Welcome!

edit

Hello, DiabetesT1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 20:18, 16 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

edit

Hi DiabetesT1. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing, which is mostly about health and medicine. Your edits to date are about [[Bigfoot Biomedical] and are promotional. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

  Hello, DiabetesT1. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

  • avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
  • propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
  • disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
  • avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
  • do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

Comments and requests

edit

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. Unmanaged conflicts of interest can also lead to people behaving in ways that violate our behavioral policies and cause disruption in the normal editing process. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protected by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Bigfoot Biomedical, directly or through a third party (e.g. a PR agency or the like)? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, please disclose it. After you respond (and you can just reply below), I can walk you through how the "peer review" part happens and then, if you like, I can provide you with some more general orientation as to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 20:19, 16 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jydog, thanks for the help! A couple of things: first, the only edits I made to this page were adding internal links; is it possible to have a conflict of interest when simply linking? To answer your question, no, neither I, nor the organization I work for, have a direct connection to Bigfoot Biomedical, nor is there a connection through a third party. This is not a PR agency account. I work for a Type 1 diabetes nonprofit which specializes in information analysis and does not receive any types of funding. We strictly deal with facts on Type 1 diabetes and Type 1 Diabetes organizations. Last month I attended the Wikipedia Conference in NYC and was told by an administrator there that because our organization has specific knowledge on Type 1 diabetes, we should be making edits to pages that focus on T1D, as our analysis provides a deeper and objective level of information. Happy to have you walk me through the peer review process and some more general orientation, whatever helps me to make edits successfully!
Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiabetesT1 (talkcontribs) 15:19, 21 February 2018 (UTC) Jytdog (talk) 15:28, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for replying! Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages when you save your edit. That is how we know who said what. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
OK, thanks again for replying.
Would you please disclose your employer? (You can just reply below and I'll help you formulate the disclosure more formally in a while)
Would you please clarify your role there? (in other words, are you in PR, or do you work on the science/medical side of things?)
Would you please let me know the username of the person with whom you spoke? Perhaps they can help with this orientation process.
Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 15:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
I work for the Juvenile Diabetes Cure Alliance. We are strictly a nonprofit who deals with scientific research, therefore, I work on the science/medical side of things. I do not have the username of the person I spoke to, only his email. DiabetesT1 (talk) 16:48, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
I redacted your post. We don't disclose other people's personal information in WP. Privacy is strictly protected by the WP:OUTING policy. (this is why i asked who you work for and what you do, not for your name)
Thanks for disclosing the name of the organization and what you do there. I asked about what you do, as this edit is not great. Please avoid as much as possible citing press releases or churnalism based on press releases.
I checked out the website of JDCI. I thought it was bizarre that you said it "does not receive any types of funding" - you work for them and presumably get a salary, so of course it has money that it gets from somewhere; it is funded. And the website indeed says that it is funded by its founder through the Brian and Joelle Kelly Family Foundation. Please be very careful not to misrepresent yourself or your organization.
Further, it is very clear that JDCI is an advocacy organization. Please be aware that you cannot use your editing privileges to advocate for anything. That applies to everything from a pharma company trying to promote a drug, to universities abusing WP to write about how great they are, or nonprofits trying to get visibility in WP, or somebody who is vegan trying to write negative stuff about meat and the benefits of going vegan. So -- you should not edit in order to promote JDCI itself or to further JDCI's mission, per se. This is described in the WP:PROMO policy, as well as the WP:COI guideline and the WP:ADVOCACY essay.
You are apparently an expert in diabetes, and we do love experts here. What experts are able to do quickly and easily are things like:
  • see easily if there are holes in an article, or parts where the content has become bloated.
  • based on their knowledge of the literature and the field, put their hands swiftly on the highest quality source about something, and summarize it accurately.
And that leads me to the challenges that experts face in WP.
  • you will probably be tempted to write your own mini-reviews in Wikipedia based on the research literature. That is not what we do here.
  • you may be tempted to add content about "hot news" in the field, based on new research being published that you see as important. This too, is not what we do here.
What we do here, is summarize reliable sources. That's all that we do. Sources are authoritative, not editors.
At this point i will take a pause (I have already written too much) But please do read the above, and then please have a read of User:Jytdog/How, which is something I wrote to provide an orientation to what Wikipedia is and how it actually works. If you would, please reply here when you are done and let me know if you have any questions about that stuff. There are a few more orientation things to go over, then I will leave you alone! :)
Thanks for your patience. If we get you properly oriented, you could bring a lot of value to WP and have fun doing it, but if you come in with misunderstandings this will not be fun for you and you will upset other people as well... Jytdog (talk) 17:19, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks again for your help. I have read through your suggestions. I have read through your notes and User:Jytdog/How. Feel free to send along the rest of the orientation points.DiabetesT1 (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
No problem - thanks again for your patience.
With regards to conflicts of interest, would you please add a disclosure to your user page (which is User:DiabetesT1 - a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just something simple like: "I work for the Juvenile Diabetes Cure Alliance and have a conflict of interest with regard to that organization and its goals. I have subject matter expertise in diabetes and plan to add content in that area and others." would be fine. If you want to add anything else there that is relevant to what you want to do in WP feel free to add it, but please don't add anything promotional about the company or yourself (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).
Once that is done just two more things and I will be out of your hair. :) Jytdog (talk) 19:50, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
No problem- and thanks again! Just added that line to my profile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiabetesT1 (talkcontribs) 19:52, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
2 Qquick notes before the last two things. Please remember to indent and sign your posts - I gave you a note about this above. This is as fundamental as "please" and "thank you" here in Wikipedia - failing to learn to do this will put you in the same kind of situation that people are in, who fail to say "please" and "thank you". really.
Also, I fixed the disclosure on your userpage. Generally we never edit each others' userpages, but i am just trying to move through this with you. More in a second....in new sections. Jytdog (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine!

edit
Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

Welcome to Wikipedia from Wikiproject Medicine (also known as WPMED).

We're a group of editors who strive to improve the quality of content about health here on Wikipedia, pursuing the mission of Wikipedia to provide the public with articles that present accepted knowledge, created and maintained by a community of editors.

One of our members has noticed that you are interested in editing medical articles; it's great to have a new interested editor on board!

First, some basics about editing Wikipedia, which is a strange place behind the scenes; you may find some of the ways we operate to be surprising. Please take your time and understand how this place works. Here are some useful links, which have information to help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

  • Everything starts with the mission - the mission of Wikipedia is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, working in a community of editors. (see WP:NOT)
  • We find "accepted knowledge" for biomedical information in sources defined by WP:MEDRS -- we generally use literature reviews published in good journals or statements by major medical or scientific bodies and we generally avoid using research papers, editorials, and popular media as sources for such content. We read MEDRS sources and summarize them, giving the most space and emphasis (what we call WP:WEIGHT) to the most prevalent views found in MEDRS sources.
  • Please see WPMED's "how to" guide for editing content about health
  • More generally please see The five pillars of Wikipedia and please be aware of the "policies and guidelines" that govern what we do here; these have been generated by the community itself over the last fifteen years, and you will need to learn them (which is not too hard, it just takes some time). Documents about Wikipedia - the "back office" - reside in "Wikipedia space" where document titles are preceded by "Wikipedia:" (often abbreviated "WP:"). WP space is separate from "article space" (also called "mainspace") - the document at WP:CONSENSUS is different from, and serves as a different purpose than, the document at Consensus.

Every article and page in Wikipedia has an associated talk page, and these pages are essential because we editors use them to collaborate and work out disagreements. (This is your Talk page, associated with your user page.) When you use a Talk page, you should sign your name by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment; the Wikipedia software will automatically convert that into links to your Userpage and this page and will add a datestamp. This is how we know who said what. We also "thread" comments in a way that you will learn with time. Please see the Talk Page Guidelines to learn how to use talk pages.

  • Thanks for coming aboard! We always appreciate a new editor. Feel free to leave us a message at any time on our talk page. If you are interested in joining the project yourself, there is a participant list where you can sign up. You can also just add our talk page to your watchlist and join in discussions that interest you. Please leave a message on the WPMED talk page if you have any problems, suggestions, would like review of an article, need suggestions for articles to edit, or would like some collaboration when editing!
  • The Wikipedia community includes a wide variety of editors with different interests, skills, and knowledge. We all manage to get along through a lot of discussion that happens under the scenes and through the bold, edit, discuss editing cycle. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss it on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.

Feel free to drop a note below if you have any questions or problems. I wish you all the best here in Wikipedia! --Jytdog (talk) 20:21, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

The stuff above, is our "welcome wagon" for people who edit about health and medicine. This subject matter has very evolved norms around it, so please take your time to read and understand the stuff above. I and others are happy to help. Jytdog (talk) 20:22, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Formalizing a "Wikipedian in Residence" status?

edit

OK, last thing and am pinging User:Bluerasberry here.

There is a somewhat formalized program called "Wikipedian in Residence" (please read what is at that link) that you may be interested in exploring. This is when someone inside an organization seeks to take an active role in Wikipedia, in which the goal is not to promote the organization and its goals, but rather to bring the organization's resources to bear in improving Wikipedia. For example, the British Museum has had such a program, and Wikipedia got a boatload of great images that help illuminate our articles.

I have copied Lane (blueraspberry), as he has been a WiR for Consumer Reports and has done a lot of great work to improve WP. He is also very active in outreach, and can help you get further oriented. Good people.

There is no need at all to formalize your work here in some "Wikipedian in Residence" framework. No need at all. But i just wanted to make you aware of it, in case this was of interest to you and your organization.

That's all for now! I gave you a lot to chew on. Please let me know if you ever want to discuss anything. Jytdog (talk) 20:28, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply