Jane at OFRI

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, OreForests. 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 conflict of interest 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, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. ProClasher97 ~ Have A Question? 22:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

As a representative of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute with a conflict of interest, I have been trying to go through all the official channels to try and get the article about the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) to be written with more neutral language and at least include a functioning link to our official website, but nothing is working. How do a I determine if this article qualifies as an attack page and get it taken down or replaced with a different, neutral version? How can I get a Wikipedia administrator or neutral editor involved to resolve this dispute? There are numerous inaccuracies in how the articles describes OFRI and it appears to have been written by editors with their own conflict of interest as an attack on OFRI by selectively citing negative media coverage. Thank you. OreForests (talk) 19:06, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

First thing: as an administrator here, I need to explain that your username is not acceptable to us. It would help you if you were to immediately follow guidance at WP:RENAME so that you can continue to make your points about this article, which I accept you are doing in all good faith.

The reason for asking this is that your username suggests that more than one person at your company has access to use this Wikipedia account. This, I am afraid, is against our policy. A name like "Mike at OreForest" would be perfectly acceptable, however.

So you are invited to either request a change ASAP, or simply abandon it and create another account with a more acceptable WP:USERNAME. Accounts like this one that have an inappropriate name inevitably get "soft blocked", meaning you are permitted to create a new account under a different name (which I encourage you strongly to do so that you can continue making your case). Or, once you get 'soft-blocked' you are permitted to follow the instructions to request on your talk page to be 'unblocked', but solely for the purposes of requesting a username change.

Because you are an employee of that company, you should follow instructions at WP:PAID to see how to formally declare on your new userpage your 'conflict of interest'. You should not edit further until both your user account name had been changed (or you abandon this one and start a new one) and you have made that declaration. Sorry this isn't what you were expecting, but I hope it makes sense. Once that's sorted, you can continue to present your reasoned arguments and make WP:EDIT REQUESTS on the article talk page. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:14, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I have submitted a username change request and declared my conflict of interest on my user page. I'm new to Wikipedia, so hopefully, I've done all that properly. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to preserve my ability to make reasoned arguments for edits. OreForests (talk) 21:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Jane. If you can, take a step back and try to assess how 'encyclopaedic' you feel the current article is. Forget all you know about your organisation, and look for totally independant publications and online news sources (not connected with it.) i.e. irgnore your own intenral mission statement, and look to see what other bodies, news outlets, governments etc have said about it. OK, there are clearly some (recent?) issues which are concerning. Those can't be swept under the carpet as they do appear to go back to well-reported concerns, and presumably started at a given point in time. But that is only part of an organisations history and purpose.So ensure you can find a mixture of the good and the bad which I, as an neutral observer, would feel gives a fair overview of the company.

Having done that, identify small, piecemeal changes to paragraphs that you would like to make. Identify clearly the precise sentence or sentences you feel need to be change, and formulate an exact of words and citation that you would recommend being made. Present it along the lines of change sentence x for this this one (sentence Y), give a reason and a link to a citation to support the recommended change.

Make a formal WP:EDIT REQUEST with a templated notice to attract editors' attention, and sit back and wait for a decision on whether your recommendation is accepted. Your edit or edit summary ought to clarify your COI, hence the reason for making the indirect edit request. These changes can be made piecemeal, and in small enough chunks that we can see how content is evolving. Whilst the lead doesn't have to include citations, the content it summarises does, and the lead should give a balanced and fair overview of the subject, which I do tend to agree it doesn't do at the moment. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I have provided several independent sources of information, mostly news articles, but the editors keep ignoring those and saying that I have not provided third-party sources. No one will add in that a bill considered by the Oregon Legislature to cut funding to my organization died in the Oregon Senate, despite an article I provided saying such, for instance. I guess I will try again with an edit request that lists these sources. Jane at OFRI (talk) 18:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:OreForests

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on User:OreForests, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, group, product, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 21:35, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... I have submitted a request to change my username to make it clear that this is an individual account and not a joint account. I have also declared who my employer is and my conflict of interest on the user page. --OreForests (talk) 21:38, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hey. Have you submitted the username request on email or elsewhere? I can't seem to find your request in your contribs or on the requests pages. Thanks! Silikonz💬 21:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I submitted a username change request, but maybe I did something wrong. I'm new to Wikipedia and so may not have done it right. How do I submit a username change request? OreForests (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

You may go to WP:CHU/S. Make sure your username isn't already taken by looking it up in Special:CentralAuth. The username policy is at WP:U. If you wish to retain the name of your organisation in your username, it must identify you personally (e.g. Example at XYZ Company). Thanks. Silikonz💬 21:54, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Is it OK to have a username like Manager at OFRI? I would prefer not to use my name. OreForests (talk) 21:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

No that won't work. It cannot be a title like "Manager". It could be "Bob at OFRI" or whatever. But no titles. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 21:57, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I have submitted the request. OreForests (talk) 22:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)