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Welcome to Conflict of interest Noticeboard (COIN)

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This Conflict of interest/Noticeboard (COIN) page is for determining whether a specific editor has a conflict of interest (COI) for a specific article and whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Conflict of Interest guideline. A conflict of interest may occur when an editor has a close personal or business connection with article topics. Post here if you are concerned that an editor has a COI, and is using Wikipedia to promote their own interests at the expense of neutrality. For content disputes, try proposing changes at the article talk page first and otherwise follow the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution procedural policy.

You must notify any editor who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{subst:coin-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.

Additional notes:

This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue, such as when an editor has repeatedly added problematic material over an extended period.
Do not post personal information about other editors here without their permission. Non-public evidence of a conflict of interest can be emailed to paid-en-wpwikipedia.org for review by a functionary. If in doubt, you can contact an individual functionary or the Arbitration Committee privately for advice.
The COI guideline does not absolutely prohibit people with a connection to a subject from editing articles on that subject. Editors who have such a connection can still comply with the COI guideline by discussing proposed article changes first, or by making uncontroversial edits. COI allegations should not be used as a "trump card" in disputes over article content. However, paid editing without disclosure is prohibited. Consider using the template series {{Uw-paid1}} through {{Uw-paid4}}.
Your report or advice request regarding COI incidents should include diff links and focus on one or more items in the COI guideline. In response, COIN may determine whether a specific editor has a COI for a specific article. There are three possible outcomes to your COIN request:

1. COIN consensus determines that an editor has a COI for a specific article. In response, the relevant article talk pages may be tagged with {{Connected contributor}}, the article page may be tagged with {{COI}}, and/or the user may be warned via {{subst:uw-coi|Article}}.

2. COIN consensus determines that an editor does not have a COI for a specific article. In response, editors should refrain from further accusing that editor of having a conflict of interest. Feel free to repost at COIN if additional COI evidence comes to light that was not previously addressed.

3. There is no COIN consensus. Here, Lowercase sigmabot III will automatically archive the thread when it is older than 14 days.

Once COIN declares that an editor has a COI for a specific article, COIN (or a variety of other noticeboards) may be used to determine whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guideline.

To begin a new discussion, enter the name of the relevant article below:

Possible autobiographies found by bot

User:AlexNewArtBot/COISearchResult This is the large mechanically-generated list of articles having a suspected COI that used to be shown here in full. You are still invited to peruse the list and, if you have an opinion on whether it's a real COI, edit that file directly. When you see a case in that list that needs input from other editors, you may want to create a regular noticeboard entry for it, below.

Requested edits

Category:Requested edits. Editors who believe they have a Conflict of Interest may ask someone else to make edits for them. Please visit this category and respond to one of these requests. Whether you perform it or not, you should undo the {{Request edit}} when you are done to remove the article from the category. Leave a Talk comment for the requestor to explain your decision.

SecureWorks COI?

SecureWorks (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - dosen't appear notable, has no sources cited (other than a list of news articles), and is mostly edited by a user apparently employed by the compnay in their Marketing department, see Talk:SecureWorks. 71.217.202.83 (talk) 02:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

COI Query on Scriptural Reasoning article

Dear Sir/Madam

I should be grateful if you would kindly assist with a potential Conflict of Interest issue on the article Scriptural Reasoning.

Scriptural Reasoning ("SR") is the practice of Jews, Christians and Muslims meeting to read their sacred texts together in order to promote better understanding. There are TWO traditions in SR - the first "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" is founded by David Ford at Cambridge and consists of a "Scriptural Reasoning in the University Group" of I believe around 35 people as referenced on the SSR's own website, plus one or two other linked groups in the UK and United States. The other "The Scriptural Reasoning Society" ("Oxford School") split from the first due to major academic disagreements over issues about protecting equality between the faiths, and democracy in organising, and has a UK and German membership of around 200.

Scriptural Reasoning is not a very large activity of thousands, but worldwide probably numbers a couple of hundred to a few hundred at the very most.

Between July 2006 and November 2008 - for a period of over 20 months - the article was one of low level editing activity. On 27 November 2008 and within a matter of a few days all of a sudden a number of new editors arrived, all connected in real life with David Ford's "Society for Scriptural Reasoning". I know and have identified a couple of them in real life.

These include:

Speculation about identities of three users below redacted per WP:OUTING Gordonofcartoon (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thelongview

Mahigton

Laysha101

The primary activity of these three users has been:

Repeated removal from the article of material on the article concerning the "Scriptural Reasoning Society", and active replacement promotion and addition of material advertising the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning".

Repeated removal from the article of critical material concerning David Ford and the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and the "Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme" to which they are connected by employment, by membership or by personal and collegial connection.

Wikipedia regulations on Conflict of Interest and Defending Interests state:

An important guideline here is our guideline on conflict of interest. You are strongly discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organisations in which you hold a vested interest. However, if you feel that there is material within the article which is incorrect, or not neutral in its tone, please point this out on the article's talk page.

Editing articles that you are affiliated with is not completely prohibited; you may do so as specified within the COI guideline, but you must be extremely careful to follow our policies.

and furthermore:

On the other hand, the removal of reliably sourced critical material is not permitted. Accounts of public controversies, if backed by reliable sources, form an integral part of Wikipedia's coverage. Slanting the balance of articles as a form of defence of some figure, group, institution, or product is bad for the encyclopedia. This is also the case if you find an article overwhelmed with correctly referenced, but exclusively negative information. This may present a case of undue weight, for example, when 90% of an article about a particular company discusses a lawsuit one client once brought against it. In such a case, such material should be condensed by a neutral editor, and the other sections expanded. One of the best ways to go about this is to request this on the talk page.

Conflict of Interest Editing: Self-Promotion

Since his arrival on 27 November 2008, Thelongview has swamped the article with repeated references to the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and its projects with only a single passing reference to the (larger in membership) "Scriptural Reasoning Society" (Oxford School). This includes removal of the whole section relating to the latter while maintaining the section relating to the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning".

He has added duplicate links to what are essentially duplicate names of the same organisation (his edit):

SR began as an academic practice. Notable academic forms of SR include SRU, the 'Scriptural Reasoning in the University' group (which evolved from SRT, the Scriptural Reasoning Theory group), and the Scriptural Reasoning Group of the American Academy of Religion. The international Journal of Scriptural Reasoning publishes articles on scriptural reasoning. It has an international body of editors and contributors, and is non-refereed. It is part of the international Society for Scriptural Reasoning. There is also an associated Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning.
SR has also become a civic practice...There are several developments of SR as a civic practice in the UK - sometimes using the SR name, such as SR at the St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace; the Scriptural Reasoning Education project,

Every single one of the above are simply other names for the same outfit the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and "Cambridge Interfaith Programme:

The American Academy of Religion is an annual conference, not a separate entity and user Thelongview names himself as one of the Steering Committee members on this.
The St Ethelburga's project is defunct
The "Scriptural Reasoning Education Project" was merely three training sessions in summer/fall 2008 led by one person from the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning"/"St Ethelburgas"
The "Journal of Scriptural Reasoning" and "Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning" are not genuinely peer-reviewed academic journals, but merely pages on the same "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" website.

The Scriptural Reasoning Society ("Oxford School") also has an annual conference presence at the JCM Conference in Germany and the Limmud Conference, it has projects of academic research called "Scriptures in Dialogue" and online Scriptural Reasoning "Scripturalreasoning.net" and partner groups. All of these have been deleted by user Thelongview

User Thelongview has made claims about "notability" and "minority opinion" to support his promotion of his own group and deletion of material concerning another group. He has not however responded to the query as to how large his constituency actually is -- as far as I can see, it consists of around 35 people, while the "Scriptural Reasoning Society" has a membership of 200. There should therefore be at least equal coverage given to both groups, if not slightly more favouring the latter body over the former. The assertions of "minority" opinion are either spurious entirely, or entirely abused in this case.

He made statements of opinion that Scriptural Reasoning "was invented" by David Ford and colleagues, and "notable forms of academic SR" which is a matter for debate, as being a paid employee of the these organisations has promoted them competitively. Clear COI.

Conflict of Interest Editing: Removal of Criticism

The three users above have systematically removed all critique of their organisation and of David Ford to which they are linked either as paid employee, collegially or personally.

These critiques about academic differences of Scriptural Reasoning methodology and critiques of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme's commodification of interfaith activity, are referenced to documents such as The Guardian Newspaper and to "Oxford Ethic" and other statements published on the "Scriptural Reasoning Society" website, and to the Fatwa on Scriptural Reasoning issued independently by the Shari'a Court of the Islamic Cultural Centre and London Central Mosque.

As before, the three users who are either in every single case either employed by or connected to the organisations or persons who are being critiqued have removed such critical materials claiming that these matters are "not notable" or that the references are not suitable for inclusion according to Wikipedia guidelines. These assertions appear arbitary and motivated clearly by Conflict of Interest.

Diffs please supporting this claim. Toddst1 (talk) 19:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meatpuppetry

Due to the suspicious arrival of these and other users, including completely newly registered users to Wikipedia such as Laysha101 all on or immediately after 27 November 2008, all connected in real life to a single group of 35 people, the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning", I had originally filed a meatpuppetry investigation, but after personal notes made by them on my talk pages, purely as a gesture of goodwill on a human level since I know the identity of some of them in real life I dropped this -- purely for the sake of harmony and in the hope that they might behave thereafter. But I seem to have been naive to have trusted in the good faith of the other side.

I should appreciate your advice and assistance on these matters. With many thanks for your kind help.

--Scripturalreasoning (talk) 06:59, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A spot of advice: bear in mind Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read. If this is going to be the style of discourse, most disinterested editors will be disinclined to get involved.

First thing: do you also have a COI to declare? "Role accounts" are not allowed, and an account called Scripturalreasoning focused on the single article Scriptural Reasoning tends to ring alarm bells. Particularly, you mention at Talk:Scriptural Reasoning#Scriptural Reasoning Society Trustees being in direct consultation with the Scriptural Reasoning Society Trustees, so COI guidelines apply to you too. You should not be editing the article.

Also, the kind of legalistic warnings here at Talk:Scriptural Reasoning#Scriptural Reasoning Society Trustees and here- which come down to "drop requests for sourcing of this, or I'll post highly contentious material to prove it and you'll regret the exposure" are an unacceptable threats in response to reasonable quests for reliable citation of unsourced hostile material. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:05, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: I've had a solid look at the article history and dicussion. The editors Scripturalreasoning complains about may have a COI, but are editing well within policy and guidelines, with no sign of breach of WP:NPOV. The edit pattern of Scripturalreasoning, on the other hand, appears to be a highly tendentious one focused on introducing, via a deal of fairly disruptive wikilawyering, poorly-sourced synthesis into the Scriptural Reasoning article. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, there are several errors of fact, and misrepresentations, in what Scripturalreasoning writes here; I can list them if anyone's interested, but I rather doubt they are (and this page is not the place for detailed arguments on issues like (for example) what the American Academy of Religion is).Laysha101 (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The issue of COI has been ventillated extensively on the Scriptural Reasoning talk page. I have addressed it there by arguing that the best response to potential COI is to attend carefully to WP:V, WP:OR and WP:NPOV. I'm an experienced writer of encyclopedia articles on a variety of topics, both on Wikipedia and from university presses, writing on things I know about. Scriptural Reasoning is one of those things. I believe Scripturalreasoning does not understand the verifiability and original research policies here, does not follow them, and does not acknowledge that they are an adequate safeguard against COI. The long-windedness of the case above is typical, I'm afraid, and has proved hugely disruptive for the article in question (see the almost endless talk page). The speculative outing of my identity is also typical, and I object to it here, as I have elsewhere. I do not, on any Wikipedia page, list any of my affiliations. I'd be grateful for the speculation above to be removed quickly, please, by anyone competent to do this. Thelongview (talk) 06:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Details redacted per WP:OUTING - sorry, should have done that earlier, but I missed how specific it was in all the verbiage. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, user Gordonofcartoon , before any further preaching from you, and before any further conversation by me with you, please remove the statement which you have written on my personal talkpage, "And please stop this total arse about...", as foul words are not what I have used in writing to you, and they are not acceptable. --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 09:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you wish (but as I said, where I come from it's only a robust synonym for "nonsense"). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 11:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update

User:Scripturalreasoning just posted the following to Talk:Scriptural reasoning [1]:

Contrary to the perception on this page, while I have declared clearly my involvement in the "Scriptural Reasoning Society", I am however, not a Trustee of this or any other organisation, and I do not even hold any official officership (Convener, Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, anything else), and so do not formally have any institutional COI by virtue of being an employee or officer of any Scriptural Reasoning organisation. Also, for the record, I have no "loyalty" at all for the Scriptural Reasoning Society as an institution/structure, despite my having contributed a lot of work to it. My loyalty and commitment is to certain values of parity, equality, truth and non-exploitation in the practice of Scriptural Reasoning as a whole (whichever group does it). The SRS can get stuffed as far as I'm concerned, if there is any hint of its Trustees and officers abandoning those ethical principles to which I am passionately committed. I therefore freely declare a COI with my wanting the article to represent some of these ethical elements in the debates around Scriptural Reasoning Theory and Practice, but that's hardly a formal COI in the Wikipedia sense.

... which is clear enough, though it omits the possibility of a close personal/professional affiliation as a non-employee (in what capacity was "my having contributed a lot of work to it"?). It also doesn't alter the COI potential of being in direct consultation, apparently in some influential role, with the Trustees of the society concerned [2] Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS Following from that, this statement has just appeared on the Scriptural Reasoning Society website: [3], which makes claims about the identities and motives of some editors here. The whole thing has an attack-by-proxy flavour. Communicating with an organisation to solicit external pressure on Wikipedia editors about article content can hardly be viewed as a suitably neutral relationship to the topic, or an example of collegiate editing. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Before engaging in wild personal accusations of my "soliciting external pressure", you might want to get your facts straight first. Since I am not a Trustee, Chair, Secretary, etc of any organisation and make no decisions or statements on its behalf, and since the statement you reference makes no named mention of Wikipedia nor lists any usernames of any Wikipedian, all that exists is your own fantastic speculation about motives and personal connections. In addition, since I happen to know that the Scriptural Reasoning Society has received at least one telephone contact from the officer of an external organisation precisely in relation to the Wikipedia article [naming it and discussing its recent editing and criticising it] and precisely attempting to "solicit external pressure" in regard to its editing -- you might want to be advised of that first before you say anything else.

Anyone is entitled to talk to their colleagues. I mean look at the mysterious way that within a matter of days after 27 November 2008, a load of editors suddenly arrived -- including the three users listed above who all know each other as colleagues in the real world -- plus various others from the Society for Scriptural Reasoning. Soliciting pressure? --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 17:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

the statement you reference makes no named mention of Wikipedia nor lists any usernames of any Wikipedian

Others can decide how far that's disingenuous. You're not in a moot court, and that kind of legalistic quibble doesn't work here. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 18:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Funny how deafening your silence on the fact that the first knowledge that colleagues have had was from the phone complaint to them of a lead officer of a national organisation of which the groups which I have critiqued are affiliate members. The Wikipedia article was raised by them and criticism of the edits on it -- external pressure -- made by them...any answers? Maybe you want to ask the other users connected to the groups in question? --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 19:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article: Transcendental Meditation, Users TimidGuy and Littleolive oil

Transcendental Meditation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
TimidGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Littleolive oil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Somebody needs to look at how this article is being edited. The Conflict of Interest of these two editors has been repeatedly raised, to no avail. Even a cursory examination of the editing history and the talk pages show a blatant, and continuing disregard for the requirements of WP:COI, ignoring repeated warnings. It would seem that the only solution, at this point, is to ban them from editing the article, since they clearly cannot conform their behavior to the editing standards here. Fladrif (talk) 15:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I second this, I have a professional interest in meditation (This is clearly stated in my about page and has been for many years) and it is an area that does require some expertise. However the intellectual dishonesty - and blatant positive corporate spin - in this article, especially of late, is become truly astounding. TM is a commercial enterprise and both of the authors above work full time for part of that corporate entity - MUM - This has now been deleted from their profiles but is still to be found in their histories.

I might add that we need to apply especially care to this article as it is not a religious article, but one that makes astounding health claims and thus must be assessed as such. As it stands at present little criticism - from reliable published and even peer reviewed sources is allowed by these editors. I have tried to assume good faith on this for sometime, so this adding to this conflict of interest message is not something that I do lightly.

I do not spend massive amounts of time editing wiki but can most certainly make my self available for further discussion. The7thdr (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that COI is an issue here. Here is a version of the article, messier but much more complete and less biased, from September 2006, just before TimidGuy began a major revision. TimidGuy, backed up by Littleolive oil in discussion and when needed in revert wars, is able to control the article by sheer persistence, slowly and steadily molding it into a propaganda piece. If there was even one non-TM editor with equivalent tenacity, it would not be a problem. Unfortunately there isn't, and TimidGuy is able to gradually shift the baseline. Rracecarr (talk) 23:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the history, I can't see anything specifically that'd come under COI (even under the earliest user pages of these editors). As has been repeatedly raised here, being a practitioner of a religion/philosophy (whatever bias that might lead to) isn't close enough a relationship to count as COI. We have simply to look at neutrality.

That said, I'm not at all happy with the neutrality of the collective edits by TimidGuy and Littleolive. For instance, just skimming the article, it's remarkable to see a failure to mention, among the criticisms, the classic debunking of TM's secret personalised mantras, that turn out to be entirely calculable from the instructor assigning them and the age of the recipient. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They're not merely practitioners, they're both on the faculty of Maharishi U - or whatever its called. They previously included that on their profile/talk pages, but deleted any reference to it a long time ago. You can still find it in their history and/or talk pages. Fladrif (talk) 02:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the archive from TimidGuy's talk page, where he states that he is on faculty, and admits that he has a conflict of interest in the TM and related articles. [4]

Also, here's the archive from TimidGuy's talk page, where he says that he wrote the first version of the TM article, submitted it through an anonymous editor, and that his purpose as an editor was to edit the TM articles. [5]Fladrif (talk) 15:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He doesn't specifically say that there. He does in this diff. Rracecarr (talk) 17:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the archive from Littleolive oil's profile page, showing where she first said she was a faculty member, and that her purpose here was to edit the TM related pages, and then removed that information from her profile. [6]

The conflict of interest is pretty blatant and obvious.Fladrif (talk) 14:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gordonofcartoon ( :-) ) good points, however one thing, well two to be truthful, "...being a practitioner of a religion/philosophy (whatever bias that might lead to) isn't close enough a relationship to count as COI" Both editors are not simply practitioners they are paid staff members of MUM. TM is not a religion - as it is at pains to point out - it is a corporate (to be a precise a series of ) of multi billion dollar corporations. Each of it's "products" are trade marked. The TM technique itself is a part of complex set of trade marked corporate entities. It is also profit making and thus any article about it must be assessed using WIKIs guidelines related to corporate entities. WIKI is especially specific in this regard, espcially if that corporate entity makes claims to improve "health" (I will find the relevant guidelines/rules shorty). I have been very patient on this article over the last year. Indeed, attempting to positively communicate and assist TG and LO, this can be clearly seen in the talk pages and is not a "recent development. But I have been spured to comment here of late purely due to the "spin2 that is being put The7thdr (talk) 21:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I might add in that context (i.e, TM as a product/business entity/COI of editing by principals & employees) TimidGuy admits that he consults with Steven Drucker, General Counsel for Maharishi University, counsel to the Maharishi Foundation and executive director of various other TM-related organizations, regarding the content of the article:

"Yes. I'd check with the General Counsel for Maharishi University of Management, licensee of the mark Transcendental Meditation. He also is an attorney for Maharishi Foundation, LTD, the U.K. charity which owns the mark."TimidGuy 22:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

"I don't think it would be appropriate to take this through the dispute process, since it's a legal matter. It would be better if you do whatever you want. Then I'll send that to our legal counsel, and if he feels it violates the trademark, he'll then send a letter to Wikipedia, as he's done before. It's a matter for the U.S. legal system, not Wikipedia's dispute system."TimidGuy 02:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

"By the way, the court entered into the record a correction from Steven Druker regarding the puja. I guess we'll need to get that document. TimidGuy (talk) 20:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC) Fladrif (talk) 16:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would just like to point out to Gordonofcartoon that as far as I know there are no reliable sources describing the mantra(s) used in Transcendental Meditation that could be used in the wikipedia article on TM.--Uncreated (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what to make of this report in general, but that specific claim appears to be inaccurate. This book, "Clinical Relaxation Strategies" by Kenneth L. Lichstein, Wiley, 1988 is itself a reliable source and it lists four sources for its assertion that, "there are 16 TM mantras assigned solely according to the meditator's age". This appears to be a well-reported fact. Will Beback talk 21:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. Looking at the edit history for the TM article, reliably sourced information as to what the mantras are, and how they are assigned have been sytematically deleted by a combination of meatpuppetry, tag-team editing, civil (and occasionally uncivil) POV pushing and the like. The pattern is repeated time after time. Objections along the lines of "nobody can write (x)about TM, because TM refuse to confirm that they're correct", "the people saying those things are violating their contracts not to reveal TM secrets", "that may have been the case in (insert date) but there's no current information on what TM is doing", "he isn't really an expert", and endlessly recycled variations thereon aren't proper objections to reliably sourced information. The pattern is chronic and inexcusable. Fladrif (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COI does not absolutely exclude people from editing articles where they have a conflict of interest, but is does strongly encourage that they avoid editig in topics where their conflict would lead to bias.[emphasis in original] It also encourages them to declare their conflicts to avoid the perception that they are trying to distort Wikipedia. There is a claim here that both of the listd editors are faculty members of Maharishi University of Management, yet they have also been among the chief contributors to that article. (457 total edits, of which 124 were by Littleolive oil and 34 by TimidGuy). Can the editors attest that they have followed the WP:COI guideline in respect to editing that article? As far as outcomes go, I see that Timidguy spun off a large chunk of material into a separate article back in 2006.[7] The current version[8] of that article is quite different and omits what appears to be significant information that a cursory search shows can be sourced reliably.[9] Is that an example of how the editors use great caution when editing articles on this topic? Finally, I see that this matter has been raised repeatedly on this board and other pages. Why does it keep coming up? Is there a dispute over whether a COI exists, or do editors say the guideline doesn't apply to them, or what? Will Beback talk 23:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why does being Faculuty at MUM creates a COI for Olive and TG in regards to the editing of the article on Transcendental Meditation? Sources to support any reasoning would be helpful. As to the book "Clinical Relaxation Strategies" and its assertion that, "there are 16 TM mantras assigned solely according to the meditator's age", maybe we can continue that discussion at the TM Article discussion page--Uncreated (talk) 00:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The editors in question have also edited the MUM article. As for the mantra issue, it is being offerred as an example of potential bias in the editing. I don't know the history of the article to know why it isn't included currently. I'm wondering why neither of the listed editors has responded here, so I've asked them both to explain this from their viewpoint. Will Beback talk 00:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise. We're going to have to ask whether Uncreated (talk · contribs) has any affiliation, having made no edits outside this topic. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gordonofcartoon my affiliation is that I participate at the Auckland University SIMS club (Students International Meditation Society) as a keen practitioner of Transcendental Meditation...I started editing the article because I felt that it was in need of improvement.--Uncreated (talk) 00:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fine. But generally when new users with affiliations turn up in the middle of disputes, there's always the consideration that they were canvassed to turn up. Others can judge the timing of your feeling that it was in need of improvement, and your sudden WP:SPA interest in this topic. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked both editors to respond. The evidence so far is that they have not made a sufficient effort to comply with the guideline, but I'm not sure that we have all of the evidence. I'd also like to see a review of the previous times this matter has been raised. If they've already been absolved of having a COI and it's being raised repeatedly then that can count as harassment. OTOH, if they've ignored previous warnings then it may now be time for mandatory changes. Will Beback talk 03:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Previous filings (please add any that I've missed):

Of those, only the 27 March 2007 filing received serious discussion. Durova wrote, "TimidGuy has a clear and immediate conflict of interest and for this reason would be well advised to restrict participation to talk pages for all transcendental mediatation-related articles." That view was endorsed by Athænara, who was the unofficial COIN overseer at the time. The burden is on the editors with conflicts to show that they've followed the guideline, since the appearance is that they haven't. Will Beback talk 04:13, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see that User:Littleolive_oil has been responding at User_talk:Will_Beback#COI_charges, and User:TimidGuy posted at User_talk:TimidGuy#Conflict_of_Interest that he won't be responding (sorry about the broken arm!), instead of here, and User: Will Beback has been replying at User_talk:Littleolive_oil#Notice. At which of these three or four places are other interested editors supposed to post? Carrying on this discussion at multiple locations simultaneously makes it awfully difficult to follow in real time, and is going to make the archives of this controvesy virtually unintelligible. Fladrif (talk) 16:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Littleolive_oil told me that he would make a response here. He may be able to speak on TimidGuy's behalf as well. If you have any more input this would be the best place for it. Will Beback talk 17:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would also echo the point that if we can confine this discussion to this page and avoid the TM discussion page and other locations, that would be helpful for everyone. I think as a community we have to answer three questions: 1) What do TG and Olive have to say about the claim that they are employees of MUM? 2) If they are, then does being an employee of MUM, in and of itself, exclude them from editing certain articles ie the MUM or TM pages? 3) If not, then we need to know if in their past editing of these articles, have they maintained Wiki standards and conducted themselves as proper editors? I am open to hearing all sides of the story but we need to be careful that we don't have a mob lynching of two good editors just because they have a bias that might be different than ours. You see, bias is a difficult thing to measure. We are all biased. We have personal points of view, opinions and so forth. The Wiki guidelines attempt to create limits to our bias by allowing other editors with a different bias to edit the same articles thereby creating some kind of balance. So we have to evaluate and see how much bias these two editors have and if it has skewed their editing to such a degree that they have violated the spirit and goals of Wiki, in the articles that they have edited. One of the things I like best about Wiki is that it provides a format whereby I can practice being neutral and try to work in concert with other individuals with different opinions and different bias'. So I think there is room for everyone if we keep our minds open. Let's see what TG and Olive have to say. Peace! --Kbob (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would help this thread if Fladrif or other editors could post examples of what they think is problematic editing on the part of the named editors. The mere fact that a COI exist and that they've actievly edited the articles does not mean that there is an automatic violation. Will Beback talk 01:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment and diffs olive

I can’t speak for TimidGuy but in some instances we were editing on the same pages and against the same problems.

There are no main space edit diffs, or diffs of any kind presented here showing POV edits. The editors commenting against me on this case have come here after consistent behaviours on the TM talk page I would consider abusive in some instances, uncivil, and consisting of personal attacks. This behaviour is pertinent to this case since these same editors are here once again attacking me and do so without a single diff. This is harassment. I have no desire to attack any one but if diffs are required I’ll add them.

MUM is an accredited university and no more a commercial enterprise than is any university. It presently is experiencing the same difficulties in its economy as any other university in the country. What is being said here by extension is that every editor employed by a university should be not be editing within their area of expertise or in an area a university specializes in, and many universities specialize.

Rracecarr’s preferred version of the TM article predates the splits that separated out various aspect of the TM organization as such is not a better version but an older version with very poor references.

There are serious issues with including mantra in the article unless there is a reliable source for the inclusion. This should be discussed on the talk page especially if a source is being presented for discussion. This source as far as I remember was never mentioned in the past.

Although I am being asked to prove my innocence when no diffs have been added here as proof of my guilt; I will add the following diffs in some of the areas I’ve edited indicating my neutral editing.

Article: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

A new editor whose style was more literary than encyclopedic the result of which was a heavily POV flavored article [10] [11] [12] [13]

An editor insistent on adding a long list of awards and recognitions given to MMY during his lifetime violating WP:Undue and creating a POV. [14]

A new editor wanting to add themes MMY discussed violating WP:Weight possibly creating a POV. [15]

Article: Maharishi University of Management

Cleaning up the MUM article which was advertisement like and unencyclopedic [16] [17] [18] [19]

Article: Transcendental Meditation

[20]

...and peaceful discussion here on external links [21] ...and most recent discussion on TM Article beginning here [22] ...and very specific to Olive here [23] after this suggestion [24]

Article: Maharishi Vedic Science merged Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Suggesting deletion or merging…now merged with MMY Discussion from here: [25]

Comments and Diffs showing COI Editing

Here are just a couple of examples with which I am personally familiar. I haven't gone into the archives to dig up more. A trend that I find highly disturbing, and indicative of COI edits, is the repeated pattern of these editors simply removing or reverting properly sourced material, because the material they remove doesn't square with their own unsourced understanding.

Malnak v Yogi

The description of this case, which barred the teaching of TM in the public schools in NJ, was written by User:TimidGuy in the state I first read it. It misrepresented the concurring Court of Appeals opinion as making findings favorable to the TM Defendants which it did not make, and then proceeded to advance unsourced legal arguments as to why that decision should not bar the teaching of TM in other schools. That, in and of itself indicates a COI/NPOV/NOR problem. Then, I attempted to correct the misdescription [here]

The ensuing edits by User:TimidGuy and User:Littleolive_oil included repeatedly deleting properly sourced information from the summary of the case, or adding unsourced and false comments, disclaimers or qualifiers. Their comments in the edit summaries, and subsequently on the talk pages that showed that neither had read the cited source material (at least not recently) and that there was no basis for their edits:

[[26]]
[[27]]
[[28]]
[[29]]
[[30]]

To give credit where it is eventually due, this last deletion of a direct quote from the court opinion, with the Edit Summary comment by olive "What a beauty", was subsequently undone by olive, and TimidGuy did acknowledge on my talk page that he had misread the concurring opinion when he wrote the original summary of the case.

Ospina/Bond Report

In the section on medical research, User:Judyjoejoe added a paragraph on the results of an independent, NIH-sponsored review of studies of the effects of meditation, including 230 studies of TM. The report concluded (to paraphrase) that the current state of research on meditation made it impossible to draw any valid conclusions on the medical effects of meditation. A long and contentious discussion ensued on the Talk pages. But, to the point of editing practices of editors with COI, User:TimidGuy and User:Littleolive_oil took turns repeatedly reverted any inclusion of this report in the article:

[[31]]
[[32]]
[[33]]
[[34]]

When a paragraph to the study was finally put back in User TimidGuy, contrary WP:MEDRS, then inserted various disclaimers and criticisms of the report, and cherrypicked portions of the report to claim that it actually found that TM reduced hypertension.

Articles of Incorporation

In the section on "Relationship to religion and spirituality", I added a paragraph, properly sourced, that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others incorporated the Spirutual Regeneration Movement Foundation in California in 1959, that it was the only organization authorized to teach TM in the US until 1965, and that its articles stated that the corporation was religious, and that its educational purpose to teach a simple system of meditation.

User:Littleolive_oil did a couple of odd things here: First, olive changed the name of the corporation, and removed the reference to MMY, claiming that the information couldn't be right according to documents she claimed to have. This is part of a continuing pattern of these editors removing properly sourced information, based on an unsourced and personal understanding that doesn't square with what another editor has written:

[[35]]
[[36]]

I had to point out that the cited sources were reliable sources, and confirmed by primary sources, re-inserting the deleted material. Olive then obtained a copy of the articles of incorporation, and capitulated, with a couple of additional edits, that the name of the corporation really was accurate, and that MMY really was one of the founders. (I'll leave aside the NOR question raised by the latest edits)

Second, and perhaps more troubling, olive removed the information from the "relationship to religion and spirituality" section, moved it into "history", [[37]] on the basis that (to paraphrase) the editors have decided that article is about TM as a technique, not about who teaches it, and the corporation having been formed as a religious one is irrelevant to the technique. [[38]]. Olive now argues that the information shouldn't be included at all, again because the article should be confined to the technique, information about the corporation moved to some other article, and besides, the article is getting too long. [[39]]. This appears to be part of a pattern in this TM article of taking any information that may be controversial, embarassing, or inconvenient, and either deleting it, or, if that can't be accomplished, moving it to a new and different article where won't be so prominent. (cf the German Wikipedia article on TM, [40] which is at once more neutral, more comprehensive, and a heck of a lot shorter than this stand-alone article to say nothing of all of the myriad TM-related articles on the English Wikipedia.)

Sorry this is so long, but you asked for examples. I'm sure that others could come up with a lot more. 16:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Mantras

Relative to the assertion by olive above that inclusion or exclision of reliably sourced information on mantras is a matter for the discussion page, a review of the archives shows that it has been discussed, and that information on mantras was systematically removed by TimidGuy, backed up by olive. See, for example Talk:Transcendental_Meditation/Archive_12#mantra_paragraph There, and elsewhere, Olive and TG repeatedly assert that it is impossible for any source to be a reliable source on mantras, because that is proprietary information of the TM trademark holders who refuse to verify it and that disclosing it would be "illegal". Other supporters assert that revealing the information would interfered with the teaching of TM to the detriment of the trademark holders. Leaving aside the novel legal theories, not only is this a misinterpretation of WP:RS, it is a prime example of COI editing. It makes any "discussion" pointless and any "consensus" on the issue impossible. Fladrif (talk) 19:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ospina Bond

Typing with one hand so my participation will be minimal. The diffs presented by Fladrif should be considered in the context of the Talk page. If you look at the whole picture, I think that the Ospina/Bond episode calls into question the neutrality of several editors who are accusing me, rather than being an example of disruptive editing by a conflicted editor.

The abstract of Ospina/Bond says two main things that are relevant to TM;

that meditation research is generally weak (as measured by the Jadad scale)
that TM significantly reduces high blood pressure

JudyJoe People added a paragraph to the TM article quoting the conclusion that meditation research is generally weak and omitted the conclusion specifically related to Transcendental Meditation -- that it reduces high blood pressure. I moved Judy's skewed addition to the Talk page for discussion, noting in my edit summary that the study actually found that TM reduces high blood pressure. I made this point again on the Talk page. And eventually noted that the abstract says this. Instead of putting in a more balanced version, Rracecarr reverted three times, each time putting in the skewed version.

I also used the Talk page to raise other issues with the study -- that a peer review found that there were errors in scoring the TM studies that directly affected their rating. And I discussed the fact that there were two different versions: the first version released in 2007 by NIH online and a revised version that is in the process of being published in segments, with the first segment now having been published last December. This revised published version altered the conclusions. No one paid much attention to these points, other than Rracecarr saying that the peer review was silly, but never explaining why, even though I asked him to.

Then I added a quote to the article from the revised published version that acknowledged that the Jadad scale may not be the best tool for evaluating meditation research. This was in Ospina/Bond's own words. Rracecarr deleted it, saying it was a minor point. I told him that in fact the issue of how to evaluate meditation research was a point of discussion in the revised published version. His inexplicable response was the he was referring to the first version of the study, as he didn't have the published version.

So from a different point of view, that episode showed that the editors didn't pay much attention to the points I raised, they reflexively reverted (and inserted a completely skewed version), and that they have completely ignored the revised conclusions of the published version, which included that the the quality of research has improved significantly over time. This revised conclusion was based partly on a revision of the Jadad assessment, raising the scores on a number of studies and finding that nearly twice as many as they had originally thought had received a Jadad score of Good or better.

My point of view was that all of these things were important considerations regarding how Ospina Bond should be presented in the article. Wouldn't this be responsible editing? Instead I'm accused of reverting any inclusion of this report. i would have enjoyed a collegial discussion of this and coming to consensus on what we put in. TimidGuy (talk) 01:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Thanks to TimidGuy, Fladrif, and Littleolive oil for posting this information, which helps us evaluate the situation. Consensus is important on Wikiepdia, but we also need to remember that a local consensus of a few editors on a talk page can't override core policies. As the saying goes, "NPOV is non-negotiable". So if there are, for example, five "pro" editors and two "anti" editors, the "pro" editors can't claim consensus as an excuse for violating NPOV, even if talk page discussions show a clear preference for one version over another. NPOV also requires that we include all significant points of view. I haven't researched all of the edit choices and discussions, so it's easiest for me to simply judge the final product. The main article on Transcendental Meditation does not now include some of the major critical viewpoints of the movement, including the fundraising practices, the age-based selection of mantras, and the matter of "yogic flying". Comments like "but we discussed this on talk..." or "we agreed not to include that..." are very thin excuses for excluding major criticisms.

Getting back to the policies and guidelines, the relevant WP:COI guidelines calls on editors with conflicts that affect their impartiaility to avoid editing directly. Back in 2007, user TimidGuy was given clear direction on this page to stop editing directly. It isn't clear to me why he chose to ignore that direction, and why Littleolive oil, who is apparently similarly situated, also choses to ignore the guideline. I'd like to hear why they think it is necessary for them to keep editing the relate articles directly rather than making suggestions from the talk page as called for. Unless there is a strong reason to ignore the guideline, I think it should be respected. Will Beback talk 09:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not a single mainspace diff of evidence was presented in that 2007 case in the 6,000 words that Dseer posted. EdJohnston is the one who investigated, and he told Dseer that he didn't make his case[41]. (Which by the way, was related to the Maharishi article, not TM.) Dseer followed up with Durova, and she told him that he needed to present evidence, which he hadn't done, and he would need to do this in an RfC or ArbCom. And that if they found a problem, their solution would likely be to put me on parole. She didn't ban me from editing the page. I continued editing because I have a right to, and because I wasn't banned. It was necessary, since most of the editors who show up are opposed to Transcendental Meditation and they put in things that are incorrect or skewed or misrepresent the scientific literature.

Will, it sounds like you've determined that Yogic Flying should be in the article. I'm not sure what authority that's based on. Yogic Flying isn't a part of Transcendental Meditation. It's part of the TM-Sidhi program, which is a different technique. Yogic Flying is covered in the Wikipedia article on that technique. Why would Wikipedia's article on TM include it, other than to confuse the readers? Mainstream media don't typically mention Yogic Flying in their coverage of TM. Do a search in Google News archives and you'll get 7,740 results for "Transcendental Meditation". If you add "Yogic Flying", you get 248 results. (That's 3%) My view is that the Wikipedia article should reflect how TM is represented in the scientific literature and in the mainstream media, and for the most part this article does that. My judgment is based on having read and viewed hundreds, if not thousands, of media reports. The mainstream media coverage is mostly positive. Look at this BBC report from a few days ago[42]. That said, I'm leaving Wikipeida. Something came up last week (other than my broken arm) that disallows my further participation. TimidGuy (talk) 15:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't know the material as well as you or the other editors. However I do know how to use Google. Using the more generic search ["transcendental meditation" fly], I get about 40,200 supposed Ghits, and 541 actual hits. By comparison, ["transcendental meditation" mantra] gets about 43,000 suppose Ghits, and 502 actual hits. While it's important to make distinctions about which exact part of the TM movement is responsible for what, it's also important to realize that "Transcendental Meditation" is the generic term used to refer to the the entire movement, and the article there should probably reflect that by including general information. I'm not interested in discussing the content, but as I said it's apparent even as an ignorant editor that substantial controversisies about the movement aren't included in the main article, and in some cases don't seem to be mentioned anywhere.

Regarding the March 2007 COI report, Durova and Athænara gave you clear direction to which you didn't respond and which yuo didn't follow. The purpose of this board is to provide guidance to editors. Is there a reason why you can't follow the COI guideline and avoid editing the articles themselves? You say, "It was necessary, since most of the editors who show up are opposed to Transcendental Meditation and they put in things that are incorrect or skewed or misrepresent the scientific literature." That doesn't require making 645 edits. Can you at least limit yourself to fixing outright errors and vandalism? Will Beback talk 23:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, NPOV is nonnegotiable but implicit to this Policy is the fact that NPOV in practice is not an absolute but is defined and specific to the article and the editors who work there. Editors don’t override core policies; they put them into practice.

My references to the talk page are specific instances of my editing procedure and practices, and indicate my neutrality as does my edit history as Gordonofcartoon pointed out. I have no other way of showing what I do. I was one of many who helped create the TM article, but can neither take credit for its strengths nor blame for its weaknesses. It was and is collaborative no different than other articles on Wikipedia.

I have never been blocked, banned or warned by an admin to not edit the TM articles, and have never been judged here to have a COI. I am stringent about the neutrality of my editing, and take seriously my reading of the COI guideline that says, “exercise great caution”. I have the right to edit.

Inclusion of any of the following topics is not a product of my or any one editor’s decision. Nor do I consider them controversial or non-controversial in and of themselves.

The TM Sidhi program has an article of its own and was split off of the main article. The main article is called, and is about the TM technique, and by definition is not about other techniques, advanced meditation techniques, or other aspects of the TM organization, but is about the technique itself. The TM Sidhi program has within its own article criticism of the program. In and of itself this article and topic like any article or topic is neutral, should not be considered controversial, but may have multiple controversial aspects.
I have never been involved as far as I can remember in a discussion of the finances of the TM organization, and know very little about it. If there are references and reliable, verifiable source and if the topic is notable as per mainstream media, literature, than discussion and possible inclusion are possible. Again such a topic is not about the TM technique, but about the TM organization.
Mantra has been discussed and has some very odd and specific issues connected to it, and would in my opinion need reliable verifiable sources for inclusion.

The TM organization articles are a dumping ground for agendas both for and against TM. I am knowledgeable in the area, and have been a middle ground, questioning major inclusions of material of the pro TM factions like this [43] and the non TM factions as I did when I demanded discussion on the Ospina/ Bond study rather than allowing an inclusion that not all editors were happy with. I responded the same way to that study as I did to massive inclusions of extremely promotional material on the Maharishi article. This is an obvious indicator and example of an editor applying a consistent, neutral standard evenly to the articles. Remove that person and you will once again have articles without expertise in the area and an open invitation for agendas that are less than neutral.

If there are diffs showing specific instances of perceived POV editing, I would feel that the fair thing to do would be to put them here so I could at least address them. so far I haven't seen them. I’ve learned a lot watching some fine editors and admins on Wikipedia, and am always happy to have suggestions on how to improve my editing. Comments on how to handle difficult situations are always welcome here or elsewhere. Thanks.(olive (talk) 00:05, 28 February 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Note that TG has retired.(olive (talk) 00:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I hope TimidGuy gets better soon. There are over two million articles that don't have anything to do with TM, so even if he's not editing this topic then there's still plenty of others. Olive, your work on the article is appreciated, I'm sure. I think the financial stuff had been deleted by TimidGuy, not you. Still, it'd be best if you avoided getting involved in editing fields where you have a conflict. MUM appears to be such a topic. Is there much POV pushing there that has to be opposed? Will Beback talk 03:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oops...no... TG has retired from Wikipedia completely. He is moving on to some other projects apparently. The timing was serendipitous as was the broken arm.(olive (talk) 04:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Advice needed

Just a general question here. There is a particular User here who is employed by a particular research organisation , and who has been editing a series of articles about a topic which this organisation sees as its core area of interest. This user in real life is also an activist advocating the subject matter, which has apparently become politicised. Therefore it appears there could be a serious case of Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Campaigning.

I discussed the COI issue and the need for NPOV with the user on an article talk page and he appeared to acknowledge this. He is now editing these articles to his (or his organisation's) particular POV again, using sources (some written by himself in real life) published by the organisation he belongs to. The problem is he discounts the other viewpoint published by another rival organisation.

I could identify the articles and user (it's not related to Global Warming), but am concerned about the issue of outing, since Wikipedia's policy against harassment takes precedence over the COI guideline. However this User does identify himself and his Wikipedia username in his signature in messages on the public Wikipedia-l mail list, so I guess those Wikipedians who subscribe to this list may know who this user is, but the wider Wikipedia community may not.

Any advice on the best approach here would be welcomed. If the above is too general then I can provide specific details. Martintg (talk) 23:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you think you see an article where improper editing is going on, name the article. Others can then draw whatever conclusions they wish about the situation, without that being considered to be WP:OUTING. If you think POV editing is going on, it is helpful if you can provide diffs. EdJohnston (talk) 00:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article is Võro language, a typical diff here. Related article South Estonian language. This is as I understand the situation: The Estonian Language Institute claims it is a dialect, the Võro Institute claims it is a language. The literature seems to be split. An employee of the Võro Institute recently applied for an ISO language code, the Estonian Language Institute may appeal. The debate has now evolved to whether it is a reconstructed language derived from an historical dialect or not. The politics of regionalism seems to be mixed up in this. A gentle approach with some mediation is needed here, I believe. Martintg (talk) 01:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked Võrok to join this discussion. Can you make a list of all the articles that may be affected by this dispute? Should anyone else be notified? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably contact User:Miacek and User:Digwuren. The articles involved:

Martintg (talk) 04:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Võros, too.

--Võrok (talk) 10:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The situation is quite simple and even better, it is verifiable. The ISO-639-3 has determined that Võro is a language. As a consequence they have made the code that used to refer to Estonian a macro language. This means that from a standards point of view, Estonina and Võro are on the same level.

From my point of view, either this is accepted silently as a fact or a big huha happens and it has to affect how we treat languages in the WMF. This would mean that the Estonian Wikipedia is to rename to ekk.wikipedia.org. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 08:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll answer with a citation by another user from Talk:South Estonian language

ISO does not "recognise" languages by handing them codes. Instead, the ISO 639 registry -- the Library of Congress -- maintains the language coding system, paying most careful attention to printed books. Since in recent years, a number of people have been printing books in Võro, the intent to precisely codify the linguistic standard now merits a separate language code -- but this does not mean any sort of royal assent over the linguistic entity's status as a language or dialect.
If starting tomorrow, a hundred people would take it unto themselves to write and print new books based on the writing system found in the Voynich Manuscript, pretty soon it would have its own ISO code. Nobody will care if it's a language -- if the books are there, they need to be coded. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 22:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 10:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Wikipedians, I'm user Võrok. The discussion I am involved is going on on the talk pages of the above mentioned articles. You can find there also my longer explanations and arguments. In short: I wrote these articles some years ago with my personal skills, knowledge, interests and inspiration. Later it has been edited also by other users. The articles could be written much better, it could be more deep, neutral etc. All interested users are welcome to make it better. But it should not be done with a sudden abrubt renames, deletions, replaces and reverts, sometimes even without discussion, as it has done by users user:Miacek, user:Digwuren and in lesser extent also user:Martintg (see their edits in the history of the above mentioned articles).

I'm a native speaker, teacher, researcher and developer of the Võro language. Maybe it really means that I'm too involved and too much interested in saving and promoting my endangered mother tongue. Too much to be absolutely neutral as it is required in Wikipedia. However I have tried to be neutral and of course I have provided and/or accepted in the articles also other grounded POVs. Or tried to find compromises. I have not much time and energy to write in the English Wikipedia in my bad English, it is hard and tiring. Also the suspicious, anonyme, sometimes even ironic and unfriendly atmosphere dominating in comments and abrubt actions of some users (Miacek,Digwuren) do not encourage or inspire much. User:Digwuren even threatened me on my talk page of Võro Wikipedia, promising to start looking for the best way how to close up Võro Wikipedia, as a revenge for the proposal for the ISO code for Võro (discussion in Estonian). I have put a lot of time and energy into these articles and their discussions. Probably too much. I'm too tired to continue editing the articles and having discussions such actively but maybe at least some information, explanations and the copromise I proposed - naming the article South Estonian language just South Estonian (rather than proposed South Estonian dialects), restoring deleted by user:Martintg infobox or at least map, arguing against an obvious nonsense about Võro being an artificial or reconstructed language etc. - I hope it will help a bit in improving the articles. --Võrok (talk) 10:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with your list of "speaker, teacher, researcher and developer" is that you left out advocate. Native speakers of any language do not necessarily have inherent COIs about it. Teachers don't, either, nor do linguists. But one who uses every chance to push his pet viewpoint about the special status of his favourite project -- one who doesn't refrain from going to the ISO 639 registrar out of process because he believes the result is more important than the proper way of achieving it -- is clearly too much involved with advocacy of the POV to be capable to neutrally contribute in matters having to do with the related controversy. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 14:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certainly not a lawier, which associates to me with the word advocate, but ok, of course I try to give my best to save my endangered mother tongue. If I must be be called an advocate for doing that, then I am proud to be an advocate of my language. But (using terms of law) if I'm an advocate then Digwuren and some others are probably accusers or prosecutors of the language. As I said above, maybe I can not be absolutely neutral, but I have tried to be accepting also another POVs. But Diwurgen et. al. aren't either neutral, their contributions have been much more biased by their own POV and/or (probably strong Estonian nationalist) interest. They have used every chance to lower or degrade the position of the Võro: 1) showing that it is a dialect, not a language; 2) renaming it's article to a dialect; 2) renaming it to an artificial language; 3) renaming it to a reconstructed language; 4) questioning its number of speakers; 5) questioning its ISO code; 6) threatened to propose closing its Wikipedia; 7) cutting it out (naming it a crap) from the template of the Uralic languages; 8) proposing to merge an article about Võro-speaking people into a section of another article; 9) deleting infobox with a map of the language area and reverting the changes they dislike; 10) ignoring proposed compromises; etc. These probably can not be actions of neutral editors. One more thing. If I really must be called an advocate, then I'm certainly an advocate of of my language, not my university or institute. Nobody questioned here (yet) the institutions, so I don't have even a reason to advocate them.--Võrok (talk) 18:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that you're an advocate of an institute that is closely connected with the issue shows that you have a strong conflict of interests that no-one of the evil “Digwuren et al” group has. As for your points: “1) showing that it is a dialect, not a language; 2) renaming it's article to a dialect;” - is it a crime to follow the scholarly consensus and not your own research?
“4) questioning its number of speakers;″ - I think this questioning was very well founded and you failed to give an answer to this
“5) questioning its ISO code″ - yes, you probably gained this 'recognition' by an assault, so to say, bypassing the Estonian regulators of language; this trick might well get reverted. And so on. In short, you are just using Wikipedia to promote your own theories, largely unaccepted by the public, and that's the core of the problem. --Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 19:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The mainstream consensus is this. Martintg (talk) 20:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I just sayd, if I ever have advocated something, then it is my language, not institute or university. Difference between us is here in the fact that I do not hide my real name (S. Iva - Digwuren just wrote an article about). So everyone can freely look out who I am and what are my possible interests but we don't know anything about who are Digwuren, Miacek et. al., which institutions or ideas could they advocate and wether they have some conflict of interests or not.

Regarding number of speakers, Koreinik etc 2000: A kiilt rahvas kynõlõs gives the number of active and passive speakers 70.000, active speakers about half of them. Salminen gives the speakers' number 50.000. Your point, that it is more than the population of the modern Võru County isn't serious, because Võro is spoken in all historical Võromaa (Vana Võromaa - Võru and Põlva counties with some parts of Valga and Tartu counties).

Regarding ISO code. It was requested by a group of requesters (including very well known linguists) from different institutions in Estonia and abroad.

"My theories" and "Scholarly consensus". I do not use Wikipedia to promote my own theories. There is proven enough in discussions also by other users that there does not exist a scholarly consensus in the question of Võro and South Estonian. There have been presented reliable sources naming them languages.--Võrok (talk) 21:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou for identifying yourself, Sulev. What confuses me is the introduction to a 2004 publication on South Estonian Phonetics you co-authored, which states on the very first line: "The South-Estonian dialects differ from Standard Estonian more than any other Estonian dialect.". When did the word "dialect" become such a negative word for you? When I see this, I don't understand why South Estonian dialects cannot be about the 28 dialects of the region, but must be called South Estonian language. We already have the article Võro language which is the newly developed literary language in Southern Estonia, perhaps this could be renamed to Võro literary language, since as I understand it, it was developed from an amalgam of two sub-dialects of spoken Võro. We could have an article on the historical Tartu literary language too. Then to bridge everything together, have a disambig page called South Estonian with links to all these articles. Perhaps this way we can strip out all the nationalist/regionalist political under-current and focus on the linguistic aspects only. Martintg (talk) 23:12, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh you know that the question about differentiating between languages and dialects is a never ending story. The list of the wolrd's languages isn't final and stoned. I guess you know, that the problem of the dialects in Estonia is, that they hardly live any more. They all are nearly extinct or assimilated to the Standard Estonian. If Võro had stayed on the status of just a dialect (dialects aren't seriously protected or developed anywhere) then it probably would be nearly in the same situation by now. So obviously we do not have Estonian living dialects after 10-20 years (when the oldest generation will leave us), exept maybe South Estonian Mulgi and a North Estonian small insular dialect Kihnu where some revitalization is taking place. Dialects will then exists only in the historic linguistics, books, dialect maps and archives of universities and institutes. And probably some dialects inside Võro (if they aren't merged into the common spoken Võro).

But having the articles about South Estonian literary language or Tartu literay language and also Võro literary language is in principe a good idea. They are already existing in the Võro and Estonian Wikipedias. I have thought about it, but I don't know who would write the articles. But the article about Võro literary language can not substitute the article Võro language. Võro has its history, its dialects, its new common spoken language and other levels of the language pyramide where the standard language is just the top (Kasak, Enn 1998: Võru murre ja võro keel. Publ. of Võro Inst. no 4, pp. 13-19). Article about the literary language can be an additional article or a chapter inside the article about the language.--Võrok (talk) 01:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand now, to paraphrase, many dialects in Estonia are almost extinct, since dialects are never seriously protected. If Võro had stayed the status of a dialect, it would have suffered the same fate as many other dialects, a historical curiosity that only exists in books, museums and archives. Therefore Võro must be elevated to the status of a language, only then can it survive and flourish, and this has been the mission of yourself and the Võro Institute.

So even though eminent academics such as your Doctoral thesis advisor Professor Karl PaluSalu published a corpus of Estonian dialects which include South Estonian dialects in 2003 and yourself refer to South Estonian dialects in the introduction of a book in 2004, we should now no longer think of South Estonian dialects but of South Estonian language instead. Therefore there cannot be an article called South Estonian dialects in Wikipedia. Have I summed up your position correctly here? Martintg (talk) 11:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed with the last suggestions of Martintg here and on the Talk:South_Estonian_language.--Võrok (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A provocative deletion of Võro again by User:Miacek: Why Voru and not...--Võrok (talk) 14:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This thread is most likely caused by unfamiliarity with the subject. therefore here is a source that should spell out everything relevant and end this discussion: Language Policy in Estonia by Mart Rannut: The forefathers of the current Estonian nation moved into the Estonian territory at least from two different directions in different waves (cf. Viitso 2001), both groups speaking similar, however considerably differing Balto-Finnic vernaculars. This laid the basis for two different Estonian languages, North and South Estonian, in use during medieval times, even in print (both became literary languages in the 17th century). The role of the South Estonian literary language began to wane in the 18th century in conjunction with the publication in 1739 of the Bible in North Estonian and with the introduction of compulsory reading skills in 1729, based on North Estonian. In the 19th century South Estonian was devalued to a low variety vernacular without accepted literary norms; however it has been in continuous oral usage in Southern Estonia. The revival of Southern Estonian took place in 1990s, when a modernised literary form was created. On this language form two ethnic groups, the Võro and Seto base their ethnic identity.--Termer (talk) 07:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would be grateful if somebody fixes a mistake in the article Sulev Iva written by user:Digwuren. The mistake is that Võro is a reconstructed language. I can't/don't want edit the article myself because the article is about me.--Võrok (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edwards Rail Car Company (1997-2008)

Edwards Rail Car Company (1997-2008) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is being edited by Steve torrico (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Mr. Torrico is or was president of this organization, and continually removes content without explanation or edit summary, despite evidence presented on the articles talk page of why this information is relative to the articles subject.

Specifically, he removes content relative to EIKON International, which is clearly a company related in some manner to Edwards (see articles talk page for evidence)).

He had previously received a COI warning, and has just received a warning about removal of content without explanation. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 15:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The editor in question has already been warned, so I'll watch the page for any more suspicious edits. Themfromspace (talk) 21:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 21:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Upon looking over the edits, although the account's intentions might not have been the best, Wikipedia articles do generally tend not to discuss other companies than the one in the article. I have reremoved the mention to the company in the lead. This can be interpreted as undue weight and/or promotion. I'll still watch the article for any suspicious editing. Themfromspace (talk) 22:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would the inclusion of this information at another point in the article (near the end?) be more appropriate? Wuhwuzdat (talk) 21:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe it would be appropriate unless there has been adequate coverage of this similarity in the press. Themfromspace (talk) 22:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) These 2 firms have received very little press.

After much checking, the only 3rd party reference to the companies interrelation I can find is a company profile that lists the address for Edwards, which is the exact same address that EIKON lists on their website as their physical address ( I believe we can trust a company to be truthful as to their own address).

Would this finding be Original research?

If not "Original Research", would this, and the 2 companies extremely similar lines of products and services, be enough 3rd party reference to tie the 2 together? Would it at least qualify for a see also as a company with a very similar product line?? Wuhwuzdat (talk) 20:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would be considered original research, since it requires a synthesis of information that requires logic to put together. Wikipedia can not report that 2+2=4 in an article unless it's already been documented, no matter how logical the conclusion is. I don't think it would qualify as a "see also" link either, since Wikipedia generally does not link to other articles until a connection has been established by sources. Themfromspace (talk) 20:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jokestress (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Jokestress is in real life as she says on her user page Andrea James. Andrea James maintains a website where she expresses her dislike for the term "homosexual transsexual" and anyone who either identifies with it, or simply does not find it 100% objectionable ("Internet fakes: "transkids.us""). She has been part of what can and has been described as a campaign against this term, and those who promote it in any way. Which is made clear by wathching this video of her talking at a womens conference about the term. She has made a small part of her career on the bashing of this term. Lately her contributions to the article in question have consisted soley of adding an NPOV tag [44], then not explaining what further objections she has.[45] Her COI is getting the the way of her editing on this topic her emotions on it are just too strong. Please help. (we have tried all forms of dispute resolution. It's kind of hard to mediate when as one mediator put it one's position is based on WP:IDONTLIKEIT.)--Hfarmer (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Amparis

AMAX Information Technologies

The article I created, AMAX Information Technologies (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), was deleted due to an administrator noting that it contains blatant advertising. I am still new at creating articles and trying to comply with Wikipedia's guidelines. Please see Amaxhelen/AMAX Information Technologies where it contains the newer revision stored in my subpage. I really need any help making this appropriate to have it live in the database. Would also appreciate if someone can look over and point out any suggestions as well. Amaxhelen (talk) 23:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Account was blocked on February 27th. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

S-550 Space capsule - self-disclosure of COI

I want to self-disclose a conflict of interest - I have just created the S-550 Space capsule article. I am the owner of the (tiny) aerospace company which designed the S-550, Venturer Aerospace, and I was the lead engineer on the design.

I created the article as the capsule design had long been a redlink on Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and List of private spaceflight companies. Both those articles reached the point that most of the other listed vehicles were covered with Wikipedia articles. I believe that at this point, the coverage of the rest of the industry and COTS competitors justifies having filled information on mine in, which I had held off on doing for the last three years to avoid placing my design in a more prominent position than its then-competitors who were equally competent but don't have an active Wikipedian on staff.

I tried to write descriptively and neutrally and all that - I've been around Wikipedia for a long time and do not want to use it to toot my own horn. However, I know that I'm not a perfect judge of my own bias, so I'm posting here and posted a disclosure along these lines on the article talk page.

I have referenced a MSNBC media article which covered the vehicle and its competitors, two blog postings by prominent new space industry bloggers, the NASA proposal respondents list, two PR notes on my organizations' website related to that vehicle and a conference presentation on earlier work on the same website, and the still-somewhat-proprietary design proposal document.

Review and input welcome, and I intend to avoid WP:OWN as hard as possible, so if it's really borken somehow feel free to just fix it, though as always discussion on the article talk page is great. Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Eliseo Soriano

I need a few people to come over and try to hack out the mess at this site. There seems to be several COI editors battling it out since December each accusing the other of wrongdoing. In the midst of the battle, verifiability and NPOV have taken hits. Themfromspace (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Auditory Integration Training

Auditory integration training (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This topic has for some time displayed the sole point of view of a medically-biased contributor 'Eubulides', and is incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable for that realon. Recent attempts to add more correct and balanced NPOV entries have been quickly reversed by that editor. Repeated attempts by me to have hime acknowlege that AIT is a non-medical issue, and therefore the medical sources are not the sole reliable resources on this topic are ignored and overrun, in order to maintain a medical bias in this article. I have now begun to receive cautions about 3RR from medical editors while Eubulides who performed the reversals has received none! ... I would welcome assistance to clarify this matter, from a non-medically interested editor Jvanr (talk) 08:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article link added. You're asking editors to take sides on what's mainly an ideological/political point: AIT self-defines as non-medical (else there'd be FDA issues) but to outsiders, as a therapy for various learning disorders, it comes under medical scope (there's even a Cochrane Review [47]). NPOV requires that both stances be mentioned. So that part is a content issue: Eubulides being "medically biased" is hardly close enough a relationship to count as COI.

OTOH Being an AIT trainer - apparently one with a major involvement in the development of the AIT hardware - a WP:SPA here to Right a Wrong, is far closer, and needs considerable attention to avoiding advocacy (see WP:SOAP) and abiding by WP:NPOV. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jvanr happens to be forum shopping, so caution should be used here. -- Fyslee (talk) 16:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Five or six editors have now attempted to reason with this SPA, COI editor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AIT is a treatment for a medically-recognised condition, therefore this is a medical topic and the peer-reviewed medical literature is the most appropriate source of citations for the article. Websites associated that promote a fringe theory and are associated with a political pressure group are not by any stretch of the imagination reliable sources for anything apart from the views of their authors. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:31, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree with what Tim wrote. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Living Things (band)

Living Things (band) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views): A non-neutral version full of spelling, formatting, and grammar errors is repeatedly being inserted by Healer313 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who professes to be band management. Reverts anyone who changes this version. Gamaliel (talk) 16:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gamaliel has left an appropriate warning at User talk:Healer313. Gamaliel and an IP editor have now tweaked the article to the point that it is acceptable by wiki standards. If Healer continues to revert to his preferred version, he should be given a short block to get his attention. EdJohnston (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Owner of quack device has received advice

Electro Interstitial Scanner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

According to this section Talk:Electro_Interstitial_Scanner#Designer of the EIS system, the owner has appeared and he has also been attempting to edit the article. I left a welcome message and advice about his COI on his user talk page. I hope he will read and heed it. -- Fyslee (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Link added. Oh, lordy. As far as I can see, there is no notability whatsoever. Whole thing off various promotional websites like EIS System and Cenzitek. I've created an AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Electro Interstitial Scanner. We might also want to look at the contributions of the article creator, Naseem abi shaheen (talk · contribs). Ghod knows what relationship Albert Maarek 174.48.78.92 (talk · contribs) has to this, but the lack of notability is the main thing to consider. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's quacky enough that Barrett has investigated it here.

BTW, that user (Naseem...) has a habit of creating unencyclopedic hagiographical type articles that are lacking in many Wikiformatting respects, as well as not NPOV. For some reason I don't find a "user contributions" link on his userpage. That's rather odd. Is it in mainspace? -- Fyslee (talk) 02:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing the user contributions link, on the left of the user page; not clear why you wouldn't. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marc Mysterio

Marc Mysterio (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Canuckdj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
74.57.187.80 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
209.222.224.161 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

Canuckdj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Repeatedly stated that he is Marc Mysterio, most if not all edits have been centered on Marc Mysterio, including creation of the Marc Mysterio article. He apparently also made numerous attempts as various unsigned IPs to give undue weight to his cover version of a Daft Punk song at the Daft Punk article, but this activity seems to have cooled down. just64helpin (talk) 22:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Scrubbed. Unfortunately, WP:MUSIC is so permissive that an AFD wouldn't work. THF (talk) 23:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I guess administrator intervention is needed, because Canuckdj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and his IP address, 74.57.187.80 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) are now edit-warring on Marc Mysterio and the WP:MOS-mistitled "Let Loose" (Marc Mysterio song), and who knows where-else. Beyond my ability to deal with as an editor without admin tools. THF (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

24 hours for User:Canuckdj and 1 week for 74.57.187.80 (talk · contribs) for abuse of multiple accounts. EdJohnston (talk) 20:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. THF (talk) 20:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now editing from 209.222.224.161 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). -- THF (talk) 18:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've semi-protected the Marc Mysterio article. EdJohnston (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edits made are proporely cited and noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.222.224.161 (talk) 18:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's for regular wiki editors to decide whether your edits are proper. If you showed the slightest interest in following our policies about promotional editing, it might be worth discussing the article with you. Until then, we will simply revert your edits, block and protect as needed. EdJohnston (talk) 18:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SEO Again

Search engine optimization (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Clinton Cimring (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
SEO 2.0 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
ClintonCimring (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Janbellows (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I am concerned about this sequence of apparently promotional edits. The two accounts links about appear to be intertwined in their editing interests. Perhaps they are close friends or even sock puppets. Jehochman ^Talk 01:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SEO 2.0 added to the list. Google the names together (no WP:OUTING problem since both user pages give detailed bios). Clinton Cimring runs an SEO company; Jan Bellows is a client in partnership. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Bellows account is now indef blocked as a sock. ClintonCimring was blocked 31 hours. We should keep an eye on Cimring's contributions after the block expires. I think the supply of good faith is running out fast. EdJohnston (talk) 14:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Egyptian yoga (again)

Egyptian yoga (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - passed to AFD.
Babacar Khane (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Neferhotep (talk · contribs)
85.6.29.182 (talk · contribs)
85.6.11.203 (talk · contribs)

Last year ChildofMidnight raised COI issues - Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 28#Egyptian Yoga - about the now-deleted Egyptian Yoga article (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Egyptian Yoga). A then editor User:HID-IIY took their ball home on January 1st, but I hadn't noticed the article had been recreated and is being edited by a new SPA with the same style, as well as IP edits that track to Switzerland, where the associated Institut International de Yoga is based. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Kappa96 and his "client", LaShawn Pettus Brown

Kappa96 (talk · contribs) got dinged with a couple warnings recently for repeatedly blanking Talk:LaShawn Pettus Brown. Then he left me a message requesting help with "our clients page". I re-evaluated the talk page and found it did indeed need to be trimmed to just project tags, and pointed the user to WP:EDITSUM. Still, the user has edited nothing but his client's page, LaShawn Pettus Brown, so I figured I'd drop a note here for further precautionary examination. Thank you! :) Doulos Christos ♥ talk 11:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Samj and Save the Netbooks

Can you identify any NPOV violations in the article? It's not optimal for an article to be maintained by someone with a COI, but I don't see any obvious indication that User:Samj is violating any Wikipedia rules. Your edits, such as linking to a Wikipedia user on the page, on the other hand, have not been appropriate. THF (talk) 16:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware that linking to user pages from articles (when the identity in question is in the public domain) was deprecated. Can you point me at the relevant WP policy/guideline? 16:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC).

WP:USER: "One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage..." THF (talk) 17:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I stand corrected. But it sounds as if this policy is more to do with maintaining namespace segregation rather than any kind of Wikiquette/privacy issue? Letdorf (talk) 17:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Well, that, and the fact that userspace is beyond other editors' control, and linking to the userspace from mainspace may result in misleading readers. If a RS mentions User:Samj, then you can create a sentence referencing it; otherwise, reliable sources have deemed StN's leadership not notable, and there's no reason for we mere Wikipedia editors to disagree. THF (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the article has now been nominated for deletion by another editor. Letdorf (talk) 21:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

User:Samj needs a cluebat about conduct issues. Finding fault with every user's comment in the AFD doesn't look much like the caution/avoid advice in WP:COI, and there's also been incivility, AFD and COI tag removal and an unproven allegation of sockpuppetry. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So you say. Bear in mind that I've been relentlessly, personally attacked (in my own name, thanks "Letdorf") over this non-profit endeavour both within and outside Wikipedia. The {{COI}} tag placement was unjustified as were the majority of the early votes in the AfD (citing COI without justification). The sockpuppet allegation was also sufficiently curious as to be reopened by another admin after one of the participants in the AfD debate promptly delisted it as "frivolous" and buried it as "irrelevant digression". -- samj _in^out 15:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't understand your objection to being named in the article; on the talk page you voluntarily admitted to being both the creator of the article and the founder of the article's topic, you also explicitly state that the purpose of creating the article was to "to raise awareness of the campaign". Letdorf (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Oh, and is now on a WP:POINT rampage of disputing COI tags and linking to his new essay Wikipedia:Conflict of interest is a cause not a crime. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That essay title can be disputed, but the essay itself seems sound. Too many editors use {{coi}} as a punishment tag, rather than to identify problems with an article. THF (talk) 21:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think people do use it as a punishment tag: more as one indicating the article has an intrinsic risk of bias while a COI editor/article relationship exists. Interpretation of WP:COI does appear to have shifted over the last few years; I take the old-school view that nobody's really capable of writing neutrally about topics where they have an interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But that's not Wikipedia policy, and it's an abuse of the tag to use it that way, as well as dreadfully unfair and uncivil to editors who are adhering to the rules. THF (talk) 15:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I didn't add the {{coi}} to this article as a "punishment", merely as a caveat to readers, who may not have been aware of the authorship of the article. I can see your point about the difficulty of writing neutrally, but IMHO, this particular case is a blatant attempt to use WP to promote a personal crusade. Letdorf (talk) 23:36, 26 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

The sticking point really is "what counts as non-neutrality?". Some say we only need look at internal article content neutrality (which is the thrust of Wikipedia:WHYCOI); others take the view that overall self-promotional edit pattern (e.g. creating and defending articles related to yourself) counts as a more global non-neutrality that also counts as a COI problem. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 23:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Accusations of conflict of interest are extremely serious, both for the article subject and especially for the few of us who choose not to hide behind aliases by editing using our full names (which I note neither of you are - did you stop to think that this little rant will end up in Google?). [Ab]using this tag without supporting violations should arguably be a serious offense in itself (given it is essentially defamatory for both parties) but it's clear that this behaviour is rife and even editors who should know better (yourselves included) apparently do not. The offending essay (which you unfairly characterise as a "WP:POINT rampage") is intended as a gentle reminder rather than tackling the problem head on by wholesale stripping of {{COI}} tags from obviously clean articles. -- samj _in^out 15:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to alter the basis of how WP:COI works, take it to Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest. As far as I'm concerned, creation of self-created articles in inherently suspect as self-promotion. If Category:Wikipedia_articles_with_possible_conflicts_of_interest is getting large, it's because COI article creation is rife, and there's a huge processing backlog. As I said to you, if you feel a COI tag is inappropriate (e.g. because an editor is no longer editing) no-one is stopping you helping to reduce that backlog by properly investigating and removing it. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 17:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:WHYCOI is entirely consistent with WP:COI, as best I can tell. THF (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And attempting to abuse WP for ones own ends is also a serious issue. It is every WP contributors' prerogative to "hide behind aliases" or not; and those that do not would be well advised to be extremely circumspect in what they do on WP, or indeed anywhere else on the Net. Perhaps the best policy for all concerned is to abstain from creating, or making significant contributions to, articles which deal with potentially controversial topics that one is intimately involved with. My interpretation of the {{coi}} tag was purely as a caveat: that the authorship of the article implies that the article may be vulnerable to NPOV or other issues. If this tag is intended to have a stronger meaning than that, then maybe we need another one.

As for the use of the word "rampage", I think this refers to the apparent "spamming" of the essay on numerous talk pages, rather than the essay itself. I'll leave it to other to decide whether essay-spamming is an acceptable activity on WP. Letdorf (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Samj followed WP:COI in good faith, disclosed his COI, and was punished for it with personal attacks and hounding. This is a very good way to ensure that editors with conflicts of interest will instead edit anonymously, and will make WP's COI problem worse, not better. See, e.g., the WP:SPA edits at Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman and Robbins.

And, again, "spam" implies bad faith, of which none has been shown. THF (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a discussion at Template talk:COI about how we can best modify the templates (and create a new one) to avoid the problem we see here where one template is used to do two different things. THF (talk) 18:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lee Hasdell and User:ClaudioProductions, latest round

Lee Hasdell is the father of User:ClaudioProductions and the latter has a bad case of WP:OWN. He is insisting on posting information he has found online on blogs and other non-reliable sources, which confirms other information he says he has from his father the subject. He has been repeatedly blocked for violating the 3RR rule and otherwise editwarring. A number of editors (admins and others) have failed to get through to him. Frankly, I am inclined to say that we need to block him indefinitely for disruptive editing in perpetual violation of WP:NPOV, WP:OWN and WP:RS. Orange Mike | Talk 21:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse ban - I have been keeping tabs on this editor ever since he attempted to do some of the same things to the Tupac Shakur page. But really, how we know that Lee Hasdell is his "dad"? I was going to ask someone that before but figured it was a joke. If this is indeed true, why doesn't his "dad" verify anything? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse ban - i'm not sure if it matters whether lee hasdell is truly his dad or not. if it is his dad, we have a COI editor who refuses to listen, violates WP:OWN, edit wars, and continually wars to add original research and poor sources. if it's not his dad, we have the same situation, except the editor is lying about who his dad is. either way, it's bad. Theserialcomma (talk) 03:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're long past the point where a topic ban restricting him to the talkpage is appropriate. --aktsu ^(t / c) 03:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories

PJHaseldine (talk · contribs) is a proponent of one or more theories covered by Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (article previously named "Alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103"), and also repeated in related articles such as Bernt Carlsson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). His COI over these articles goes back to a socket puppetry case over this article as well as his own biography. A COI case was opened back then, which resulted in him being blocked for a period, as well as agreeing with WP administrators to abide by WP guidlines for making COI edits. However it seems that the agreement has now been cast aside, as we're back in a situation where he is making COI edits to the Pan Am Flight 103 related articles. Part of the issue is that he's been partially successful in the past in using WP as a soapbox - for example, the Scotsman newspaper cut/paste his POV content from this article verbatim some months ago, thereby giving it some mileage (which was promptly self-referenced in the article in an attempt to meet WP's verifiability requirements). However his theory is not published or referenced by any reliable sources, and therefore is being given undue weight as well as being original research. In other words, he has a very strong COI to keep pushing his theory via this article here at WP, as is evident by his track record of ignoring repeated requests/reminders on associated talk pages to follow COI guidlines. Socrates2008 (Talk) 22:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If there is an ongoing COI issue with the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories and Bernt Carlsson articles, it is one that Socrates2008 (talk · contribs) himself has to address. He is a South African editor who does not want to acknowledge the possibility that apartheid South Africa could have been responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. My recent edits to these articles followed his wholesale clean up, for which I congratulated him.---PJHaseldine (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To anyone who may not understand the insult made above, Mr Haseldine is attempting by his comment above to portray me as (racist) apartheid-lover. Please don't let him distract you from his self-stated COI over this article and others related to it. Socrates2008 (Talk) 10:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From Talk:Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories:

I have no COI over this article. However, Socrates2008 appears to have one - see this COI discussion.---PJHaseldine (talk) 20:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, let's quickly summarise your lack of COI, shall we:

You have a personal alternate/conspiracy theory that you have been pushing in multiple WP articles (Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories, Bernt Carlsson, Bankole Timothy, Pan Am Flight 103, Patrick Haseldine, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, your user page), via your blog, from the UK government petitions website (blocked by WP) and other internet locations.
You've been using Wikipedia as your personal website, by maintaining the primary content here that you continue to link to from multiple Internet websites. You therefore have a very strong COI in keeping this content up for all these external links you've created, and for the subject matter to reflect your own POV. Some of this info you have been publishing at WP has been driven from main article space by other editors, but you continue to flaunt WP policies by publishing it on the talk pages instead. (e.g. External links from here to here and from the UK government petitions site (blocked by WP) to here).
You and your theory are not mentioned by any reliable, verifiable sources. (Try searching Google books - nothing). So there are issues of weighting and original research over your theory vs others that are well-published.
You've been representing your theory as fact in the WP articles you've been editing.
You added and defended citations to the Scotsman newspaper, despite knowing that they had cut/paste your WP edits.
You've used multiple accounts in the past to try to hide your edits and to give the impression of consensus when your POV has been challenged. Yes, the socket puppetry now appears to have stopped, but it still illustrates the depth of your COI.
You continue to make COI edits to your own theory in articles such as this one and this one, despite repeated requests (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ) to follow COI guidlines.
You have been edit warring with other editors when your COI/POV content has been removed. (e.g. here)
You are the only person who has been expanding your theory in various WP articles over the past 24 months.
You have now gone back on your own word in a previous COI case where you agreed with Administrators not to make further COI edits.
You edited my first post above to replace Bernt Carlsson with Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories, in an apparent attempt to limit the scope of this COI case.
You have been attacking other editors such as myself that are pointing out your COI, in an attempt to distract attention away from yourself. (e.g. here and here)

So, do you still say you have no COI over the Pan Am 103 conspiracy theories? In answer to your allegation of my own COI, I challenge you firstly to provide the edits; secondly I call your bluff - I will happy sign up for a topic ban across all Pan Am 103 related articles if you do... Socrates2008 (Talk) 06:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Between 23 and 25 February 2009, Socrates2008 made a total of 39 edits to the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories article. His WP:clean up of the article was necessary and long overdue, and I congratulated him for it.

However, Socrates managed to misrepresent - whether deliberately or not - the South-West Africa (Namibia) theory. In particular, he was wrong to say "More recently, the theory has been expanded by Patrick Haseldine from the original version where the South Africans had only been forewarned of the bomb, to one were they were actively involved in its placement. The alleged motive was to assassinate United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, and thereby prevent the transitioning of Namibia to independence. Haseldine cites the following unconnected events to explain his theory here."

As is clear from this discussion on Arthur Rubin's talk page, my alternative theory was first publicised on 7 December 1989, thus pre-dating many of the perhaps more aptly named conspiracy theories.

I therefore corrected Socrates' edits to the South-West Africa (Namibia) section, as follows: "According to another theory, apartheid South Africa was responsible for the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103. The theory is rooted in an allegation made in the film the The Maltese Double Cross and by Die Zeit that the United States government knew of the bomb and warned staff from its embassies in Helsinki and Moscow, as well as a high-level South African delegation, to avoid the flight.[36] Someone allegedly contacted the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland 16 days before the bombing, warning of a bomb on a Pan Am aircraft departing Frankfurt for the US; none of the staff at the Moscow embassy took the flight, despite it being a popular route for them over Christmas.[6] The allegation prompted a strong statement from the then South African Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, (made by his private secretary in November 1994) stating: 'Had he known of the bomb, no force on earth would have stopped him from seeing to it that flight 103, with its deadly cargo, would not have left the airport'."[37][6]

"Initial allegations of South African responsibility for the bombing were made in a series of letters by former British diplomat, Patrick Haseldine, that were published in The Guardian newspaper between December 1989 and December 1993.[38][39] Haseldine did not accept that the South Africans had simply been forewarned of the bomb, but were actively involved in its placement. The alleged motive was to assassinate United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, and to frustrate Namibia's progress towards independence from South African rule. Haseldine cites a number of related events to support his theory:[40]

Signing of the Namibia independence agreement on 22 December 1988 (the day after the Lockerbie bombing) at UN headquarters.
Cancellation at short notice of a booking on PA 103 by a 23-strong South African delegation, headed by foreign minister Pik Botha, and including defence minister Magnus Malan and director of military intelligence General C J Van Tonder.
The last-minute change of travel plan by Bernt Carlsson. Instead of flying direct from Brussels to New York on December 20, Carlsson was persuaded by a representative of De Beers to stop over in London the following day and to join the PA 103 transatlantic flight."[41][42]

"He also links a version of his South-West Africa (Namibia) theory to the Joe Vialls "radio detonation" theory."

I stand by this version of the South-West Africa (Namibia) theory in preference to the incorrect one made by Socrates2008 (to which Arthur Rubin has reverted).

Wikipedia editors each have their own subjects of interest and expertise. As a British Wikipedian, my main subject of interest (and expertise) is the Lockerbie bombing. As befits a South African editor, Socrates2008 shows a great interest in South African battles and in aircrashes. His compatriot, Deon Steyn, also concentrates on South African military-related subjects. Neither editor seems to accept that he could have a conflict of interest in editing in his own subject interest areas, nor in their both collaborating to mount a concerted attack on the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories article.

In summary, I accept that WP:COI prevents me from editing my own biography. However, I should not be restricted from editing elsewhere on Wikipedia, just as Socrates2008 should continue to edit articles such as the Vela incident, and Deon Steyn can edit Koevoet without restriction.---PJHaseldine (talk) 13:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Final response:

You've failed to address any of the COI complaints raised against you.
COI guidlines, with which you are already familiar from your biography, would allow you to express any concerns over your own theories via the relevant talk page.
My "collaboration" 18 months ago with user:Deon Steyn was limited specifically to rooting out the 4 socket puppet accounts that you were using to edit your own theory and bio.
Your attempt at painting me as an apartheid racist/militarist is not working. Kindly refrain from making further attempts at guessing my politics, as they are insulting far off the mark. Unlike you, I am not forwarding any original fringe theories or politics of my own here at WP. (I edit a wide range of articles, and have submitted a number of good articles) PS: Nice try once again trying to deflect the attention off yourself.
As above, you should absolutely be restricted from editing your own theories on WP - that is EXACTLY what the WP COI policy is all about adressing. Socrates2008 (Talk) 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now would be a fine point at which an Admin could review this case and take decisive action. Thank you. Socrates2008 (Talk) 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem here is that it is only the South African Wikipedia editor, Socrates2008, who has raised this plethora of what he calls "COI complaints" against me. I have replied to his catalogue of criticism in a perfectly reasonable way, but he responds by unjustifiably accusing me of painting him "as an apartheid racist/militarist".

I would hope that when an Admin does come to "review this case and take decisive action", he will take action against both Socrates2008 and Deon Steyn for collaborating to mount a concerted attack on the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories article.---PJHaseldine (talk) 16:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Commonweal Institute

Commonweal Institute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A whole batch of SPAs, some recently created, two with names of Institute employees, started editing this article, really WP:LARDing it up. THF (talk) 19:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forum for Stable Currencies

Forum for Stable Currencies (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) I have moved this article from userspace, so the link below is no longer current. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Volunteers,

It felt as if I had my wrists slapped when User:Cameron Scott slammed the notice "run of the mill pressure group" and the threat of deletion down, and like a wounded animal, I accepted the proposed deletion. But out of the blue of Wikipedia's cyber space came help. Now User:Moonriddengirl has userfied and repaired the article such that I'd welcome your critique.

Is this now "fit for publishing"?

Yes, my Conflict of Interest is pure passion, combined with commitment, perseverance and persistence. But I am perfectly neutral, information and informational as well. And I do appreciate communication of the kinder kind.

Looking very much forward to your comments,

Sabine McNeill (talk) 22:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article looks fine and I don't see much evidence of a COI in it as it is currently written. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's not a "run of the mill pressure group" after all? Could you maybe have referred me to WP:ORG on a neutral level of conversation?

Sabine McNeill (talk) 10:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me also: well-sourced and neutral in tone. Only thing I'd suggest is that the links to the blog and meetings archive are unnecessary as, although they're at different URLs, they're both readily accessible as menu items on the main site. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You!

Sabine McNeill (talk) 10:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Maybe it's not a "run of the mill pressure group" after all?" actually I still think that this is the case but the additional sources just about get it past our notability standards and I'm not going to argue the toss over it at AFD or the like. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion the article needs more work. The opening sentence uses the jargon of a particular philosophy, by saying: "Forum for Stable Currencies is a political advocacy group in the United Kingdom seeking economic democracy through freedom from national debt." Economic democracy, though we have an article on it, is not a neutral term that all groups agree on the meaning of. It's a code-word like social credit that goes along with a certain political view. (It doesn't help to explain the views of a group to our readers by using one of their own buzzwords as part of the definition). My quick scan of the article suggests that the supporters of this group hold views that are very non-standard among regular economists, so a bit of outside perspective, like a criticism section, would be good to have. EdJohnston (talk) 06:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, when the original contributor of this content asked me to restore the originally PRODded article, she also asked for assistance with the issues that led to its deletion. I added literally every reliable source I could access (and one that I've since learned was unreliable). There is at least one other source that discusses this group, a November 10, 2003 article in the New Statesman (see [49]), but I can't access it. It doesn't look extensive. As for the rest, I'm helpless in this respect. :) I took Econ I in my first semester of college and never looked back. I have removed the resolved tag, though, since it seems more conversation may be appropriate. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gavin Lurssen

User:Themfromspace and John Stuart Yeates, Daily Record (Maryland), etc.

John Stuart Yeates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Daily Record (Maryland) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

User:Themfromspace recently tagged the John Stuart Yeates article, written by User:Stuartyeates about his late grandfather. The article appears to be of a high standard and lacking of any other violations (e.g. WP:NPOV) that this conflict may have given rise to. In the absence of any other problems the {{COI}} cleanup template should be removed. It's somehwhat ironic to see Friendly being used in this fashion to WP:BITE the newbies. From feedback given in the case of Daily Record (Maryland) (another seemingly inappropriately tagged article) this editor "strongly believe[s] that any users of this article should be aware that the article was typed by a person very likely to be personally related to the company". Again, if the conflict has not given rise to other issues the tag should be removed. To their credit, articles like Mian Muhammad Aslam Advocate by User:Mianhammad59 stating that subject "successfully emerged as one of the best lawyers of Punjab province" are appropriately tagged. -- samj _in^out 04:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as I have already explained to this user elswhere, I believe the COI tag should remain on the articles for as long as significant amounts of information on the article have been edited in a conflict of interest. This is to let reader's of the article know that the article isn't up to the normal standards of a community edited encyclopedia. It's also to let Wikipedians know that the article needs worked on and spotted for behavioural issues and POV problems. I believe that what I am doing is the standard procedure when working with articles that have been edited by COI editors. Themfromspace (talk) 08:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As User:THF said above, "But that's not Wikipedia policy, and it's an abuse of the tag to use it that way, as well as dreadfully unfair and uncivil to editors who are adhering to the rules.". I couldn't have said it better myself. Many (most?) articles are not community edited anyway. -- samj _in^out 11:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem here is in the wording of the template. I have no problem with the use of the COI tag being used (in this case anyway, I don't have the depth of experience to speak in generalities), but it would be great if it would be changed slightly to more of an encouragement for third party readers to contribute. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC) (hope I got the formatting right)[reply]

John Stuart Yeates appears to be a notable botanist. I hope that whoever is actively working on this article, conflicted or not, will wind up improving the references to a satisfactory level. We would at least expect someone to do a search of worldcat.org to see if any of his publications are found in libraries. (That would allow supplying complete references for his books). If he published any well-known scientific papers, please refer to them, and supply full citations. The bios in Who's Who are essentially self-published so they may not merit inclusion.
Daily Record (Maryland). This is a paradox, because one would think that a statewide daily newpaper would easily be notable, but I can see no third-party coverage at all! If no sources can truly be found, the article needs to be quite a bit shorter. The 18 items that are now in the reference list look like advertising blurbs or directory entries -- nothing that can establish the importance of the paper. (Except for that NNA award which, we are told, is given to small newspapers with under-16,000 circulation. WP has no article on the National Newspaper Association so it is hard to know if this award is significant). EdJohnston (talk) 02:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of the time where I see an award listed like this it is to establish notability (usually there's some edit summary or talk page evidence of this). I'm not sure in this case but the references are indeed lacking so I've added {{refimprove}}. As you say, it is somewhat the paradox - maybe it's just a secondary source (presumably, like blogs, there are many newspapers that quote others but are rarely quoted themselves). Do you see any reason to keep the {{COI}} tag in addition to the {{refimprove}} tag? -- samj _in^out 11:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Microcredit Summit Campaign

Microcredit Summit Campaign (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Accounts

Microcreditsummit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
Jbmatu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
63.139.76.163 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)

Self evident case of COI. Intervention in the name of Neutrality is desperately needed. Thanks--Hu12 (talk) 05:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tagged for Notability. This seems to be a kind of monitoring organization that wants to track and summarize the progress of microcredit. It does not appear to make any loans directly, but they hold conferences. This group is not very well known, judging from Google searches, and if no reliable sources are found, it could be a candidate for deletion. They did get a grant of $700,000 from the Gates Foundation, so somebody takes them seriously, but hardly anyone seems to write about them. If they do serious survey work in the field, perhaps they have academic publications? EdJohnston (talk) 06:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Thomas Hoeren and User:Putzlappen‎

These users have to date only editted Thomas Hoeren‎ [50] [51]. I am fairly confident one is the sock of the other (reported here and thus they are both the subject of the article. Babakathy (talk) 21:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks to me that Thomas Hoeren, the German law professor, is notable. The article could be improved. I wonder if anyone has time to rewrite it :-). The many, many red links to organizations he is associated with don't assist the English-speaking reader very much. Stuff that cannot be provided with an on-line reference might be briefly summarized. I checked his article in the German wiki; it has many red links as well, but is somewhat better written. EdJohnston (talk) 04:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree he passes wp:prof. My concern was the COI. Babakathy (talk) 09:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have cross-checked and verified main claims in article. Suggest case can be closed. Babakathy (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Dcourtneyjohnson

Dcourtneyjohnson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Every edit this user has made has been self-promotional except for the ones that have simply been unsourced POV-pushing. He threw a fit and accused me of being part of a right-wing conspiracy to silence him when I pointed out some suspicious sock-puppet behavior and nominated his unreferenced autobiography for deletion, so if other editors who are not part of the right-wing conspiracy can be the ones to explain Wikipedia policies to him, it would be useful.

In addition, this is a good opportunity to ask whether Mr. Johnson is subject to the same de facto topic ban that I am; every time I edit a tort-reform-related article, there is a gigantic fuss, no matter how Wikipedia-compliant my edits are. I'd like standards to be uniform here, given that Mr. Johnson claims his expertise in tort reform in his autobiography, and given that he is not even attempting to follow the rules about neutral and self-promotional editing. THF (talk) 03:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:YP09

YP09 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Only creates spam articles related to mediterranean middle east Yellow Pages. Articles are speedy deleted, but user once recreated a deleted article, requiring a double delete. Has anti-spam warnings up to level three, and latest article has been tagged for speedy. When I first encountered the user, I went to UAA, but the admins considered the username to vague for a promotional block. Now I ask for a permanent block due to spaming. I mean, YP09 clearly means "Yellow Pages 09", and the user has done nothing but spam wikipedia with Yellow Pages articles. --Cerejota (talk) 12:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 645: / Line 645: @@
 :In summary, I accept that [[WP:COI]] prevents me from editing my own [[Patrick Haseldine|biography]]. However, I should not be restricted from editing elsewhere on Wikipedia, just as [[User:Socrates2008|Socrates2008]] should continue to edit articles such as the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vela_Incident&action=history Vela incident,] and [[User:Deon Steyn|Deon Steyn]] can edit [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Koevoet&offset=20070525105440&action=history Koevoet] without restriction.---[[User:PJHaseldine|PJHaseldine]] ([[User talk:PJHaseldine|talk]]) 13:08, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
-Final response:
+::Final response:
-*You've failed to address any of the COI complaints raised against you.
+:*You've failed to address any of the COI complaints raised against you.
-*[[WP:Suggestions for COI compliance|COI guidlines]], with which you are already familiar from your biography, would allow you to express any concerns over your own theories via the relevant talk page.
+:*[[WP:Suggestions for COI compliance|COI guidlines]], with which you are already familiar from your biography, would allow you to express any concerns over your own theories via the relevant talk page.
-*My "collaboration" 18 months ago with [[user:Deon Steyn]] was limited specifically to rooting out the 4 socket puppet accounts that you were using to edit your own theory and bio.
+:*My "collaboration" 18 months ago with [[user:Deon Steyn]] was limited specifically to rooting out the 4 socket puppet accounts that you were using to edit your own theory and bio.
-*Your attempt at painting me as an apartheid racist/militarist is not working.  Kindly refrain from making further attempts at guessing my politics, as they are insulting far off the mark.  Unlike you, I am not forwarding any original fringe theories or politics of my own here at WP.  (I edit a wide range of articles, and have submitted a number of [[WP:GA|good articles]])  PS: Nice try once again trying to deflect the attention off yourself.
+:*Your attempt at painting me as an apartheid racist/militarist is not working.  Kindly refrain from making further attempts at guessing my politics, as they are insulting far off the mark.  Unlike you, I am not forwarding any original fringe theories or politics of my own here at WP.  (I edit a wide range of articles, and have submitted a number of [[WP:GA|good articles]])  PS: Nice try once again trying to deflect the attention off yourself.
-*As above, you should absolutely be restricted from editing your own theories on WP - that is EXACTLY what the WP [[WP:COI|COI]] policy is all about adressing. <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva"><font color="black"><font size="4">Socrates2008 (<font size=3>[[User talk:Socrates2008|Talk]]</font>)</font></font></font> 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
+:*As above, you should absolutely be restricted from editing your own theories on WP - that is EXACTLY what the WP [[WP:COI|COI]] policy is all about adressing. <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva"><font color="black"><font size="4">Socrates2008 (<font size=3>[[User talk:Socrates2008|Talk]]</font>)</font></font></font> 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
-Now would be a fine point at which an Admin could review this case and take decisive action.  Thank you. <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva"><font color="black"><font size="4">Socrates2008 (<font size=3>[[User talk:Socrates2008|Talk]]</font>)</font></font></font> 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
+::Now would be a fine point at which an Admin could review this case and take decisive action.  Thank you. <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva"><font color="black"><font size="4">Socrates2008 (<font size=3>[[User talk:Socrates2008|Talk]]</font>)</font></font></font> 13:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
+:::The problem here is that it is only the South African Wikipedia editor, [[User:Socrates2008|Socrates2008]], who has raised this plethora of what he calls "COI complaints" against me. I have replied to his catalogue of criticism in a perfectly reasonable way, but he responds by unjustifiably accusing me of painting him "as an apartheid racist/militarist".
+:::I would hope that when an Admin does come to "review this case and take decisive action", he will take action against both [[User:Socrates2008|Socrates2008]] and [[User:Deon Steyn|Deon Steyn]] for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pan_Am_Flight_103_conspiracy_theories#Concerted_attack_on_this_article_.28and_others_linked_to_it.29 collaborating to mount a concerted attack on the Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories article.]---[[User:PJHaseldine|PJHaseldine]] ([[User talk:PJHaseldine|talk]]) 16:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 == [[Commonweal Institute]] ==

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