User talk:Richard Harland

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Richard Harland. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Richard Harland, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

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

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

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Grachester (talk) 05:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Help me

Basically, I've been stupid, and I'm now floundering completely out of my depth (including how to make contact and beg for help).. I was horrified when I recently discovered that the wiki page on me (Richard Harland) contained some bits of outright misinformation (since reproduced elsewhere, as I now realise, falsely relying on the wiki page) and was also a dozen years out of date. Not having any contact with the person who put it up, I was delighted to discover I could edit it myself and no doubt edited too much. (I didn't alter opinions with which I disagree, but added in quite a bit of new material.) Now I find that my page has a message saying the subject of the bio has improperly contributed himself. Grachester (I think) has made some corrections according to evidence I cited, but the message remains, and I'm wondering what I have to do to get rid of it. Please help - false information on me can be very damaging; at the same time, I now realise why you can't allow people to edit pages on themselves. (Please note: I live in Australia, so it may take time before I can read a reply, and before you read my response.) Richard Harland (talk) 09:12, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Last time I was told I hadn't asked my question, and the conversation was ended. I don't know where 'below' means when you require me to ask my question 'below'. Does the material above go through as my question? If not, where do I ask? Richard Harland (talk) 09:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

OK. So this means that you have a conflict of interest (COI). For information on the rules about COIs and on how to deal with a COI see: WP:COI and WP:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide.

One of the most important things to do is declare this COI. On how to do that see: WP:Conflict_of_interest#howtodisclose.

The next thing to know is that you should (almost) never make edits to an article about yourself. Instead you should post an edit request on the talk page of the article. You should specify what changes you request and provide reliable sources supporting them. Other editors will take a look at your request and if they consider it constructive perform the edit (this can take some time depending on the number of outstanding requests and the complexity of your request). You can manually make a request using the Request edit template, or use the Edit Request Wizard. See WP:Edit Request Wizard, Template:Request edit, and WP:Reliable sources.

For urgent issues like defamation or any kind of content that violates Wikipedia policies you can additionally post at the noticeboard for biographies of living people: WP:BLPN.

If you need further help, you can always post questions at the WP:Teahouse or the WP:Help Desk. I hope this helps. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. The trouble is that the revised, updated version of the article is basically the one now up there. Grachester - I think - corrected my (Richard Harland's) nationality in line with evidence/citations I provided, and also removed a paragraph on forthcoming books (I could provide citations for the Amazon pre-order and GoodReads listings, but I agree, it could be viewed as a form of advertising). I'm not sure whether the '15 books' in the article's opening paragraph was reverted (it should be 17) - if so, it's the only thing that was. My questions: when I disclose COI on my talk page and user page (hoping I can follow the instructions - I'm at a Visual Editor level, computer language is baffling to me!), am I then entitled to remove the template message on the page about 'one major contributor appears to have a conflict of interest'? Or can I spell out somewhere that the contribution took the form of updating - though admittedly there was a lot of it? If I edit by adding citations for info already there, will that bring another COI message to the page, or is the addition of citations permissible? Sorry I have to keep asking for guidance - I feel like a toddler who's walked into a minefield! Richard Harland (talk) 00:44, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

You shoud disclose on your user page and talk page on your article, use {{request edit}} for now on, and not be the one to remove the COI template on the article. I dream of horses ^{(Contribs) (Talk)} 00:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with I dream of horses that you should not remove the COI template yourself. On the question of adding citations to existing content it probably depends on the persons seeing your edit. I recommend erring on the side of caution and using edit requests instead. I'll try to take a closer look at the article in the coming week to see what (if any) changes are necessary to remove the COI message. In the meantime here are step-by-step instructions for declaring the COI using point-and-click:

Declaring your conflict of interest on your user page

Edit your user page.

At the top of the editor you should see a toolbar that starts with B, I, a link icon, a picture icon, a book icon, and then a puzzle piece icon. Click on the puzzle piece icon to open a window with the title "Insert a template".

In the search field enter "UserboxCOI" to get to the form for declaring a COI. If you enter it exactly like that you can just press enter, otherwise you have to select it from the list.

Under "REQUIRED PARAMETERS" enter the name of the article for which you have a COI, i.e. "Richard Harland" (despite the title there is only one required parameter, called "1").

You can add further parameters under "OPTIONAL PARAMETERS". The numbered parameters are for other articles where you have a COI. With the "float" parameter you can set where the box appears on your page (e.g. left, right). With the "text" parameter you can add further information if you want.

When you have filled out the form click on "Insert" in the top right corner.

Now a box should appear on your page.

Declaring your conflict of interest on the article's talk page

Edit the article's talk page.

Click on the puzzle piece icon.

In the search field enter "Connected contributor".

Under "REQUIRED PARAMETERS" enter your user name (despite the title there is only one required parameter, called "1st user").

Under "SUGGESTED PARAMETERS" click on the plus sign in front of "U1-declared" and enter "yes" to let other users know that you have declared your COI on your user page.

Click on "Insert" in the top right corner.

Now a new box with a beige(ish) background should appear on the talk page.

-- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:41, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Random Person no 362478479, and thanks, I dream of horses. I didn't understand a couple of v short messages I received yesterday, but I understand now, and I'll act on the step-by-step instructions at once. Richard Harland (talk) 23:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

(Later on June 18th) The instructions for the User page didn't work out as planned (toolbar didn't match, no puzzle piece), but I eventually managed to declare the COI on both pages. I've proposed footnotes and citations on my Talk page for later updated sections of the article, so at least they won't be without evidence. I didn't Request Edit, because it seems I have to put the proposals up first (?) 58.110.68.181 (talk) 12:17, 19 June 2023 (UTC)