NewbieSeattle

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Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 22:43, 24 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia; WP:PAID

Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion

Hi NewbieSeattle I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing about health and medicine. You are pretty clearly the same person who was editing at Seattle Children's earlier today under an IP address. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use/WP:PAID editing policy, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, NewbieSeattle. 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, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate 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).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you.

Comments and requests

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. 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 protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose your connection with Seattle Children's? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but please disclose the connection. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here - I am watching this page. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hey Jytdog-

Yep, I do work for Seattle Children's and did not think about a conflict of interest until I got much deeper into how Wikipedia works. I apologize. I came across the Seattle Children's Wikipedia entry and noticed that it had not had any updates for several years and information was sparse. My intention was to improve it, not market the hospital. I also checked other Children's Hospital entries and noticed that many of those sights have much more robust fact-based info that our entry does not have. Since you don't want anyone with a COI to update the site, who would update it? I don't see how anyone would be motivated to update our entry unless they did have some connection. Anyway, our entry is much better now, but could be even better. But...I will stay away and hope a stranger will step in and research our organization and update it as new information becomes avaialable. Again, sorry for any harm I've done.

NewbieSeattle (talk) 16:23, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

For a couple of examples, check out Boston Children's, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Texas Children's Hospital. All are likely written by someone with a COI.

NewbieSeattle (talk) 16:38, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Yes there are many unethical editors in Wikipedia. It is a sad thing. You seem to be jumping the gun and ending the discussion. Do you want to learn about the COI management process actually works? Also would you like me to walk you through the COI management process here? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

I read through the information about COI and it appeared to me that you don't want anyone with a COI to edit a page that conflicts. I have a lot of unbiased info about the organization that would make better information. Do you want me to put that together in the sandbox and then you can filter out what you consider to be biased? For example, I think the page should list bed size. It's not marketing, its just a measure of how large or small the hospital is. There is also strange information on our page that I don't think is of general interest to your average reader - example - there is an entry about the hospital library? It is such a minute part of what goes on at Seattle Children's compared to all that is missing. To me, it affects the credibility of the entire page. NewbieSeattle (talk) 21:02, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for replying. My main concern talking with you here on your talk page is to get you oriented to how this place works - there is a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia, including how COI is managed. As I said if you want, I can walk you through that, and also give you an as-brief-as-possible primer on the key policies and guidelines that govern what we do here. Let me know. Jytdog (talk) 22:42, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jytgod- I'd like to take you up on your offer to give me a primer on how to get things updated. Seattle Children's would like to have accurate information posted but given my conflict of interest, how do I do that? Let me know. Thanks! NewbieSeattle (talk) 19:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

General orientation

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

As I mentioned another editor can walk you through processes specific for conflicted editors, but here is a general orientation to WP. It is as brief as I can make it...

The first thing, is that our mission is to produce articles that provide readers with encyclopedia content that summarize accepted knowledge, and to do that as a community that anyone can be a part of. That's the mission. As you can imagine, if this place had no norms, it would be a Mad Max kind of world interpersonally, and content would be a slag heap (the quality is really bad in parts, despite our best efforts). But over the past 15 years the community has developed a whole slew of norms, via lots of discussion. One of the first, is that we decide things by consensus. That decision itself, is recorded here: WP:CONSENSUS, which is one of our "policies". And when we decide things by consensus, that is not just local in space and time, but includes meta-discussions that have happened in the past. The results of those past meta-discussions are the norms that we follow now. We call them policies and guidelines - and these documents all reside in "Wikipedia space" (There is a whole forest of documents in "Wikipedia space" - pages in Wikipedia that start with "Wikipedia:AAAA" or for short, "WP:AAAA". WP:CONSENSUS is different from Consensus.)

People have tried to define Wikipedia - is it a democracy, an anarchy, secret cabal? In fact it is a clue-ocracy (that link is to a very short and important text).

There are policies and guidelines that govern content, and separate ones that govern behavior. Here is a very quick rundown:

Content policies and guidelines

WP:NOT (what WP is, and is not -- this is where you'll find the "accepted knowledge" thing. You will also find discussion of how WP is not a catalog, not a how-to manual, not a vehicle for promotion, etc)
WP:OR - no original research is allowed here, instead
WP:VERIFY - everything has to be cited to a reliable source (so everything in WP comes down to the sources you bring!)
WP:RS is the guideline defining what a "reliable source" is for general content and WP:MEDRS defines what reliable sourcing is for content about health
WP:NPOV and the content that gets written, needs to be "neutral" (as we define that here, which doesn't mean what most folks think -- it doesn't mean "fair and balanced" - it means that the language has to be neutral, and that topics in a given article are given appropriate "weight" (space and emphasis). An article about a drug that was 90% about side effects, would generally give what we call "undue weight" to the side effects. Of course if that drug was important because it killed a lot of people, not having 90% of it be about the side effects would not be neutral) We determine weight by seeing what the reliable sources say - we follow them in this too. So again, you can see how everything comes down to references.
WP:BLP - this is a policy specifically covering discussion about living people anywhere in WP. We are very careful about such content (which means enforcing the policies and guidelines above rigorously), since issues of legal liability can arise for WP, and people have very strong feelings about other people, and about public descriptions of themselves.
WP:NOTABILITY - this is a policy that defines whether or not an article about X, should exist. What this comes down to is defined in WP:Golden rule - which is basically, are there enough independent sources about X, with which to build a decent article.
WP:DELETION discusses how we get rid of articles that fail notability.

In terms of behavior, the key norms are:

WP:CONSENSUS - already discussed
WP:CIVIL - basically, be nice. This is not about being nicey nice, it is really about not being a jerk and having that get in the way of getting things done. We want to get things done here - get content written and maintained and not get hung up on interpersonal disputes. So just try to avoid doing things that create unproductive friction.
WP:AGF - assume good faith about other editors. Try to focus on content, not contributor. Don't personalize it when content disputes arise. (the anonymity here can breed all kinds of paranoia)
WP:HARASSMENT - really, don't be a jerk and follow people around, bothering them. And do not try to figure out who people are in the real world. Privacy is strictly protected by the WP:OUTING part of this policy.
WP:DR - if you get into an content dispute with someone, try to work it out on the article Talk page. Don't WP:EDITWAR. If you cannot work it out locally, then use one of the methods here to get wider input. There are many - it never has to come down to two people arguing. There are instructions here too, about what to do if someone is behaving badly, in your view. Try to keep content disputes separate from behavior disputes. Many of the big messes that happen in Wikipedia arise from these getting mixed up.
WP:COI and WP:PAID which I discussed way above already. This is about preserving the integrity of WP. A closely related issue is WP:ADVOCACY; COI is just a subset of advocacy.
WP:TPG - this is about how to talk to other editors on Talk pages, like this one, or say Talk:Electronic cigarette aerosol and e-liquid. At article talk pages, basically be concise, discuss content not contributors, and base discussion on the sources in light of policies and guidelines, not just your opinions or feelings. At user talk pages things are more open, but that is the relevant place to go if you want to discuss someone's behavior or talk about general WP stuff - like this whole post.

If you can get all that (the content and behavior policies and guidelines) under your belt, you will become truly "clueful", as we say. If that is where you want to go, of course. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully it is digestable enough. Jytdog (talk) 19:17, 5 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

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