Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard

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Welcome to Conflict of interest Noticeboard (COIN)
Sections older than 14 days archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) 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.
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Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests is where COI editors have placed the {{edit COI}} template: Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests Talk:AGX Multiphysics Talk:James F. Allen (businessman) Talk:American Council on Education Talk:American Water Works Talk:Anaxam Talk:Florence Ashley Talk:Astex Pharmaceuticals Talk:Roy Bahat Talk:Bank of Greene County Talk:Rich Barton Talk:Bastion (agency) Talk:Bending Spoons Talk:Marc Benioff Talk:Bound (2023 film) Talk:Breyers Talk:Brookfield Properties Talk:Burford Capital Talk:Mike Cannon-Brookes Talk:Sukhinder Singh Cassidy Talk:Sonia Chang-Díaz Talk:Change Healthcare Talk:Character.ai Talk:Chime (company) Talk:Sujit Choudhry Talk:Citadel Securities Talk:Civic Hall at Union Square Talk:Slaid Cleaves Talk:CoBank Talk:Cohen Milstein Talk:Aaron Cohen-Gadol Talk:Community-engaged research Talk:The Culinary Institute of America Talk:Dahua Technology Talk:Dark Castle Entertainment Talk:Louis DeJoy Talk:Paul Devlin (filmmaker) Talk:Nina L. Diaz Talk:Daniel Diermeier Talk:DISA (company) Talk:Dixy Chicken Talk:Ed Dodds Talk:Double Union Talk:Earth Journalism Network Talk:Mary Baker Eddy Talk:EF Education First Talk:ESAB Talk:Ex Libris Group Talk:Far East Organization Talk:Farm Credit Council Talk:Farm Credit of New Mexico Talk:Scott Farquhar Talk:Fastly Talk:Mark Felton Talk:Anne Finucane Talk:Florida Power & Light Talk:Bryan Fogel Talk:Forecasting Love and Weather Talk:John Freund (business executive) Talk:Bradley Fried Talk:Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media Talk:Judy Genshaft Talk:Geotab Talk:Kellie Gerardi Talk:GetYourGuide Talk:GLX Digital Talk:GoDigital Media Group Talk:Colin Goldberg Talk:Grail (company) Talk:Kenneth C. Griffin Talk:Steven Grinspoon Talk:Grove Collaborative Talk:Shashi Gupta Talk:H.B. Fuller Talk:Holly Ham Talk:Jacob Helberg Talk:Henley & Partners Talk:Heterodox Academy Talk:Eric Hippeau Talk:Human Appeal Talk:Index Ventures Talk:Industrious Talk:Infillion Talk:Institutional Venture Partners Talk:International Churches of Christ Talk:Sultan Al Jaber Talk:Simcha Jacobovici Talk:Valerie Jarrett Talk:Edward D. "Ted" Jones Talk:Michael Jones (entrepreneur) Talk:Jeffrey Katzenberg Talk:King the Land Talk:A. Gary Klesch Talk:Karl Lagerfeld Talk:LD (cigarette) Talk:Dion Lee Talk:Jeffrey Leiden Talk:Dafna Lemish Talk:Ronnie Liang Talk:Library of Congress Subject Headings Talk:List of people from Darwin Talk:List of University of Queensland people Talk:Robert Luciano Talk:Geoffrey von Maltzahn Talk:Masdar Talk:McCain Institute Talk:Media.Monks Talk:Metlifecare Talk:Christos Metskas Talk:MoneyWeek Talk:MP Materials Talk:Netvibes Talk:Neuroscience Research Australia Talk:List of New School people Talk:NextEra Energy Talk:David Nirenberg Talk:Nondestructive Evaluation 4.0 Talk:Oasis Management Talk:Olivier Cornet Gallery Talk:OneHope Talk:Oregon Public Broadcasting Talk:OUTtv (Canadian TV channel) Talk:V Pappas Talk:Dana G. Peleg Talk:Gregory Pence Talk:Perkins Eastman Talk:Pershing Square Capital Management Talk:Pink Ribbon (snooker) Talk:Matthew Pittinsky Talk:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Talk:Profire Energy Talk:Pure Storage Talk:Qiagen Talk:Quantitative storytelling Talk:Linda Rabbitt Talk:Shlomo Rakib Talk:Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership Talk:Revel Transit Talk:Revolut Talk:Eric Rubin Talk:Roland Rudd Talk:Jay Ruderman Talk:Rick Sanchez (journalist) Talk:Scandia (theme parks) Talk:Stephen Schlesinger Talk:Schott AG Talk:Science Inc. Talk:Milton Shedd Talk:Site Number 4 Mnt 85 Talk:Dragan Šolak (businessman) Talk:SolidWorks Talk:SoundExchange Talk:South Fort Myers High School Talk:Space Capital Talk:Spotfire Talk:A. G. Sulzberger Talk:Sysco Talk:TaskUs Talk:Tenants and Owners Development Corporation Talk:Tencent Talk:The Red Sleeve Talk:Theatre Development Fund Talk:Topps Talk:Traton Talk:Jean-Pascal Tricoire Talk:Edward Trobaugh Talk:Maria-Ana Tupan Talk:UK Biobank Talk:Carla Ulbrich Talk:United Launch Alliance Talk:United States Postal Service Talk:UnitedHealth Group Talk:Up TV Talk:Veris Residential Talk:Versapay Talk:Terry Wahls Talk:Dashun Wang Talk:Washington University Medical Center Talk:Joey Wat Talk:Mark Weisbrot Talk:Xavier University Talk:Sam Yagan Talk:Yelp Talk:Zero-day vulnerability Talk:Zillow Talk:Zions Bancorporation

Hundreds of RNA motif pages

• Drum RNA motif (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• over 200 other pages (all created by user)
• Zashaw (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

In the discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drum RNA motif it was noticed that there are many similar articles created by the same user. The user provides enough information on their user page to confirm that they are part of the group that published the article that is the sole reference. The user's contributions to this (and the other pages I'm about to mention) were long enough ago that it is not an issue of continued user behavior, but rather a big cleanup problem.

Turns out there are over 200 pages with a title that includes RNA motif that were created by this user and rely solely on several research papers published by this group. All the pages that rely on a single paper present the issue in WP:SCHOLARSHIP, that there isn't confirmation that the finding is confirmed or significant, so all the pages at the least need review to see whether they should be deleted, and perhaps should all be presumptively deleted.

However, none of the participants in the discussion up to now (including myself) have enough expertise in the field to ask for all the pages to be deleted without review. Someone who is conversant in the field may be able to confirm my suspicion that these 200+ pages represent findings from an individual lab and are either not significant or WP:TOOSOON without confirmatory work by other investigators.

In short, I'm looking for help in sorting this all out.-- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 04:51, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for alerting me to this discussion on my talk page, rsjaffe. As I understand it, you have two related concerns. First, these RNA motifs appear to be based only on primary literature, and not secondary literature. Secondly, they indeed derive from my own research, and so there appears to be a conflict of interest in my writing Wikipedia articles on them.

What is perhaps not made sufficiently clear in these articles is that the relevant RNAs were included in the Rfam Database. Rfam (see the citations in the Wikipedia article) is a database of different types of RNAs with a conserved structure, and its content undergoes significant curation by expert bioinformaticians, both in deciding which RNAs merit inclusion and what data about those RNAs to provide. It also provides data necessary for further scientific analysis of the RNAs.

With regard to the apparent lack of secondary source: The Rfam Database seems to me to qualify as a secondary source, since it is essentially a hand-curated encyclopedia of structured RNAs that meet Rfam's criteria (as I understand it, essentially that there is evidence of biologically relevant structure and function and that the data are meaningful). Therefore, I believe these Wikipedia pages are supported by a secondary source. You can confirm their inclusion in Rfam for yourself by looking for Rfam's information box in the relevant pages, introduced with the {{Infobox rfam ...}} tag in the markup. All data in this info box comes from the Rfam database. Beside the term "Rfam" is the accession for the given RNA and a link to its entry in Rfam. For example, on the Drum RNA motif page, you can click on the accession RF02958 (lower, right part of the page). Such links should be provided for all RNA articles I have added to Wikipedia.

With regard to the apparent conflict of interest: The Rfam Database is maintained by a group at the European Bioinformatics Institute and this group was previously located at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. I have never had any affliation with either of these institutions, nor do I have any power to make Rfam incorporate specific RNAs into their database. Indeed some of the RNAs I have published were not included in the Rfam Database, and these RNAs do not have corresponding Wikipedia articles. Thus, I did not really decide to put these RNAs into Wikipedia, rather the Rfam group did. I just did the work to create the Wikipedia article in many cases.

In terms of resolving this issue, perhaps it would be helpful to have an "External links" section in the affected articles that explicitly links to Rfam, although I'm not sure how to practically do this with hundreds of articles.

I have alerted the Rfam team to this page, in case they want to weigh in. I will also link to my text here from the Articles for Deletion entry for the Drum RNA motif page, since I see that the same issues are being discussed there.

Zashaw (talk) 13:55, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

There are methods to edit large numbers of articles to emplace similar edits, so that’s not an impossible task if that would resolve the issue with lack of secondary references. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 15:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Comment As the current head of Rfam, I would like to voice my support for keeping the articles authored by Zasha Weinberg (Zashaw). These articles accompany the entries in the Rfam database of RNA families that capture the data reported in the scientific literature and create computational models to enable identification of these RNAs in any sequence. Rfam staff include trained bioinformaticians and RNA biologists who carefully review all entries and provide additional verification that these RNAs are important (Rfam is not affiliated with Zasha Weinberg or his institution). For example, a Wikipedia article about the Drum RNA is part of the Rfam entry RF02958 and includes an infobox showing metadata from Rfam. Many RNAs discovered by Zasha Weinberg have been later shown to serve important functions, so it is important to have Wikipedia entries that describe what these RNAs are. Having scientists like Zasha Weinberg provide starting points for Wikipedia entries about different RNAs is valuable because these pages are then edited and expanded by the community. In fact, Rfam pioneered the integration with Wikipedia over a decade ago (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013711/), and we found that connecting the scientists and the community through Wikipedia has been very successful. Antonipetrov (talk) 14:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's a significant COI issue here. Yes, Zashaw could mention Rfam on their userpage to be clearer that there's a connection to it, but the actual work they're doing isn't particularly affected by their professional connection to the topic (and the self-cite is probably reasonable in this instance given the topic. The discussion of notability of the articles is a separate (and much broader) issue, so I'll add more at WP:Articles_for_deletion/Drum_RNA_motif which I think is the main location for that discussion. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 01:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

As someone involved in the beginning of rfam/pfam, I would also like to voice my strong support for keeping these articles! Magnus Manske (talk) 14:49, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Help wanted We're continuing to discuss whether Drum RNA motif should be deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drum RNA motif, and I suspect the outcome of the discussion there should inform what happens here next. I came to the COI notice board for help, as I realized that we needed a lot more scrutiny of this issue, as it affects hundreds of pages, and this noticeboard seemed to be the most relevant (though not a perfect fit to the issue at hand). I invite administrators and other knowledgeable people to review the deletion discussion and weigh in if appropriate. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 00:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Magnus Manske: Any chance you could take a look at this, having been involved in the early bioinformatics integrations? It's pretty clear that these articles don't meet our current notability standards and to me, the solution could be that there is an Rfam wiki where reseachers such as Zashaw can write about them, and then if they then become notable, we can copy from that wiki to here in the future. If a Wikipedia article existed, then that would take priority over the Rfam wiki i.e. there would only ever be one version of an article. Is this something that might be feasible for you Antonipetrov? I admittedly have no experience in WP:TRANSWIKI but I am sure someone does. SmartSE (talk) 10:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• I am afraid that I do not agree with the point that these articles do not meet the notability standards. These entries describe RNA genes that are found in many different organisms, including human pathogens. Even if we do not yet know all of their functions, these RNA have evolved over a long time and do play important roles that will eventually be revealed. The Rfam team works on a wide range of RNAs, including viral RNAs and RNA motifs found in Coronaviruses. Several years ago one could have argued that those entries and the corresponding Wiki articles were not important enough, which would have been misguided as recently these RNAs turned out to be rather notable. Many of the pages that are being discussed here have been improved over the years by Wikipedians who are not necessarily scientists but who wanted to contribute to a valuable resource. Relegating this important information to a separate wiki would create a barrier between the public and the scientific endeavour. Antonipetrov (talk) 11:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Antonipetrov: They unequivocally do not meet the general notability guideline at present if they are only discussed in a single publication and that is the only yardstick of notability relevant here. From a random selection of pages created by Zashaw, I can't see anything to support "Many of the pages that are being discussed here have been improved over the years by Wikipedians": [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. SmartSE (talk) 13:21, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Smartse: The first example that immediately comes to mind is Fluoride riboswitch. The page was started as crcB RNA motif and many years later this RNA was shown to act as fluoride riboswitch. I can look up other examples like this if it helps. I do appreciate the need to weed out irrelevant articles that do not serve any purpose except to promote the author(s). Zashaw's case could not be further from this - if anything, it is a great example of collaboration and open science. Rfam database serves as a second publication supporting these pages because we publish bi-annual updates in the Nucleic Acids Research (since 2002!) and we could have easily included a table listing all of these RNAs and new information discovered about them by our team at Rfam. We did not do it because it would be redundant with Rfam itself and it never occurred to us that the notability of this work would be questioned but we could have satisfied the formal criteria with ease. Antonipetrov (talk) 13:40, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Antonipetrov: Thanks for the example. When it was created that article had only a single journal article reference like most of the articles under discussion and assuming that was all that existed, did not meet GNG. When this and the corresponding article in Science was published, it became notable. Now there are hundreds of articles mentioning it. Wikipedia isn't into cataloging things which might become notable at some point in the future - if it did then every person and business would merit an article as they might one day become Bill Gates / Google etc. Personally I don't see that COI is much of an issue here, as you are all clearly trying to benefit the project rather than yourselves, but that doesn't change the fact that this content doesn't belong here. SmartSE (talk) 16:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Smartse: I am afraid that I do not agree with the analogies between RNA genes and people, movies, or other items that may or may not become notable. The genes - be it RNA or protein - exist in the living beings around us. They are notable regardless of the number of scientific papers about them. Importantly, we are not talking about every single gene - we are talking about a high-quality, manually curated subset of RNA genes that have been discovered by Zashaw and then manually reviewed by me (Antonipetrov), my team, or our predecessors at Rfam, who are all trained biologists. Our review is not superficial. We perform a lot of quality control steps and analyses, and in some cases we change the data submitted to us by Zashaw. As a result we produce entries in the Rfam database that are linked to the corresponding Wikipedia entries and are represented by the Rfam infoboxes. I am not sure I understand why all this work does not qualify as a secondary source, and I continue to express my support for keeping these Wikipedia entries. Antonipetrov (talk) 16:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• This is notable basic biology. There seems to be some misplaced concern that there are too many articles, being added indiscriminately. I think the situation is, rather, the very rapid progress in molecular biology that makes identifying significant structures much more feasible. Most of them are being discussed further, and if we start having discussions over each of them, by the time the discussions and the likely appeals and subsidiarty dscussions are finished, there will be sources. Some areas in science move faster than AfD and other WP processes . DGG ( talk ) 02:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
• Request to close this issue Discussion concluded on nomination for deletion as No consensus with recommendation to open RfC to resolve the issue.-- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 20:49, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

No need for an RfC. I do not see any issue whatsoever. Actually, this is excellent work by a number of contributors. My very best wishes (talk) 00:30, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Very suspicious editor with IP address 96.231.39.34 is editing the AdvisorShares page

• AdvisorShares (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Fund.com (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• 96.231.39.34 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 173.66.193.112 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Just looking at the timing and contents of edits, as well as using Wikipedia's geolocate link on their IP addresses, it appears that blocked user with IP address 173.66.193.112 and user 96.231.39.34 are the same person. In addition, using geolocate shows that they are using computers near AdvisorShare's office. All of their edits are deletions of publicly available material involving AdvisorShares and additions of unsourced information that almost surely would only be known to a company insider. It seems obvious that they are trying to change the AdvisorShares page to a promotional page. 96.231.39.34's first edit was on October 4, 2021, where they deleted information about AdvisorShares, whose source was the US governmental regulator the SEC, from the Fund.com page without explanation. 96.231.39.34 tried to replace a link about a court case regarding the ownership of the company with the company's own Twitter page. This user also obviously doesn't know the rules around editing Wikipedia. They just make deletions without explanations or add unsourced comments. On December 2, 2021 when one IP address was blocked (173.66.193.112) another one (96.231.39.34) tried to make edits on the same day. In their latest edits from December 2, 2021 they basically just complain that everything written in these publicly available articles and documents from the SEC and US courts are lies and that Wikipedia is rigged. They never cite publicly available information to support the cases they want to make. If you read their comments and explanations, they're not even trying to hide that they have a conflict of interest, in part because they use information that only an AdvisorShares' insider would know. After the name of Charles Robertson under Key People, 173.66.193.112 added "(deceased from reading this slander about AdvisorSahres)". After a quote that Charles Biderman gave to a journalist, 173.66.193.112 adds "the facts are they were notified of the reasons, and they chose not to make them public)". Libertyandjustice (talk) 16:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

• I've semiprotected AdvisorShares and Fund.com for two months each. No objection if another admin wants to block one or more of the above IPs. EdJohnston (talk) 20:11, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Louis B. Rosenberg & Zoe Rosenberg & Unanimous A.I.

• Unanimous_A.I. (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Louis B. Rosenberg (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Zoe Rosenberg (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Virtual fixture (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (added by SVTCobra 02:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC))
• Collective intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Swarm intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Outland_Pix (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Outland_Pictures (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Augmented Vitality (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• AR Trends (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 174.87.70.118 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 173.73.139.240 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 136.179.21.78 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 81.92.245.46 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• UnanimousImage (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) already blocked (added by SVTCobra 07:33, 5 December 2021 (UTC))
• GardenM (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (added by SVTCobra 07:33, 5 December 2021 (UTC))

First of all, very new to editing, I'm unsure about correct procedure. I have been improving the Metaverse article, and the most recent edit was from an unregistered user adding a reference to a newly published article in VentureBeat. I was suspicious about the addition, and checked the anonymous user's contributions. Their only other contribution was to the Wikipedia page of the article's author which set off alarm bells. The author's Wikipedia page reads like pure sales copy, as does the Wikipedia page of Louis B. Rosenberg's company, Unanimous A.I. On inspection, there is a pattern of puffery and inserting editorialized sources to articles authored by Louis B. Rosenberg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrigadierG (talk • contribs)

I added virtual fixture to the list. Seems related. --SVTCobra 02:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I've added (and will notify) users Augmented Vitality and AR Trends (in this context, "AR" likely stands for augmented reality). Based on topic-related username and overlapping edits, these both also seem related. Or maybe a separate group? I dunno.

The two Outlands accounts could be blocked as promotional usernames which implied shared use (per WP:ISU etc.). Since neither of them has been active recently, this isn't pressing, but it does further suggest something fishy has been going on. Grayfell (talk) 05:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• @BrigadierG: Did you see the notice at the top of this page telling you that you are required to notify all users of any discussion which involves them? I have posted the required notices for you. Please be sure and notify any additional editors if they are added. Grayfell (talk) 05:07, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
• @Grayfell: my apologies. I will ensure I do that in future. Forgive my ineptitude, and thank you to whoever fixed my horribly broken formatting. BrigadierG (talk) 05:13, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I added User:GardenM (commons) and User:UnanimousImage (commons). These two accounts are largely responsible for uploading images to Commons and adding them to the aforementioned articles. --SVTCobra 09:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• I've nominated the Zoe Rosenberg page for deletion here BrigadierG (talk) 00:12, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

FYI, on Commons, Outland Pix repeatedly uploaded a photo I took of Zoe, falsely claiming as their own; see their talk page for long list of those and other copyvios. Funcrunch (talk) 03:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

See also this exchange on Commons for further context. Funcrunch (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

• These two accounts were both created within a couple hourse of each other:

• Sechnotot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jellostand22 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

One edited Louis B. Rosenberg while the other edited Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Louis B. Rosenberg. The end result of both edits, regardless of intention, seems to be to preserve the article by trimming the most superficially and obviously objectionable content. While this would be a good starting point, I don't think it's enough, and much of the content still in the article is still poorly sourced and overly promotional. Having two brand new accounts created just to tackle this issue is yet another sign of something weird going on. Perhaps they will comment about it here. Grayfell (talk) 01:16, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Someone has seemingly put a lot of effort into seeding this guy into Wikipedia, and someone seemingly noticed very quickly once he was nominated for deletion. This level of activism is very concerning. BrigadierG (talk) 21:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Sechnotot, User:Jellostand22, and User:Nipomoham have been confirmed to be sockpuppets (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sechnotot/Archive. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 18:45, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Christopher Bauman

• Draft:Christopher Bauman (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This draft is entirely the work of unregistered editors, who are removing the AFC comments and resubmitting it tendentiously. Do we have a clue whether there is a sockmaster? I have requested semi-protection. Is there anything else that can be done? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The photo on that page is a copyright violation. If you check out the uploader's Flickr account you'll see it's all stock photos and screenshots that he claims are his own work and has republished as CC or PD. I don't know how to report this at Commons. GA-RT-22 (talk) 23:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

That uploader does have a troubling upload history, but this particular image does not appear to have come from Flickr. --SVTCobra 12:57, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Basis Global Technologies

• Draft:Basis Global Technologies (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Draft:Basis Global Technologies(2) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Curve516 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Paid editor created an article about company in article space in October 2021. Editor was then told by Giraffer that paid editors are required to disclose, and are strongly advised not to edit directly or create directly in article space. Editor then correctly made a disclosure on their user page. Article was then moved into draft space by User:MrsSnoozyTurtle. Editor then moved Centro, Inc. to Basis Global Technologies, citing name change, and it was then moved again by User:MrsSnoozyTurtle to draft space. User apparently needs to be cautioned again against paid editing in article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:27, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

JKLlamera

• Draft:JK Llamera (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• JKLlamera (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The mentioned user created a draft page about himself, stating his basic information about himself. As per COI rules, no one shall create a page about himself or herself. NewManila2000 (talk) 15:38, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

There are literally dozens of vanity articles in drafts every day. But can I ask why you submitted this one for review? --SVTCobra 17:16, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I nominated the draft for deletion, but there appears to be something more problematic going on with this user. --SVTCobra 18:03, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I submitted the draft for review and at the same time, that the page be deleted too. NewManila2000 (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Agustín Ostachuk

• Aostachuk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Crab (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Alexander Bogdanov (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The user Aostachuk has been engaging in slow edit warring to add the journal article What is It Like to be a Crab? A Complex Network Analysis of Eucaridan Evolution written by Agustín Ostachuk, and published in the Journal Evolutionary Biology in 2019 to the Crab article. Aostachuk has denied that there is a conflict of interest, despite the clear similarity of their username with the author of the journal article. Aostachuk has also previously been warned on their talkpage for copying text directly from the article. I am not in a position to assess the paper on its merits, but if the paper was influential in the field I wouldn't have a problem with citing it, but it appears to have had little impact so far. Aostachuk also cited another article by Agustín Ostachuk on the article Alexander Bogdanov. 1 Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:02, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

This goes much deeper than I initally thought, Aostachuk has an extensive habit of citing their own research articles (and little else) extending all the way back to the beginning of their editing in 2013 diff. A quick perusal of their edits shows that in almost all cases where they are adding references, they are citing papers they are an author of. This is clearly an abuse of WP:SELFCITE. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:23, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cougroyalty: who has also been tangentially involved with this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:02, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I have also reverted some of Aostachuk's Crab edits, and I warned them about copying work on their talk page. (I also noticed they just received a barnstar on their talk page from a user with no other contributions, which seems odd.) Cougroyalty (talk) 17:11, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Response to Hemiauchenia

Wikipedia policy regarding "Citing yourself":

Citing yourself

Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason , but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB, and is not excessive. Citations should be in the third person and should not place undue emphasis on your work. You will be permanently identified in the page history as the person who added the citation to your own work. When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion: propose the edit on the article's talk page and allow others to review it. However, adding numerous references to work published by yourself and none by other researchers is considered to be a form of spamming.

The paper being cited (Ostachuk, 2019) in the Crab page is relevant: it has been published in the journal Evolutionary Biology, it has been cited 4 times so far, and it has been downloaded 418 times from the publisher page [6]. Aostachuk (talk)

Aostachuk has undone my attempts to properly format this response for some reason. For anyone uninvolved feel free to do so. Of those "4 citations", one is a preprint on Biorxiv, and one is a paper that you wrote yourself. I do not see how the paper has had enough substantial impact on the field to warrant inclusion. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:38, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia has been extremely violent with his/her commentaries from the beginning. He/she (who knows who he/she is?) has been trying to accuse me from unethical behavior ("Wikipedia is not a place to promote your own work"), when it is clear according to Wikipedia policy on "Citing yourself" that this not a crime or violation of the terms of use . I advice Hemiauchenia to be more respectful and polite, as I have been, and not to accuse me of false denunciations. In my edits, I have not only cited my own work but others too (5 different citations in the article "Crab"). I will not further discuss the quality of my work with an unknown person with unknown academic formation. Aostachuk

Wikipedia welcomes people who contribute anonymously, and there's a variety of good reasons people do so (including safety). Your edits are a conflict of interest problem and you should (a) clearly state on your userpage that you are the academic Agustín Ostachuk (if you want to continue editing in areas where this is relevant); and (b) not add publications written by yourself directly, but propose on the talk page and such changes you would want to make, ideally using {{Edit request}}. It does not matter if you are trying to be neutral by including references from others: the point of a conflict of interest is that it fundamentally compromises a person's ability to assess whether their edits are neutral, and as such a neutral third party is needed. — Bilorv (talk) 16:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Aostachuk, you are both adding citations to yourself to the majority of articles you are editing, as well as edit warring to keep citations to yourself in over the objections of other editors. That is not the 'conforms to the content policies' and 'is not excessive' envisioned by the guidelines here. You should stop adding citations to yourself to articles. When you have published something that you believe can improve an article, you should raise that on the article's associated talk page for implementation by editors who are not so close to the issue. - MrOllie (talk) 16:03, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that you do not want to accept Wikipedia's own policies: "Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP: SELFPUB, and is not excessive". It seems to me that there is not much more to add, just accept the reality of the facts and evidence. If citing yourself were a conflict of interest or a crime, you would not be allowed to cite yourself in scientific publications. If this is allowed in true academic publications, it does not make sense that it is not allowed in a general information web page, the content of which is not considered academic or scientific literature.

It is clear that all my edits are in my name, since my username is my name, so it is quite redundant to clarify that the edits were made in my name. I have nothing to hide and I registered on Wikipedia with my name. This gives transparency and clarity to the system, and automatically eliminates any type of conflict of interest (since everything is in view and registered). The use of pseudonyms only contributes to confusion, turbidity, opacity and impunity, and does not make it possible to reveal the conflicts of interest and the hidden interests that these people are defending. I don't think security has anything to do with this. This is not Wikileaks. Aostachuk

This kind of motivated reasoning is exactly why we discourage editing with a conflict of interest. You have taken that sentence, which contains very important caveats and limitations, and are using it to justify adding citations to yourself whereever you like and edit warring to keep those citations in. That is not the intended reading of that sentence. You're a scientist, and you're used to scientific publications, where citing yourself is so encouraged it is almost a requirement. But Wikipedia is not scientific publishing. This is a different community, with its own norms and standards. If you want to contribute here successfully, you will have to make some effort to learn and abide by the local practicies. I think you would benefit greatly by reading Wikipedia:Expert editors, which was written with this sort of situation in mind. - MrOllie (talk) 17:27, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry. It is very difficult to maintain a dialogue on equal terms with an unknown person that I cannot identify, and who therefore cannot take charge of his own words.

As for me, I am in a clear conscience that I have acted in good faith, transparently and honestly, that I have not engaged in any unethical, opaque and shady behavior (like someone who hides under a false name), and to be supported by Wikipedia's usage policies (which have already been sufficiently cited). Aostachuk

Communicating with other editors is an integral part of contributing to Wikipedia and is required for our consensus-based decision making processes. The vast majority of Wikipedia editors use pseudonyms. If you cannot find a way to communicate with people using pseudonyms, editing on Wikipedia may not be for you. - MrOllie (talk) 18:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, if you continue to edit war as you have been, it is likely that your account will be blocked. - MrOllie (talk) 18:12, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• Aostachuk, your knowledge of convergent evolution is certainly something that we need more of on WP. Some of the citations you added were appropriate and needed and so I reinstated those a few days ago. However your citations of yourself I did not and I must agree you should discuss before doing so. I must also agree that your own works would need more/better citations before that would be warranted. Invasive Spices (talk) 11 December 2021 (UTC)
• Aostachuk, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy but a norm-driven community. If a majority of people think your actions are disruptive then you are expected to change your actions. All of us have, at points, disagreed with what a majority of people thought about our actions and still changed our behaviour anyway—such is the compromise you have to make as an adult working within a community.
  Making lawyer-like arguments according to the letter of the rules is not helpful because the rules are written and shaped by the views of the community, not the converse, and they are ignored whenever it is helpful to do so. The rules give an idea of what the community finds disruptive, but do not replace direct community feedback. The community feedback here is: your actions are disruptive. If you do not wish to listen to constructive criticism and change your behaviour then you cannot work under the processes of Wikipedia, which would be a great shame as we are in dire need of subject experts. P.S. a signature should have four tildes (~~~~), not three. — Bilorv (talk) 19:55, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

  Note that User:Aostachuk has been blocked for one week for sockpuppetry involving the barnstar award awarded to him/herself by a puppet, noticed by User:Cougroyalty. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 00:13, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

WE Charity again

WE Charity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

More WE Charity UPE is almost certainly taking place. See The Signpost for a good summary of our past issues here.

This IP edit summarises a CBC source that evidences a unusual co-ordinated campaign to suppress investigative journalism into the group... but summarises it in a way completely flattering of WE Charity, with a few very misleading claims. My new summary was reverted in under half an hour by an IP geolocating to the same area in Canada, and they gave me a template warning. There's a term for someone who knows Wikipedia well enough to have seen template warnings (but who forgets a signature) editing in an area where we've detected large amounts of UPE, trying to whitewash a scandal that portrays WE Charity unfavorably. It's "duck".

The only surprise here is how stupid WE Charity think Wikipedia are. More eyes are needed, permanently, on all WE Charity-related pages. — Bilorv (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps WP:SEMI could keep the IP editors at bay and force any autoconfirmed, registered paid/COI accounts into the spotlight. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The last two IPs, 98.97.158.7 and 50.68.19.161 are part of the same (expensive) residential proxy network. Obviously an experienced UPE operation. MarioGom (talk) 19:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protection applied. Are there any other articles in Category:WE Charity that could benefit? MER-C 20:01, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Nicole Simone

• Nicole Simone (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• JustACodeMonkey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 12vanillabean (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The articles creator states his conflict of interest directly on his Wikipedia profile. His account was created specifically to create this article even. Nicole Simone has worked extensively on personal projects with someone named Greg (last name I will keep private of course). It seems obvious that this is the same person and as someone employed by Nicole this represents an even further conflict of interest.

"JustACodeMonkey, known to his friends as Greg, joined WikiPedia to help his friend Nicole Simone (aka Late July)." NoSpamming (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

While I agree that JustACodeMonkey has a COI, per an old diff of his userpage that clearly states as such, there appears to be an off-wiki dispute at the heart of this over animal cruelty allegations regarding a charity that Nicole runs. The self-published blog that was being used to source these allegations (which NoSpamming presumably knows about, see https://redemptionflaws.wordpress.com/2021/12/03/rp-founder-nicole-simones-wikipedia-article-now-with-references-to-redemption-paws-controversies/) were rightly removed per WP:BLPSPS. I have no opinion on her notability, but the AfD nomination you have created is badly formatted and needs to be fixed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Added another suspicious SPA. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

An IP with no other edits has responded on their Talk page [7] (sorry mobilediff) Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Society for the Study of Social Problems

• Society for the Study of Social Problems (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Tomhoodster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

User is a SPA and has not acknowledged COI as requested at their TP. I recently removed most of the "annual meeting" section of the article as promotional and it has been restored as it was with completely inappropriate language. MB 00:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Even ignoring the obvious promotional wording, the article seems to cite no independent sources whatsoever, and thus fails to demonstrate that it meets Wikipedia notability criteria. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:46, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The COI is obvious; I will leave it to other editors to take the five seconds it will require to find the clear evidence of a connection between this editor's name and the organization. The lack of any communication for over 3.5 years makes it clear that this editor needs to be blocked. ElKevbo (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not finding any independent coverage of this organization... there might be some on JSTOR but I don't have access on there. Anyone else? If there's nothing there then the article might be suitable for AfD. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 19:22, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Society for the Study of Social Problems. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• I can get JSTOR (and so can you, fellow Wikipedia users, through the Wikipedia Library[8]) and it seems to me fairly clear there is sufficient sourcing for an article, though it will have to be completely re-written from the COI puff piece that landed. I've made a start ... Alexbrn (talk) 21:32, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Swiss Life Asset Managers

Article

• Swiss Life Asset Managers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Users

• Schlagzeiler (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Uguisan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Request for a closer look at the article given the self-declared COI. Thanks.-KH-1 (talk) 01:14, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

India League

• India League (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• JumpingJimmySingh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 78.86.134.72 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

JumpingJimmySingh denies having a conflict of interest with the India League/1928 Institute (User talk:JumpingJimmySingh#Managing a conflict of interest) but seems to be in close communication with the latter's webmaster. At User talk:JumpingJimmySingh#India League, they ask "How do I ensure that page is SEO?" Within the space of an evening's discussion at Talk:India_League#Relationship_between_India_League_and_1928_Institute, text on the Institute's site has been changed from "The 1928 Institute was established in 2020 as a think-tank to continue the work of the original India League (est. 1928)" to "The 1928 Institute was established in 2020 as a think-tank and is the continuation of the original India League (est. 1928)", at the same time as the editor concerned posted this. Previous, when text that JumpingJimmySingh added to Wikipedia was identified as a copyvio of the 1928 Institute website, it very quickly disappeared from the site after JumpingJimmySingh had been notified - see this discussion. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:08, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

JumpingJimmySingh also created Draft:Nikita Ved (about a co-founder of the 1928 Institute), which contained unsourced personal information about the subject - for which I can't find a published source. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_League#Relationship_between_India_League_and_1928_Institute - as discussed on this chat, I said that I would message all parties involved. I messaged the 1928 Institute and they responded to me in an hour to clear up a matter on the 'original India League'. I am an observer of British Indians, hence I volunteer my time in this space and am not part of the India League/1928 Institute. JumpingJimmySingh (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Could you clarify how you knew the personal details about the 1928 Institute's co-founder that you included in the article you tried to publish about her? Cordless Larry (talk) 22:51, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks like a straight up coi. There is no other explanation for it. scope_creep^Talk 14:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, like with most organisations, they have a 'contact us' page or are available on Instagram, hence they responded to my query. Re Dr Nikita Ved, her details are online and on her Instagram - the information is not very hard to find. I'm now starting to feel bullied for making edits. All of my work edits are on the India League and are based on facts from credible and unbiased sources, i.e. the BBC or the University of Oxford. JumpingJimmySingh (talk) 16:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Which of those sources did the information you included in the article about how she broke her nose come from? Cordless Larry (talk) 17:29, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

We now have an IP editor trying to remove a sourced quote from the article. Cordless Larry (talk) 15:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sumerbhandari. I suspect there is some UPE editing going on that potentially includes this article. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

• I will block JumpingJimmySingh from directly editing the article given the COI. Drmies (talk) 21:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd also add that the IP edits yesterday were from an address on the same range as an editor claiming to be the 1928 Institute website owner. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Savage Minds (magazine)

• Draft:Savage Minds (magazine) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Julian Vigo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

When reviewing and declining the draft at AfC on the basis of notability per WP:NWEB, I noticed that the creator of the draft has a user name that matches the name of the founder and editor of the web based magazine, from which I have inferred they have a conflict of interest and financial stake in the topic. I left a message on the editor's talk page asking them to declare their connection. The editor has replied with claims of harassment, libel and censorship. Please could an uninvolved editor review the draft and the comments that its creator has left for me on their talk page. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:53, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

It's barely even a "magazine", it is a substack blog. COI creation of articles is allowed via AfC, but I think this one will just die and get deleted naturally. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:10, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Substack is a publishing platform. Savage Minds is not a blog. We have an editorial process for everything and this is a magazine which has been quite successful since its launch. The previous Wikipedia editor, as you can see from his comments, has made reckless statements and has made statements not at all based on reality. I can only imagine he is not informed with the publishing world. Savage Minds is a magazine and has many award-winning journalists who contribute to it. I don't know where this editor gets his information, but Substack is a company that merely provides server space—there are many other magazines and news outlets based on Substack. The comments by this editor are extremely uninformed and rude. Please review my complaints of the comments I have received from the previous Wikipedia editor. I have also provided a long list of blogs on Wikipedia that are actually blogs and that are substandard for consideration as a media source. Most of the blogs on Wikipedia are commercial enterprises. Savage Minds is not. Julian Vigo (talk) 00:16, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The issue isn't whether blogs and magazines are commercial or not, Julian Vigo, but rather whether they meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. If there aren't independent sources written about the magazine that an article can be based on, then the subject doesn't meet the inclusion criteria. It might be that there are articles about blogs that predate the tightening of the new article review process, but if that's the case they should be nominated for deletion. Cordless Larry (talk) 12:01, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Funnily enough, Savage Minds is the former name of Anthrodendum, an actually prominent (and probably wiki-notable) anthropology blog. This looks like a fringe-y, politically-motivated rip off. – Joe (talk) 11:57, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a legitimate publication with two own writers. I am an anthropologist. Keep the ad him to yourself. I would like an editor who is t insulting and who had a modicum of knowledge about the publishing world. These comments are deranged and offensive. We have journalists, writers and scholars on board. These comments are a sad representation of Wikipedia. I would appreciate and editor who is respectful. The public submits to you. Editors need to play by the same rules. I have submitted documentation of our magazine being covered by three major media sources. Criteria met. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Julian Vigo (talk • contribs) 12:28, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Could you link to those three sources here so that I can assess them, Julian Vigo? Cordless Larry (talk) 12:39, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Before this gets derailed further, may I point out that the rather aggravated response on Julian Vigo's part appears to stem in part from differences in understanding of what constitutes conflict of interest and paid editing? While Julian Vigo is the editor of Savage Minds, she's saying that her work there is of a non-commercial nature, and appears to have taken insult at the suggestion that WP:PAID compliance is required (as well as the rather harsh wording of the template message regarding forgetting to sign in, which, regardless of other issues, does indeed seem unnecessarily WP:BITEy). What are the applicable policies/guidelines for editors who have a non-financial conflict of interest stemming from their relationship to an organisation anyway?

To Julian Vigo, please understand that there are two separate issues in question: Firstly, if you have a close connection, even if it's not financial, to the subject of a (potential) Wikipedia article, please disclose this; see WP:DISCLOSE for guidance. Secondly, whether or not Savage Minds is considered notable for Wikipedia's inclusion purposes is determined by Wikipedia's notability guideline. No one is going out with the purpose to attack you or censor your work. You're welcome to discuss the issue, as long as it's done civilly. Angry tirades are unlikely to achieve the responses you desire, after all. --Paul_012 (talk) 12:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

What are the applicable policies/guidelines for editors who have a non-financial conflict of interest stemming from their relationship to an organisation anyway? That would be WP:COI, which applies to all conflicts of interest, financial or not. Mlb96 (talk) 06:16, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Kamala Beach

Draft:Kamala Beach was originally created as an WP:AFC draft and accepted by User:HitroMilanese. However, it was later draftified by User:GSS with the reason, "Violation of term of use per off-wiki evidence. Please see WP:PAID." I've asked on the talk page what the specific concerns were, since the page didn't seem to be promoting any specific business, but GSS hasn't edited since 9 October. Would anyone know what exactly the problem is that needs scrutiny for COI? --Paul_012 (talk) 10:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The said user should have clarified more on off-wiki evidence. I am in favour of moving the article back to mainspace and tag it with appropriate template (if essential). I don't understand why someone is willing to pay for a geographic location. Hitro talk 06:12, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I would wait until GSS comes back in the New Year. There is obviously something wrong if its tagged. It probably something like a development or something like that. scope_creep^Talk 10:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Ed Greenwood

• Ed Greenwood (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• 70.52.158.33 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I'm not sure if this violates WP:COI, but per discussion on the IP's talk page they state that they are Ed Greenwood. Could someone please review the IP's contributions and address with them whether their edits are acceptable? 8.37.179.254 (talk) 16:21, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi. Ed Greenwood here. Once again, this IP user incorrectly asserts that they are "my" edits. As I said at the talk page, I have NEVER edited "my" Wikipedia page; these reversions of material 8.37.179.254 had repeatedly removed were done by librarians working at the same library I work at, initially without my knowledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.52.158.33 (talk) 16:27, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe it is also a COI concern for people who know the subject to be editing their page as well, but I will let someone else take a look at this and see what they have to say. 8.37.179.254 (talk) 16:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

It look's like a SPA account, that made an attempt to add some books with no sources, that were reverted, and then the editor put the publishers in a series of books and changed a video title from Baldur's Gate to the Eye of the Beholder. He clearly states he is an Ed Greenwood. He has a clear COI. Seems to be tidying up his own article. Left an edit request message. scope_creep^Talk 10:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Ed Greenwood, again. To reiterate: As I have repeatedly stated, I have NEVER edited my own article. I have, years in the past, when there was no such mechanism, sent messages to the Talk page of suggested title and date CORRECTIONS to publication credits others have added to my page, for others to review and add/implement if they see fit; I have never edited the page. Apparently other librarians restoring vandalism show up as having the same IP as I do. So, sorry, but I see no Conflict of Interest. And scope creep is incorrect in saying the librarians "made an attempt to add some books with no sources, that were reverted." They RESTORED computer game (Wikipedia uses the heading "video games") credits, not book credits, that had been on my page for years until removed (several times) this month. I notice that some book credits have vanished, too, so perhaps they were also removed. Out of interest, what "sources" should be provided? I was directed to Wikipedia policy "any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly support the material"...I wouldn't think credited on the cover of a publication as its author, or on its legal page, would be likely to be challenged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.52.158.33 (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Danna Azrieli

• Danna Azrieli (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Azrieli Group (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Yossilev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• DavidV azri (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Katvanit (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This is a paid single account, the paralel hebrew entry דנה עזריאלי is manifestly paid. (disclosure) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:2:C10B:0:0:0:1 (talk) 21:42, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Added other connected contributors and the related Azrieli Group article, which has also been extensively edited by the SPA creator of the Danna Azrieli article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I notified the above listed users. Let's try not to forget to do this. --SVTCobra 22:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Right, I thought the onus was on the IP and I forgot about the others I had listed, my apologies. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:23, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The onus was on the IP, but they seem to be a novice. Cheers, --SVTCobra 22:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I should note that Kavanit is the username of the disclosed paid editor on Hebrew Wiki who wrote the original article this is a translation of, but there is no disclosure on enWiki, despite the fact that he has edited the EnWiki article, and it is possible that they are co-ordinating this clear UPE. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Katvanit has an interesting knack for obtaining VRT permission for uploads on Commons. The variety seems almost implausible, but I guess that's a problem for Commons. --SVTCobra 23:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that implausible given that he is coordinating with clients who are directly paying him and who can be requested to give the required permission. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:18, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Right, I meant implausible for a non-involved party. --SVTCobra 23:23, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

There is also a paid disclosure In the corrseponding Hebrew entry Azrieli Group and both the two hebrew entries and the two parallel english ones edited in close dates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:3:E34C:0:0:0:1 (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment The Yossilev user is a WP:SPA and likely a UPE. The DavidV azri user is also a WP:SPA and looks like a UPE, came into copyedit the article. scope_creep^Talk 11:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Katvanit (official site) is a name of a big PR/content Israeli company. They employ dozens of paid editors in wikipedia (most of them undislose) you blocked many of them, but they keep coming. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:1FD:CA49:0:0:12CF:9526 (talk) 12:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

If that is true, then the Kavanit account should be blocked, as English Wikipedia does not allow usernames that represent entire organisations or companies per WP:ISU Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I have reported the Katvanit username to WP:UAA. Looking at the Katvanit website, it is a clear violation of promotional username for UAA. scope_creep^Talk 16:43, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Is it true that Hebrew Wikipedia does not have a conflict of interest policy? --SVTCobra 17:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

If I don't mistake the basic rules for COI established by wikimedia foundation and every wikipedia must use it, however, there are subtleties and Hebrew wikipedia is by far less atrict than the english one — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:1FA:8D97:0:0:12EF:EF12 (talk) 18:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

P.s. I conclude from Katvanit answer in his talk page that according to english wikipedia policy, english entry about Danna Azriely is COI — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:1FA:8D97:0:0:12EF:EF12 (talk) 18:25, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Muso805

• Muso805 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

For over two years, Muso805 has been contributing here, often side by side with user:Colin Larkin, who is the same Colin Larkin who has authored Encyclopedia of Popular Music (EPM) and All Time Top 1000 Albums. The vast majority of Muso805's edits consist of adding scores, rankings and other details from Larkin's books. This has been noticed by other editors in the past, including MrOllie and Notfrompedro. I'm afraid I've not added diffs here of the edits by Muso805, but I believe picking a page – any page – from his contribs history back to mid 2019 will adequately prove the point.

Most recently, there's been some discussion at the user's talk page about a likely COI. Muso805 denies that he is Larkin but, even aside from suspicions relating to his edits, there are several examples of interactions on talk pages that suggest he is:

• In an October 2019 discussion at User talk:Danski454, Muso805 asks Danski454 why they changed some information Muso805 had added on All Time Top 1000 Albums. Danski replies, pinging Muso and telling him he must be mistaken. But it's then user:Colin Larkin that responds, saying, "Apologies -- you are correct I took an older change/deletion from you in error. Thank you for pointing out. Regards."

• MrOllie came up with another example, from November 2019. Colin Larkin posts a message at User talk:Cwmhiraeth asking about a page move at Colin Larkin (writer). In their replies there, Cwmhiraeth and another editor each ping Colin Larkin, but it's Muso805 who responds: "Thank you both. I admit my question was not that clear -- I think I get it."

• Also, there's a February 2021 discussion at User talk:Muso805 (as later queried by Notfrompedro). There, Muso805 is telling an anecdote about a 1980 David Crosby gig which he attended. When Muso is asked for more details by another editor, it's Colin Larkin who replies, with a promise to "reveal all" via email.

I think these are all pretty clear-cut examples that show the two users are one and the same. Whether he writes "EPM" or just "rating" in his edit summaries, Muso805 has added hundreds of Larkin scores at album articles for at least two years; before then, it was mostly rankings in the All Time Top 1000 Albums. JG66 (talk) 14:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I have never met Muso805, he has contacted me a few times over the years. I did ask him to respond to something a while back, he clearly knows my work very well - I (maybe foolishly) gave him my then log in password as I cannot self promote. I have since changed my password. There is a possibility that this may be a woman who I had problems with several years ago - but have no way of proving it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin Larkin (talk • contribs) 21:56, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@Colin Larkin: Do not, for any reason whatsoever, allow another person to use your account. Wikipedia has a strict policy against sharing accounts. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 04:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Yael Shelbia

• Yael Shelbia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• YaelShelbia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

By appearances, this user has been editing the article about themselves. Coincidentally, User:Katvanit (from above) has uploaded an image of this person. --SVTCobra 17:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I saw this too, but the editing didn't look that promotional. I note she replaced the image uploaded by Katvanit with one she uploaded herself. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Katvanit employs many editors, one of them is User:אור פ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8_%D7%A4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:1FA:8D97:0:0:12EF:EF12 (talk) 18:29, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Katvanit worked also with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rotemtal and with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TheParkKing

- there is paid disclosure to the corresponding hebrew entries Katvanit created and the three of them wrote in english. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:14F:1FC:C4C2:0:0:12F1:D584 (talk) 19:12, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the Katvanit rabbit hole looks pretty deep. I wonder if they all edit from the same IP at their offices. --SVTCobra 20:40, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I think not, Shauli Cohen,the CEO mostly hire freelance writers, each of them edit from his home or other premise.

Draft:Virgo

Created by User:Virgo4africa. Brand new editor, probably clueless. Doug Weller talk 19:18, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

SWVL

• Swvl (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Abdelrahman_Sukar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Abdelrahman is the Global Head of Marketing at SWVL, currently deleting the SWVL page historical events in favor of showing company image in a certain way. 217.54.134.239 (talk) 19:27, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@217.54.134.239: At the top of the edit window of this noticeboard, it clearly states "When investigating possible cases of conflict of interest editing, editors must be careful not to out other editors. Wikipedia's policy against harassment takes precedence over the conflict of interest guideline." You have violated this provision here and at Talk:Swvl. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 04:09, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Rp2006

• Rp2006 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Rp2006 has made an edit to an article that includes a reference to a source with which I believe Rp2006 has a WP:COI relationship. The content in question was initially added by an editor other than Rp2006, later removed by a second editor, and reinstated by Rp2006. I believe that Rp2006 should disclose their relationship to the source per WP:COI, but Rp2006 does not believe a disclosure is required because the edit was a revert and not adding the source in the first instance. I don't believe the fact that it was a revert relieves Rp2006's obligations under WP:COI, and that if anything, a COI is even more relevant when it comes to reinstating removed content than adding it in the first instance. Must Rp2006 disclose any COI relationship they have with an edit, if that edit is a revert? Levivich 00:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

The issue is complicated by the fact that making references to the COI Rp2006 has with certain publishers/magazines/companies is hard to do without outing, even when the COI exists, unless he comes forward and properly discloses the COI both in his user page and in relevant articles (per WP:DCOI). Note the user page is not obligatory, but it would be helpful in discussions to know how another editor might be affiliated with a subject. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 00:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

What is missing in this statement is the timeline. @Levivich is making it sound like this all happened within minutes of the revert. The article in question was added on Feb 7, 2019. And then about twenty changes were made to the page over the next couple years. Then an editor on November 24, 2021 decided to make massive changes to the article that would require a lot of time to go though, and much discussion on the talk page. Then on November 25, 2021 Rp2006 reverts those changes. There were over 10K characters removed from the article and reverting those changes are just a revert. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sgerbic (talk) 00:58, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

The last edit is not a 10K character revert, Sgerbic. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 00:59, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Even if it were, I don't think it matters if the COI content is reinstated on its own or as part of a larger revert (both are the situation here, as there were multiple edits). Levivich 01:02, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

You take responsibility for any edit you make, even if it's "just a revert." Maybe if the entire topic area wasn't a minefield of connected editors adding each other as sources it wouldn't be so easy to accidentally step on a land mine. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Where do you get that SFR (if I'm allowed to call you that) who says that "editors are adding each other as sources"? Sgerbic (talk) 01:11, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it's pretty common knowledge that members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and writers for SI use each other as sources for articles. I believe that's actually one of the actions you promote, per your own writing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:16, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

What is a member of CSI? I'm not clear on that, does that mean they have a magazine subscription? Sgerbic (talk) 01:35, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I mean something like A columnist for Skeptical Inquirer... and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry adding CSI and SI sources as cites, and training others to do the same. Can we not play this game? If enough people are doing that eventually one of them is going to revert and restore a source they wrote and cross the COI line. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:45, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, yes. If you make an edit that in some way involves a source that you have a COI with, then you must disclose that COI. The nature of the edit is irrelevant to this, and it should not be relevant - I feel there is a bigger picture that I am missing to this discussion, so I can't comment on the details, but it isn't hard to imagine situations where someone with a COI prefers the former version of a page due to it aligning with their COI, and thus reverts to that version. BilledMammal (talk) 01:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

The bigger picture is a shitshow, I'll save you some life expectancy and recommend you don't get involved too much, BilledMammal. If interested, however, you can find the relevant thread in ANI under section "Outing attempt". Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 01:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I you are sharing links ACS - why not give @BilledMammalBilledmammal the link to the multi-day drama on ANI that got you banned from there? Remember that nightmare where you started outing people? Oh and the thread of you trying to rile people up to work against other editors? Sgerbic (talk) 01:33, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not responding to what I see as irrelevant to the current discussion. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 01:43, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it is obvious at all. Here is a close analogy (as I see it) to the situation as it is CLAIMED to have happened. BTW, I think the issue is a SELFPUB one, not COI. Steven King is a WP editor. Has been for years. Has thousands of edits on all sorts of articles. His WP ID is not his name as he does not want to be outed due to harassment and stalking concerns. He has an interest in, watches and edits tons of Scary as Shit fiction pages... that's what he likes to work on (Not his own books mind you). On one page he is watching, someone(else) - he gets a notice via WP email - added one of HIS own books as a citation (in an appropriate way). Cool. But does King need to now slap a SELFPUB disclaimer on the page? I don't think anyone would say so. But years later, a newish editor (who seems to not understand COI issues) comes in and makes a mess of the page (in his opinion and other editors) by deleting what she sees as COI issues (and they do not) all over the place, including deleting the King citation. So, King reverts the edit restoring the page to its long-standing form. You are telling me King now needs to declare a SELFPUB on that page? Worse - doing so he must by definition out himself? Really? Rp2006 (talk) 01:36, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If you have a COI you must disclose it. I am sure admins can help you by email to find a way to do so without outing yourself. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 01:40, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

You, as usual, missed the entire point. The scenario where King must claim a SELFPUB situation in that case seems outrageous. Saying it is COI seems even nuttier. Rp2006 (talk) Rp2006 (talk) 01:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Then the other editors who thought it was a problem could have reverted, and just like that, there is no issue. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:47, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually other editors did revert the same set of changes, so it seemed clear consensus to not let the changes stand -- as I recall. Rp2006 (talk) Rp2006 (talk) 06:30, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Then why not continue to allow them to revert? Clearly if there were multiple editors reverting a single editor your own edits were unnecessary. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 06:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't care about King. The point still stands. COIs must be disclosed, and the easiest way to do so is in the Talk page of articles. See Talk:Eindhoven University of Technology for an example of me disclosing my coi in an easy, straightforward way. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 01:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If an editor removes a cite to King, and King reverts that editor thereby reinstating the cite to King, then King must disclose the COI, in my view. Levivich 01:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

SELFPUB may apply (though probably not to King), but unless I have misunderstood this situation, you are thinking of SELFCITE? As I understand it, SELFCITE is a form of COI.

As for King, he should note a COI if he wants to make the reversal - and if he doesn't want to mention a COI, he should leave the revert for another editor to do. This is true in general, but particularly true in this example where other editors holding Kings position exist and so it is unreasonable to expect that the edit will go unnoticed by non-COI editors. This is because correcting what are seen as mistakes by a COI editor - regardless of whether the editor is correct about them being a mistake - does and should fall under COI guidelines. BilledMammal (talk) 02:10, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

A COI is a COI. While WP:COIADVICE does have a section on unambiguous uncontroversial edits, it is very very clear that what has been going on the specific article page is controversial though I recognise that the editors involved may not be able to recognise it. Paraphrasing and expanding upon what I said earlier at ANI, if the author of the source requests an editor to read a source they have written, it is a COI. If that same editor edits that page, to include or restore that source if it is removed by another editor where that edit was made in good faith, it is a COI.

In this situation, if Rp2006 is the author of the source, they must disclose it and self revert. As it is a content dispute, Rp2006 should then recuse themself from that discussion, and allow a consensus to form between the other editors at that article's talk page. If Rp2006 is not the author of that source, then I do not understand why this issue has now spanned multiple noticeboards and user talk pages. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:00, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

• Any reason why the edit over which there is a COI concern is not diffed here? That edit contains a link to an article on an external website which contains a number of statements evincing an approach to Wikipedia editing that I think is problematic from a COI point of view. The external article also mentions GSoW, which is lead by Sgerbic. I think editors here should read that article, but I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to link it here? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 02:00, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure either and that's the reason why I didn't include it in the OP :-) Levivich 02:03, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

  Because of outing concerns that have essentially been Streisand'd to hell and back at this point. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:04, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

  Honestly if the relevant section in the article talk page would've been collapsed and the discussion continued this whole fiasco could've been avoided. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 02:07, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

 Comment: Well, we have a pretty heated argument very quickly. But why isn't the noticeboard informed of what article we are talking about? What is the source that generates the alleged COI? What are the diffs that demonstrate the allegations? --SVTCobra 04:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

SVTCobra, affected pages are Skeptical_Inquirer and Committee_for_Skeptical_Inquiry (SCI) and all related pages. The article in question here is Sharon_A._Hill.

Also Sgerbic you have an even more obvious COI with respect to SCI. You also need to declare your COI for all matters related with SCI. Mvbaron (talk) 07:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Also Sgerbic and Rp2006 you both have added your own names and/or citations to your own works at the above mentioned pages. (if anyone want's the diffs, I'm happy to supply them but seeing that WP:OUTING concerns are so prominent here, I won't do it now) Regardless, this is clearly WP:COI editing and you both need to declare your COI either at your user page or the talk page. And you both should only propose edit requests for your COI pages and not make substantial edits yourself. All this discussion above is utterly pointless and a distraction at best, you have a COI and you need to declare it and you should not add content about yourself directly. --Mvbaron (talk) 08:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I have NEVER added content about myself and am not happy that anyone glibly says I have. Sgerbic (talk) 17:52, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

This edit appears to qualify (see "skepticism" section). Schazjmd (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Also Special:Diff/746026432. Now that I look, your group is doing a ton of COI editing. Your name appears on 64 mainspace articles [9], and I think all of them were added by you or members of your group. Huh, this is bigger than I thought. Levivich 18:42, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

During the enormous ANI thread a month ago this came up, written by Sgerbic, This style of editing can be used to improve the exposure of publications like Skeptical Inquirer as well. If the Wikipedia edit is well written, the reader will be curious and want to continue reading about the topic, follow the citation, and learn about our people and publications... We need to do a better job getting our publications, our podcasts, and our spokespeople mentioned in places that people are visiting and hopefully curious to learn more. Wikipedia is the perfect venue; we just need to make sure the edit exists.[10] I don't understand how this wasn't cause for immediate sanctions. Any other COI editing of this style, on this scale, would be shut down almost immediately. Imagine if it were another publication organizing off wiki to improve their exposure? After all, Wikipedia is the perfect venue! ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Is this an issue that might need to be dealt with by arbcom? If it is hundreds of COI violations over multiple years as a modus operandi perhaps it goes above just community discussion in a noticeboard. I don't know how these things are handled, and I'd rather give the affected editors the benefit of the doubt, so I'm just asking.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:56, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom is for issues that cannot be dealt with by the community. If this ends up being ongoing, then maybe, but otherwise it is better if it is handled by other means. - Bilby (talk) 23:59, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

My concern would be with avoiding outing editors who haven't disclosed their COI onwiki but have talked about their edits (or have been talked about) offwiki, like in the rp case, and do have a coi. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 00:04, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

After reading everything to do with this, both from the current event and the one a couple of months ago, I'm somewhat in favour of an investigation here as implied by Levivich if there's the likelihood of this circular COI editing occurring across a great many articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:13, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

That is clearly unacceptable, and an unambiguous COI; they have explicitly expressed WP:NOTHERE goals (promotional activity in article writing). At the very least, they should be banned from directly using that particular source; if they want to use it, they should do it only through an edit request. BilledMammal (talk) 00:40, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes you have (I said I had diffs): [11] and I am baffled that you say you didn't. Mvbaron (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

• Straight question. @Rp2006: Would you be willing to disclose whether any of your personal works are (or have been) cited in any page on which you have performed a revert over the last 30 days? I have no power to compel you to do so, and you are free to decline. JBchrch talk 00:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

(Personal attack removed) Can we establish who the bad guys are? Very dodgy claims of COI too. -Roxy the dog. wooF 08:59, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Godwin's law strikes again. Very civil and constructive. Adding content quoting and citing yourself is pretty dodgy, but providing diffs of it and expressing concern is less so. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:12, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Harold Mcmillan reference was removed so I'll just say that this looks like a Lynch mob attacking some of the very best editors on the project. Usual suspects, dear me. -Roxy the dog. wooF 14:55, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Lynch mob is much more civil. We've moved from political violence to race based violence. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

It is slightly more civil, perhaps. But the mob should perhaps aim at tendentious or disruptive editors instead of some of our best. -Roxy the dog. wooF 15:01, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Out of curiosity I searched Wikipedia (all namespaces) for "roxy the dog" "lynch mob"; there's quite a few hits and it's some interesting reading. Levivich 15:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

That is a strong counterpoint to diffs of a person adding content about themselves and citing their own work. I wonder if there are any policies about that type of editing? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:05, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

That's so funny SFR. Did you find any that they added directly, or only to repair the article. Did you know that I have re-added exactly the same diffs as RP. Am I a GSoW member? Do I have a potential COI? Levivich, you'd better tell your check user colleagues about a "tell" for Roxy socks. I used the phrase "lynch mob" 36 times in about a dozen years, shocking. Another "tell" is that I often use the same word twice or more in any one post to a talk page. -Roxy the dog. wooF 15:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Did you review the thread? There are three diffs of Sgerbic adding information about herself, as well as citing herself. The RP situation is a bit hairier because no one is sharing the obvious diffs due to outing concerns. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Sgerbic's user page would seem to meet disclosure requirements. And while I would personally agree that Sgerbic should use talk pages rather than writing about herself and/or citing herself, our policies don't actually forbid this. If you start an RFC to get that changed I would probably support, but that's not how things are right now. - MrOllie (talk) 15:26, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

They do forbid using Wikipedia for promotion, which she has said she does. Also, I believe the articles also need to be tagged with a COI notice. It would be easier to get together a list of pages that need a COI tag if she hadn't said she'd never made such edits. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:32, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

There's no requirement that articles be tagged with a COI notice - not that I'm familiar with, anyway. Please link it if I'm mistaken. MrOllie (talk) 15:39, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Article should be tagged with connected contributor, COI should be disclosed via edit summary, or the COI userbox listing articles they have a COI in regards to and have edited. I don't see any of those disclosures made. The articles don't have to be tagged if the COI edits are disclosed another way, but it's better for readers who will never see a user page to know that an article has been greatly edited by someone with a COI. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:53, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

That's for places where there's a COI with the topic of the article overall, for example Talk:Susan Gerbic. We typically do not hold self-citers to that standard. Given the ongoing problems we've been having with academic spam, I would probably support efforts to change that too, but the Wikipedia community seems to give much more leeway to self citation for whatever reason. - MrOllie (talk) 16:04, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Is not just self citing, as noted above it's adding your name to an article you already have a COI with. Or doing a massive promotional expansion [12] to an article you have a clear-cut COI with. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Disclosure is required, but it is also required to abide by Wikipedia's policy, which includes not engaging in promotion. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case, per this article. BilledMammal (talk) 15:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, our WP:COI guideline is entirely toothless, it only recommends, and strongly encourages disclosure. Anyone with a COI (who is not paid) might as well ignore it completely. Ollie and Roxy correctly hint at that above, but I wonder how much the actual consensus regarding this is. --Mvbaron (talk) 15:44, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I wonder how much the actual consensus regarding this is ← I think it depends, and editors need to step back a bit and consider the aims of Wikipedia as a whole before being too keen to don their Witchfinder General hats. If somebody with a COI comes here promoting (say) their diet pills, then obviously that is A Bad Thing that the community will have little tolerance for. But "promotion" of high-quality knowledge is not bad, and even encouraged in a project like (say) WP:COCHRANE whereby editors, and even Cochrane members are encouraged to add Cochrane Collaboration sources to Wikipedia. Granted, this is not entirely without controversy, but there seems to be a lot of black and white thinking in this thread which does not appreciate the history of how Wikipedia actually works. Alexbrn (talk) 15:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Exactly, if you agree with something it's ok to organize off-wiki to promote it. Editing to draw attention to a magazine you write for, and citing yourself in it can be fine as long as it matches the house POV. Then it's acceptable to ignore the policies and guidelines. Especially if you're using it to add negative information to BLPs. That's the best. Also, we should make sure to attack any editors who express concern about the COI editing by calling them Nazis or witch hunters. That really elevates the dialog. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. It is in this area of cognitive dissonance that any number of edit-a-thons, student editing assignments and WP:GLAM efforts exist. MrOllie (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Yup, one gets the feeling that if some famous gallery made images of its fine art collection publicly available, and a gallery employee had the temerity to add those images to relevant articles, some editors here would be screaming COI and going on a revert spree. Ultimately the aim for everyone is to improve and maintain Wikipedia and, with various shades of COI, sometimes that's not quite so simple as some are suggesting. Alexbrn (talk) 16:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I would be screaming COI if that museum employee said This style of editing can be used to improve the exposure of publications like Skeptical Inquirer as well. If the Wikipedia edit is well written, the reader will be curious and want to continue reading about the topic, follow the citation, and learn about our people and publications... We need to do a better job getting our publications, our podcasts, and our spokespeople mentioned in places that people are visiting and hopefully curious to learn more. Wikipedia is the perfect venue; we just need to make sure the edit exists. All of these shades of grey arguments fall apart when an editor says they're doing it for promotional purposes. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

But you'd be okay if they weren't saying that? I was responding to the suggestion that COI needed to be an absolute rule with teeth. It ain't that simple. Alexbrn (talk) 16:28, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

If the situation were different I would have to look at the totality of the situation. Were they still people shoehorning negative information from primary sourced "stings," covered no where but the magazine they have a COI with into BLPs? Do you get still get attacked as a a supporter of Fringe for removing an obvious blpvio? The reason this is such an issue is there is a wide breadth of other issues with the editing, all tied together by the COI. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:38, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

On the other hand, at least on editor in question did not disclose their COI (rp2006), and all of them are making substantive changes to articles about their COI-topic. Even if it's only strongly encouraged to not edit their COI-topic directly and not forbidden, this noticeboard should at least tell them to do so - otherwise we might as well get rid of the strong language in COI all-together.

And remember that this thread only exists because of a poor discussion on a poor and badly-sourced article connected to the COI topic: Sharon_A._Hill. Mvbaron (talk) 16:29, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:SELFCITE and the rest of WP:COI has pretty clear rules about how to do this. I don't care if it was the late Stephen Hawking citing his own work, he still would need to disclose it. There is no "high quality" exemption to COI disclosure requirements. (And everyone suggesting I'm engaged in a witch hunt, a lynch mob, or a Nazi purge, should reflect on whether they care about people misusing Wikipedia for self promotion or not.) Levivich 16:08, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

break

• Speaking of diffs, what do people think about a COIN subpage to collect diffs? Levivich 15:26, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

  I think that's asking for a repeat of the outing problem that kicked this discussion off. I think the private evidence / arbcom case route is the only remedy if there is truly a problem worth addressing here. MrOllie (talk) 15:41, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

  How can it be outing to collect diffs of Sgerbic adding content about herself to articles? She edits under her real name. Or outing to collect diffs of Rp2006 doing the same? Or the many other accounts who are obviously students doing the same? It's only outing if we link a username to a real name, which isn't necessary to evidence COI editing. For example, Rp2006 is affiliated with Gerbic and GSoW, etc., and that's evidenced by diffs and such. I don't need to write his real name on-wiki to link to his edits. Levivich 15:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• My own reaction to all this is "meh". I'm not hugely familiar with the "GSoW" content but from what I've seen of some of it, yes, there are some issues with it be overly self-regarding and self-referential. On the other hand, the one article I'm aware of which was targeted as being predicted a WP:SNOW deletion for its apparently obvious GSoW-derived problems, got an AfD which backfired spectacularly, despite the "COI sources" apparently tainting it. Probably the best way to sort this out is to raise any issue(s) at the affected articles.

Given that Wikipedia has high-profile content under attack from corporations, political movements and even Nation States it's not high on my worry list that some articles are too harsh on fraudsters or too glowing about scienists, but if Wikipedia editors do feel this is a priority I think, given the outing risks, it is an issue that the community cannot handle and they would need to work towards an arbcom case. I'm not sure further discussion here will lead anywhere good. Alexbrn (talk) 16:45, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• • I've never participated in an arbcom case, how can editors work together when making one? Would email discussions be a way to avoid outing on-wiki but gathering the relevant diffs+outside links? Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:30, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Probably the best way to sort this out is to raise any issue(s) at the affected articles is not realistic because there are over 100 affected articles (based on my very quick perusal following Sgerbic's claim above to have "never" edited about herself). I'm not going to go through all of this by myself just to send an email to arbcom. Such an inquiry is better off being done collaboratively, transparently, and on-wiki. Levivich 17:40, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Especially when the editing has been done in this manner over many, many years and the editors are immensely defensive of their edits (and their interpretation of COI) doing it article by article would be an inordinate amount of work and time. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 19:49, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

So if the proposed change(s) are going to impact "hundreds" of articles that will necessarily take a lot of "work and time". Or ... what? Are you proposing to delete "obvious" problem articles like you tried with Taner Edis. Or find some way to edit content without "work and time"? This is not making much sense. Alexbrn (talk) 20:02, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

One discussion about 100 articles would take less time than 100 discussions about individual articles. Levivich 20:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Speaking in hypotheticals, if there is a widespread COI issue spanning dozens or hundreds of articles, at some point discussions on the individual article level will be required. What form those discussions will take will depend on the content of the article. In theory a lot of that can happen in parallel, one editor will not need to copy-edit all of the articles with issues. But the broadstrokes COI issues need to be resolved first before individual article level discussions are warranted.

As has been demonstrated at the Sharon A. Hill article, there is a resistance to change that may or may not be warranted. There have been oblique references to consensus building that clearly did not happen in the article's talk page, or in the article's edit history. On the ANI thread Rp2006 said A glance showed me they at least some of the long list of edits partially involved removing material due to misconstrued COI issues, which were already argued over elsewhere.) Where did that discussion occur? Because it clearly wasn't on the article's talk page. While I don't have the competency in that topic area to definitively state if there is or is not a problem in my opinion with the previously proposed edits, on a surface level it does appear concerning that the response to a detailed and clear summary of a WP:BRD change was silence, followed by status quo stonewalling. If that behaviour is replicated across multiple articles, any attempt at making progress in this issue would be next to impossible. That issue needs to be resolved first. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

As a relative newcomer, I'd really like answers to two questions that came from this sorry story at ANI: (1) If you self-cite, how can you declare your conflict of interest without self-outing (given that the work you are citing inevitably contains your name); i.e. which takes precedence, COI or Outing? My personal view is that it is far better never, ever, to self-cite. (2) If you don't actually write the self-citation, but someone removes a citation to you, and you revert the removal, do you have the same COI that you'd have had if you added the citation yourself? Elemimele (talk) 00:27, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

If you choose to self-cite, you're essentially self outing unless you're published under a pseudonym. I agree, it's better not to self cite. If you revert a removal of your source that someone else removed, I'd say you have the same COI as adding it yourself, as you're deciding that the work should be cited over someone's objection. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:43, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

1) If you chose to self-cite, then you're choosing to self-out. I don't think there's any way to separate that while maintaining a conflict of interest policy.

2) Short answer, yes. Longer answer, WP:COIADVICE applies. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:COIE might provide further guidance as well, Elemimele. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:01, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

thanks, all, and especially A._C._Santacruz, that sets my mind at rest. I had been worrying that an accusation of COI could be interpreted as a deliberate outing, when basically you're saying "I think you're citing/writing-about yourself" but I'm seeing now it isn't: if the accusation is true, the person had already self-outed, if it's false, then the editor hasn't been outed. Elemimele (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

One thing I'd like to add, it's somewhat easy to avoid this entirely if you're capable of self policing. If you know you have a COI with an article, perhaps the best thing you can do is to avoid it entirely. That way there is no risk of self-outing, because you're not making that link. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

As for 1): WP:OUTING prohibits editor A from outing editor B. But if editor A has any form of COI, they generally have to self-out, and that is not prohibited by the policy. A common form of "self-out" is performed by editors who work for a corporation and add an edit request to an article's talk page, which often begin with "Hi I'm Billy and I work for Big Corp Ltd. I would like to suggest the following edits to this article...". JBchrch talk 04:25, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

An idea

I was doing some meditation and realized that both editors' conduct and article content need to be addressed. The arbcom idea looks promising for the former, but we'd still be left with potentially hundreds of articles within the skeptic topic are that are filled with coi edits, selfcites, and issues of neutrality or undue content. Thus, I had the idea of seeing if we could make some kind of task force with the help of people over at the skepticism/biographies/science wps to comb through the articles in the skeptic purview and make note of those with issues. Like that we can know just how many need fixing and maybe get more hands on deck to fix them (since it seems like it will take quite a bit of human hours). What are your thoughts? My original idea was to just track it myself by making a subpage of my user page but uh I have a history of misunderstanding what is and is not allowed or benefitial to be done within user subpages. Is this a good idea? Is there some kind of precedent for these kinds of efforts? Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 21:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

"people over at the skepticism/biographies/science wps to comb through the articles in the skeptic purview" ← it would take editors who thought this was a good use of their time. But when (for example) sci/med editors are grappling with articles getting tens of thousands of daily views on COVID, the task of "combing through" backwater articles about ghosthunters, etc. might not seem like a priority - especially if there was a suspicion that they were being asked to do somebody else's work fishing for evidence in aid of a campaign against GSoW. Alexbrn (talk) 07:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Dragon King (dinosaur skull)

• Dragon King (dinosaur skull) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Maudjohnson90 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Recently came out of AfC. I strongly suspect that Maudjohnson90 (A SPA) has a COI with regard to people who own or owned the skull. For one thing, she uploaded a diagram made by an expert showing the completeness of the skull apparently made in 2003 that is not available anywhere online. Second, it also includes uncited and unverifiable claims that wouldn't be known to anybody other than those closely associated with the skull. The skull had a brief spurt of press coverage when it was attempted to be auctioned in early 2015, but there is no followup coverage, which implies that it failed to sell at auction. The article includes the claim that Dragon King is understood to be the most expensive skull to ever trade privately. which isn't cited or made in any of the relevant articles, but implies that Maud has insider knowledge, which is confirmed by a post made by her to the Teahouse, where she states that the skull was sold privately "last year". Maud has also added references to the skull to the main Triceratops article as well as the Hell Creek Formation article. A COI notice on her talkpage went unanswered. In her teahouse post, she stated: I should make clear that I have no financial stake in this at all, it is simply a fact that the skull is the biggest found and I think should be public information. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:10, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree with the suspicion. In this edit she mentioned that The skull is definitely the biggest in the world. However, sources actually do not support this, merely saying it might be among the largest specimens but there is no sure way to know. Either maud is just a big fan of this skull in particular and nothing else (only topic she's edited over 2+ months of contributing), or there might be an upcoming sale in the near future. Who knows. In any case, per duck test I'd say theres a COI. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:41, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Suspicious

Silas nganyi seems suspicious because of this revision. The user seems to have some relationship with them. Also, see the talk page. 2409:4063:4005:2624:0:0:1D03:70B1 (talk) 14:37, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

• This isn't a conflict of interest. It's someone posting a memorial, apparently about their mother, in violation of WP:NOTMEMORIAL. I've removed it. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:10, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Possible SEO activity

• Alial17 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I'd appreciate some extra eyes on contributions from this user. About 75% of the references they've added have been to commercial sites that would be unlikely to meet WP:RS guidelines. I realize that for some topics it's difficult to find non-commercial links, and I'm sure we have a lot of good-faith references to commercial blogs about various topics. In these particular contributions, my "SEO radar" is pinging a bit. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:30, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

It certainly does look suspicious, especially with the very intermittent editing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:43, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, sorry what have I done wrong? I have put in valuable content and referenced the content to the blog articles and cited them properly (I think). You are right, most blogs on the topic are commercial blogs, and there are only a few sites that even have them. I even deleted an existing obvious citation to an about page that had no reference value. I am not sure what you mean with intermittent editing, do you prefer I rewrite the whole post? Regards Alaila17 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.171.86.66 (talk) 19:55, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Paid work discovery

• International Trade Council (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Proof of identity (blockchain consensus) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Will Storr (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Frank LoVecchio (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Marcelo Claure (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• AtomsRavelAz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Just wanted to bring attention to commissioned work which is going on.

• International Trade Council [13]
• Proof of identity (blockchain consensus) [14]
• Will Storr [15]
• Frank LoVecchio [16]
• Marcelo Claure (here this UPE was hired after failure of User:Centrereded) and many more are there on their profile. Marti Siurana (talk) 17:29, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Marti Siurana (talk · contribs), is right, I have received compensation for some of my edits, but not the majority of them. I have always made sure my edits comply with the sites guidelines. I apologize for not clarifying it before, it's just something I kept postponing for later. I will make the necessary disclosures as per Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure, please let me know any further action I should take. Thanks, AtomsRavelAz talk 17:46, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

AtomsRavelAz Thanks for your candidness. It must be because you were unaware, but your articles are well-written and neutral so no action required. Just declare COI edits like User:Bbarmadillo did and everything should be fine. Marti Siurana (talk) 18:28, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Marti Siurana: Thanks a lot for your understanding, I really appreciate it. I will declare the COI edits. Thanks again, AtomsRavelAz talk 18:32, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@Marti Siurana: When you post the names of editors on the boards, they are in good standing, until they are found in breach, so you need to inform the person that they are on here. It is deeply uncool and likely disruptive not to tell them. You inform them. When I started editing the Marcelo Claure article, user:AtomsRavelAz never knew he was on here. scope_creep^Talk 08:48, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

More eyes

• Robert Evans (writer) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Wiki54321editor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Direct editing on Robert Evans (writer). 176.33.97.82 (talk) 21:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

@176.33.97.82: Have you informed the editor that they have appeared on here? This is the Spanish Inquisition, or hammer and tongs in the basement. You need to inform them. scope_creep^Talk 08:50, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I am guessing Scope meant to say, "this is not the Spanish Inquisition" --SVTCobra 10:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: Thanks. That was what I meant to say. My grammer is woeful. I was trying to repeat was @Possibly: said almost a year ago. scope_creep^Talk 10:51, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki editor has now properly disclosed SPA in his talk page, but has made an edit to the Evans page since and has not added the proper disclosures to the article talk pages. The edit is a minor one, but worth pointing out as procedure hasn't been followed. Grr >:( /s Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Added relevant tags to articles in talk page and mainspace. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Vaughan Grylls

• Vaughan Grylls (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Pinny Grylls (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Pavilion Books (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Castleandelephant (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Vaughangrylls (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• InvisibleFilms (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Artworker (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• =fjf6756 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (blocked)
• Lk890 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Substantial and long-running cohort of WP:SPA accounts apparently here for one purpose only: to promote the activities of Vaughan Grylls, of his daughter and of Pavilion Books, a company of which he is apparently a director. It seems that I asked Castleandelephant to properly disclose any COI on 14 March 2018; there was no response. The editor continues to make edits promoting Grylls, and has made not one edit unconnected to him. The other SPAs appear to be dormant. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for raising the issue Justlettersandnumbers, I'd agree that this is a clear-cut case of SPA. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Luckin Coffee

• Luckin Coffee (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• ICookie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Mattm64 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• 84.211.19.226 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Three WP:SPAs seem to be working from a document to update the article. Editor @Skarmory: noticed the unsusual editing pattern and it up at the help desk. It does seem quite off, particularly the last edit summary Finishing touches -Doc. I've informed them. scope_creep^Talk 09:29, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Reply from iCookie/84.211.19.226 regarding claimed Conflict of Interest. (Also written on my talk-page): Regarding the discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard of a possible conflict of interest, there is a wrongful claim that the Wikipedia page of Luckin Coffee is being updated from a document by three WP:SPAs. The IP address of 84.211.19.226 is mine, as I did the first edits to the page without logging into my account, iCookie. You could check my account history and see that I'm not in fact a WP:SPA, as I have edited several articles in the past, including the norwegian Wikipedia sites: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorbert_dose , https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Harold_Gray , https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_(enhet) , https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85ndelig_oppf%C3%B8lger , although this was quite a while back.

The Wikipedia page of Luckin Coffee has been updated to reflect the recent material legal developments, as well as updated to reflect current audited financial data and store counts which were all severely outdated. All the updates have been accurately cited with either 1. news articles from valid sources 2. audited financial data from Luckin Coffee 3. legal documents from the corporate restructuring, found at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/luckin/dockets. I have tried presenting information in an objective as possible manner. I hope you can read through the article and see this.

The "finishing touches" refers to the last updates I made before going to bed yesterday after spending the entire day contributing to the page. The Wikipedia page has not been updated from a document, but it has been a gradual work of mine over several hours (as you can see from the way my edits have been made), to try and organize the page in a better way. For instance the information regarding the Chapter 15 proceeding has been moved from the "History"-category down to the "2020 accounting scandal" category, and this category was renamed to include all restructuring-related matters. The category was moved down as it's no longer a current event after recent litigation settlements.

I hope this clarifies the situation a bit. Thank you. ICookie (talk) 13:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: It is indeed "a while back" that you were editing on Norwegian Wikipedia. 14 years, actually, so I think you can see that it is odd that you would suddenly return to begin editing English Wikipedia with such a strong interest in the minutia of the legal situation of a Chinese coffee company operating within New York. User:Mattm64 also appears to have been inactive since 2007, just like you. Is there a connection? --SVTCobra 13:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I'm still a bit unclear as to what the problem is. Is the article edited or written in such a manner that it strikes you as non-objective?

As for Mattm64, we know each other privately and both have an interest in corporate restructurings, of which Luckin Coffees cross-border restructuring is a textbook learning example. I would assume that such a textbook successful restructuring would be great learning material for students and the likes, of which many use Wikipedia, and I'd think that many people would have great interest in the reading about the "minutia" behind it.ICookie (talk) 13:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: This is an informal discussion. Unusual behavior is reported here and those who follow this noticeboard look into it and discuss it. I had never heard of Luckin Coffee before this, so as of yet I don't know if is objective (frankly, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact they grew to 5000+ locations since 2017). You state that you used court dockets as well as audited financial data as sources, yet I do not see either of those listed as references. Digging into primary sources when there are so many secondary sources is also unusual. And again, unusual is not the same as wrongdoing, it's just unusual. --SVTCobra 14:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: Those references are gone, because Quetstar reverted everything, including store-counts and other information like revenues and financial data that was done in complete accordance with WP:ABOUTSELF, and including the numerous secondary sources from Bloomberg, Reuters etc. ICookie (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: SVTCobra claims that since it's a long time since I edited Wikipedia, that I should not be allowed to edit Wikipedia articles anymore, despite all my edits to the article having citations, references, lots of secondary sources like Reuters and Bloomberg, and also having objective language in accordance with the standards of Wikipedia. He has given no further reason for why and just claims that I am "raising red flags" since it's a long time since I edited any wikipedia articles. This is not a valid argument to attack me. ICookie (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if an objective third-party could look at my revisions and tell me if, and how, my edits are breaking the rules of Wikipedia.

Keep in mind this article hadn't been updated in a long time and still uses old financial data, old store-count data and old data regarding important developments that have happened in the restructuring of Luckin Coffee. For instance, they are no longer under Chapter 15, as a judge just approved their restructuring plan. 2021 (UTC) ICookie (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie @SVTCobra: I checked the article and it raised some red flags in me since the users in question have only edited this article, so I have boldly revered the edits and restored the last revision before them. Quetstar (talk) 13:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: I have not edited Luckin Coffee. I have no 'powers' either. So let's keep the discussion civil. --SVTCobra 14:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie I reverted the edits, not SVTCobra. Quetstar (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: You still have not told me how exactly this article is breaking the rules. The only reason you have given for this supposed "conflict of interest" is that "its a long time since I edited on Wikipedia". That is not a valid reason and you know it. ICookie (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

My language has been objective, all citations and references have been given as neccessary. Anyone can check that and see. ICookie (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar: You even deleted the audited financial data that I updated on the sidepanel, and reverted it to the 2020 data, which is kind of hilarious. How exactly is updating financial data a "red flag"? Or updating the store count? You even reverted the store count back to 2019-numbers.— Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 14:35, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: Again, I have not edited Luckin Coffee, I have not deleted anything and I have not said anything was "breaking the rules". Nevertheless, you seem to have a problem with me, so I will happily recuse myself from this discussion. Cheers, --SVTCobra 14:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: My apologies to you SVTCobra, I see @Quetstar was the one who reverted my work. Still, you have presented no valid argument as to why the article should be reverted (something you obviously supported), beyond telling me that I haven't edited on Wikipedia in a long time. Please point out exactly how its breaking the rules and how its non-objective.

@SVTCobra: @Quetstar I would like an explanation as to how the article broke the rules or was otherwise non-objective. Why was financial data reverted to data from 2020 and 2019, when we have data from 2021? Why do you think the category on the 2020 accounting scandal should not be updates, when there have been material developments here? Why do you believe the article should still refer to Luckin Coffee as being under Chapter 15 bankruptcy, when in fact its not anymore? Please explain, I am all ears — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs)

@ICookie: I had not even begun to form an opinion. I was just asking questions. I did nothing to cause Quetstar to revert the article to an earlier version. And as far as I can see, neither of us initiated any action that resulted in the rev-del (revision deletion) performed by an administrator. Unbeknownst to me, there were apparently extensive copyright violations in your final version of the article which required it to be actually deleted from the history of the article. I do not know how the administrator became aware or discovered this. At this point, it is impossible for me to evaluate your edits because they are no longer available for me to see. Saying that I "supported" what happened is unfair. I have in the past helped editors who had a genuine COI (again, I am not implying you do). I worked with them and helped get the changes to their articles up to date, etc. I think all that's left for me to say now is God Jul! --SVTCobra 16:16, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

All the edits were suspicious, so i reverted them. An admin later deleted these due to them violating WP's copyright policy. Quetstar (talk) 16:45, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar: Wrong. You removed more edits than the admin did, including valid, non-controversial data such as revenue figures, store-counts etc. from audited sources. You also still have not given a valid reason for removing these datas.

@SVTCobra: Fair enough SVTCobra, and a merry christmas to you too. I apologze if I came off as harsh, I thought you were the one deleting it but it was @Questar. I will take it up with him.

@SVTCobra: Hey mattm64 here. No COI. I just noticed that the page needed to be updated and ICookie asked for help. it's completely out of date, we updated all of the court documents in links and updated financials as well. I'm pretty sure we kept it neutral in tone. Also, you need to look at my edits where I posed exact links to the court dockets. Anything that starts with epic is a court docket, or an SEC link. Don't revert back hours of people's honest work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattm64 (talk • contribs) 14:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Financials, Court Docs and a rev-del for cutting and pasting from a press release... these are all red flags of someone using primary documents to reshape an article. Slywriter (talk) 15:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Slywriter: Okay noted, I didn't know we weren't supposed to use those? The page is over a year out of date, the last event listed is a 2020 SEC settlement. Since that time there has been a private placement raise, a class action settlement, A bankruptcy filing under chapter 15, and a chapter 15 enforcement order. As well as 2021 financials. I thought those would be considered relevant and not reshaping a document. Please advise. I'm somewhat of a rookie. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattm64 (talk • contribs) 15:16, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally doesn't cate what a company says about itself, though updating store counts and other non-controversial information is fine when done in accordance with WP:ABOUTSELF. Court documents get tricky because they are generally primary documents and really need secondary sources that discuss those court documents. Slywriter (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: I reverted the edits because they were highly suspicious. Slywriter has excellently explained the red flags that led to me taking action. Quetstar (talk) 16:00, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Questar: You removed edits that were objective according to WP:ABOUTSELF such as updated financial data, store-count and secondary sources like Bloomberg and Reuters whom have also reported on the restructuring. Luckin Coffee is not under Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection anymore, and the article was updated to reflect this, using secondary sources (bloomberg), yet you also removed this.

An administrator has obviously looked at this, and he rev-del only the edits from where Mattm64 added information about the "JPL appointment".

But you, a non-administrator, have no reason to remove objective data such as store-counts, financial data and non-controversial information from secondary sources regarding the progress of the restructuring.ICookie (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie: This is a moot point now. The rev-del would probably have happened regardless of Quetstar. Also, it is common to revert to last best version even if some of the intermediate versions are valid. In fact, I will even help update Luckin Coffee. The point is, the page needed to be reset due to the copyright issue. Cheers, --SVTCobra 17:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: @Questar removed more than the rev-delete did, including store count, revenue and updated financial data in the sidepanel, that was according with WP:ABOUTSELF and data that used valid secondary sources, such as the Bloomberg article mentioning that Luckin Coffee was no longer under restructuring.

• Comment I think the three of you are undeclared paid editors, paid to update the article and make it to something it wasn't before. The whole thing is a crock. I think we are being played. scope_creep^Talk 17:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  I cannot see the edits, but I trust the perspectives offered by @Quetstar, Slywriter, SVTCobra, and Scope creep:. Thus, I agree with Scope's assessment here, per the duck test. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Scope creep: I already told you that the IP address starting with 84 is me. I made the first edits before logging in. Please check the IP address of my username if you do not believe me. Me and Mattm64 are not paid editors, please refrain from accusations of which you have no evidence of. Edits that were fully compliant with the rules of Wikipedia and even completely non-contriversial edits such as store-counts, audited revenue figures etc were removed by @Questar. Yes some edits were removed by admins, but @Questar removed many more edits than that, and has so far given no valid reason as to why. Again the non-rev deleted edits were completely non-contriversial and there is no way to fake it, as it was based on audited data, reuters and bloomberg secondary sources.

This was a blanket delete done by @Questar, he didnt even bother to check what was edited, but simply removed everything I added.

Yes, the edits were objected to and reverted. Per WP:BRD, You can start a discussion on the talk page about those edits if you like. There is nothing unusual or improper in other editors' conduct of reverting and raising concern about the edits, so you would be wise to divert off that path and focus on whether you can edit the article in compliance with wikipedia police, procedures and Terms of Service. Slywriter (talk) 18:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

ICookie, Mattm64, do you have some connection to Luckin Coffee? Specifically, do you receive or expect to receive, or have you ever received, and financial payment, benefit, reward or emolument from that company? If so, you are required to make appropriate disclosure. Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:30, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Good grief! The early part of this discussion has been heavily edited well after after responses. I guess to make it look less confrontational. I don't even know how to undo this mess. --SVTCobra 18:52, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  Bleh, let this serve as the record of the alteration I guess. Could include a note by their comments with the diff. Slywriter (talk) 18:59, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I mistook you for @Quetstar earlier, and edited my own comments to correct that. So outside parties reading this mess can actually understand whats going on. If you think I am confrontational, thats on you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 20:38, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

On me, eh? ICookie, you were practically screaming about me abusing my so-called powers and demanding third-party intervention. --SVTCobra 22:16, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: This is a pointless debate. I mistook you for Quetstar, and when I realized that, I changed my replies. If you felt I was screaming at you or otherwise offended you in any way, I apologize for that. I spent all yesterday editing this article and Questar removed all my edits in one fell swoop, most edits of which were perfectly valid and non-controversial such as financial data. He still has not given a proper reasoning for it.

@Slywriter @SVTCobra @Questar @Scope_creep @Santacruz Only a smaller portion of the edits were actually rev-deleted by an admin. The rest was reverted by @Questar. You can still see the majority of my edits in diff. Look at the diff, and tell me which of my edits broke the Wikipedia policies, procedures, Terms of Service or copyright, and point out which of my edits did not use objective language, improper citations or the likes. And be spesific. Saying I am "suspect" because it's been a long time since I edited, is not a valid argument.

@Justlettersandnumbers No, we are not paid or otherwise affiliated with Luckin Coffee. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 19:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

We can no longer see the diffs of what Questar reverted to refer to them. And challenging his revert is pointless. It was well-intentioned and in the interests of the encyclopedia. You can attempt to re-insert the content or discuss on the talk page of the article. Those are the next steps and a lot less waste of everyone's time as absent any other evidence this COI discussion has reached its limits.Slywriter (talk) 19:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. For me, the subject is closed and that's final. Quetstar (talk) 20:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Slywriter @Quetstar Is this a joke? Go to View History and compare the latest edit with the edit done 20:18, 19th of December (GMT+1). EVERYONE can access that version and it wasnt rev-deleted, but removed by Quetstar along with all my edits before it. AGAIN, I did plenty of edits before that point in time, that weren't rev-del'd but @Quetstar still removed them for no valid reason. Again, go compare these in diff, and tell me which of my edits break Wikipedia policies, procedures, Terms of Service, copyright, are non-objective / biased or used improper citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 20:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The edit which introduced content sourced to a press release by Luckin Coffee?? No need to go further if you don't see the problems with that edit. More importantly, this needs to move to subject talk page and be a discussion on the content thereSlywriter (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Slywriter and the edits using Bloomberg, Reuters and audited financial data? Why were those removed? Remove or improve the edit you don't like, dont remove everything including perfectly valid edits.

@Slywriter OH, and great job on that revenue update. You got it completely wrong. Revenues for Q3 2020 weren't even close to $300M. In fact the revenue figures were completely accurate as according to the AUDITED financial data from 2020, until @Quetstar was kind enough to remove them all, because god forbid Wikipedia readers actually get accurate information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 22:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

My reasoning was valid. Your edits will not be restored and that's final whenever you like it or not. Quetstar (talk) 20:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar You wrongfully removed valid edits that were in-line with the Wikipedia TOS and all other legal framework, and that were completely non-controversial, such as financial data, revenue figures, and store-counts that were sourced from AUDITED financial data, i.e. checked and validated by a third-party (secondary source).ICookie (talk) 22:19, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• UPDATE @Quetstar has wrongfully removed valid edits that were in-line with the Wikipedia TOS and all other legal framework, and that were completely non-controversial, such as financial numbers on the sidebar, revenue figures, and store-counts that were sourced from AUDITED financial data, i.e. checked and validated by a third-party auditor of the company (secondary source). @SVTCobra tried putting the data back into the sidebar, but got completely wrong revenue numbers. I will be restoring these edits that I have made with the CORRECT numbers. If anyone has a problem with that, take it to the Talk page. If you purposefully delete my valid edits again, then you are being disruptive and participating in edit warring which is a breach of Wikipedia TOS. ICookie (talk) 22:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  And i will revert them again, because an admin later deleted them for copyright violations. Quetstar (talk) 23:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar:*:Wrong. The admin deleted only the edits made by Mattm64 from 20:22 (GMT +1) and after, for copyright violations. He did not delete my edits up to 16:56 (GMT+1), 19 December 2021‎ because there were no copyright violations there.

I don't want to discuss this any further, but the article will remain as is because it's in WP's best interest. Quetstar (talk) 00:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Quetstar: You are wrongfully removing valid edits that are in-line with the Wikipedia TOS and all other legal framework, and that are completely non-controversial, such as financial numbers on the sidebar, revenue figures, and store-counts that were sourced from AUDITED financial data, i.e. checked and validated by a third-party auditor of the company (secondary source). You are wrongfully claiming that there are copyright infringements in the article, something that was been disproven to you in the argument above. You are unable to point out the copyright infringements you claim are taking place. You are purposefully deleting/reverting valid edits, you are being disruptive and participating in edit warring which is a breach of Wikipedia TOS. I will be reporting you on the Edit warring noticeboard shortly. ICookie (talk)

@ICookie:: That is NOT edit warring, and is not a breach of TOS, I am just enforcing what has been agreed upon by me and the other editors here apart from you and Mattm64. Quetstar (talk) 01:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar:: Your actions of wrongfully removing valid edits were not "agreed" upon by anyone. In fact Slywriter, SVTCobra and Santacruz didn't even get a chance to look at the edits before you deleted them, and they pointed that out numerous times previously in this debate. Slywriter even suggested I re-insert my edits and that we move further talk to the Talk-page of the Luckin Coffee page. So yes, you are edit warring and breaking the TOS by, on your own (not by consensus), wrongfully removing valid edits that are in-line with the Wikipedia TOS and all other legal framework, and that are completely non-controversial, such as financial numbers on the sidebar, revenue figures, and store-counts that were sourced from AUDITED financial data, i.e. checked and validated by a third-party auditor of the company (secondary source). You are wrongfully claiming that there are still copyright infringements in the article as an excuse for edit warring, something that was been disproven to you time and time again in the argument above. You are unable to point out the copyright infringements you claim are taking place in the current version. You are purposefully deleting/reverting valid edits, you are being disruptive and breaking the Wikipedia TOS. End of debate. ICookie (talk) 01:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@ICookie I have no further comment because i have reported you to ANI. Quetstar (talk) 01:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar The fact that you just wrongfully deleted all my edits for a second time, and this time gave "copyright infringement" as the reason for the deletion (when there is no copyright infringement in the current version) shows that you are the one that should be reported to ANI — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 01:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar In fact I just reviewed your Talk page and you have a lot of complaints against you for similar behavior as you are showing here, i.e. wrongfully and repeatedly mass deleting / reverting contributions for non-valid reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ICookie (talk • contribs) 02:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers No I am not paid by anyone nor do I have any connection to Luckin Coffee. Seeing as information on the company is a bit hard to come by I doubt they are paying anyone to do any of this. Heck I had a hard enough time finding information in the dockets, but as I have some experience with searching legal documents and following court cases I thought I would help contribute - and I was updating the page because it was over a year old. My edits were neutral and non-speculative. I did make the mistake of not putting quotations on a copy paste, but I did cite my source. I accept that that portion has been removed for copyright violation. What surprises me the most is how @quetstar wanted to remove factual things such as court decisions and revenue figures as these would seem to be material to the page. Funny how he just edited and added the word "embattled" in front of Luckin Coffee in the history. I don't care, but that seems like a non-neutral and biased term that should be avoided. if I didn't know better I would say he is the one with the agenda, not me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattm64 (talk • contribs) 00:43, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Quetstar I see the last revert and changes you made. To be clear, I plan on correcting spelling and grammar, as well as adding any relevant developments on the page as they occur. For example, If there is a management change, or an exit from chapter 15, or if the IPO in HK etc (I'm just making these up), those would be relevant edits to add. It doesn't make sense to keep an article "as is" if it's not up to date (as it has been out of date for over a year). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattm64 (talk • contribs) 00:49, 21 December 2021 (UTC)