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Editing, poor and absent referenced, COI

User:Lexein, you provided some advice on the talk page for User:Brianhe regarding my observation of self-serving editing on Boutique_investment_bank and other pages. Thank you for the suggestions on how to handle this, and what pages to go to when I see a COI. My most recent observation is in connection with Purchase_order_finance, which is not wrong, but is nearly devoid of references and could be more complete. I am a regular and long time used of Wikipedia and very new as an "editor". I am not comfortable editing, and would like to be part of a solution rather than part of the problem. As such, i would like to work with an existing editor until I get a more solid grasp of protocol.HKbrit (talk) 12:03, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've copied this and replied on your Talk page, as I'll be mentoring you. Let's continue there for the foreseeable future. --Lexein (talk) 15:04, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

OTRS friends

Thanks for the nice note on my talk page. I don't have any friends in OTRS. I do have a nice article incubating though. If you have any OTRS friends that wish to check Commons #2013041310001871 that may help. I forwarded the emails from the ten photographers but the 1st volunteer wanted them from the subject. She forwarded them as .rtf format and the 2nd volunteer wanted actual emails forwarded. She is actually the producer and rights holder for many of them but had the photographers send emails anyway just to make sure they were accepted. She is a little busy and also doesn't want to keep emailing people. I misplaced my copies of the original emails but they should still be under the same ticket number with her .rtfs. Her article will look yucky without images if it goes to article space as is. Up to you if you wish to help out with OTRS and create the article. Don't move the incubated article though because it has a COI history that should be avoided. Just copy/paste the markup with CC-by in the edit summary. 99% was my fix up work so it shouldn't be a problem with the other COI editor. --Canoe1967 (talk) 06:54, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

POV edit?

I would like for you to outline what you think my POV is, as your recent revert suggested. Clicking on the link redirects you to an article titled under the shorter, less technical, and more widely recognizable name. Articles are titled under the premise of WP:COMMONNAME. The WP:COMMONNAME is very clearly Linux, not GNU/Linux. The latter is only used by a smaller group of FSF supporters and is not in common use in English. We need to use common, concise vernacular in order to prevent the article from being needlessly technical. If my edit summary did not make that clear, I apologize.

See also: WP:JARGON and WP:TECHNICAL

Miranda Streeter (talk) 12:56, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you want to refer only to the kernel, "Linux" is just fine by me. Your interpretation and deprecation of everything else is wrong, and is part of a fairly obvious and ongoing (if unconscious, by editors like you) stripping of credit for the great majority of the success of GNU/Linux from the GNU Project, and attribution of that success to Linus Torvalds, who stuck a major chunk of his own name in the name of the kernel. What you're really doing here is rationalizing fawning Linus worship, and is defensive, overeager, WP:POINTY, and wikilawyering. --Lexein (talk) 13:41, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Another naming thing

Another article naming thing if you're interested. There seems to be consensus among a couple experienced editors for Monster (company), but I don't think it's a non-controversial edit I could make myself. CorporateM (Talk) 03:43, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Oops, Crisco just got it. CorporateM (Talk) 03:59, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, that was easy! I need more problems like this one. --Lexein (talk) 21:08, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Lol, I was surprised you stuck around on the Hightail article. Do you generally enjoy collaborations with COIs like that? I am always on the lookout for just the right editors to work with. Some editors don't like working side-by-side with a paid editor for free and they are under no obligation to - personal choice I figure. CorporateM (Talk) 03:13, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm sort-of event-driven. When I see that someone's touched something on my watchlist, I check in and try to address anything that jumps out at me. In this case, the reviews section had become a naming mess, not helped by one of the reviews updating the company name long after the review was written. I've had a mixed history actually collaborating on articles; see Hollywood Walk of Fame history. It usually eventually works out, but there's often some huffing&puffing.--Lexein (talk) 16:31, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

My experiences are also mixed on both sides, as is what we should expect in a community that is anything but consistent. Some editors are overly hostile regarding my COI and others are overly sympathetic and I prefer to avoid both cases when possible. In most cases I am not neutral where I have a COI (well, not always where I don't either), but I do the best I can from my position.

I support "good enough" editing and if my contributions are a little mediocre, well, it's a good thing I'm not the only editor on the site :-) CorporateM (Talk) 20:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I have a strong "good citizen" bias about COI editors - meaning COIeds must have a super-light touch (full letter and spirit of WP:COI) at all COI or appearance-of-COI articles, but are free to be just-folks editors at all articles which are completely unrelated to any of their COI interests/edit history. IMHO COI editors should edit a lot of articles not in their paid or main area of interest: a) practice, b) practice, c) experience away from the fishbowl/potential aggro. --Lexein (talk) 23:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

In doing a Q&A type thing for the SignPost, I came to realize my thinking has changed. It's not unusual for my COI works to need trimming or copyediting, contain factual errors or even for me to over-compensate for my COI. Nobody seems to care about my general mediocrity.

It just has to do with trust and AGF. Wikipedia wants us to have a COI, but we don't. We serve our clients exclusively. PR ppl don't give a crap about Wikipedia. We're just trying to do our jobs. Well... I do my job by explaining Wikipedia's expectations to clients and how spin, omissions and other tactics will have a negative impact long-term.

It doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes I am bias and often I am not able to make clients as neutral as I would like them to be, but I can usually get it pretty close and Bright Line-type engagements take it for the home-stretch and it works out well enough. CorporateM (Talk) 01:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Matthew Bryden

Hi Lexein. It seems I've gotten myself into a fairly heated argument on this page. My attention was drawn to it when an editor at COIN asked me to help in a volunteer capacity. A PR rep was asking to add more content to the article from primary sources. Well, instead I started taking a heavy axe to it, because it was full of primary sources, op-eds and the like. When I started cutting the controversies too, I started bumping into disagreements and edit-conflicts, etc. with another editor. Could really us a couple experienced editors to chime in and hopefully we can reach a consensus on the right approach.

To avoid edit-warring, etc. I've shared a proposed draft here CorporateM (Talk) 17:51, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd just use BLP as a battering ram to shut down the POV and synth. If it's not fixed in a week, I'll mow that overgrown lawn. --Lexein (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Moved FreedomPop discussion to Talk:FreedomPop --Lexein (talk) 23:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Noodles & Company

Hi Lexein. I've already pinged User: Mike V, but if you're interested in participating here on the Noodles & Co. company page, I would welcome your participation.

While I am adding them almost going out of business in 1996, the article is clearly quite positive, which I believe is representative of the source material (yah, how many times have you heard that from an editor with a COI).

Anyways, it's a first draft and a good starting place. I think some of the more upbeat portions might go under a closer magnifying glass to make sure it's not too positive. CorporateM (Talk) 21:40, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Friendly observation

Hi Lexein, as I know nothing of either archive.is or botnets, I have no dog in the argument going on on ANI. I did read through the comments though, and would encourage you to modulate your tone. Your passion is coming across as the hysteria that you accuse the other side of having. I think your case would be better received if presented in a calmer, more rational-sounding manner. LadyofShalott 01:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, I suppose. Your comment is welcome. Please don't be offended that I will be blunt on my own talk page; for background, see my discussion next to the #Hierarchy atop this Talk page. We have some admins who have soured and have become embittered to the point of obliviousness to the damage they cause. To the extent that they discuss falsely, I feel it incumbent on me to rebut their falsehoods bluntly, with vigor, and to label their behavior boldly, in an attempt to bring them up short. They literally want to kill a valuable resource to Wikipedia, and damage one of Wikipedia's very foundations, verifiability, all in the name of some mewling obsessive i-don't-like-it-so-burn-it antibot overreaction. Contrary to false assertions by my (long-time) admin opponent, I do want bots reigned in, but if their work product helps the encyclopedia, we should keep it. --Lexein (talk) 05:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I would love to know what "false" statements I have made. You seem to have this image that this was some orderly IP pool with someone manually rotating addresses among them. That first batch of IPs were performing interleaving edits from three different Indian states, Italy, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Qatar, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, France, Mexico, Austria, and South Africa. Can you explain what legal network arrangement you can envision that would have that pattern?—Kww(talk) 06:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

A) I don't care. You care. You're obsessed with the bot, and are deliberately, blinkeredly ignoring the benefit to the project. BTW you didn't present any of this evidence before, so you get the response you get. B) I don't care: stop/block the bots, partially block the editor presumed responsible, re-educate, etc. C) I care: leave the valid work product alone. D) I care: cultivate a productive relationship with a dev who has performed beneficial work for the benefit of Wikipedia, when nobody else stepped up.

I really do want you to understand this. Please stop grandstanding about the technical bullshit about the damned "botnet", stop trying to play the part of some sort of "burn the village to save it" paramilitary strike team, and just be a Wikipedian. You're burnt out, Kww. You're starting to hate the Five Pillars, and it shows. --Lexein (talk) 06:33, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

And I really want you to stop calling me a liar when what you mean is that you didn't bother to research the IP addresses. I presented the evidence, I simply didn't digest it enough that you would pay attention.—Kww(talk) 06:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Really? I'll stop labeling lies as such when they are retracted. So, I will spell out what I mean since you're somehow failing to get what I mean, or even recognize what you've lied about:

Lie #1 was in the first sentence of your first declaration: "spambot". Spam is useless interference: links to archive pages at archive.org and at archive.is are not useless or interference. You bias the reader by the presumption of both "bot" (and it still could have been a guy running a script sporadically) and "spam" (presumption of uselessness or damage/interference). You didn't say "in my opinion, this seems like a spambot - is it?" You used the full force of your admin knowledge to inform the world that it absolutely is a spambot, and nothing else. Bull. Shit.

Lie #2 was that the links were all(implied) "to his site": too bad for you it's obvious by examination of the IP contributions you linked to that the changes were all of high quality: much higher than you have so far admitted, and large numbers (from the several sets of IPs you listed) were to archive.org, most definitely not "his site".

Lie #3 was your still unsupported claim of "illegal". That's just bullshit scare tactics, designed to frighten readers who aren't yet wise to such bullshit tricks: "Oooh, it was illegal, so of course we have to revert all those edits!" Legal claims are just not on, and you've no right to throw that sort of shit around.

Maybe you didn't mean to actually lie. Maybe you're just angry and burned out about unauthorized scripted actions, and having to deal with folks doing end runs around bot disapprovals. Sorry you think the fact of a possible bot is soooo much more important than the quality/applicability/usefulness of the edits performed. Maybe extremist, radical rhetoric is the only way you feel your concerns will be heard. Keep it up - you're just making my job easier. --Lexein (talk) 07:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"Spambot" is quite accurate, claim 2 was not made, and claim 3 is obvious on its face. I don't think you will get much traction if you pursue your claims.—Kww(talk) 14:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Re "claim 2 was not made" (lie #4) - here are your words perpetuating lies 2 and 3: "Let me see if I understand this logic:from all appearances, the owner of archive.is has used an illegal botnet to place links to his site into Wikipedia, but you have no problem trusting the veracity and safety of the archive. What am I missing?—Kww(talk) 14:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)" In your claim, you omit the addition of archive.org links, thus implying that all the links were to archive.is, a bald lie. Since you're so sure "spambot" is accurate, why bother arguing with me about it? Traction is traction, and you don't get to say how much. The community does. --Lexein (talk) 15:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Matthew Bryden

Just an FYI, you had previously participated on the Talk page of the article and the issue has now been escalated to ANI. I thought you may be interested in the discussion there. CorporateM (Talk) 18:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I got a notification when Drmies mentioned me. I think it's in good hands, and the fluff will be removed, and a nice fat topic ban will quiet the whole thing down. --Lexein (talk) 19:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I hope so. I am not so confident as community decisions like that are difficult to obtain, but then you have been labeled as a wiki-friend under my corrupt influence anyway, so if you did participate it would likely agitate things. Ha - I bet you didn't even know we were friends! I rather figured you disliked me or maybe just found me mildly annoying. CorporateM (Talk) 22:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

1. Oh, don't worry about that. That editor's stupidly alleging bad faith where there is none. They'll learn. Nobody who even cursorily inspects my history of contributions, especially on talk pages, would ever conclude that I'm anyone's wikifriend. As an avowed wikignome, excessive friendliness is not my thing, and it is viewed with suspicion. Cordiality, from room temperature to warmish, is enough, but should not be mistaken for friendship - such is earned by more than finding a way to acceptable copy and sourcing in some gak Wikipedia article.
2. You know I disagree quite sternly with the notion of paid editing, and COI editing; such practices complicate and weaponize content discussions (pillow fights turn to slap fights, turn to brawls). But we've managed not to, so, so far so good. Does that make us wikifriends? No, it makes us completely independent editors who have so far managed not to be idiots - a vastly different thing. --Lexein (talk) 01:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh man, but I was hoping we were like bestest pals. BFFs forever. I was going to give you my friendship bracelet. I feel so betrayed! :-p

I had no idea you were so ferocious. BTW - the proposal that you listed "support" for was a bit different than what you were actually supporting, but I started a new string proposing just a plain topic ban. Might make sense to move your comment under that header? up to you. CorporateM (Talk) 01:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

{{frenemy}} Yeah, well, WP:TIGERS, I try to remind myself. Trouble with the proposals is, I'd like the PR guy to willingly back off, and I'm not seeing him stepping up to do that. I was rather pleased with the swimming pool analogy, though. --Lexein (talk) 03:09, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

One question about the Archive.is fuss

Hi, I saw you had a calming part on the discussion about archive.is. I am a long time contributor (with another id) on the french pages of wikipedia. I am also a webmaster of some websites (NGOs, no profit of any kind, but copyrighted material). I have been drawn to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.is_RFC page because I recently discovered archive.is for peculiar reasons: copies ("snapshots") of many pages on my web sites and many others started to come up in google search results.

It was quite difficult to have these pages removed from archive.is: no answer from webmaster@archive.is for 10 days. Only when I mailed to the french webhosting company to complain about copyright issues, did the copies cease to work (but were still found by google...)

I see the usefulness of a snapshot service, don't mind beeing cached by google, archived by archive.org, BUT *not* having those snapshots exposed to google, indexed and shown in google (or bing)... I made those remarks to webmaster@archive.is without getting any answer.

You seem to be in touch with Mr. Denis Petrov and rather benevolent to him. If he runs archive.is in good faith, can you ask him about archive.is snapshots showing in google, and why he does not prevent this from happening (very easy to do for any unskilled webmaster). To me, it seems there is a business plan behind such a behavior.

Thanks in advance.

max Maxoufix (talk) 17:44, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know that I have had any sort of calming influence: I'm unhappy about the aggressive swarm-editing of Wikipedia and at the loss of a high-data-quality archive, even though it is, as you point out, imperfect in ways irritating to some content creators. I'm glad you were able to get your archived pages taken down, though I'm of the opinion that small operations like archive.is should be given 30 days to perform such takedowns, where there's no real time urgency or harm to persons involved, and they're not under U.S. legal jurisdiction anyways.

You're correct that Google does present cached results, and does so long after the original has been deleted or changed. I've seen this when I've made changes to Wikipedia articles; it seems to take many days, sometimes weeks, for Google to reluctantly catch up. You're correct that "noindex" or robots.txt could be asserted by archive.is, but I've seen Google ignore noindex as well, failing (or seeming to take forever) to remove pages on which <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> has been asserted.

If archive.is is gaming ranking to appear higher than source site results, the Google algorithms will be tuned to drop those results far down in ranking. This has happened for all archival sites in time. All SEO fails over time. --Lexein (talk) 18:19, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for answering me. But I think I know how slow google can be, and as far as I could check they always take exclusion directives into account sooner or later. What amazes me is that archive.is has not excluded its snapshots from search engines crawlers and I thought you might ask Mr. Denis Petrov why it is so, why he does not exclude archive.is snapshots from crawlers in the first place since it is *not* their purpose to be found by search engines. After all *he* knows and you are in touch with him. Please, can you ask him? Maxoufix (talk) 08:07, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi again. Did you have the opportunity to ask? DId you get an answer? Thanks Maxoufix (talk) 08:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

1. If you will please review my attempts at communication at WP:Archive.is RFC/Rotlink email attempt, you may perceive a lack of straight answers to some direct questions about operational details. 2. I would prefer not to extend the scope of my discussion with the putative owner/operator of archive.is beyond the scope of the swarming edits and the RFC; it doesn't seem right for me to take up your cause, when Wikipedia's cause was my point. 3. You released your content on your entire site under CC irrevocably (as seen on the live and archived pages), and so have literally no standing to complain about archiving, IMHO. I'm on the side of the literal meaning and application of Creative Commons licensing. 4. IMHO it's more up to Google to tune its algorithm, than for Archive.is to NOARCHIVE; Google will always crush SEO games, it's just a matter of time.

For these reasons, after some thought, I have not pursued your question. I'm not standing in your way; I just don't think I could help in any concrete way. To reach Rotlink, I used User:Rotlink's "Email this user" link, and I refrained from abuse; I just expressed my feelings and interest as literally my feelings and interest, and not as an attack. Sincerely, good luck. --Lexein (talk) 13:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Appreciate your courage

Hi! I was reading the comments about archive.is and archive.org and finding it ridiculous how the admins felt the IPs need not only be banned, but rollbacked so that dead links remain unverifiable. It's such typical bureaucratic behavior: when you didn't approve of them, they say you're defending the use of spambots. If every user who did things that policies strongly disapprove of, has all their edits, useful or not, reverted, Wikipedia wouldn't have much left. Because almost every single arbitration case ends up in blocking or topic banning users with countless contributions (usually focused on the topics they were banned for).

I mean, I always knew bureaucratic organizations could get unreasonable ([1] = some cherry picked examples... or so I thought) but I believed it was something uncommon I would never see.

These people just want to punish people who disobey them, by deleting them out of existence. The behavior could have been a complicated moral question, but the obedience addiction becomes obvious when you considered that they never reverted Anders Breivik[2]'s edit [3], because Breivik apparently didn't upset Wikipedia's admins. What are Wikipedia administrators thinking? "Breivik was a bad man, but not disobedient to me, so I leave him alone. He deserves no further punishment. Meanwhile, Archive.is needs more than just banning from Wikipedia: we need to aggressively punish him even while doing so hurts ourselves and Archive.org and uses up man-hours."

I probably shouldn't post this paragraph in your talk page
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Personally, I do not believe this is even about punishing archive.is... Fighting to the end at all costs is a virtue in enforcement, yet yielding, understanding and liveAndLetLive mentality is the virtue in conflict. If they don't undo all the improvements, it'll look like they're admitting he has been helpful in some way. This creates an uncomfortable impression that it's conflict rather than enforcement, and threatens the mindset that all administratorVsBannedUser issues are enforcement. So they must revert, and tell the editors, "he is someone you should avoid like a criminal."

I do not edit/comment a lot on Wikipedia, so I can't really help you in those long discussions. DontClickMeName _talk^{contributions} 20:23, 25 October 2013 (UTC)