayen466, in consideration of your meetings with senior Conservative Party members, could you confirm you have no possible conflict of interest when it comes to removing negative material from Conservative party biographical articles for active politicians, or if others might later judge that you do have a conflict that ought to be declared and managed? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 08:27, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Herewith confirmed. No conflict of interest whatsoever. This is not about party politics, Fæ, but about BLP quality. I make no difference based on whether it is a LibDem, Conservative or Labour MP. JN466 08:59, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Outside view: No COI exists here. Collect (talk) 14:21, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Woodforest National Bank

User Woodforest80 has made 11 edits, all to Woodforest National Bank, most recently about 9 months ago. The article doesn't get much attention from editors, but its prose has a distinct COI glow about it. It got about 100 views a day last month.[146] I have flagged the article as COI and warned the user. ke4roh (talk) 01:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Article depuffed. Collect (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Bloomberg Markets Article

Hello. I introduced myself here a while ago to acknowledge my activity with Bloomberg L.P. Recently I have been working on a revised draft of the Bloomberg Markets article, as the current article lacks any significant information. (My draft is here: User:RivBitz/Bloomberg_Markets_Sandbox}. I discussed revisions for the article with User:Mrmatiko in the Help Desk live chat and he said he approved of the revisions. I do not feel comfortable posting the revisions myself because of my conflict of interest. Would anyone here be willing to take a look at the draft, and if the article revisions seem appropriate, posting the edits into the actual article? Thanks --RivBitz (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Article style and references look good. There appears to be a complete absence of negative coverage. Has no article has ever been withdrawn or criticised? Stuartyeates (talk) 21:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. The magazine is relatively new (hit newsstands in 2000), and I have not come across any reliable sources that criticize the magazine. However, I'm definitely always open to adding critical sources if they arise.--RivBitz (talk) 16:01, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Kirsty Lang

A new user with the name Kirstylang has made two edits to the article on Kirsty Lang. Both were constructive, but there is a clear conflict of interest. Uvghifds (talk) 18:02, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I've dropped a note on her talk page [147]. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

The Widowmaker – Ian Easton

User name is the name of the subject of the article. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 19:02, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Push Girls

New account of Sundancechannel (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), Sundance Channel being the channel the show will appear on. Edits have been reverted as unsourced and promotional in nature. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 19:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

FortressCraft (2nd report)

This issue was already posted about here on the noticeboard, but nothing was ever done. Here's the original posting. Basically, as DarthBotto had stated in his report:

  • 87.194.139.68 has revealed himself to be the lead designer of FortressCraft (see this diff).
  • KingFredrick VI runs the FortressCraft Wiki and has been removing the Video game clones category from the articles.
  • HereticKiller6's only edits have been reversions about information that might portray FortressCraft in a less than favorable manner. Basically he's pushing his own personal POV about the game.


Here's some diff's of various issues I've touched on above:

I could also go through a ton of diffs relating to edit warring on the FortressCraft article, by HereticKiller6, but I think you guys should really just check out the page history.


As for myself, I don't have any conflict of interest with any of the three articles whatsoever. Yes, I've played all three games on my XBOX. But that's not really pertinent information. I'm not a member of any Wikis for any of the three games. The only reason I'm bringing this discussion back up is because this edit warring has continued and something needs to be done about this, and because the original posting that DarthBotto had started went unnoticed and is now archived. As DarthBotto stated in his report, "I think that after ten months of this, we need some administrative attention to this page". However, it's now been over 10 months of this, and despite editing slowing down on the three articles, I still think that something needs to be done.

Now, I'm not 100% sure on how to notify the people who have been named that there's a discussion here that they are a part of, so if someone can notify them for me, that would be greatly appreciated. 209.159.183.132 (talk) 18:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I should also note that I believe one of the editors of the CastleMiner article could potentially be the creator of the game, or someone involved in creating it, due to the statement in the "Reception" section of the article. "CastleMiner Z was the #1 downloaded Indie of 2011. It is widely considered the best XBLIG, and it has received a lot of awards because of this." Seems very biased to me. Personally, I think that either all three articles should be locked so only admins can edit it, or users such as KingFrederick, HereticKiller6, and the IP of the creator of Fortress Craft (87.194.139.68) should be blocked from editing due to their obvious COI issues. 209.159.183.132 (talk) 18:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Not sure if "bumping" things is "kosher" here on Wikipedia, but I'm gonna bump this to prevent the bot from archiving it. This still needs attention. 173.238.166.40 (talk) 18:19, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Focusanddetermination08

Articles created
  1. Ahmed Samerai
  2. Sahara Communications
  3. Kevin Pho
  4. Ryan Messick
  • Account appears to have been used for single purpose of spam/promotional/publicity purposes, possibly by some sort of public relations firm.
  • Large gap of edits between December 2011 and March 2012, then this, diff.
  • Could use a bunch of editors looking into the above articles, as well as other stuff from Special:Contributions/Focusanddetermination08.

Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 04:52, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Meghan.reilly/Archive may be helpful. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 12:51, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Hunger Games (film)

This article is highly unbalanced with many favourable edits coming from IP addresses (unregistered users).

Just random examples (there are more if you look): 1 2 3

Genjix (talk) 23:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

This is very common with recently broadcast TV shows and released films in the USA. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:25, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Being biased is not the same as having a conflict of interest. If the POV pusher gets no real-world benefit for the biased edits, then there is no COI violation. You could consider a trip to WP:NPOVN, which is the place for garden-variety biased editing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

William Looney

I have a COI with this article so I cannot add it, but the subject now has an official website so could someone please determine if it is appropriate to add http://www.exceedingexpectationsinc.com/?--v/r - TP 21:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Rather than search for it myself, do you know if the website claims somewhere that it's the official website of William Looney? If it is, I see no problem with linking it in the external links section as the official website, even if the website's purpose is to sell his services. OlYeller21Talktome 21:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I can't find that it's official, exactly, but the copyright listed on the page is "Copyright © 2009, 2011 William R Looney III.". That's good enough for me.
Reading through the website a bit more, it does feel very promotional. I wouldn't use it to support opinions in the article but I think it's obviously the official website of the subject of the article and has a place in the external links section. OlYeller21Talktome 21:23, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks very much. It is very much promotional for his speaking and leadership seminars but it is definitely his official and only website.--v/r - TP 21:25, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Could do with a bit of careful handling this one...

So I've no idea what to do about this promotional edit, given that there appears to be some school project run by Rhona_McEwen which some students are working hard - if it were a lone user I'd revert as promotional but this looks like I might be getting myself into a little trouble… any expereinced hands want to jump in? Fayedizard (talk) 09:07, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

And one of the reasons it might require careful handling is that one of the groups of students appears to be charged with creating an article about the course leader? from Wikipedia:Canada_Education_Program/Courses/The_Rhetoric_of_Digital_and_Interactive_Media_Environments_(Rhonda_McEwen))

<START QUTOE>

Group 3

Group name: CAST
Topic: Rhonda Nanette McEwen

Spokesperson & Designated Sandbox: (User:sherry.yuchengr/sandbox) <END QUTOE>

So year - would be good to get other people comments on this… Fayedizard (talk) 09:20, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Faye. Unquestionably a COI. I actually know the parties involved, so I'll send them a line. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:33, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm an online ambassador for that Wikipedia:Canada Education Program. I don't actually remember signing up for this course, but it did appear on my watchlist so I'm following up on the concern. I sent an email to the professor (McEwen) and the instructor listed on the course page notifying them of the COI guideline and asking for them to direct the students to alternate articles. maclean (talk) 00:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
As a follow-up, the professor responded positively. She understands the conflict of interest now. She says she will integrate some of it into her userpage profile. I will try to bring the article up to standards. I have no objection if someone wants to see if it would survive an AfD. maclean (talk) 03:50, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Maclean :) much appreciated, and it's great to find out that the students have had their work looked at - I think that the Rhonda McEwen article isn't going to pass Wikipedia:Notability_(academics) so I've AfD'd it - but certainly if it survives I'd be happy to come back and give it a bit of work with you :) Fayedizard (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Stourbridge College

Although I have amended the page as of present, there have been a couple of recent edits to the Stourbridge College page, by the same user, that appear to have replaced cited, verifiable content with information that clearly appears to have been written by someone with a close connection to the subject, some of which even reads like an advertisement of sorts. I'm not sure whether this is appropriate to report on this board (I'm pretty new to Wikipedia), but I'm just wondering if another editor would be able to keep an eye on the situation? --LivingInMediocrity (talk) 17:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Anaman Yogiji

User notes: "I am an official representative for Anaman Yogiji. I was able to update his page."[148] I tagged the article talk page with {{Connected contributor}} and tagged the user talk page with {{Uw-coi}}. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 03:44, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Tony Lama

This IP editor appears to be someone from Justin Boots. They've created two drafts at AfC and recently added some puffery to Justin Boots (at which some attempts at a cleanup has been made), aside from this article. Their additions seem to be a copyvio of http://www.tonylama.com/en/heritage.html, and looking back, some of the additions to the Justin Boots article appears to be copyvios as well. I reverted all of their changes at the article, but I would appreciate it if someone can look at the situation and maybe guide them along or take appropriate actions. Thanks. wctaiwan (talk) 04:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

David E. Henderson

Could an uninvolved editor look this over please. The articles subject is editing the article and attacking me for asking for citations. Theroadislong (talk) 20:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I am now being accused of slander and I am extremely concerned at the continued personal attacks.Theroadislong (talk) 22:05, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
and now this... http://www.davidhenderson.com/2012/03/30/looking-behind-the-veil-of-wikipedia-and-who-is-pulling-the-levers/ where I am mistakenly named as another user.Theroadislong (talk) 12:45, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Now appears removed. Collect (talk) 12:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo gave Theroadislong a barnstar in connection with the above. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
(ec)And I suggest the editor involved is likely the grandson of the current article subject - which is a fairly marginal COI at most. Was their an article on the current Henderson? Collect (talk) 12:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Keurig & K-Cup

User's edits to the named articles indicate they may work for the company that is the subject of the article. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:14, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Commercial stuff depuffed. Collect (talk) 12:40, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Ira Flatow, Science Friday, and Talk of the Nation

Ira Flatow is the host of the radio program Science Friday. It seems reasonable that User:Iflatow is the same person, and he contributes to both articles. I put the appropriate warning on his talk page and flagged both of those articles with {{COI}}.ke4roh (talk) 03:10, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I added {{COI}} to Talk of the Nation, parent radio show of Science Friday, and added that article here. Also renamed this section to reflect 3 articles. ke4roh (talk) 13:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Declaring an interest

Some questions:

  • Should I declare an interest in an article about my wife's great-great-great-grandfather, if I choose to edit it further?
  • Should I declare an interest in articles I edited (and in some cases, created) back in 2004-2006 (i.e., before the precursor of the COI guidelines even existed), if I stopped editing them once I became aware of the COI guidelines/policy? (I'm talking about articles I've edited about people I know.)
    • More specifically, what's the best way forward with articles I may have created back in the dark ages about people I know, who are probably only marginally notable, if the articles have languished largely untouched? These are articles that would probably survive AFD, but which no one has touched in years. PROD and see what happens? Or just leave alone?

Thanks for your thoughts. Guettarda (talk) 13:25, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I think based on the COI Guideline's current definition, you would only have a COI if you were writing those articles in an effort to serve the subject's interests or had something to gain by doing so. If you have an acquaintance and are editing out of personal interest, than you merely have a "close personal connection." I might be wrong, so better to wait for a COIN regular to respond, but it seems like a simple Talk page comment declaring a personal connection would do. Hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes responding. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 14:32, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Nope, you've got it right. Unless Guettarda expects a real-world benefit from his edits and those edit are harmful to Wikipedia (e.g., biased), then there's no COI problem here.
Disclosures are always optional. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

EUCLID (University)

I disclosed my COI on the Talk page of EUCLID (university) about one month ago. The article has been subject to prior edit warring and arguments about an issue of international accreditation, an issue of complex legal and political ramifications. I also followed up with both responding editors and submitted an OTRS ticket (who told me to use the Talk page).

I'm not trying to be argumentative or pushy, just looking for an impartial volunteer willing to get in the trenches with me. Below are the corrections I'm requesting for consideration.

  1. EUCLID is accredited in Maine[149]. A five year old source was used to claim they are not.
  2. Add that EUCLID Is "approved for use" in Oregan, instead of only stating that it is "unaccredited." This information is available from the same citation currently used to say they are unaccredited.
  3. The article states the State of Michigan "does not accept" degrees from EUCLID for Civil Service positions. I don't think this is a correct interpretation of the source, as the source says applicants with degrees from foreign institutions must prove they've received a similar education.
  4. The "degree mill" comment was associated with a very authoritative source in the article text, but according to the citation it's from a contributed article by two authors pushing their books about degree mills.
  5. EUCLID's own 24-page letter in response to Accredibase is only used to reiterate Accredibase's point of view, rather than present all majority and minority viewpoints. When a company is attacked, should its response not be included? If the letter is not a reliable source for a statement about the letter's existence and content, then maybe it should be removed entirely, as it can't only be a reliable source for one side of the argument.

If anyone has time to get in the trenches with me on these bullets, it would be immensely helpful. I'm not sure if I'm being impatient or if 1 month is long enough.

User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 14:16, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


  1. Euclid's absence from a webpage of unaccredited institutions—a webpage that the State of Maine indicates is incomplete and not to be relied upon—does not prove that it is actually accredited. It's not.
  2. Approved for what kind of use in Oregon? Certainly not all the kinds of use that an accredited degree can be used for. Euclid is not actually accredited anywhere in the USA at all. The state-by-state question is only whether claiming to have a degree from Euclid can get you prosecuted for fraud: some states say yes, and others say no.
  3. Ditto for Michigan. It appears that Euclid is not accredited anywhere in the world—not like regular universities, at any rate.
  4. So? Source has three meanings on Wikipedia: the article, the author, and the journal. If the academic journal is "very authoritative", then it doesn't matter if the authors have written a book about the subject.
  5. The letter is a weak source—primary, self-published, and non-independent—and our use of it is therefore restricted by WP:ABOUTSELF to purposes that aren't self-serving.
Finally, let me say that it's very strange to see a moderate-sized article about an alleged university and not see any information about degrees granted, admission requirements, students enrolled, courses taught, faculty employed, or campus facilities provided. It's, you know, almost like they don't do any of those things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks WhatamIdoing. It seems you have a strong point-of-view and I have a COI, so why don't we work this out through civil discourse.
1 is fair. The current citation is no longer accurate, but the new citation doesn't necessarily verify they are accredited in Maine. In the absence of clear reliable sources, it seems we should remove this alltogether.
2-3 I am not a subject-matter expert and have no means to argue against statements not based on reliable sources. I'm also not qualified to interpret what "approved for use" means from a legal perspective. I'm only regurgitating what is in a reliable source. You say things like "it appears" to be - I don't know where you're getting this information from.
4 This is a purely factual correction. The article says the source is the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. However the citation is from a contributed article in College & University Journal. Since it's a contributed article, I'm not sure it can be used as a reliable source, but at the very least we should correct who it's coming from.
5. I agree it's a weak source. If it's not a reliable source for this application, we need to remove it alltogether. It can't be a reliable source to attack the company, but not to defend it.
Our discussion will benefit if the foundation of that discussion is based on what's available in reliable sources. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 14:01, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Star Wars: The Old Republic

User KingDMS has created a single purpose account with the intent of adding a link to a Star Wars: The Old Republic wiki he is a major contributor, or delete the link to a competing wiki if we won't add the link to his. He initially hid his COI but another user found out he had come here from a thread on his SW:TOR wiki talking about improving their search engine ranking. While others have expressed concern with his intentions and his reasoning, he clearly is not willing to ever drop the matter. I thought maybe this would be an appropriate place to mention this, since the discussion on the talk page there is going nowhere, but since it's only a discussion rather than disruptive editing I'm not sure? Still I think feedback from COI experts would be very helpful. Some guy (talk) 01:35, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

David Nathan (music writer)

See the recent note on the David Nathan Nathan talk page.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:26, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Christopher P. Lynch

According to his userpage, Mhong2011 self-identifies as an executive at one of the companies run by Christopher P. Lynch, and his edit contributions have been pretty much as a single purpose account for the promotion of Lynch. This editor is starting to show some serious ownership issues - after noticing a recent addition of a pile of additional promotional content to the article, I removed that and rewrote the article in a much more neutral tone, with proper sourcing and citations; however, Mhong2011 keeps reverting to his preferred promotional version, which is not only poorly formatted, but also has many sourcing issues. I feel this needs more eyes on the situation. MikeWazowski (talk) 05:34, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

While Mhong2011 is currently blocked for edit-warring, I fear he is trying to evade the block - a new account (Lovemellon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)) has shown up to continue the promotional edits, as well as trying to scrub the COI template from the page. I've opened a sockpuppet investigation, but I could really use another set of eyes on the article. MikeWazowski (talk) 16:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I've restored this section, as Mhong2011 has returned from his block and resumed trying to create a promotional article for Lynch. I could use more eyes on this, as this editor seems determined to own the article. MikeWazowski (talk) 17:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Yuri Kosin

User name is the same as the article title. User has made edits to the English- and Russian-language versions of the article. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 22:28, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Student assigned to update Analytic Hierarchy Process for professor and creator of AHP

Sava magda (talk · contribs) is a student of Thomas L. Saaty [150] and doesn't see how updating Analytic Hierarchy Process as a school assignment from Prof Saaty would be a conflict of interest [151]. --Ronz (talk) 17:07, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I really don't see the problem of updating the Wikipedia with the information regarding professor Saaty work. I'm a PhD student and part of my tasks is to help the professors with their work - even this means updating the Wikipedia website with useful information regarding the AHP/ANP models. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sava magda (talk • contribs) 17:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Please read WP:COI - because of your close connection with the subject matter you have a clear conflict of interest. Your professors should understand this and not ask you to carry out this task. Also note that the updates you were trying to make were more suitable for an academic paper than for an encyclopedia.--ukexpat (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Might be worth contacting User:Lou Sander on this - he was also a student of Saaty and is the major contributor to the page...[152] Fayedizard (talk) 07:05, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Good suggestion! I've left Lou a note. --Ronz (talk) 16:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

As long as we are promoting projects which involve students, we will have students who are learning rather than being expert in editing Wikipedia. Look to the edits and see if they are NPOV . If they aren' t, this is a student , give then some guidance, help them understand. If after that the student is still having problems that's another issue. If we want to hold on to new editors and students, we have to treat them like new editors and students, not like experienced long term editors.(olive (talk) 16:25, 5 April 2012 (UTC))

Is a way to find editors who've offered to help with such endeavors? --Ronz (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Ukexpat misrepresents the actual rules about COI here. To violate the COI guideline, both of the following must be true:

  1. The user's actions must be harming Wikipedia.
  2. The user must benefit in the real world from those harmful actions.

Merely having a close connection with the subject is not sufficient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with WhatamIdoing's interpretation of COI. "The user's actions must be harming Wikipedia" seems to go far beyond anything stated or intended in WP:COI. --Ronz (talk) 16:05, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Hey, just weighing in with an opinion and maybe a little bit of clarification for Sava. The thing about a COI that makes so many people get a bit upset is that it's so very easy to make edits that are not considered to be neutral, well-sourced, encyclopedic, or any of the above. Because you know Saaty, you have the drive to make him look better, either because he's someone you respect, because you want people to automatically like his work or Saaty himself, or because you're afraid of what would happen to your grade or position. The thing that you need to be very careful of is that you make sure to realize that you are automatically pre-disposed to feel this way about Saaty and his work, even if you're not aware of it. For example, if I were to write a wikipedia article about my boss or one of my teachers, I would want to write something about them that puts them in the best light possible and might not even realize that I'm writing an article that is not neutrally written. I might even bring in sources that I know do not pass the guidelines for reliable sources because I want to justify the article's existence or to back up ideas. As a result the data in the article is skewed, and as a student of the sciences you know how bad it can be to have a source that is not professionally and encyclopedically neutral. It's why I know that I will never be able to write about someone that I personally know- I'd never be able to be non-partial. Don't take this to mean that you absolutely shouldn't edit the article or have anything to do with it. There are many different ways to edit an article and ensure that it's neutral. The first thing I recommend is that you get someone from one of the Wiki projects to assist you and proofread what you've added to Wikipedia. Not only will this help you become a better Wikipedia editor in general, but they would be able to tell you if anything needs to be changed or removed from your additions. Since Saaty seems to be a multi-disciplinary professor, you could search through Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics or Wikipedia:WikiProject Engineering, among other wikiprojects. Be aware that you can also request other users to add and edit the data for you as well. This would directly remove you from the editing altogether, which would pretty much get rid of any perceived conflict of interest. It's just one of many ways to get around the difficulties of editing when you are directly involved with the person or subject that you're writing about. I'm rather hopeless at engineering and math, so I'm not really the person to go to for this but I just wanted to voice my two cents on the matter.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 12:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
  • The number one thing to remember here is that Sava is a new user, and is therefore unaware of the Wikipedia guidelines. She seems to have come on here with good intentions, so it's not like she's the type of person who works for an advertising corporation and was paid to create Wikipedia articles. Yes there's always a potential, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt and show her other ways to have the information added.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 12:39, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Paul Burston

Clearly an editing war going on... Seems as if some of the edits are vanity rather factual edits.

Replace this with a brief explanation of the situation. 95.210.131.224 (talk) 09:50, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Charles Brokaw

While searching for sources for an article up for deletion, I noticed that the MacMillan page for the author listed above linked to the Wikipedia article. Upon a little investigation, I noticed that this was the case for pretty much all of Muledeer7's articles. The editor's contributions seem to entirely consist of Wikipedia articles for MacMillan authors, which leads me to believe that the editor is either a direct employee of MacMillan or is someone that has been outsourced in order to create Wikipedia articles for this company. I know that this doesn't automatically mean that everyone this editor has added is non-notable, but it is a huge conflict of interest and can be seen as advertising. I've put a warning on the editor's page, but considering that they've created about 57 pages for MacMillan authors, I thought it prudent to bring it up to this board. I'd list all of the authors they've created pages for, but I'll let the links speak for themselves: MacMillan's Charles Brokaw Page, [153] Tokyogirl79 (talk) 10:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Biotechnology in Maryland

This article, and others worked on by Mdbizauthor, read like press releases for the State of Maryland. Based on his/her user name (i.e. MD is abbreviation for Maryland) and the edits/additions this editor has made, I believe he/she may be an employee of the State.JoelWhy (talk) 18:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Bowman and Brooke LLP

I believe the username says it all...(but, just in case, it's a page for a law firm, almost certainly created by someone w/in the law firm.) The page probably warrants inclusion in Wikipedia, as it appears to be a relatively large firm. But, rules are rules. JoelWhy (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

User name has been blocked and I have tagged the article for speedy deletion as too promotional in tone.--ukexpat (talk) 21:51, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Many paid for articles with problems

Expewikiwriter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (already blocked per WP:SOCK and WP:SPAM) has created many articles this year, many of which are on subjects of questionable notability and which contain advert-like content. The most recently created ones have been dealt with, but if anyone has the time to go through older contribs and deal with them it would be helpful. SmartSE (talk) 23:22, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I've PROD'd about half-a-dozen article to which he has been the main contributor. They have varying levels of non-notability. One or two of the articles I didn't may actually be notable, so I didn't touch them. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:00, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Artie04 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) WikiWriterWikiWriter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Don't forget to look through Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Expewikiwriter. Also, maybe someone can create a table of all the articles to which Expewikiwriter created and include a column in the table to mark that the created article has been checked. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

How's this? User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 00:35, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Article Notes Completed
ClarkHuot Nominated for deletion Completed
David Jerome
Young Entrepreneur Council Needs advert editing
Nissim
Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition Fixed Completed
The Ghost Cop Deleted Completed
Harold J. Morowitz Needs advert editing
Stimulator Nothing needed Completed
Nathan Ballard Nominated for deletion
Shama Kabani Needs some editing, perhaps revert to the original
Gregory Scott Cummins Needs advert editing.
CBIZ Nominated for deletion
Ilya Pozin Need to scan for plugs like this to remove.
Home Care Assistance Nominated for deletion
Clif Bar Has an advert flag
Trans FX Nothing needed Completed
Dave Meltzer Needs an AfD
Kum & Go Some advert editing needed
David R. Stokes Nominated for deletion
Robert Uhlmann (media executive) Nominated for deletion
Demon Days Appears fine at a glance
NewOrleans.com Nominated for deletion Completed
Joy Theater Appears fine
Patrick Zipfel Nominated for deletion
LUNA Bar Nominated for deletion
Eduard Davis Nominated for deletion Completed
Jeff Gold Nominated for deletion Completed
Brooklyn Salsa Company Nominated for deletion Completed
Patrick Zipfel Nominated for deletion
That's everything for the expewikiwriter account, save the list doesn't include the mentions of their clients they sprinkled through other articles. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 00:35, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
With just one more addition, it also covers WikiwriterWikiwriter. Artie04 has no edit history and Wikiwhite2012 only commented on a deletion discussion, so that's a wrap unless more user accounts are found. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 00:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Athanasios Orphanides

I am concerned that the basis (please see here for details):[154] for the above article which is on the current Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, has been put in place by the PR representative of the Central Bank who I believe to be user:Kyproula, if you look at her postings here:[155] they only relate to this article, my concerns arise from the fact that there is a conflict of interest. The article, apart from reading a lot like a CV, only mentions the subject's research contributions prior to 2007, which is the year he took up his public office position as governor, in order to portray him in a more favourable light, whilst ignoring his term as governor, no mention of what he has acheived during those years is made.

I would have expected some critical presentation of the Governor's time in office and his policies etc. Also, if you look at the article's discussion page another user tried to add a section on the subject's time as governor with criticism based on his policy of regulating Cypriot banks, but it was removed as undue weight. I think, there is a case for an independent editor to look at the article and add a section about recent events i.e. the subject's term as governor between 2007-2012 in a way that is objective and not biased. Thanks 87.228.193.254 (talk) 11:57, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

My read at a glance is that the issue isn't about COI, or about critical content, but about reliable sources. If you want to break the deadlock, it will take some significant elbow grease to establish what criticisms were consistently reported in reliable sources and balance that with achievements to affirm proper weight. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 01:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Sergey Zagraevsky

Hello. We talked about this man in German WP. I suggest, that for the profession of being a "painter" there are no citations but the own website. The article may be written by a person close to the subject. Best regards --Robertsan (talk) 07:22, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

In other words, you're alleging that Dr. Olga Ozolina has a close personal connection to Sergey Zagraevsky. I suppose it's possible, she did provide the artist's permission to include his artwork in the article. But that connection may not be any closer than a professional acquaintance, however, since Ozolina is an art historian. I'd like to point out that her editing history suggests an interest not in promoting any particular person, but in subjects related to art in general (and Russian art in particular). I'm not really seeing any evidence of a COI here. Your concerns about the notability of the article seem justified, but that's an issue to bring up at the article and possibly at Articles for Deletion, not here. -- Atama頭 19:02, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Richard Kirshenbaum

Article has been created by what appears to be Mr. Kirshenbaum's advertising agency. It would appear that whoever is behind the controls has exercised good faith and done their best to neutralize the article a bit, but the COI still concerns me. Some review, here, could not help. Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 17:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Cedar Crest Country Club Quincy IL

User name is a little suspicious. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 07:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Connect America

The logo of Connect America he uploaded says he is the author. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 09:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That was tagged as spam and I have deleted it as such. SmartSE (talk) 20:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Nanobionic

Resolved
 – Indefinitely blocked as a COI spammer. -- Atama頭 18:49, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I've nominated the article for speedy deletion, but it's pretty clear that the author of the article is affiliated with the scam...errr, completely reputable product that they are selling.JoelWhy (talk) 12:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Alter Ego (film)

User has added a link to the website in their user name to the article (change of user name has been requested by the user, possibly to disguise their connection to the website). Total-MAdMaN (talk) 13:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Not commenting on any other aspect of this report, I'd like to point out that the username change request was totally appropriate, and it's exactly what we ask editors to do when they have a username that could be considered promotional. -- Atama頭 21:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Janna Cachola

Replace this with a brief explanation of the situation. Cortezquartet (talk) 23:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hulda Regehr Clark

New single-purpose account making WP:NPOV [edits http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hulda_Regehr_Clark&diff=486999617&oldid=486771581] to Hulda Regehr Clark. JoeSperrazza (talk) 13:53, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Portal:United_States_Air_Force

This Portal appears not to have been updated since 2009/2010. Would anyone consider it a conflict of interest if I were to begin updating it regularly?--v/r - TP 19:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

James Cantor

While researching an answer for a previous COI/N discussion, I found a pattern of old COI edits that was surprisingly extensive: Of the times James Cantor has been written into or cited in Wikipedia articles, roughly 68 of 79 were by James Cantor, an IP, or a login that was permanently blocked for suspicious edits. I've assembled a preliminary list of details and diffs for the refs to Cantor and CAMH. (Please feel free to add any instances I missed and correct any mistakes.)

To summarize: James Cantor has been written into the bodies of Wikipedia articles at least 11 times; 7 by Cantor, with 5 of those anonymously as "MariontheLibrarian." Some of these included edit wars (eg [156][157][158]...[159]). 3 were added by IPs or now-permanently blocked logins. Of the 11, only one was added by an account without a COI, permanent block, etc.

James Cantor has been cited at least 68 times; 45 by Cantor, with 39 of those anonymously as "MariontheLibrarian." These sometimes replaced citations to rivals (eg [160]). Another 13 were added by IPs or permanently blocked logins. Of the 68, only ten were added by accounts without a COI, permanent block, etc. (To isolate this from a separate issue, two articles were excluded from these figures.)

Since James Cantor's recent edits haven't been that bad, new disciplinary action might not be warranted. However, it seems likely that James Cantor's past edits as a whole have placed undue emphasis on himself and possibly his colleagues. Perhaps it would be best to post a comment about this pattern on the talk pages of the affected articles. This would provide those maintaining the articles with the big picture. They could then decide what adjustments, if any, to make to the article content. BitterGrey (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Every single one of those citations are from 2008, and Cantor's latest post on COIN (from the archives) pretty instrumentally demonstrates that he understands COI on wikipedia. This very much looks like there was a problem of selfcitation in the past, but is no longer an issue. The issue may be that Bittergrey objects to the use of any citation by James Cantor. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 21:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd invite everyone to go to the list, click on the first dif attributed to Cantor, and see that it is clearly not from 2008[161]. Obviously, WLU's claim "Every single one of those citations [is] from 2008" is untrue. That written, this is a matter of old content, not recent edits, exactly as I stated in my original post.
As usual, WLU is both wrong and is hounding me. The more recent example was at sexology, escalating to EL/N. I had questioned one EL, and WLU reacted by removing all the other ELs, leaving that one. WLU hadn't checked the ELs. If he had, he might have known that I was arguing to keep an EL that James Cantor had added some time before[162], but that WLU had removed. (Technically, Cantor re-added it, but that is beside the point.) This actually wasn't the first example of me defending a position which turned out to be Cantor's against WLU. I could give more, but I think the point is made. He's been hounding me for a year, and has picked a lot of fights. WLU attempted to hijack that EL/N discussion, including declaring it resolved twice[163][164], just as he is trying to hijack this one.
I wish I could write that WLU's practices have improved as much as James Cantor's. BitterGrey (talk) 23:43, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
If you have a problem with my behaviour, you are welcome to bring it up somewhere appropriate. All the links on this page are from 2008, and the most recent discussion on COIN was from James Cantor alerting the community of a new peer reviewed article he authored - which he did not add himself. The apparently new link is from April 2010, two years ago. Again, his latest COIN shows that he is well aware of conflict of interest issues. I see no reason to bring this up here, there is no recent activity indicating a problem. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 01:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
No, WLU, as you can see by the section title, this is about James Cantor, not you. You are the one who is butting in here, as you do most everywhere else I edit.
I specifically left the two articles affected by WLU's hounding of me out of the above figures. (The actual reason I made the list was to learn this: WLU appears never to have named or cited Cantor before WLU started hounding me, and never in any article that I either had not edited or had given him free reign to edit. Apparently, he only mentions or cites Cantor when he thinks it will cause a fight.)
Now back to the subject of James Cantor, if WLU will stop butting in.BitterGrey (talk) 03:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I am grateful for the consensus that I have been editing quite appropriately for years. (I would add, however, that I believe that my earlier edits also followed both the spirit and the letter of WP:COS.)
But, despite that even BitterGrey says my editing has been fine for years, he is nonetheless making this report at COIN. Indeed, he has been making such reports at noticeboards, edit warring with multiple other editors about me, for a long time. (I stopped participating in such discussions myself also a long time ago.) Also of note is BitterGrey’s usersubpage, tracking anyone who might be part of the conspiracy to promote me, anyone I know, any topic related to anyone I know, and so on. Clearly, WLU is not hounding BitterGrey. Rather, BitterGrey is hounding me, and WLU is simply the most recent editor to have gotten caught in the conspiracy theory.
I study some very controversial issues, and being hounded just comes with the territory for me. But other editors should not have to bear the consequences.
Whether the representation of me, my colleagues, etc. in WP is disproportionately large (because of my editing) or small (because of BitterGrey’s) is, of course, for other editors to decide.
— James Cantor (talk) 04:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
It appears to me that JC has used Wikipedia to promote himself and closely-related people and topics. I can't say I know what to do about it, but it appears to me that BG wants a mass deletion of Cantor-related material. I would like to get a sense of what sorts of changes/deletions are being considered by BG. Binksternet (talk) 05:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
re Binksternet: While I'm open to other ideas, my suggestion was to provide those maintaining the affected articles with the big picture and let them decide what adjustments to make. A mass deletion of Cantor-related material wasn't my intent. Over ~10% was added by other established editors in good standing, so it makes sense that more than 10% should remain. I hadn't planned on deciding how much more myself. I thought it best to post here, in case others had better ideas.
re Cantor: I wrote that your editing had improved, not that it was fine for years. For example, since you work with the person who's name is on the autogynephilia article, you shouldn't have called for the deletion of the (non-auto) gynephilia article in 2011. Perhaps if I were paying closer attention to you, I would have some more recent examples. Your claim of a "consensus" based on only one editor doesn't inspire confidence. BitterGrey (talk) 06:36, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
My name shows up 17 times in that section. 13 of those mentions are by you, Bittergrey. You are bringing up my behaviour, not me. My two comments to date focus on James Cantor's behaviour, my sole discussion of my own was to note that this is not the place to discuss my behaviour. So if you want to talk about James Cantor, do so.
It's never appropriate to say "X author/source is used too many times". The gross numbers never matter. What does matter is how each specific reference is used. A controversial source could be used to cite uncontroversial information like definitions, dates, names and the like. What is needed is an example, or list of current uses of citations by James Cantor that are problematic. Though, since this is COIN and not NPOVN, the real issue is specific examples of current behaviour by someone with a conflict of interest. I would venture that there are no such examples for James Cantor. The most recent diff I've seen so far is two years old, while the COIN discussion I linked to is from January, 2012, and was started by James Cantor to demonstrate that he wasn't engaging in conflict of interest editing.
The idea of paring back all citations to 10% of what is currently there is also inappropriate. Each citation's use and presence stands on its own merits - not on who added it. So what current and specific citations are problematic?
I simply can't see why this is being discussed on COIN when James Cantor obviously understands that citing himself is inappropriate (he may consider his self-imposed restrictions excessive, but that doesn't matter - what matters is that he edits in compliance with the COI guidelines). Since there is no current conflict of interest issue to be resolved, why is this discussion here? Why not take it to individual talk pages? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 10:59, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
The bigger problem with BitterGrey's anyone-connected-to-Cantor worry is that it's an incredibly small field. In the end, basically every mainstream pedophilia researcher is "connected to Cantor" directly or indirectly. That's because there just aren't that many of them. You could seat them all in a single room.
Here's a simple illustration: If you go to Pubmed and search for "pedophilia", you'll get a list of 300 papers published in the last ten years. More than one-eighth of those papers are either written by Cantor or written by someone he's co-authored a paper with. Far more of them cite a paper he's written or that one of his close colleagues has written. Cantor has one paper that (according to Google Scholar) has been cited more than 100 times. Several others have been cited fifty to seventy times. These are not minor papers by some fringe-y outfit that are being ignored by the academic researchers in the field. If Wikipedia isn't citing papers by Cantor or someone connected to Cantor at a fairly significant rate, then we're not doing our jobs right.
Naturally, an activist like BitterGrey will have his own opinions about whether Cantor is right, but I doubt that even BitterGrey would try to claim that the work by Cantor and his colleagues doesn't represent the mainstream "establishment" view of pedophilia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
The three categories were 1)Cantor or logins that he is now open about having used, 2)IPs or blocked users, and 3)other logins. I have no "anyone-connected-to-Cantor worry," contrary to WAID's misrepresentation. Please note that WAID and WLU have a long history of joining to argue against me, with EL/N being a recent example. A difference there is that I was arguing for an EL which happened to have distant connections to James Cantor. BitterGrey (talk) 16:24, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
If you believe that James Cantor is currently abusing multiple accounts, the appropriate action is to start a sockpuppet investigation. None of my comments are in any way a personal attack and they stand unrebutted - problems from 2010 that do not occur now are irrelevant. There is no point in criticizing an editor for mistakes they used to make. An editor who made mistakes and improved is a laudable memeber of the community whose continued presence should be encouraged. Again, I see no issue relevant to COIN. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:29, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
"currently abusing multiple accounts?" It seems WLU and WAID are intent on putting accusations in my mouth, in hopes of distracting from what I really wrote. This tactic only seems rational if they have already accepted that what I wrote is correct, and are hoping to misdirect others from that truth.BitterGrey (talk) 17:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth: I have never abused any account. For the first eight weeks of my four years on WP, I edited under a pseudonym, which is very much my right. I then decided to start editing under my own name, even though that is entirely optional. I linked my old account to my new account, and I linked my new account to my old account. (The notices are still there.) I have never switched back, even for single one of my several thousand edits. If there is any rule, guideline, or optional suggestion that I failed to use in order to be as transparent as possible, no one has said what it was.— James Cantor (talk) 17:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Bittergrey, if you don't believe James Cantor is currently abusing multiple accounts, then what is the purpose of this section? Particularly given James' current practice of suggesting inclusion on talk pages and seeking input from COIN rather than editing the article directly? If you have problems with how individual citations are used, isn't the best way forward to deal with them on a page-by-page basis? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 18:03, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
A link to the COI/N discussion about MarionTheLibrarian, initiated by another user. While not outing James Cantor, this did remove his option of continuing to edit under an undisclosed COI. Of course, that is history. At issue now is what we should do with the residuals of those edits, as well as more recent ones. BitterGrey (talk) 18:07, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
If in the 3.5 years between that board posting and this one, nobody has raised any concerns, what is the current issue? And what edits, specifically, are currently problematic? COIN is about conflict of interest, you appear to be suggesting there are weight issues on those pages and that's a different noticeboard. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 18:17, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

To try to counter efforts by involved editors to sidetrack this, I'll highlight the one comment (and so far only one) by an editor who isn't involved in some way: Binksternet: "It appears to me that JC has used Wikipedia to promote himself and closely-related people and topics. I can't say I know what to do about it, but it appears to me that BG wants a mass deletion of Cantor-related material. I would like to get a sense of what sorts of changes/deletions are being considered by BG." I hope that I have responded to his reasonable concerns - I'm not asking for a mass deletion, just testing out the idea of some talk page comments[165].BitterGrey (talk) 18:33, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

So no more reservations about the proposal of adding comments to the talk pages of affected articles, or better ideas? BitterGrey (talk) 22:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
That is why the COI Template exists. It is meant to warn people that there could be inappropriate material in the article that was added by an editor with a conflict of interest. Usually the material is inappropriate because it is promotional (spam) or the article's POV is otherwise slanted toward the COI editor's bias (whether positively or negatively). So I think that use of the tag is warranted. However, the tag should only be used if accompanied by a talk page discussion explaining the COI concerns, which is why the tag's language states, "Please discuss further on the talk page." The intention of the tag is to direct editors to help clean up the article by changing or removing problematic content, or to at least facilitate a discussion where editors can decide whether or not there really is a problem with the article's content. But that would be my suggestion, to thoughtfully use those tags the way they were meant to be used. -- Atama頭 18:27, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me to those, Atama. Would it be better to use the COI-check Template instead for articles where he wasn't a major contributor? Since I've already assembled a list of diffs, I'll copy and paste the relevant ones to function as the basis of the talk page comments. That should keep things as objective as possible. BitterGrey (talk) 04:52, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hallmark Institute of Photography

Recent edits to this article have removed sourced historical material referring to fraud charges against school's former owner and principal, involving the school's funds; these were removed either without reason or because they are "unsubstantiated" and involve former "employees".[166] [167] [168] [169] [170] [171] [172] [173] [174]. The claim that these sourced issues are "unsubstantiated" is unexplained (it was the only independently-sourced information in the article), and the editors removing these items are not engaging in conversation beyond occasional edit summaries (and then only when information they have deleted has been restored).

At least one of these two non-IP editors (PEGSchools (talk · contribs)) has an obvious-looking conflict of interest, and is now blocked,[175] after having been warned about COI editing.[176] The other (Imattjc (talk · contribs)), while not avowedly representing Hallmark Institute (or its current owner, Premier Education Group), has only edited this article, and then only to remove sourced information, or add unsourced "current" information.

I have attempted to engage these editors on the article talk page[177] and on Imattic's talk page [178] [179] to no response. While I have no strong opinion on what should be included in this article, I believe I'm seeing an organization WP:OWN an article in order to manage their reputation, and they are unwilling to discuss their edits aside from edit summaries making broad, questionable denunciations of the information they are removing. / edg ☺ ☭ 14:01, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Various edits and articles by a sockpuppeteer

This relates to this sockpuppet case, where it was established that journalist Nimrod Kämer purposely inserted false material violating WP:BLP policy into the articles of several celebrities so that he could offer to correct it for them for a fee. Editorially and technically speaking, these are all his accounts and their contributions suggest various conflicts of interest; the obvious example being that his article is an autobiography. Because the very public film he made makes the connection between accounts and at least one IP address entirely self-evident, edits made by the IPs in the SPI case should be checked in addition, and of course anything that doesn't satisfy the inclusion criteria to be taken to WP:AFD. WilliamH (talk) 23:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Andøya Rocket Range

Name is listed on the website for the article subject as the head of marketing. User's edits include the word "our". Total-MAdMaN (talk) 12:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Jozenga

Pretty self-explanatory. I've also nominated the page for CSD.JoelWhy (talk) 12:36, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree about CSD. :) --Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:30, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Hamish McLachlan

This may be a reverse case of COI editing. A news organization accused the subject, Hamish McLachlan, of editing his own page. I have not found any evidence on Wikipedia of that allegation, but a series of BLP/vandalism incidents forced me to sprotect the article for a few days. A few more eyeballs on the article would be useful. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

A bit of background on this. Crikey is sort of a media watchdog group, more than a standard news organisation. The real story came from bigfooty, an internet football forum. The thread that "outed" the host of a weekly football show as being either the author of his wikipedia article, or closely connected to him, is now one of the most viewed threads ever on that site, with over 150,000 views and 1300 posts. McLachlan has claimed on twitter and through another journalist that the User:Rompingwins is not him, but a former friend. A youtube account by the same name appears to be McLachlan's, but since been deleted. Either way, the Rompingwin account here is a WP:SPA and in some way connected to McLachlan. I severely doubt that he'll ever post here again under that account, given the amount of ridicule and abuse that has resulted from it. I think most people are surprised that it has "gone viral" (in the AFL/bigfooty world at least) like it has, but it seems to be the topic of choice for a boring mid-week period between games with no other major footy news around! If anyone needs anymore background, please ask. (and just to confirm, I am also the user ThePope on bigfooty). The-Pope (talk) 14:15, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
In light of continuing off-wiki plans to vandalize the article, I have extended sprotection for three months. --TeaDrinker (talk) 14:21, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Help requested on Moody's Investors Service

Hello, I've previously posted on this page to ask for assistance and would like to do so again, for a request on the Moody's Investors Service article. I work with Moody's and am aware of the COI rules, so I have placed an edit request on the Talk page, as I am cautious about making edits to the article myself. The request concerns some information that does not belong in the Moody's Investors Service article, which was recently added to the end of the article's introduction. The sentence in question notes the reported revenue and number of employees for Moody's Corporation, not the subsidiary Moody's Investors Service. The information would be more appropriate in the article for the corporation, and has actually been included there, using more recent numbers. If there is consensus to do so, I would like to have this information removed from the Moody's Investors Service article. I have not yet received any response to the edit request and would welcome any input from editors here. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 21:09, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed it for the reasons you stated; is in the wrong place. Thanks for coming here to sort it out. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:11, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Tagishsimon. I am grateful for your help. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 12:32, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Kuwait Zoo

Disregard
 – No indication of a close connection between user and subject of article in question. OlYeller21Talktome 16:48, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Suspicious name. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 03:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Kuwait is a country. If somebody has the country in their username and edits any page related to that country, is it a conflict of interest? bobrayner (talk) 15:17, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe it's a conflict of interest. Unless there's proof that they have a close connection with the zoo (simply having "Kuwait" in the name doesn't prove a close connection to the zoo), then there's no COI. There may be advertising, spamming, or POV pushing going on but those are issues not covered by this noticeboard. OlYeller21Talktome 16:46, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Josey Greenwell

The article may be notable but this user surely have a conflict of interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Solomon7968 (talk • contribs)

It's helpful to provide evidence for your claim. In my opinion, presenting no evidence when claiming a conflict of interest is uncivil.
I'll look into the article and user and report back. OlYeller21Talktome 16:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The user has never made a talk page edit and has never outed themselves as having a close connection with the subject of the article. The most suspicious edits they make are to slightly change quotes indicating that perhaps they know what the quote was (because they possible made the quote). "DoublexMGT" assumedly represents "XX Management Group" but I can find no link between Josey Greenwall and that group. At worst, the user's username could be a violation of WP:USERNAME but as they haven't make any problematic edits that relate to XX Management Group, they haven't actually violated the policy.
Unless Solomon7968 can provide some evidence or someone can prove a close connection and problematic editing, I don't see any issue here. OlYeller21Talktome 17:08, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Rush Limbaugh–Sandra Fluke controversy

An IP user, 209.6.69.227, has been making extensive contentious and highly partisan edits to these articles since the controversy broke in March. His near-constant presence on the talk page has been critical in giving the article a strong conservative bias. He continues to edit these articles, bringing them closer to his oft-expressed extremely conservative political beliefs.

In a recent edit summary, 209.6.69.227 wrote "This is a routine communication that notifies our affiliates’ traffic managers of advertisers that prefer not to be in ANY potentially controversial programs. It is prepared and disseminated on a quarterly basis.".

It appears that the user is employed by Clear Channel media or some associated media organization with an interest in promoting Rush Limbaugh's show. To my knowledge, the IP has never disclosed that he works for a media company, or that he has a professional interest in promoting Rush Limbaugh or Clear Channel. — goethean ॐ 19:21, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Umm that edit summary you're using as "evidence" is a quote from the article he used as a citation. It's not his words. - Xcal68 (talk) 04:19, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
All that he needs to say is "I am not employed being paid by Clear Channel or by any entity with an interest in promoting the Rush Limbaugh Show." — goethean ॐ 14:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Or you could have attempted a semblance of due diligence and actually checked the link, rather than throwing around unfounded accusations. - Xcal68 (talk) 18:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
And why on earth should he have to deny employment with that organization, when there's zero evidence to suggest he works for them? What next? Will you be then wanting his denial to a huge laundry list of organizations you concoct merely because his pov aligns with them? People in glass house...etc. And make no mistake, I don`t like a lot of his edits, but they are usually cited with equally reliable sources to many of the existing citations within that article. - Xcal68 (talk) 19:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Some examples of biased editing which may promote an organization with which this user is apparently employed or associated:

  • [180] adds content favorable to Limbaugh which is not found in source
  • [181] posting GOP talking points on article talk page
  • [182] ditto
  • arguing Limbaugh (originator of the term "Femi-Nazi") cannot be caled 'anti-feminist'
  • removing relevant facts
  • [183] denigrating Sandra Fluke
  • [184] adding negative material about Fluke

This is just a random sampling. Nearly all of this user's edits are contentious, partisan, and promote Limbaugh. — goethean ॐ 19:43, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

You overstate the evil nature of the edits - most of which appear fully sourced and reasonable. COI is not the problem here - it is the usual POV in BLP articles problem. Cheers. Collect (talk) 19:50, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
I do not think that it is okay for Clear Channel employees to use Wikipedia to promote Rush Limbaugh. It is completely unsurprising that you think the opposite. — goethean ॐ 20:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
I completely agree with Collect. The edits are simply typical POV. There is zero evidence of COI or his place of employment. - Xcal68 (talk) 04:19, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

That Goethean lacks reading COMPREHENSION is evidenced by the spamming of wikipedia with numbers that he/she/it does not understand are being DE-BUNKED in the references to it. That Goethean also lacks basic reading or comparison skills (5 year olds can compare and see which words are SAME - get a five year old to help you) is evidenced by the fact that he/she/it cannot recognize the RELEVANT quote from the source cited stating what he/she/it denies, namely that the memo is a routine quarterly memo, which had a 50:50 chance of being released during but coincidental to the whole controversy (if we agree it began and ended in 1.5 months). Please READ the SOURCE. Which is deemed a RELIABLE source, since it isn't Think Progress and doesn't release cr_p like Think Progress. That is all. Stop stalking me.--209.6.69.227 (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Please review WP:PA. If you answer a seven point critique with a general personal attack, it is unlikely you will sway opinion on this page. Allegations of stalking must satisfy the criteria of Wikipedia:Harassment and may brought, with evidence, to WP:ANI. Please try to resolve the issue directly with the individual concerned, first. Thank you. --Walter Siegmund (talk) 14:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
If you mean "point", as in the generally used definition of "argument", there are not seven, but NONE, as stated above. If you disagree, please feel free to explain the twisted logic that use of a Washington Post quote from a Washington Post article that was posted as source provides "evidence" of my employment history.
If you mean "point" as in "purpose", as in "the point of Goethean's existence on Wikipedia is ....", I could fill in the blanks, as could most editors who have the misfortune to encounter, but doubt there are seven.--209.6.69.227 (talk) 16:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Can't say I'm really seeing it myself. I don't see a COI problem. There may be NPOV concerns. (OK, It's Rush Limbaugh. There are going to be NPOV concerns.He wouldn't have a job if there wasn't.) I don't agree with much of the summary of the edits as a COI issue...and I don't think some of the sources can remotely be considered reliable for what they're saying. Rush called someone a slut, and 98 large corporations requested that their ads aren't used on Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity's shows. Well done Rush. That's quite the influence you have.
I'm no fan of Rush. I'm no fan of anyone who makes a living off of creating political controversy...especially just by talking instead of doing. I just don't see why this is anything more than a simple content dispute. --Onorem♠Dil 14:35, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The universally acknowledged problem with the ThinkProgress missive is, for instance, that they "found" that Hallmark does not want its advertisements on any political or racy show. It is one of 98 corporations on CCR's list. Hallmark has NEVER advertised on any of the above shows, nor is it likely that it ever will. Hallmark did not, as ThinkProgress claimed, drop anyone. Washington Post and Daily Kos, among others, debunked that a month ago, and nobody (and I include Think Progress itself) but Goethean still supports the silly claim.--209.6.69.227 (talk) 16:20, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Goethean's WHOLE argument is that my use of a quote from the Washington Post, "This is a routine communication that notifies our affiliates’ traffic managers of advertisers that prefer not to be in ANY potentially controversial programs. It is prepared and disseminated on a quarterly basis.", together with adding the Washington Post reference in the article makes me an employee of Clear Channel communication. If anyone can explain that, be my guest. Otherwise the conclusion is as I stated above. --209.6.69.227 (talk) 15:20, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

This was another Very Strange Edit by 209 in which he speculates that what he alleges, without evidence, are "lies" in Fluke's biography could hurt her when she applies for a job(?!) God only knows what his frankly defamatory speculations have to do with editing a Wikipedia article. — goethean ॐ 15:34, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The above misstates the point of the cited edit, which advised caution relying on a "school bio" for article details without another supporting source -- noting that school bios may be inflated without adverse consequences, while the same degree of inflation on resumes can result in firing/rejection. In effect 209 argues that WP:VERIFY requires the latter, stricter, standard, making school bios unreliable sources. In any case, this has nothing to do with 209's employment, or with COI. --Raven (talk) 18:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


I haven't looked through every edit from all involved users but is there any actual evidence of a close connection between any editors and Fluke or Limbaugh? If not, this discussion isn't for this noticeboard. OlYeller21Talktome 20:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Clear Channel is the network that broadcasts Limbaugh's show. The COI being alleged is employment by Clear Channel, on the basis of the word "our" in the edit summary of an edit quoting Clear Channel. The rebuttal points out that the word "our" is part of the direct quote which was in the edit summary, not the editor's own word. --Raven (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The only "evidence" presented by Goethean, the editor who initiated this, has already been disproven. There is no evidence of COI. - Xcal68 (talk) 21:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Lord Gould

Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I posted this morning about a requested edit, but no one appears to have seen it or responded yet, so I thought I would escalate here. A lightly edited version of the requested edit should be completely uncontroversial. I'm not making the edit directly myself due to a potential COI.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:59, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

It might have helped if you had added {{edit request}}. Can you find some RSs for the content? SmartSE (talk) 20:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Taibi Kahler

Replace this with a brief explanation of the situation. Newmanoconnor (talk) 05:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

It appears that Symbology101 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is either the subject or directly related to the subject. There is not independent significant coverage and fails to meet WP:GNG, it is a Vanity site that is blatant self promotion and the only articles the user has created are This article and others related to the subjects own "inventions".Newmanoconnor (talk) 05:57, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I deleted that and another article as copyvio/spam. SmartSE (talk) 17:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Cascadia

Cascadianow (talk · contribs) is an old account exclusively editing articles related to the Cascadia (independence movement). I note that there is also a website called Cascadianow.[185]]. Dougweller (talk) 12:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Are the edits themselves problematic, is there any aggressive POV-pushing? A very cursory look suggests a need to trim contributions, not necessarily intervene. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 15:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Doug Flag (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) isn't great. Given the username, I've {{softerblock}}ed them. SmartSE (talk) 17:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Woodforest National Bank

Most content on Woodforest National Bank has been removed, and User:Dmoh77 has twice removed the same unflattering section, most recently saying it was wrong, though it was properly referenced. I'm suspicious that Dmoh77 may be a paid operative, but do not know how to further investigate. ke4roh (talk) 16:45, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Inception (Yacht)

Name of the skipper of this boat is Jeff Dusting. JoelWhy (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Glenn Doughty

This edit and the user's own edit both say Karen Fulbright is a business partner of Glenn Doughty. Edits by the user have removed sourced information from the article or replaced sourced information with unsourced. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 19:11, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Paul Steelman

Addition of unsourced information, some of which is personal. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 21:35, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The7stars

User appears to be an employee of The7stars, as they have created an article for the company and added information about the company being selected for media management to all the above articles. The IP address, which has also edited The7stars, is registered to The7stars. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 18:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

CharlieOsborne is still editing after being warned a (few hours ago), I will report as promo only account. Widefox (talk) 20:30, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Craig Graham

0. creation of promo article by WP:SPA editor 1. Sydneysider1979 is colleague of subject (I do not wish to out, but evidence is online) 2. declared no COI when asked [186] 3. will not edit other articles despite my suggestion 4. editing now as 124.169.7.4 Widefox (talk) 12:49, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Deterministic noise

Adding own book to reading list, and sole ref of article = business / self promotion. Widefox (talk) 18:18, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like a clear conflict of interest. Professor Magdon-Ismail is likely pushing his own book which, though written by three scholars, is self-published. The AMLbook.com publisher is made up of the three writers. Binksternet (talk) 18:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Ministry for Primary Industries (New Zealand)

At least as far back as 2007, the NZ government admitted to Parliament that they were editing this article (the ministry had a different name back then). This is still an advertisement for how the ministry wants to be seen, and shamelessly lacking in NPOV. Orange Mike | Talk 14:04, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

The Haskell Company

Promotional puff piece, with coi editor. Theroadislong (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it would make a better starting point for a neutral non promotional article but that version also has problems.Theroadislong (talk) 16:09, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Notification made at User talk:Haskellnewmedia. —C.Fred (talk) 15:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I don't believe a revert would be appropriate since the data is very dated. COI editor has attempted to take out the puff, and replace with facts. please review and let me know what needs to be changed. Added references to important parts about influence in design-build model. Founder of the company was the original thought leader behind design-build. He founded the Design Build Institute of America. So thought that was an important factual point. A reference was added to document this fact. The leadership of the company takes public service as a responsibility, this is why this piece contains as much info as it does. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Haskellnewmedia (talk • contribs) 17:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
The facts may have been updated, but the tone was significantly changed as well. What was written in a very neutral tone now has a very promotional sound to it. —C.Fred (talk) 17:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Edubb

Jdobypr is the PR agent for Edubb, a band. The article is currently up for deletion. TeaDrinker (talk) 07:51, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

User name blocked.--ukexpat (talk) 15:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Paul Burston

I suspect the entry on Paul Burston probably constitutes a "puff-piece" with lists of "glowing" book reviews etc. There also appears to be some sort of editing battle going on.

The only puffery I can see is a mention that the NYT had "praised" his first novel, which should be easy to fix. I don't see lists of "glowing" book reviews or other reviews, just a bibliography and 2 links to interviews. I've left a COI welcoming template for Paul Burston. -- Atama頭 16:03, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Maria Dinulescu

Username indicates they are the person the article is about. Edits have added unsourced information and lots of promotional quotes. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 23:43, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Left a COI welcome message. -- Atama頭 13:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Vijay Antony

Username indicates they are the subject of the article (fc stands for film composer). Edits have changed name, date and place of birth (all unsourced) and removed the References and External links sections. Total-MAdMaN (talk) 00:00, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd delete it per G11 but his body of work suggests that he really is notable so I'm reluctant to do it. The article itself is almost totally an advertisement. This article could be a poster child for why we discourage COI editing. -- Atama頭 14:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

climate change capital

I noticed that the Climate Change Capital article was registering an error regarding a major contribution to the article being closely linked to the company. So I tried to edit it, adhering to the best policy article and maintaining a netral point however i haven't had any luck in removing the warning.

I guess somebody from the company tried to write the article in the first place.

I've removed the COI tag since there's no accompanying discussion on the talk page to justify the tag. There isn't even a talk page to have a discussion on, yet. If that changes, the tag can be reinserted. -- Atama頭 14:07, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

One Horse Gap

Article is looking more and more like an advert due to conflict of interest edits. Theroadislong (talk) 08:53, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Structured_Dynamics

On his Talk page, the article notes he's the CEO of this company (plus, his user name is Mkbergman, and the CEO name listed on the page he created is Michael Bergman.) I suspect he is not aware of the COI policy, as he has made no attempts to hide this (but he did not overtly attempted to reveal his COI on the company page he created.)JoelWhy (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

EnCor Biotechnology Inc.

Encor Biotechnology is a small Florida biotech firm. Our article is virtually entirely the creation of the company's founder and owner, Gerry Shaw, and much of the material is essentially word-for-word identical to the company's website ([187]). Shaw has stated that he hopes to sell the company in the next year or two. The tone and style of the writing needs work—it's rather chatty and promotional-sounding. I suspect it's questionable whether or not the company meets WP:CORP's standards (the only independent sources so far are a couple of short articles from the Gainesville Sun, and Shaw reports annual sales of less than $1 million: quite a small company), though I haven't nominated the article for deletion.

Shaw has been repeatedly removing a {{coi}} tag yesterday and today (he's technically in breach of the 3RR with these edits, though I'd rather not see the book thrown at him [188], [189], [190], [191]). He was notified on his talk page by another editor of Wikipedia's guidelines regarding editing with a conflict of interest a couple of weeks ago: [192]. He has continued to remove the COI tag from the article even after I explained my concerns in response to his comments on the article talk page: Talk:EnCor Biotechnology Inc.#Conflict of interest.

Some extra eyes would be appreciated. Am I off base in thinking that the {{coi}} tag is appropriate in this instance? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:07, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

help me please an article damaging to my family

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The Conflict of Interest issues applicable to this noticeboard have been resolved. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

This article from the link above quepongo damages directly to my 3 year old daughter as she is called Zariel and I do not know where this information the author sack but just are not true stories please help to delete the article, I am desperate.. Enojada (talk) 14:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess the article you are referring to is Zariel I can't see any problem with it or why it should affect your daughter?Theroadislong (talk) 14:40, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Taking a look at Zariel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), it seems quite generic to me. If we have missed the point and you have specific concerns of a confidential nature, please raise them by writing to info-en@wikimedia.org rather than posting on public noticeboards. Thanks Fæ (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that the issue is that the OP's daughter has the same name as a character who is an archdevil. I am not sure there is much we can do about that. My name is frequently the name of English villains in movies...--ukexpat (talk) 15:10, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
If the name Zariel bothers the parents, in most instances they can change the name of the child accordingly, or perhaps even vary the spelling slightly, such as adding another vowel or two r's or something like that. But us Wikipedians can not change the name Zariel since it was established as a character in pop culture and we have no control over that.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, our apologies to Enojada, but we can't delete an article simply because your daughter shares the same name as this fictional creature. Note that the fictional creature existed before your daughter, so I don't think there's really anything to be done at this point.JoelWhy (talk) 17:39, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm intrigued by this, and was wondering if we as a community, could look into renaming the article, as an act of goodwill? Perhaps something along the lines of Zariel (video game character). That way the child's parent will realise the article isn't about her daughter. Only a suggestion. Wesley☀Mouse 18:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Or, since the subject is of dubious notability, we could nominate it for deletion or turn it back into a redirect as it was when it was first created. I'm going to boldly do the latter. SmartSE (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd say that's fine if you think the article deserves to be a redirect because of its content, but not if it's being turned into a redirect because one guy complained. --Onorem♠Dil 21:17, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I didn't notice that references had been added. I'm against the redirect. --Onorem♠Dil 21:19, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
The articles content has been completely lost, seems like a backwards step to me.Theroadislong (talk) 21:23, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I can fully understand where everyone is coming from on this. Just because a mother of a child has lodged a complaint about an article which shares the same name as her daughter, and the fact the article refers to that character as an archdevil; shouldn't be a reason for redirecting. However, we should also see things from the perspective of the distressed mother here. Put yourselves in the shoes of a parent... what if it was one of your children who has an article sharing the same name, which was referring to a fictional evil character; would you be a little upset about it? Only a parent would be able to understand where this mother is coming from. That was why I suggested to the community, perhaps a slight tweak of the article name as an act of goodwill, would be a reasonable compromise. Afterall, doesn't the community like to pride itself on compromising? Zariel (fictional character); or Zariel (videogame character) would be a justified compromise all round IMHO. Wesley☀Mouse 21:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, should have maybe explained a bit more. First, I did that because I think it is the right thing to do regardless, and in many other cases it wouldn't be right to remove the content. It just so happened that this coincides with what Enojada wanted. The references in the article were shoddy, and when I followed WP:BEFORE it looked as if the subject failed WP:GNG, so reverting it back to a redirect seemed like the easiest way to deal with things. If I was too bold, then feel free to revert and I'll take the article to AfD, unless someone can come up with some more sources. SmartSE (talk) 21:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
This is nonsense. I happen to have the same name as a well known film star and a rapist and murderer from near my city. I deal with it. (It's not hard.) HiLo48 (talk) 07:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Everyone deals with things in different ways. Some people are thick skinned and can laugh off issues like this; but some can't, and we shouldn't be criticizing those people. Unless you're a parent yourself, you probably not understand where this parent is coming from; so to say you can "deal with it, it's not hard" is a little over-sensitive in my honest opinion. A simple compromise in a tweak of the article name isn't exactly going to cause that much harm all round is it now? Wesley☀Mouse 10:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Ummm. I AM a parent. Next? And please show me the Wikipedia policy that says that we modify the obvious names for articles for super-sensitive, overly protective parents. HiLo48 (talk) 10:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
I assume in good faith that the bold and enlargement of the word AM was in humour? lol. But back to the matter at hand, Wikipedia and the community within prides itself on compromise and goodwill. A slight tweak of a name to keep everyone happy would be a noble act of goodwill. Many a times in the past, I've been snared at for having a slight resemblance to Nosferatu; and at the time yes it did upset me a little, but then I started to giggle it off. And nowadays it just gets monotonous hearing people say it. But this parent is obviously upset that an article has the same name as their daughter. Sure, the character Zariel was thought of well before this child. But to highlight that its a fictional character isn't exactly going to cause that much hassle is it? It would show the parent that the Wikipedia community do have a heart, and also stipulate that its a character and nothing to do with their daughter. Wesley☀Mouse 10:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Oh dear. I almost give up when such an inability to communicate is on display. You obviously assumed that my opinion was as it was because I wasn't a parent. I have no idea why you thought that. The emphasis was to highlight firstly your false assumption about that, and secondly,the accompanying assumption that all parents would think just like you. Sorry, but the world is not that simple. I happen to disagree, and you may never understand why. HiLo48 (talk) 10:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • "After all, doesn't the community like to pride itself on compromising? " Err... No, actually - the WP community always favours a howling lynchmob, based on the narrowest and least helpful interpretation of the sainted Policy that is possible. Just look at Jim Hawkins (radio presenter). 8-(
In this case, I'd suggest, per Wesley Mouse, renaming (without redirect) to Zariel (video game character). It preserves that which should be preserved and it reduces the most obvious impact of a search on the name. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:44, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Dungeons and Dragons isn't a video game. 86.** IP (talk) 10:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I was looking at this issue on a broader spectrum, and not aiming at you personally. I suppose my choice of words weren't the best at the time, and I do apologise for that. You did ask before if there where any policies about modifying things. Well I have found a few that may be worth a look at - WP:CENSOR, WP:DISC, WP:PROFANE, and WP:PG. From the way the OP has worded their distress, then for us as a community to ignore it isn't acting in good faith towards them as an individual. We shouldn't be behaving as the judge, jury, and executioner towards them, just because they are clearly upset over a minor thing. And if you read my other comments above too, you'll also note that I agree with the other view that an article shouldn't be altered on a whim - but as this may be a one-off incident, then perhaps as an act of goodwill, we should look into the possibilities of a small tweak. We want to encourage new users, not scare them off by saying "blah who cares, get a grip". Wesley☀Mouse 10:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

If I might butt in; Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game, which has a large, very detailed world, meant for creating adventures in. This article, so far as I can tell, is about one element put out there for people to hang their own stories on; it doesn't appear to have been used in any official stories, and, indeed, while mentioned on this page of the Dungeons and Dragons wiki, she doesn't have her own page there, and looking at Bel_(Dungeons_&_Dragons), it appears that, by the time Zariel was named, she had already been displaced from any notable role in the Dungeons and Dragons cosmology: "He was first identified as Avernus's ruler in Dragon #223 (November 1995), a role he retained in later appearances. That source explained that he had wrested control of the layer from the unnamed previous ruler (noted only to not be Tiamat) thousands of years ago.[6] His predecessor was first named as Zariel in Guide to Hell (1999).[7]"
As such, while the original poster's reasoning for the article being a problem is completely fallacious, the article in question shouldn't be a standalone. However, it should be directed to Bel_(Dungeons_&_Dragons), where information about her appears. I shall do so.
Now, admittedly, there's probably an argument that a number more Dungeons and Dragons articles on our wiki deal with aspects of the setting that have never rose to much prominence; but that's an argument to have another day, I think, per WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS.
You may now return to much less geeky lives. 86.** IP (talk) 10:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the Zareil lesson, 'twas interesting. I applaud your suggestion though, nice one! So I suppose that closes this one down then? Are we all off to the pub for some beers and a few games of pool? I'll get the first round in. Wesley☀Mouse 11:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
No worries. It's not a part of D&D I'm expert on - rather before my time playing, to be honest - but I know enough to at least know that the sources for Zariel weren't a good guide to notability, and a quick google of "Zariel dungeons dragons" confirmed my suspicious, and led me to the target article. =) 86.** IP (talk) 11:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Whether Wikipedia deletes the article Zariel, uses a redirect to a different article, or even writes an (incorrect) article saying that Zariel describes an angel -- regardless -- there will still be a linkage between the word Zariel and the fictional archdevil character out there in the Internet. Somebody googling Zariel will come across the meaning of the term regardless of what Wikipedia does. We here at Wikipedia can not do anything about this. It is out of our control. Our job is not to give or take away meanings of words. Wikipedia is not a clearinghouse for the meaning of names. Our job is to say what Zariel is, whatever that may be, and to examine the subject in the same way that we would examine any other subject in Wikipedia. Deleting information about this topic may hinder the needs of other people who wish to learn about this fictional character, possibly to play a video game; further, removing the Zariel information may hide the Zariel-archdevil link from future parents who are thinking of naming their child "Zariel" and they choose this name unaware of the full connotations; in such a case, removing the information could cause more problems in the future. Rather, what is necessary for us as Wikipedians is to follow Wikipedia's excellent rules. We must disregard superstitious requests. What IS under somebody's control is the decision by the parents about what they wish to name their child; IF the name Zariel really bothers them that much, they can simply change their daughter's name. Problem solved.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:17, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree, but realise that we're talking about a character that, so far as I can find, has never had more than two pages written about her, ever (at least, in notable sources: playing Dungeons and Dragons is a little like writing fanfiction, so someone may have at some time used the idea - but that would add no more notability than me making up a story around... I don't know, the 73rd name in I Chronicles would make that person suddenly notable, if they aren't already.) For a third link I didn't put up yet: [193]. The original poster's argument has long since ceased to be relevant, the non-notability of the subject is what's relevant 86.** IP (talk) 12:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
If the topic Zariel is non-notable, then follow proper channels such as WP:AfD or WP:PROD and let the community decide. What people have done here with these redirects is a violation of Wikipedia's rules.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Which rule? 86.** IP (talk) 13:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Applicable rule is here which says Sometimes an unsuitable article may have a title that would make a useful redirect. In these cases, deletion is not required; any user can boldly redirect to another article. If the change is disputed, an attempt should be made on the talk page to reach a consensus before restoring the redirect. I am one of those here disputing the redirect; please achieve consensus on the talk page of Zariel first before reducing it to a redirect.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC) Actually, on second thought, this is not an important enough issue for me to fuss with, and frankly I do not know much about such characters or games.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:45, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
There was no need for consensus before 86.** IP implemented a redirect. I don't see that you objected to implementing a redirect before the redirect was done. Even if you did object, that doesn't prevent someone from doing it in the first place (which is why our policy suggests that people can be bold with implementing redirects as a deletion alternative). -- Atama頭 13:57, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
It was actually me who reverted it back to a redirect, but as I stated above I'm happy to discuss it at AFD if someone feels it's necessary. (I wish so many people were this interested in discussing other article listed here!) SmartSE (talk) 08:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vandalism of Jack Welch article

Yesterday, I placed a message on the Talk page of Jack Welch's article regarding some current issues with the article content. A short while later I noticed there was some vandalism of the article by an anonymous editor, who added the following:


And he is also a vegetarian and has involved in himself in the sale of barbituates.


This vandalism is still in the article today and although I'd like to remove it, I have a conflict of interest with Jack Welch as a subject because I work for Strayer University, which runs the Jack Welch Management Institute. If anyone here is able to help remove this vandalism, that would be appreciated. Perhaps editors here could also be of assistance with my request on the Talk page there? Thanks in advance, Hamilton83 (talk) 21:55, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Just after I posted this, I checked the article again and see that the vandalism has now been reverted, so please disregard my note about that. However, if anyone here is able to help with my request on the article I would really appreciate it. Thanks, Hamilton83 (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Outright vandalism—say, someone replacing the entire article with "I LOVE CHEESEBURGERS!!!!!!!!"—or libelous claims can generally be reverted by anyone at least once, even people with a close connection to the subject. When what's in your best interest is obviously also in Wikipedia's best interests, then there's no "conflict" of interests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Not just "generally" but "always" see Wikipedia:COI#Non-controversial_edits for details. Hamilton83, if you don't mind me asking, why did you think you couldn't edit it yourself? Was it due to all the recent coverage regarding PR editing of Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales' advice (WP:BRIGHTLINE)? Cheers SmartSE (talk) 08:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies, WhatamiIdoing and SmartSE. The reason that I came here rather than edit myself is that, although I'm aware of the guidelines, I would prefer not to make any edits to articles where I have a COI. It may seem overly strict to some, but my concern is to ensure that no editor has any cause to say that I (on behalf of my employer) have been acting improperly in editing articles where there is a conflict. I should also say, I've been receiving advice from User:WWB Too, who follows this "bright-line" rule too.
I actually noticed the vandalism because I am trying to address—via a Talk page request—some other issues with the Jack Welch article: in particular, plagiarism of sources and inaccurate material. Again, while I'm aware that the guidelines say I could make these edits directly, I would rather involve other editors to ensure that any changes are neutral and acceptable to the Wikipedia community. If you're able to help here, I would appreciate it. Thanks, Hamilton83 (talk) 21:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
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