Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard

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

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

Additional notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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Possible autobiographies found by bot

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

EServer.org

Report

→ See also: Special:Linksearch/*.eserver.org

EServer.org (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - article about an electronic publishing cooperative
Geoffrey Sauer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - director of EServer.org
Geoffsauer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Appears to be Geoffrey Sauer - SPA adding eserver.org links and editing the above articles - active December 2004 - January 2007

Similar SPAs:

12.216.62.86 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active December 2006
129.186.156.5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active December 2006
129.186.66.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active June 2006 - May 2007
12.216.41.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active May 8 & 18 2007

The individual links appear to be customized to the specific article. However the fact there are already 322 links is alarming. I think we should insist that User:Geoffsauer stop adding the links until he gets a consensus that they are appropriate. EdJohnston 05:34, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Customized for many specific articles. It's a massive campaign. — Athaenara ✉ 05:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a campaign. This is a high quality web resource that naturally attracts a lot of links. It would be classified as link bait. I don't think this is spamming. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 06:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, this is a classic COI spam campaign. User:Geoffsauer, some SPA's, and some IP's from Iowa create both the EServer.org and Geoffrey Sauer articles, edit them heavily, and add a bunch of eserver.org external links. It doesn't get much more straightforward than this. (Requestion 17:47, 19 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Let's put away the torches and pitchforks. This appears to be an electronic library that makes literature available for free to the public. It's sort of like Project Gutenberg. I checked a few of the articles that contain these links, and I did not see an intentional linking campaign. Is see a large number of independent users citing this database from various articles and discussions. Example: [1] An even better example, added by Administrator User:Doc glasgow: [2] Enforcing COI is very important, but I think we need to be more careful to investigate these things fully before jumping to conclusions.

→ (Interjected.) The links which Ronz supplied in his initial report here, to specific WT:WPSPAM and WT:EL discussion sections, were intended to support that "investigate these things fully before jumping to conclusions" process. — Athaenara ✉ 19:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Geoffsauer needs a friendly warning. I predict he will behave impeccably once he is informed. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 06:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you know! He received a warning on 13 December 2006 [3], and hasn't made a single COI edit since. He did do a few little fixes to clear up image licensing problems, but I don't see any problems with those edits. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 07:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That conclusion might be just a bit premature considering all the SPA's and IP's from Iowa. (Requestion 20:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

You could be right. Do you think you have enough of a case to ask for a checkuser? I don't see how to pursue this other than to look at each edit on the merits. (adding) I just checked all the edits after the December 13, 2006 warning for the reported SPA accounts: 12.216.62.86 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), 129.186.156.5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active December 2006 , 129.186.66.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). There were no link drops that I could see. The users did correct a few links, possibly to fix broken links. There were some other gnomish edits. I still don't see anything sinister here. Can anyone provide a diff after Dec 13 to show there's a continuing problem? Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 22:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that a checkuser request will be denied because spam and COI violations are not severe enough reasons to bypass the privacy policy. I'll know more in a couple days after all 322 external link additions are tracked down. (Requestion 19:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I've tracked down some more socks and the current count is 249 external eserver.org link spams. The complete list is at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jun#eserver.org. (Requestion 21:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I have found a couple more socks. The current count is 278 external eserver.org link spams. (Requestion 06:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Jehochman mentioned that User:Geoffsauer received a warning on Dec 13 2006 [4]. I'd like to point out that Geoffsauer violated that warning here [5] on Jan 18 2007. (Requestion 21:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I started going down the list of 322 links found by this linksearch. As User:Jehochman has correctly observed, some of these links are to individual digitized books in the style of Project Gutenberg. I have no objection to these so long as they are appropriate to the article and are added with local consensus. Other links, such as the one that User:Geoffsauer added to our Technical communication article on in this edit on 28 March 2005, present a directory of links in a style reminiscent of DMOZ. I personally think that Sauer's Eserver link to http://tc.eserver.org should be removed from the Technical communication article, since Wikipedia is not a directory. In fairness, that article probably has more external links than it needs. If anyone has time, I suggest they randomly look at some other items found by the same linksearch and see what they think.

This editor doesn't seem to be a bad guy, but the profusion of DMOZ-style directories raises a warning flag. EdJohnston 16:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links to directories are not prohibited. Links to DMOZ are not prohibited. Links to categories in online libraries are not prohibited. Please see: Wikipedia talk:External links. Too many external links on a wikipedia page is what is discouraged. --Timeshifter 18:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added some rules to COIBot (blacklisted/monitor). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edits by this IP are troublesome: 12.216.41.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - active May 8 & 18 2007 Shall we send Geoffrey Sauer a friendly email and ask him to look at this thread and explain? If he is using anonymous IP's in a sneaky way to add links, that's a real problem. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 16:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's fair. Also you might find out why he doesn't use his logged-in account when he adds links to Eserver or edits his own article. If he must do this, at least do it openly. EdJohnston 17:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately he hasn't enabled email. We seem to have a complex situation. Possible linkspamming and sock puppets, but the resource is somewhat worthy and has attracted some valid links. We probably shouldn't delete them all. We probably need to give fresh warnings before blocking because the old one is almost six months old. We also can't be sure that the sockpuppets are abusive. Maybe it's another person at the organization who's on dial up and doesn't have a Wikipedia account. How about we place {{uw-coi}} on all the fresh socks, and ask them to come here to comment? Maybe the user will help us solve this mystery. If not, we can start blocking. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 22:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The web page 'eserver.org' lists an email address for Geoff Sauer. EdJohnston 22:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Message sent. I've asked him to comment here. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 22:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Link subsets

Comment. I shrunk down the original set of 322 links to a more modest 14 links to be studied:

These 14 links provide 'web directories with commentary'. So they may run into the rule that Wikipedia is Not a Directory unless they are really notable enough to deserve articles in their own right. Having articles would require reliable third-parties to have commented on their value. (A couple of the above links are not directories, but actual web periodicals, like http://bad.eserver.org, which is an online journal called 'Bad Subjects'.)

I am not sure we should be accepting the above 14 as external links, unless they are notable enough to have their own articles created. Especially we shouldn't keep them if Geoff Sauer is not willing to discuss the situation, because we'd like the Eserver people to acknowledge our policies and agree to cooperate with them. Your comments are welcome. EdJohnston 15:42, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first resource on your list has Google PageRank of 6, and has attracted links from more than 1,000 different web pages, including many official university pages. This isn't run of the mill linkspam. See [6] for a list of who's linking to item #1. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 18:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it takes extraordinary effort to get a PR6. It's interesting that you mentioned the antislavery.eserver.org link. Today, I just found User:Jlockard, a university literature professor, who spent the majority of his edits adding or fixing 63 antislavery.eserver.org links. At first I wasn't sure if this was a spamming but the more I looked at the diffs the more I was convinced. Very little value was added to Wikipedia, mainly just a bunch of eserver.org external links. There was even a run-in with a spam fighter back in May 2006 but the spamming continued. This is a tricky situation. (Requestion 06:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I read this discussion with interest, though I'm not a skilled Wikipedia user and don't feel qualified to contribute to the policy debate here about external linking. I'll respect your collective judgment about when external links are appropriate, and won't add any more without a clear policy decision that would encourage me to continue. In my judgment I have never added off-topic or poor-quality links to a Wikipedia entry, and would not do so. But I won't post here again, now that I see how my past contributions might be seen as self-serving. To clarify my past intent adding links to entries, as a professor of English with a speciality in technical communication I have edited entries and added links to online resources which I considered appropriate, as I understood it from my research, my reading of Wikipedia guidelines and existing entries. I don't know about an Iowa bias in posts about the EServer, though I do teach as many as 150 students per semester, all of whom use the site, and it may be that my students have posted some EServer-related entries. But I have never meant to injure Wikipedia's neutrality or credibility, and am concerned that anyone might consider my edits to have done so. I'll do my best, however, to answer any questions I can to clarify the reasoning behind any particular edits I have made.Geoffsauer 06:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that explanation. It is very helpful. For the future, I suggest you refrain from linking to your resources from articles. Instead, if you want to suggest a link, place a comment on the article talk page and let somebody else make the decision whether to add it to the article. I am not sure what you can do to restrain eager young students from adding these links. Maybe others can advise. Also, we have a project called Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination that might be very useful to you. Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 06:08, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Still working my way down the numbered list of 14 links, from above, benefitting from the Special:linksearch URLs that were added to each one. So far, looking at items 1-4, I see nothing inappropriate. On the whole this is good information. I fixed the citation format a couple of times, and I noticed at least one fluffy and over-linked article, (Praxis intervention), but that's not a problem related to Eserver. EdJohnston 04:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that many of the edits of the eserver.org external links are good and valuable. Many though were spammed. Many were also to low quality linkfarms. If you want to see the COI aspects it might be easier to go the the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Jun#eserver.org page and manually go through all the contribution diffs for all of the socks listed there. The COI picture should become clearer when you focus on the contribution diffs. (Requestion 16:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Wikipedia's best purpose really is not as a convenient transfer point to draw readers to external sites, whether eserver.org or any other. Can this be dealt with properly? — Athaenara ✉ 10:05, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should close this one because the editor has stopped making COI edits, and the links have been scanned. Jehochman ^Talk 04:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linking continues

The Special:Linksearch/*.eserver.org count, which was 322 when it was first reported, is now up to 353 - click "(500)" on the linksearch page to see that. — Athaenara ✉ 16:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plus 31 links in the past couple weeks is not good. I checked all the larger list of sock IP's at the WT:WPSPAM archive and it wasn't any of them. I'm going to scan the articles now to find out who it was and I'll report back here. (Requestion 18:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

This diff by User:RachelBartlett accounts for +12 of the new links and should be cleaned up in my opinion. I found two legit editors that each recently added one eserver.org link, no need to mention them by name. Still searching for the other +17 link sources. (Requestion 23:00, 18 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

All those RachelBartlett links, or most of them, appear in a single edit. [7] She migght be spamming her own cause, but I don't think this is related to EServer.org. Jehochman ^Talk 12:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. On WP:NOT#DIR criteria I removed 11 gender.eserver.org external links from the Paul Rosenfels article and left one link to eserver.org which seems sufficient. I also added a notability tag. I suspect that Rosenfels is notable so it should be easy for someone to add a proper reference. While eserver.org does have valuable historic documents I don't consider it a WP:RS. I'm still searching for the source of those 17 new eserver.org link additions. (Requestion 20:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I have removed the blatant spam that was added by the socks on the WTSPAM list. The eserver.org linksearch count is now 256. The {{prod}} tag from the Geoffrey Sauer article was removed by an SPA User:Jefferyev who also added some references. An SPA doing this with such a similar name is suspicious. I hope this doesn't mean that the eserver.org spamming will continue but now in a covert fashion. (Requestion 16:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Jefferyev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) [Added userlinks — Athaenara ✉ 01:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)][reply]

Count now up to 273. — Athaenara ✉ 01:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two editors (User:Moorlock and User:Rbellin) are blanket reverting my eserver.org spam deletions. I may request some blocks if this continues. (Requestion 19:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

As I've explained on User talk:Requestion, no one has "blanket reverted" anything. Rather, two disinterested editors have concluded, after reviewing the linked pages, that some of the deleted links are useful and encyclopedic references and deserve to be reinstated. Rather than engaging in a reasonable discussion about the links' usefulness as references under WP:EL, Requestion has revert-warred, repeatedly threatened blocking, and used spam warning templates. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive264#Overzealous_.22linkspam.22_deletion and User talk:Requestion. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, User:Rbellin and User:Moorlock have been blanket reverting my spam cleanup operation. I've tried reasoning with them but all I get is a lot of attitude. They even filed an ANI report about me. (Requestion 20:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Moorlock (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Rbellin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

See also: "Overzealous "linkspam" deletion" section on WP:AN/I. — Athaenara ✉ 21:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. A spammy link that is occasionally useful is hard to deal with in our system. Although 273 links may seem to be a large number, I think it might be worth creating a file containing all the individual links, allowing space for other editors to leave comments on them, pro or con. Leaving it to local editors on each Talk page to decide whether each link belongs is probably not a win because many of these articles are thinly staffed. If anyone agrees with me I'd start work on the list. There seems no other simple way of clearing up this issue once and for all, short of the spam blacklist, and we don't (yet) want to do that. EdJohnston 21:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have been reading through these comments in order to understand the nature of the problem. It is extraordinary that an online public scholarship project that provides digitized primary source documents and educational resources on slavery has attracted this sort of attention as a putative link-spammer. While User:Requestion expresses doubt that this project qualifies as a reliable source, quite a few university libraries and teaching faculty have no such doubts. We contributed both links and, where appropriate, text to selected articles on historical writers on slavery, many of them little-known. These are educational and research resources related to and contributing to understanding the biographical articles in which they appear. There are no links to any articles on topics other than the history of slavery. User:Requestion appears to make unilateral decisions on the quality of external links and, despite interventions by User:Moorlock and User:Rbellin, insists that he/she will have final authority in the matter. I find that attitude objectionable too. Those links were made in a spirit of idealistic contribution towards educational resources, and it would contradict that same spirit were there to be a revert war. If there is not a quiet and reasoned resolution here, I would prefer not to link Project resources to Wikipedia articles on slavery. Cheers, --Jlockard 00:25, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requestion is by no means alone in defending policies and guidelines. To frame the issue as a personal one, as if he and other NPOV editors are not defending them, is disingenous. In re Moorlock, Rbellin and Jlockard's last sentence: a preference "not to link" would be very helpful. — Athaenara ✉ 07:48, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The issue, to my understanding, does not concern compliance with policies and guidelines. These links are fully compliant with guidelines and contribute towards Wikipedia readers' understanding of the biographical subject articles and the literature of slavery. The issue focuses on an editor's perceived misapplication of these policies and guidelines in removing links to scholarly resources. At the expense of apparently significant time and energy, User:Moorlock and User:Rbellin have made a series of attempts to engage User:Requestion on the matter, to little avail. Before deciding what to do, it would be useful to hear from User:Requestion. Cheers, --Jlockard 15:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry that you were late to the party. It has already been decided what to do and even Geoffrey Sauer has agreed to stop spamming Wikipedia. Why are User:Moorlock and User:Rbellin causing problems with the continued blanket reverts? A little respect would be nice here. (Requestion 21:11, 29 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

User:Requestion, unilateralism is poor policy and worse practice. You clearly do not have the consent of a number of users to continue removing links on slavery-related articles, and it would seem wiser to desist and discuss the matter calmly. As for Geoff Sauer, you mistake walking away with contempt for a person's agreement. This is a marvellous way to get users who have an enormous amount to contribute positively to Wikipedia to throw up their hands and leave.--Jlockard 02:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing that Geoff Sauer and Jlockard have contributed positively to Wikipedia are a bunch of eserver.org external links. (Requestion 19:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Correction: Geoff Sauer also created the EServer.org and Geoffrey Sauer articles. COI? (Requestion 20:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

User:Requestion, I do not see much hope for this discussion given the tone of response. We all do what we can in life, and there are many forms of positive contribution. While not representing eserver.org, I can make the observation that much comment here appears to attribute a malignancy to that domain address. Geoff Sauer has contributed magnificently to public-interest webspace since establishing the EServer as a collective in the late '80s, when it was still gopherspace. It is now the largest non-profit online humanities publisher in the world and continues to function with its establishing social idealism. Following-generation projects like Rick Prelinger's Internet Archive have looked to eserver.org as a model. Given the unnumbered thousands of links to Wikisource, one must wonder why there is such obsession with 200-some links to the larger and more diverse collections of eserver.org? Collaboration and cooperation are excellent values for online creativity, but they have been in short supply in this discussion. Still, let's try to make this a fresh opportunity: do you have positive and contributory comment in relation to external links at the William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Parker articles? Let's try to be nice here. Cheers, --Jlockard 21:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop alleging that I "blanket reverted" you. I reverted your deletion of links once on a handful of pages (six, by my count). Moorlock hasn't edited any page connected to this discussion since June 25th, nor have I, so I'm not sure where you get "continued" from. -- Rbellin|Talk 22:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have blanket reverted my spam deletions twice. Moorlock has done it three times now. I'm going to try to clean this mess up yet again. I'll stop alleging your blanket reverting as soon as you stop doing it. It's that simple. (Requestion 22:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I just went through my own edit history again to be sure. Six pages, reverted once each. -- Rbellin|Talk 22:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The following was posted to my talk page. I removed it and forwarded it here.

"COIN and eserver.org"

"Have you read the exchange on User talk:Requestion about Requestion's arbitrary deletion of links to eserver.org? It seemed very strange to me that your last comment at WP:COIN characterized Requestion as "defending Wikipedia policies and guidelines." I understand that frequent COIN participants are likely to know each other better than other Wikipedians, but please don't take up Requestion's defense before you familiarize yourself with previous discussion on this issue. I'm a bit disturbed by the willingness of editors in this COIN discussion to assume the bad faith of outsiders. To me, this looks rather more like a case of several thoughtful, field-expert Wikipedians being shouted down by a mistaken interpretation of the spam policy and a failure to ask the basic question "does this make the encyclopedia better or worse?" And in any case revert-warring and refusing to participate substantively in Talk page discussion is not something to be characterized as "defending policies." -- Rbellin|Talk 15:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)"

I assume no clue. — Athaenara ✉ 20:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me? If you have a reply for me, please say it directly and unambiguously. I don't think I'm clueless, but I do think that both many of Requestion's comments and this one are borderline incivil, and I think this is a poor way of handling reasonable disagreement. At least one of your links ("no") appears to be there as a suggestion that I've spammed Wikipedia, which is certainly false. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that User talk:Rbellin understands the nature of the problem. This eserver.org case has been festering on for more than a month. Many many people at WT:WPSPAM, WT:EL, and WP:COIN have commented on this case. A consensus was reached and it was time to close the case. For some unknown reason Jlockard, Rbellin, and Moorlock think that this all was my "unilateral" decision. I don't particularly appreciate the grief, anger, and blanket reverts I received from them either. It might be time for the WP:TROUT. (Requestion 20:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Can you please provide a link to the discussion where this consensus to remove all links to eserver.org was arrived at? I've looked through the archived discussions at WT:EL and WP:WPSPAM and I don't see anything remotely approaching a consensus anywhere there. The previous discussion here is perhaps closer to agreement, but I see no sign of a consensus to remove all the links. (I should also say again, since you seem to have missed it on your talk page, that I agree that a good chunk of the eserver links you deleted very much deserved to be deleted as spam. But some were clearly useful references.) -- Rbellin|Talk 22:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest reading the discussions again but more carefully this time. I also didn't remove all the eserver.org links, I left about 70% of them, and I didn't delete any references. (Requestion 22:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

The nature of the problem is that people with a major WP:COI are adding large quantities of eserver.org external links to Wikipedia. Jlockard has added 63 eserver.org external links even after being warned by an administrator over one year ago. Jlockard confirmed the COI here. See Special:Contributions/Jlockard and Special:Contributions/129.219.46.76 for external link spamming activity. Almost every single edit is an addition of an eserver.org link. I request that Jlockard honor the spirit of Wikipedia and please stop adding eserver.org external links. I also never said that eserver.org wasn't a source of reliable information. What I said was that eserver.org was not a WP:RS which is very different. (Requestion 20:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Requestion, you're right that this is a problem, and you're to be commended for dealing with it head-on. Please note at this noticeboard or at AN/I if that account, that IP, or another eserver IP starts mass-adding links again, and it will certainly be dealt with. But I think it would calm things down considerably if you would let go any link addition that has an edit summary clearly indicating why the particular link is needed. Any such addition is within policy. Thank you. Chick Bowen 23:30, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do have a huge problem when any of those links are blanket reverted. For example 67% of the spam reverts done by User:Rbellin are in articles that Rbellin had never edited before! (history logs [8] [9] [10] [11]). Another Rbellin revert worthy of mention is this re-re-revert from Nov 2006 that was previously deleted by some other spam fighter. I haven't yet looked at User:Moorlock's reverts in detail but with "rvv" edit summaries and a handful of generic undo's in a period of a couple minutes I'm sure I'll find more questionable behavior. (Requestion 00:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Thank you for responding, User:Requestion. While your response invokes Wikipedia policies and guidelines, it does not illustrate how links to digitized primary source materials violate that policy. Your response exhorts; it does not exemplify. To the contrary of your assertion, such links to scholarly materials not only conform to Wikipedia policy, but provide high-quality information based on field expertise. To clarify your confusion on the point of COI: as stated once already, I do not represent eserver.org. I represent the Antislavery Literature Project, which functions in cooperation with the EServer. We are a non-profit for public scholarship in the literature of slavery and a separate entity from eserver.org, although we use their server. To clarify any COI further, the Antislavery site currently receives a contemporary average 5.1 visits/day from Wikipedia, or less than .01 of the site's daily visits. The major interest I can identify here is to avoid wasting my work-time on this matter.

However, let me illustrate to you the destructive effects of your work. Please visit the William Lloyd Garrison article where on 21 June 2007 you deleted an external link to his 1835 Marlboro Chapel address. This material is of direct consequence to any Wikipedia reader interested in Garrison's non-violence and pacifism, mentioned in the article. On 26 June User:Moorlock restored that link and you threatened to have him blocked for this and similar acts of 'revert disobedience' -- a nice neo-Thoreauvian term -- regarding slavery-related links. You did not respond to attempts by User:Moorlock or User:Rbellin to reason gently.

But let's pursue that precise course here. What editorial standards did you apply in seeking to improve the external links on the Garrison article? There are currently 16 external links in the Works Online section. Of these, only two -- from Cornell's May collection and the Antislavery Literature Project -- meet digital scholarly publishing standards [[12]]. This means that the digital texts were created from original texts, or high-quality copies with legal permission, and have been processed according to identified standards of textual scholarship. Another three of the 16 texts are from TeachingAmericanHistory.org, seven are from fair-use.org, one is from a course website, and one is from PBS. While I enjoy PBS very much, it is not a reliable source for historical texts, and fair-use.org is a citation resource, from which we have no clue where the document originated or its authenticity. In the case of the present Garrison document, whose digital link you sought to eliminate, an original resides in a wooden case directly across from me at the moment. It is reasonable to call this digitized document and its originating site a WP:RS.

So, in review, you cut one of two external links that qualify as WP:RS, and let another nine stand untouched that did not (TeachingAmericanHistory.org is from Ashland University, but the origins of its texts are unclear). The standard of link evaluation you employed was quite inconsistent. In short, your editorial choice was -- shall we say -- very dubious, and you would have hurt the quality of the article had not User:Moorlock intervened.

WP:EL specifies three basic questions concerning links: (a)Is it accessible to the reader? (b)Is it proper in the context of the article (useful, tasteful, informative, factual, etc.)? (c)Is it a functional link, and likely to continue being a functional link? In this case, the link to Garrison's Marlboro Chapel address meets all three criteria. One might go through the slavery-related links you have deleted on a case-by-case basis and conduct the same exercise, but once should suffice to get the point across.

User:Requestion, I hope this further explanation will provide you with another perspective and change your opinion. If there is still an obstacle here, then RfC or mediation would be good means of achieving better understanding. Cheers, --Jlockard 23:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Jlockard, your association with the eserver.org antislavery project is a conflict of interest (WP:COI). Your edit history clearly demonstrates that you are a WP:SPA whose single purpose is to add eserver.org external links. These are promotional problems that cannot be argued away. Claiming academic scholarship and quoting a couple random lines from WP:EL is not going to give you a license to spam Wikipedia. I hope you can understand this. (Requestion 19:36, 30 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

In translation, User:Requestion, what you state is that textual scholars should not supply links to textual scholarship with which they are affiliated because that is COI. That defeats the purpose of providing high-quality text links to accompany Wikipedia articles. It does help to know something about the subject under discusion -- in this case the literature of slavery -- in order to know what digital materials might be suitable. And, no surprise, scholars involved in digital projects are also the sources of such links. Wikipedia has a questionable-to-poor reputation among humanities scholars, for good reasons (and some less cogent ones too). Improving the provision of information is one way to address some of these complaints. It has long been my belief that it is better to work with people to solve a problem rather than against them to create another. Fortunately we appear to be doing that in reference to the Theodore Parker article whose link you removed. It is satisfying to work pleasantly towards mutual understanding, and I invite you to enjoy that same satisfaction. Cheers, --Jlockard 05:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Content and substance

It is content and substance which make an encyclopedia what it is. Some of the particulars of the policy known as WP:NOT, which developed as a response to many differing perceptions, apply here:

This encyclopedia's external links guideline supports that policy:

"It is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic."
"If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it. Refer to the citation guideline for instructions on citing sources."

For those who wish to add external links to articles, and who do not wish to be involved in developing article content and citing references, the best participation is to post them on the article talk pages with clear explanations of how the links support our encyclopedic purpose. — Athaenara ✉ 04:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the compromise suggestion, User:Athaenara. As we gradually check through the trail of User:Requestion's deletions and repost links in slavery-related articles, it will be done first on the talk page. Should User:Requestion or any other editor have questions or issues, they are welcome to discuss same. Cheers,--Jlockard 05:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An example of the above compromise suggestion appears at the Theodore Parker article talk page[[13]].--Jlockard 06:26, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jlockard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
129.219.46.76 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Comments:

I did not suggest a compromise. I showed (again) how wikipedia policies and guidelines apply here.
It's a mistake to persist in framing all this as if it's an issue only with a single user who opposes excessive external linking. Experienced NPOV editors know how to read the contribs. I strongly recommend that you stop trying to cast Requestion as a villain. — Athaenara ✉ 06:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Athaenara, do you have any comments on the use of and rationale for the link described on Talk:Theodore Parker? Thanks, --Jlockard 14:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A link to a page which contains a single paragraph authored by Jlockard and a dozen or more links would not improve the well referenced Parker article. — Athaenara ✉ 23:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-posted from the Theodore Parker talk page -- The use of unpaginated and unreferenced text resources, too common in Wikipedia article links, severely limits their usefulness. This means that they cannot be cited by users. Seven of the nine links are not citable primary text resources and/or do not meet a standard of verifiability. That is not well-referenced. Due care should be taken in selection of links providing text resources. The external link proposed has one introductory paragraph (by Jlockard) and three (XHTML, PDF, Word) versions of Parker's Slave Power for reader convenience.--Jlockard 00:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because it has the text (digitized in three formats: XHTML, PDF, MS Word) of the 1910 edition of Parker's collected writings and speeches, my view of this specific link has changed. As I posted on Talk:Theodore Parker, I have cited it as a reference in the article. NOTE: This decision and act is not evidence in any way, shape or form against Requestion. — Athaenara ✉ 05:24, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again, User:Athaenara. While this has been an interesting passage, now that there is some sense of mutual understanding and joint reasoning, I think it may be preferable to move review of links to the relevant talk pages. The same parties can work together. Thanks are also due to User:Rbellin for useful and calm contributions. This discussion thread appears to have served its purpose and, if there is mutual agreement, can be closed.--Jlockard 06:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MobyGames/ Flipkin

Special:Linksearch/*.mobygames.com
Flipkin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

User:Flipkin has established himself [14] as David Berk, a co-founder of the MobyGames website and has added some 900 links to the website, all still there, right up to his most recent edit [15]. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jun#mobygames.com [16]. There seem to be an associated farm of socks which have got the site up to over 6000 links. Some legit editors defend some of the links and any clean up would be messy. --BozMo talk 10:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is the general problem when 'good' links are spammed. I would strongly advocate a clean up off all links added by this and sock-accounts (per WP:SPAM; "Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed."; ). Established editors can then revert the edits where they can justify the links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For something of that magnitude, I would hope the linked websites would be blacklisted. --Butseriouslyfolks 04:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's two templates which transclude most of the spam. I've nominated them for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 June 9. MER-C 06:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clever. If only he had used his power for good instead of evil . . . Nice catch. Should we disable the links in the template in the meantime or leave them for reviewers at the TfD? --Butseriouslyfolks 06:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I urge you to reconsider this decision. Having glanced over the COI page, th only material that seems like it might apply to the links that have been made thus far would be under the following:

Conflict of interest often presents itself in the form of self-promotion, including advertising links, personal website links, personal or semi-personal photos, or other material that appears to promote the private or commercial interests of the editor, or their associates.

Links that appear to promote products by pointing to obscure or not particularly relevant commercial sites (commercial links).

Links that appear to promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages.

Biographical material that does not significantly add to the clarity or quality of the article.

From this I would say that 1. doesn't apply because the links are not obscure, are relevant to many of the game pages being linked and are not commercial except in the sense that the site in question contains ads within the pages and even merchanting links generated to amazon.com and ebay. I would say that 2. doesn't apply because mobygames is a public project and not a "personal page" in any sense. In fact, all edits by flipkin can be viewed from his own page on the site, and certainly don't cover every aspect or even the majority of content. 3. may or may not apply in some cases, but since the "biographies" of various individuals (game develeopers) is dynamically updated on the Mobygames infrastructure, that means that information is constantly updating and becoming more complete. Like wikipedia, actual biographies, photos and other information must be contributed by users and in many cases, pages linked to will not be "complete" in any sense, similar to many wikipedia pages on various individuals.

Full disclosure: I am also associated with the Mobygames game project and am considered "staff" for the website. (Apologies for if I haven't used the wikipedia formatting codes properly in this comment, I don't use them often enough.) --WildKard 08:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the bit you overlooked is: "How to avoid COI edits... avoid... 3. Linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);"--BozMo talk 11:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Spam and Wikipedia:External links as well. They clearly state that massive linking of this sort is not allowed on Wikipedia. nadav (talk) 09:01, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, I did that, and right on #3 of what to link to is "Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons." Are you saying MobyGames doesn't qualify under the 'amount of detail' section, especially credits? --Trixter 06:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a COI notice board. You founded a website and you added hundreds of links to it in Wikipedia. That's a conflict of interest violation. --BozMo talk 13:51, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that Trixter and Bhirt have also declared themselves as MobyGames founders in the TfD discussion. --BozMo talk 14:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You must have missed the part in WP:SPAM that says: Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed. nadav (talk) 00:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Looking at the various discussions around on this one there seems to be a lot of support for the idea that we delete the 3500 or so links added by the hard-core COI spammers, put those gentlemen all on a final warning and leave the broader community to sort out any worth adding back over time. Anyone agree/disagree? Anyone got an obvious bot to hand capable of doing this (given the links are all templated and the list of spammed articles we could put together)? --BozMo talk 21:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the number of links spammed is closer to 5500. Other than User:Frecklefoot and User:Krótki, no established editors have added a large number of mobygames.com links. On my survey I found an incredible number of SPA's adding moby links in a very systematic fashion; for example alphabetically, or for exactly one calendar year (Jan 1 - Dec 31). The SPA's get warned, some get blocked, but they always return under a new name. Another problem I see repeating is when User:Mathsgeek deleted a bunch of moby spam, the WP:VG community blindly reverted all of it. I like BozMo's proposal but I don't think it is going to work. (Requestion 00:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

I think if we do it with an edit summary linked to an explanation page then we would have a good case for warning and sanctioning mindless reverts of links to empty pages. --BozMo talk 11:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't there a nuclear option where persistent spammers have their links automatically banned by a bot? Sounds like a job for AN/I. -- THF 00:19, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree with BozMo. We can then leave it to regular page editors whether to add the links back. Alternatively, if new SPA's continue to spam then the site will have to be added to the blacklist. Has WikiProject Spam been consulted? nadav (talk) 00:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Yep! Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jun#mobygames.com) JoeSmack ^Talk 14:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spamming shouldn't be tolerated for even a second. DurinsBane87 12:21, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Total support for implementation of BozMo's proposal. — Athaenara ✉ 08:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And nadav's. — Athaenara ✉ 09:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The last three comments sum up my opinion entirely. Do not tolerate Spam. Nuke Spammed links and let CVG community re-add the useful ones. If they spam again blacklist the whole site. - X201 12:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with X201. After much discussion here, the Mobygames site appears to have some value as an ext link, analogous to IMDB for films. However, if we were aware that the owner of IMDB was adding links to its site by the thousand, we would never tolerate it. The links added in spam fashion have to go. --Butseriouslyfolks 16:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nuke 'em, but keep the templates. MobyGames has some great content (which means the template is still useful), but note I say some; a large number of entries are even stubbier than Wikipedia's, and yet these users have been adding links to them regardless of quality or relevance. Garrett^Talk 23:19, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The template is the reason for the massive spamming. It offers an umbrella to work under. Likewise, many inexperienced editors think they should add the template to any plausible article simply because it exists. Nuking the links without nuking the template would make little sense. The template is the problem. The spammign would never have occured without it. And there is no downside as valid links can be added where appropriate like every other site. Special treatment led to abuse. The real issue needs to be addressed. 2005 21:43, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds entirely reasonable for me. I guess if the template is the problem because other websites/communities are not using a template for their own linking to relevant articles, then we should not have it either. --WildKard 22:21, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

3 comments

I'm going to copy and paste 3 comments from the TfD, because I believe they're important for you to read:

One problem for me is the complete lack of attempt to mention the issue at either of the templates' talkpages, or to change its instructions to regulate usage to only useful Moby entries. The instructions for TfD state: "If a template is being misused, consider clarifying its documentation to indicate the correct use, or informing those that misuse it, rather than nominating it for deletion." --Quiddity 23:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So why not be bold and do it? As for changing instructions, a much wider community worked on WP:EL so perhaps you could just link to that. But we aren't talking about odd innocent editors. We are talking about the systematic addition of mainly shallow links to thousands of pages by a group of people who aggressively reply to queries with "its all agreed". I don't think there is any chance at all that this gang would be influence by comments on a template, even if you just posted "see WP:EL" probably it would just get deleted. Most communities on WP are a bit better at self regulation on these kind of things. That's how it should be --BozMo talk 06:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The wp:point is, why didn't you?

I only noticed this TfD by accident, and am dismayed and disappointed at the zealous/crusading/confrontational attitudes towards other editors (e.g. this comment by BozMo, this initial comment by Hahnchen, ignoring things like the 2 warnings Flipkin gave User talk:69.139.77.86, etc) and towards a free, community-driven reference-project (sound familiar?). More so than that, I'm frankly disturbed at your current discussion of a law-in-your-own-hands solution at WP:COIN#Proposal.

As Lendorien stated: "Hate to say it, but someone has been going around deleting all the mobygames links from every game article, regardless of whether mobygames link has more or useful information about the game. In some cases, the mobygames link has been the ONLY SOURCE for the article.--Lendorien 23:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)" Is that going to happen again?

And now you are seriously, nay, eagerly, contemplating razing Wikipedia of links to an incredibly useful resource. Slash and burn should only be a last resort solution, where the vast good will outweigh any harm, and that is not even close to the case here (see the thread about featured articles, above. and that's just the featured articles...).

It reminds me of the theory about how police officers should be required to regularly spend a little time working with innocent children or animals, instead of just criminals all the time. You're all displaying a bad attitude, that is not helpful to anyone concerned in the end, and that needs to be made abundantly clear. --Quiddity 04:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

End of copy. Uses of "You" intended in the selective/encompassing sense, not singular.

If you do anything like "nuking" the links to a useful reference, purely to chastise a handful of editors who almost certainly thought they were helping both sites (worldwideweb), you're going to be doing a lot more harm than good, and end up pissing off a lot of bystanders. Please please, take a calm and measured approach, and do not take unilateral action based on the single-minded consensus displayed above. Thank you for reading. --Quiddity 16:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have re-read these comments and appreciate your good faith opinion on the matter which is at one end of the spectrum of good faith opinions I have seen expressed. I am even happy to believe that the TfD which appeared on every one of 6500 links on CVG pages you were lucky to notice by accident. As for the personal overtones you use in terms of "zealous/crusading/confrontational" I am happy to leave anyone to judge my comments and style in raising the issue with a few COI editors versus the way in which you have approached people who in good faith removed some of these links. What I am missing in the above though is your suggestion on what we should do next (apart from your parody of what you think we are proposing). --BozMo talk 17:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quiddity, I think your position is persuasive in the TfD discussion but not here. The question there is whether the template should be deleted because it has been used excessively to spam WP. Your position indicates that there are appropriate uses for the template, as the linked site often has value, so it should be retained.

Here, however, the question is how should we respond to a large-scale linkspamming operation conducted by an editor with a COI. These links were added indiscriminately without regard to whether the content at the linked site warranted the links. Nevertheless, even if most of them were warranted, they are still spam posted by a user with a COI problem. Useful spam links are still spam links. "Live with the COI spam because it might be useful" is not a workable position here, as it invites spammers to linkspam WP in the hopes that some users will find their links useful.

In a perfect world, we could assign several paid employees the editorial task of reviewing each of these links for propriety and deleting only the inappropriate links. However, we don't have those kinds of resources. The proper course here is to delete the links added en masse in the same manner as they were added -- indiscriminately. Warn the user but don't blacklist the site yet. --Butseriouslyfolks 18:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To all: I've replied to BozMo at User talk:Quiddity#Hi with some of the background thoughts and impetus I'm bringing to this issue. Just pointing there to assuage any curiosity, and to further clarify who/what I'm frustrated with.

Here, I'm really trying to make it clear that something is amiss, when the possibility of blacklisting such a site is mentioned, after so little has been done to assist the users at fault from making further mistakes.

Examine User talk:Flipkin: He was welcomed and then encouraged/assisted with the usage of the template back in September 2005, then out of the blue he was warned 5 days ago.
User talk:TnS, was warned by Chicken Wing in January 2007, and then when TnS offered a measured and intelligent response Chicken Wing replied "Sounds fine. ...".
User talk:Krótki was warned for the first time 5 days ago. Welcomed in Jan 2006
User talk:Corn Popper was warned for the first time 5 days ago. Welcomed in Jan 2005
User talk:Ravimakkar was stomped on in January 2006, but was then told "You don't have to be sorry. ...".
User talk:69.139.77.86 was warned twice by Flipkin not to add links unless they were definitely useful.

And that's it from the list of offenders (those who added 50+ links, excluding frecklefoot. and I'm simplifying, but you get the point). Possibly I'm missing some pertinent facts (?), but after many hours of reading and discussing, I'm left with an uncomfortable feeling that there is a lot more Bite than Good going on, and I'm trying to (emphatically) point that out in the only way I can.

Thanks again for reading. I really do appreciate the work that Coin and wpspam does, I'm just trying to supply an outside perspective on this particular issue, which seems to be getting potentially way-overblown. --Quiddity 20:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Quiddity. I'd like to remove User:Krótki from your list above and add User:Corn Popper, User:59.182.37.97, and User:63.212.164.226. The accounts in the above list are not real editors, they are WP:SPA and I suspect several of them to be the same person. They mass spam, get warned, blocked, create a new account, and repeat. They are what we call serial spammers. Have you looked at the contribution logs for those accounts? The only thing we could do to assist is to help them add mobygames.com links since that's all that they care about. (Requestion 02:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

(Corn Popper added, but) Those IPs haven't even gotten a welcome/warning template yet... This is exactly the kind of bad faith/bite attitude I'm trying to point out above.

To try and explain it another way: Some people contribute without reading any more than the warnings and suggestions from just below the edit window (if that). Someone might see that a link to imdb is missing from a movie article, adds it, then goes through all their favourite movies to check that each one has it. I did that in the distant past. Others work alphabetically, because it's straightforward, and that's what they think will help. Look at List of health topics (S); someone started there, and hopes to return to finish it later or hopes someone else will. That's how this place works (One of many). wp:iar is policy to prevent exactly this kind of overenthusiastic wikilawyering. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by repetitively trying to help you understand, but I know of no other way to expand your world view to encompass what it currently does not.

[Perhaps I should've posted these comments at WPSPAM... Sigh. It's tough giving unsolicited "Working with others" feedback to multiple people. Sorry to those uninvolved, I usually try not to be this verbose. Feedback would be appreciated though...] --Quiddity 04:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requestion: You just now added 3 templates at once to User talk:63.212.164.226, a user that hasn't edited since January 2007, and to User talk:69.139.77.86 whom hasn't edited since August 2006, and to User talk:59.182.37.97 whom has only made 12 edits. This is very bad faith. You are gaming the warning templates.

And before you accuse me of stalking, bear in mind that researching and analysing the activities of individual users in order to come to an objective set of conclusions is part of what you are meant to be doing too, as part of investigating possible spam/coi problems. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: "Who will watch the watchers?". Anyone who notices problems, that's who. --Quiddity 20:35, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Quiddity. You are absolutely correct and thank you for stalking. The edits of those IP addresses were in extremely bad faith. You might not be aware of this but in SPAM and COI cases it's standard practice that all socks are considered to be the same individual / entity. I also just found User:68.46.123.33 who is an extremely interesting sock. That IP address has been banned, indefinitely blocked, and somehow added 300 mobygames.com external links. The more I dig the more interesting it gets. (Requestion 00:34, 16 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

The User:68.46.123.33 case is interesting. I'm also curious as to how that happened.

However, that doesn't address why you added 3 levels of warning templates at once, to users like User:TnS. Is that standard practice too? It seems overtly hostile, and is gaming-the-system in my opinion.

Are there any admins who could weigh in please? --Quiddity 01:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I could I guess. WP:BITE and WP:AGF are important but we also allow an appropriate treatment recognition of "obvious socks". The disagreement is because you look at a pattern of use and read it as "clearly" something different to how requestion does. I think that takes us beyond policy into subjective judgement. I would personally say that a single anon IP who you suspect to be a sock and does nothing but add a dozen links to a site with spamming issues you probably on balance get guided by WP:BITE and WP:AGF, and talk to them gently, but by the time you have multiple such accounts all similar the chances there are genuine naive users behind them becomes vanishing small. So, I am with Requestion on this one. You are welcome to ask another Admin of course. --BozMo talk 20:10, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I meant an uninvolved admin... However you didn't address the only question I asked: Is it standard practice to put 3 levels of warning templates at once on pages like User talk:TnS and User talk:59.182.37.97? Does that not seem excessive and rude? I understand jumping straight to a high-level template is normal, but not posting 3 at once. --Quiddity 21:44, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is your problem Quiddity? You follow me around and throw wrenches into the Wikipedia machinery like you are trying to make a WP:POINT about spammer sympathy. User:TnS already had a warning from Chicken Wing and Nposs. I just added a 3rd warning but those previous warnings don't even matter. Like I said, it is standard practice to inherit warnings across accounts. Also many spam fighters start at a spam4 warning in cases of mass spamming which +1600 links definitely qualifies. (Requestion 02:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Well, yes I added a lot of MobyGames links alphabetically to stub video game articles. I can't say anything new, just repeat myself: "I do not work for MobyGames and I am not affiliated with them in any ways. If you noticed I have added MobyGames links mostly to game stub pages. Game stub pages are usually quite uninformative without screenshots." If you noticed I've not added a single link to MobyGames since the warning of Nposs. And thus I would like to ask the removal of the "Courtesy messages" section from my talk page because it is quite embarassing. I did all the additions with good intentions, according to Talk:MobyGames#MobyGames template. I understand that I made a mistake because of adding too many links to low content pages on MobyGames. But that was because of the lack of rules. Someone should update the MobyGames template page and the Talk:MobyGames#MobyGames template section with the guidelines/rules of correct linking to MobyGames. The NeveR SLeePiNG 00:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello TnS. Wow, your response was quick. I have a deal for you. I'll remove the "Courtesy messages" on your talk page if you agree to remove the 1600 mobygames.com external links / templates that you added. Seems fair. What do you think? (Requestion 02:27, 16 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Not all the 1600 links are bad, most of them contains more value than the Wikipedia article. That's why I need the guidelines/rules so I can make the removal according to them. The NeveR SLeePiNG 11:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The TfD was closed as no consensus. I'll repeat the proposed solution I left there near the end. "The only actual concerning accounts I can determine from the list of suspects are User talk:68.46.123.33 and User talk:69.139.77.86, the edits by those two accounts could legitimately be reverted en masse.". (And any of the edits made after 4 October 2006 by User talk:Ravimakkar too). (The details behind that suggestion are scattered throughout this thread and the TfD, and the contexts are in the individuals talkpages, so I won't repeat it all here.) I don't know much about bots, but I believe mass-reverting the edits of individual editors is a fairly straightforward process? Ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests for more info, I'd imagine. Thanks. --Quiddity 17:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only 2 IP's and a small fraction of Ravimakkar edits? You've got to be kidding. With all due respect Quiddity, your understanding of this situation is woefully inadequate. Please stop interfering. Please stop being a hindrance. Please stop throwing wrenches into the Wikipedia machinery. And please stop following me around. (Requestion 17:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Please please try to assume good faith. I'll give the single example one more time, and let you examine the evidence yourself.

User talk:Flipkin. As of September 2006 he had been welcomed, and encouraged in the use of the mobygames template. The first mention of the COI guideline/problem was (the next edit) June 8 2007, the day before the TfD.

If he didn't know he was doing something wrong, we can't punish him for it.

(and just to clarify, I was explaining to BozMo how I stumbled upon the mobygames thread, as a reply to his disbelief. I'm just trying to be honest and transparent, in action and motive. (Don't label me just because I happened to agree with anything the argumentative timeshifter said!)) Thanks. --Quiddity 02:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear if it was a question of "doing something to Flipkin" I could have just done it (sinister laugh). This COI seeks a consensus on some sort of bot removal of links which were put in by Flipkin, and also by a series of SPA IP accounts. Also it has brought up an issue on WP:EL since Quiddity has a view (I hope I am being fair) that we should link to every page which has any information not in the WP article. Getting clarity on that and guidelines for when to link to MG would be a good outcome. --BozMo talk 08:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cutting to the chase

Has the massive and obvious overlinking been reduced or not? — Athaenara ✉ 01:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK nothing has been done yet. I'm finishing up the the WP:COIN#EServer.org case and then I'll get to the mobygames.com overlinking. (Requestion 17:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Lest anybody continue in the belief that mobygames.com is a reliable source, let me offer two rebuttals:

(1.) http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,257587/

"He is originally from Quatloo, Alberta, Canada." Oh, I doubt that.

(interjected) I must concur, I do not know this gentleman and have never been to Alberta. Also, I agree that Mobygames.com is not a WP:RS. Not because it contains errors -- everything contains errors, including reliable sources -- but for other reasons. Quatloo 00:03, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(2.) http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,4916/

One of his projects was "wwwwolf: Armageddon". That's funny, I heard they were very picky about their content.

My conclusion from this experiment is that this site is not as useful or appropriate for linkage as we were led to believe. It's absolutely not reliable. --Butseriouslyfolks 23:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I should add that the content I quoted from mobygames.com is plaintext. I added the links to relevant users here so that other readers would understand the significance of the names. Also, in fairness, I should add that my attempt to add "Quiddity, Oregon" as the birthplace of another developer was rejected pending further information from me, such as a source. So at least somebody there is paying attention. --Butseriouslyfolks 01:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Global Panel Foundation

Global Panel Foundation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) AND
Prague Society for International Cooperation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) AND
Marc S. Ellenbogen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The latter is a résumé for an individual who presides to the other two institutions; long but slow warn-and-revert war between inside editors and COI patrollers. Lately an inside editor has resorted to verbal aggressiveness, hence this report. --maf (talk-cont) 00:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Praguesociety (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - started all three articles; a week later promoted all of them to FA status (example)!

The following users are all insiders of the organizations and have tried to restore cleaned-up or unsourced deleted content on all three articles - interestingly, as one user leaves, a new one takes his place:

Nbenker (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - (seems like his secretary: "moved Prof. Dr. Marc S. Ellenbogen to Marc S. Ellenbogen: Mr. Ellenbogen does't want to use his title in Wiki.")
Badenbaden (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Profellenbogen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
BanikPico (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - (his idea of verifiability: "verified and accurate"); seemed in good faith at first (see) but right after tried to cram all content back in (see)
Verticaldemocracy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - latest active user, verbally aggressive in his defense of the articles
Zrahl7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - [added 05:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)][reply]
Salsicha picante (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - [added 03:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)][reply]
Garters (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - [added 03:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)][reply]
64.204.217.21 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
89.56.164.199 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
89.56.133.222 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
203.234.169.3 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

--maf (talk-cont) 00:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IP lookup results:

64.204.217.21 - Possible - same geographical area (New York), but too populated.
89.56.164.199 and 89.56.133.222 - wrong side of the country. Unlikely.
203.234.169.3 - Unrelated - South Korea.

Be careful of 3RR. MER-C 09:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All of the accounts listed above, anonymous and otherwise, are single-purpose accounts focused on the Ellenbogen-related articles with evident conflict of interest varying from apparent to obvious. It doesn't matter where they are on the planet: look at the contribs. — Athaenara ✉ 10:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One month after maf's initial report here, this crew of COI SPAs is still multiplying accounts and proceeding with near-impunity. — Athaenara ✉ 03:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Parnell Habersham

Richard Parnell Habersham (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Rhabersham (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Article created, edited by article subject. RJASE1 ^Talk 00:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Listed at WP:AFD. Yechiel Man 08:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've extensively edited this article for reliable sources and neutral point of view. As of this writing, the Afd has not yet closed. — Athaenara ✉ 05:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gbooks24 / KatieSimon

Gbooks24 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
KatieSimon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
199.106.94.136 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

An admitted employee of Simon & Schuster using the above registered usernames and IP is posting numerous S&S author bios using text copied from other websites, including the S&S website. I posted the info to the spamdalism noticeboard and an admin left a very nice message for the editor in question explaining WP:C. I think the WP:COI concern is much more substantial. Another editor notified her of WP's COI policy, and I asked her to disclose her identity on the article's talk pages, but she is reluctant to do so. I think the idea of a major publisher posting copyvio bios of its authors on WP is highly inappropriate and borders on User:MyWikiBiz. Anybody agree? --Butseriouslyfolks 20:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, highly inappropriate and violate WP:NOT. — Athaenara ✉ 22:39, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, also: I have requested a move of Kate brian to Kate Brian. This is one of the articles created by User:KateSimon. Bearian 00:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The two registered accounts have been inactive since 8 and 11 June, but 199.106.94.136 was still actively linkspamming yesterday. — Athaenara ✉ 04:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Dice

Mark Dice (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Conner
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Conner 2
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Resistance Manifesto
Deb4ser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
MagicMemory (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
208.54.15.1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
208.54.15.129 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ←

This is a soapbox matter rather a straight COI but COIN is probably the best noticeboard for it. "John Conner" is a pseudonym used by Mark Dice until recently. His internet radio show and writings appear similar to Alex Jones (radio). Under either name he is known for self-promotion. For the past couple of years promotional edits favoring him have been made to Wikipedia. In the past he's been sufficiently non-notable that most of the references have been removed. The "John Conner" article was successfully AFDed twice, and speedily deleted a couple of more times too. Obviously it's been recreated several times. The various promotional efforts have paind off and he's probably notable enough now to merit at least a short article. If so, we need to watch it closely to prevent it from becoming a soapbox for fringe theories. ·:·Will Beback ·:· 05:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is another one that needs to be looked at more carefully not onyl for COI, but notability. He's merely famous for stalking and for being in the news, not being or doing anything per se. I've tagged it, too. Bearian 00:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

208.54.15.129 is still actively COI-editing the article, adding links for videos the subject has made as (wholly not-RS) references, for example. I have referenced some of his additions, but I wouldn't waste energy on arguing against their deletion, and I'm frankly tempted to stubbify the article. As Will Beback pointed out, there's a soapbox issue here, too. — Athaenara ✉ 08:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Drum Major Institute

Drum Major Institute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Drum Major Institute (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Unclear what to do. Seems to be a notable org, but tone of article is promotional. Yechiel Man 14:40, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It seems notable, but What a mess of an article: Red Link City, USA. COI and messy articles seem to go hand in hand. Bearian 16:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And this edit violates NPOV, since Drum Major is a thinktank way to the left of the nonpartisan Brookings, which is characterized as "liberal." THF 16:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note also:

Chelesay (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - spa (and sockpuppet/meatpuppet?) for DMI, created 12 June
Andrea Batista Schlesinger (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - DMI official article created spammily by DMI and edited by Chelesay -- THF 11:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

140.239.224.226 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has edited Drum Major Institute similarly to the above editors.

I notified the first two editors about possible coi issues, and recieved a reply from the first: [17]. I'm concerned that editor Drum Major Institute has continued editing both articles, including removing a likearesume tag, without contributing to the Talk pages of either. I'm hoping a note from another editor would be helpful. -- Ronz 20:01, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping to close this one, but just a few hours ago coi spa Special:Contributions/Drum Major Institute removed the {{cleanup}} tag. — Athaenara ✉ 05:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I gave the user a general note about removing the clean-up tag on his/her talk page. Sancho 15:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bernard J. Taylor

Bernard J. Taylor (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Terrell Newman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Siebahn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Article on playwright created by a person claiming to be the webmaster for his promotional website who is also adding promotional information about the playwright to other articles and has started an article about at least one fictional character in playwright's plays. WP:OWN issues are arising -- user is removing appropriate templates. Erechtheus 03:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the COI admission. I've left a warning. Block indefinitely on the next COI or spam edit. Somebody needs to go clean up this big mess. This user has been a prolific spammer. Jehochman ^Talk 04:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User maintains webpage:

bernardjtaylor.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please indef block this abusive editor?

Grab your mop. Every edit from this account is self-serving COI or linkspam, hitting multiple articles. (e.g. [18][19][20]) Wikipedia is being abused for a publicity campaign. The editor has been warned up, but persists, and has been leaving obnoxious messages with any editor who opposes. Jehochman ^Talk 14:33, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

48 hour block for WP:NPA violations. Follow up with specific evidence of linkspam, etc. if problems resume. Durova^Charge! 17:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The most vitriolic personal attack is this one.

Whether or not problems resume, here are the external links that need to be checked. Many look like spam. The editor claims to be the webmaster of this site, so he obviously should not be adding all these links:

http://www.bernardjtaylor.com linked from Wuthering Heights - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com linked from User:Siebahn - This one is OK
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/ linked from Bernard J. Taylor - Also OK
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/BOOKINDEX.html linked from Image:Bernard J. Taylor.jpg -OK
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Books.html linked from Detective fiction - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Heights/Heights.html linked from Wuthering Heights - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Heights/Heights.html linked from Lesley Garrett - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Heights/htsbronte.html linked from Wuthering Heights - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Htspages/Heights.html linked from Wikipedia:Dead external links/404/w - No issue
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Liberty/Liberty.html linked from List of musicals: A to L - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Liberty/Liberty.html linked from Battle of the Alamo - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Muchado/Mado.html linked from Much Ado About Nothing - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/Nosferatu/nosmoore.html linked from Much Ado About Nothing - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/PridePrejudice/pp.html linked from Pride and Prejudice - SPAM
http://www.bernardjtaylor.com/PridePrejudice/ppintro.html linked from Pride and Prejudice - SPAM

I hope the editor will agree to stop spamming, clean up the above mess, refrain from further COI edits, and agree not to make further insults. Jehochman ^Talk 18:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll leave this at a 48 hour block for now. If problems resume the duration will escalate rapidly. Durova^Charge! 18:26, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've cleaned up the linkspam listed above. Jehochman ^Talk 19:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked 69.218.220.246 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) for blockevation. Agathoclea 22:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Block on the sockmaster extended to one week. Report additional problems here and I'll respond appropriately. Durova^Charge! 16:36, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder even about the notability. I don't know about the US venues, but the UK ones - Tonbridge ... Eastbourne ... Rotherham - have a rather small-town flavour, and these productions may even be amdram. And his books track to iUniverse (ie self-published). AFD? Gordonofcartoon 02:31, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by SP edits, two more likely socks, the latter getting uppity about being expected to provide published sources for biographical data: Gordonofcartoon 22:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
24.93.115.165 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Artwinters (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Westgate / advertising

JRoss09 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Special:Linksearch/*.westgateresorts.com
Westgate Resorts (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
David A. Siegel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I was told this might be the right place to ask. Westgate Resorts looks like a huge advertisement to me. Am I right? It may be a notable company, but I don't think all of those resort links need to be there. --blm07 15:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like a public relations campaign to me. Editor JRoss09 has only edited articles about Westgate Resorts, its founder, shareholders, affiliates, and places where he can add links. I'll warn him about COI editing, and see what he has to say. Jehochman ^Talk 17:57, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to fix the main article for formatting and erasing junk from it. Bearian 01:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some more cleanup, but it still needs work. Jehochman ^Talk 03:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NBC Universal IP address inserting program ads

64.210.199.232 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Stephenb214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
John_Travolta (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Michael_Eisner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Becky_Quick (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
(various other NBC employee BLP's)

IP whois shows this user(s) is at NBC Universal itself. Editing includes (in addition to a "Fxxx Y**" edit) a history of "this xNBC show coming on at date/time" adverts in Travolta, Eisner and NBC employee BLP articles. I'd suggest that an IT administrator that presides over that IP range at NBC be contacted by wikipedia that wikipedia should not be used to spam upcoming NBC shows and to post in a manner that I'm sure NBC would not want to be associated with. Piperdown 19:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added another possible NBC SPA-COI account (Stephenb214) to the list. Jehochman ^Talk 22:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've semiprotected Michael Eisner and Becky Quick for two weeks. The account and IP address don't show any recent activity. If this is an ongoing problem, please post the relevant account or IP. I take this very seriously and I agree: this is the type of situation where it's important to act quickly and with discretion. I don't know whether this is good faith action by a new user, whether it's coming on orders from management or some well-meaning low level employee acting alone, but it's the kind of thing that could really cause negative press backlash for a firm. Durova^Charge! 15:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scientology, again

Scientology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
COFS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
CSI LA (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Su-Jada (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

A couple of Scientologist editors have engaged in large numbers of edits apparently intended to whitewash the main Scientology article. Their responses to other editors have not been WP:CIVIL both on Talk:Scientology and in edit comments. Two of them have been blocked (see links for details) but this does not seem to have helped much. Is there anything that can be done? SheffieldSteel 14:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about taking this to Wikipedia:Community sanction noticeboard and requesting a community ban? I think these people have worn out our patience. I believe past investigations have shown that COFS works for the Scientology organization, so these are nothing but COI edits. Jehochman ^Talk 14:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will try that. Thank you. SheffieldSteel 15:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For related, information, Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/COFS. Smee 22:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The community enforcement discussion is at Wikipedia:Community_sanction_noticeboard#User:COFS. Smee 22:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC).[reply]

SAC Capital Partners

SAC_Capital_Partners (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Steven_A._Cohen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
69.74.41.252 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Ip address that whois's from SAC Capital Partners has edited the article for SAC Capital Partners and [21] the BLP for the person who runs it. Piperdown 17:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can add User:Lamphore to the list of miscreants, but the case relates to edits made around February 1, 2007. Based on the normal wiki process, both articles have changed substantially since then, and there's really nothing to be done from the administrative end, except maybe to slap on "cleanup" tags and to warn the users with subst:uw-coi. Yechiel Man 06:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I cleanedup the article a bit, although I am not quite sure what to do with the big list of firms the company has invested in. -- Sparkzilla talk! 07:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Theatre Under The Stars (Houston)

Theatre Under The Stars (Houston) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Veronabritj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - (formerly User:Theatre under the stars)

Created by, and extensively edited by, a new editor with the exact same name. I tagged it for COI2. Bearian 23:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[[WP:PROD|Proposed for deletion]. Yechiel Man 01:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edits were reverted 3 times or more in a matter of days, and the page was blanked once, by the same user. Does this violate the rule on 3r's? Bearian 16:44, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Philip Stanton

Philip Stanton (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Stanton Studio (talk · contribs)
83.33.179.37 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ←
83.33.177.219 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
83.50.145.191 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This article was created by an editor called Stanton Studio, probably in violation of conflicts rules and extensively edited by anonymous editors, with content that appears to be original research. Bearian 00:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have confirmed the conflict of interest. There is an equivalent article in the Spanish Wikipedia, es:Philip Stanton, which was authored by an identical username and an identical IP address, 83.33.etc. He doesn't seem to be notable, with about 150 Google hits for "Philip Stanton" with 1962, his year of birth, to distinguish him from other people with the same name. Because he has written and illustrated many books, he is not obviously nonnotable, so I have not decided to take any action. If you wish to be enterprising, you could try listing his article for deletion on the English and Spanish wikis. Yechiel Man 01:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No thanks. I agree that he's notable, so I won't tag it for deletion. However, I want to keep on the tag as a notice to readers and other editors. Bearian 13:13, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've left him a {{uw-coi}} warning. Jehochman ^Talk 13:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MFauntroy (talk · contribs)

MFauntroy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Michael K. Fauntroy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - autobiography
Walter E. Fauntroy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - uncles's biography

Wrote his own biography and significantly contributed to father's biography, as well as self-promotional editing in other articles. Videmus Omnia 03:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also removing negative information concerning his uncle. Videmus Omnia 03:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've warned the user. If he continues making COI edits, please let us know. Jehochman ^Talk 04:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

69.146.65.6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) removed {{COI2}} from WEF article. I added maintenance / improvement tags when I restored it. — Athaenara ✉ 06:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Katrina Swett

Katrina Swett (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
~~SwettforSenate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)~~ - Has been editing that article, with an obvious POV username. I didn't know whether to place a request here or at WP:UAA. Flamgirlant 18:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Username-blocked. Videmus Omnia 19:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
24.62.159.215 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - suspected mockpuppet, COncord, New Hampshire IP.
Donatello08 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - User's only contribs are to the article and its talk page.
Lyracat1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - another possible spa.

I've left a warning for the user. Please report this as an inappropriate username. Thanks. Jehochman ^Talk 18:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the swift response. I'll be down the hall, to the left. =).--Flamgirlant 19:00, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

broken <s> tag fixed.--Flamgirlant 19:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have added content and citations I found with a Google search. Bearian 23:01, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Hmartincalle

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

Appears to be H. Martin Calle [22] of Calle & Company [23]. In every article he's edited to date he's added material about himself, his company, or what I assume is a relative. I've notified him of WP:COI and removed some of his edits. --Ronz 17:13, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good call. Short contribution list, possibly factual (although unverified) information. This might be someone who could be persuaded to post cited suggested edits to article talk pages instead of inserting promotional material directly into articles. Durova^Charge! 20:07, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Financial Access Initiative

Financial Access Initiative (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Christina Barrineau (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Financial access (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
'07Student (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - [Added by Athaenara ✉ at 04:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)][reply]

Every thing matches, but I can't tell if there's a conflict. The articles were edited by the same user, and Barrineau is a director of Financial Access Initiative. Smoke? Bearian 00:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First person "article" + username similar to company title = blatant spam + conflict of interest. MER-C 08:29, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about the second article, seems plausibly notable. MER-C 02:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Branding brand

Branding brand (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Collegeprowler (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Hotsaucetogo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - another possible SPA.

I have tagged the article for: conflict of interest, reads like an advertisement (peacock language, photos and interests of the principals, etc.), red links, lacking third-party sources, and unverified sources. This is an article for PR firm by a PR firm. WP:NOT, WP:OR

The conflict is that the former employer of three principals and the creating editor have a suspiciously similar name. The creator of the article has most recently only been creating or editing articles about persons or entities that are clients and principals of that PR firm. Also, the editor has made lots of edits, but has not even bothered to make a user page or a user talk page. WP:COI

I have not suggested to delete it entirely, as it may be notable, or just my error.

Also, there's possible copy-vio of pictures? Bearian 16:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah!

Joey Rahimi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
College Prowler (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
United Nations International School (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Joey Rahimi = Collegeprowler = College Prowler = Branding brand = Branding Brand = Alumni of United Nations International School [[24]]!

From Joey Rahimi: "Joey Rahimi (born April 20, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of College Prowler, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based publishing company of college guidebooks and collegeprowler.com, one of the fastest growing websites in its industry. The company was established in 2002 as a project in an entrepreneurship class at CMU's Tepper School of Business.[1] He attended the United Nations International School and graduated with an International Baccalaureate. Upon being accepted into Washington University in St. Louis, Emory University, New York University, and Carnegie Mellon University, Joey decided to attend Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [2]"

Also, note the Usertalk on Collegeprowler has several copyright violation notices! Bearian 16:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images have been tagged as no source/license. Videmus Omnia 19:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The portraits in the article are copyvio from company website here. Videmus Omnia 19:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Collegeprowler (talk · contribs) is now removing maintenance notice from Joey Rahimi and College Prowler. Videmus Omnia 15:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I unclosed this as there are three more articles that the concerned user has been editing where COI is applicable. MER-C 02:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Freedompress (talk · contribs)

Freedompress (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
David Steinman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Freedom Press (U.S.) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

See the above user's user page for self-proclaimed COI. Videmus Omnia 20:45, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, yeah. This might be grounds for deletion, but I'm not sure. Yechiel Man 10:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Christopher Elliott

Christopherelliott (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - has come to edit the article Christopher Elliott (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). However, I doubt this is the same person, and I'm wondering if in fact we shouldn't just block the username unless he says they're the same person. The Evil Spartan 14:31, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also uploaded a huge number of professional-quality images claiming to be the creator/copyright holder. Videmus Omnia 15:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Get rid of the violating pictures. Bearian 13:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They're tagged as GFDL. About the best I can do is mark them as "possibly unfree". Videmus Omnia 15:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Voicefarm (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) removed the photo gallery with the edit summary "this is to remove the biography details causing the tagging to occur." I don't know what this means, exactly, but I do infer some sort of tandem relationship. — Athaenara ✉ 07:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gwen Shamblin

Gwen Shamblin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
GwenShamblinRepresentative (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The above account is a single-purpose account editing the Gwen Shamblin article. Videmus Omnia 15:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This one's a tough nut to crack. I'll give the user a boilerplate warning, but it's good that the article is very well referenced and receives attention from neutral editors. Maybe someone else can look more closely. Yechiel Man 09:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Omaha Steaks

Omaha Steaks (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - This article mentions Omaha Steaks' history of spamming and their listing at Spamhaus.
Beth Weiss (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - This account has only ever edited the Omaha Steaks article, and the name "Beth Weiss" is that of Omaha Steaks' "corporate communications director" according to this article. I left a pointer to WP:COI on her talk page and invited her to talk about it on the Omaha Steaks talk page, but instead she keeps adding inaccurate info to the article.
208.249.105.221 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - This IP has two edits to the Omaha Steaks article, and the IP reverse-resolves to "mailer.omahasteaks.com".
M161 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - This account only has a single edit, which was to "sanitize" the Omaha Steaks page
Dsimon12 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Same as above
70.171.169.139 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Same as above. According to an IP geolocation site, this is an Omaha, Nebraska IP address
70.187.26.152 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - another possible spa. Videmus Omnia 04:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
24.252.62.197 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - another possible spa. Videmus Omnia 04:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Os032007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) another possible spa. Videmus Omnia 04:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Oops, looking at contribs, seems to be a spa on the other side of the issue. Videmus Omnia 04:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, the case of Os032007 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is even stranger. Their older edits support Omaha Steaks, and their later edits seem to support the other side. But the later edits in support of the other side say "Undid revision X by Gkudrna", and as far as I can tell, this user is Gkudrna, as evidenced here. Their most recent contrib where they blanked the talk page here seems to support Omaha Steaks. My thinking is that "Gkudrna" realized that their username could be tied to Omaha Steaks quite easily, so they undid their own edits and changed their username to something random in an effort to hide the association. Os032008 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (note slightly different number) is an SPA for the other side. Power piglet 05:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Gkudrna=Gary Kudrna, beef producer? Stranger and stranger...Videmus Omnia 05:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Along with Snakesouls (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), Censorship-is-evil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and 24.252.34.13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Videmus Omnia 04:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "Beth Weiss" account and the 208.249.105.221 IP seem like blatant COI to me. Power piglet 22:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Beth Weiss is the Corporate Communications Director for Omaha Steaks, see the bottom of this page. Videmus Omnia 22:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And Dsimon12 (talk · contribs) is almost certainly associated as well - the Simon family are the founders of the company and still fill most of the corporate offices. Videmus Omnia 23:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly Dan Simon, referenced here. Videmus Omnia 03:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I torched the most blatantly promotional text -- after which there isn't much left to the article. Raymond Arritt 15:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've warned everybody. Next time one of these single purpose accounts makes an improper edit to this article, they should be blocked as a disruptive account. None of these are here to build an encyclopedia. Jehochman ^Talk 03:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

70.171.169.139 (talk · contribs) has challenged by editing again and blanking the COI warning from their talkpage. Videmus Omnia 03:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are these folks slow learners, unfamiliar with WP policy, or what? They've got to know this doesn't look good on top of their earlier incidents with spam. Raymond Arritt 03:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(reset) One of the IPs, User:70.171.169.139, responded after I recreated the warning. As long as they are talking with us and no obviously trying to stall, we should just revert their edits. No blocks needed just yet. I think these are newbies who need help countering bias introduced by their competitors. We have to explain how a corp can use the article talk pages and COIN to get help when needed. Jehochman ^Talk 06:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

70.187.26.152 and 24.252.62.197 are very Likely, same ISP as 70.171.169.139 and are in nearby Bellevue, Nebraska. MER-C 09:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Beth Weiss (talk · contribs) has resumed the editing today. Videmus Omnia 03:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bruce Wydner

Bruce Wydner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Weidner Communications Inc. (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Language technology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Human language technology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Eyring Research Institute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Brown Prophecy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Dennis Fairclough (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Bruce Bastian (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Dbp653 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) seems to be on a crusade to insert this Bruce Wydner (only 200 Google hits) and his company into a pivotal role in the development of machine translation, apparently on the basis of a personal association self-described here: "I have been working with Bruce Wydner for several years and I decided to tell this story through Wikipedia ... Your attempt to furnish an unbiased opinion on this article is in poor taste, and is much uninformed ... please feel free to ask myself or Bruce Wydner any questions, or even better yet give him a phone call, he is very nice and polite and he doesn’t mind talking, if you would like, just tell him that I told you to call him, we are the best of friends".

The same editor has been using the address 207.160.210.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), and Brucewydner (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has also been involved with some of these articles.

I've posted a {{uw-coi}} warning to User talk:Dbp653. Gordonofcartoon 11:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dennis Fairclough has been stubbed by removing unreferenced and self-published info. Videmus Omnia 21:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Language technology and Brown Prophecy are at AFD. Human language technology I redirected to Language technology, wose content it largely duplicated. Out of interest, I just found these sites - www.worldwideinterlingual.com, fastfluency.org - making similar claims, drawing on the same quotes, and even using the same image - which strongly suggests a promotional connection. Gordonofcartoon 13:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting problematical: now Bruce Wydner himself has posted a lengthy justification for Wikipedia being coopted into revealing this story - in the US national interest, no less [26]. Brucewydner (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has also restarted editing his own article. Help would be appreciated.

I've further just found these news archive items: Man accuses firms of stealing software and 'Bizarre' $10 billion suit dismissed suggesting that this material introduced uncritically by User talk:Dbp653 is highly unreliable. Gordonofcartoon 18:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledge creation

Knowledgemachine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), account of Bruce LaDuke of hyperadvance.com / instantinnovation.com

recently rewrote Knowledge creation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) in response to a {{prod}}; the new version reads like ad copy from his website. --Piet Delport 19:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've listed the article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Knowledge creation. Thanks for your alert report. Yechiel Man 20:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Douglas Hubbard

Military logistics (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Hubbardaie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
BillGosset (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I'm looking for unbiased opinions on recent edits of Military logistics by Hubbardaie. Although sourced, his edits focus on his own Applied Information Economics model, work he has done for the Navy all referenced to his recently published book. In my opinion this borders on self promotion and assigns undue weight to a single aspect of a subject. Ehrentitle 21:20, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In retrospect, I can see excluding my point for an article that short. I could see it as a subsection or a separate article. The military logistics article should be much longer. I compared it to the length of the artillery page and infantry page. I think it should be at least as long as those.Hubbardaie 17:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Douglas Hubbard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Applied Information Economics (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Hubbard Family (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Hubbard family (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Coi Spa Hubbardaie ("aie" presumably for "applied information economics") has created at least four additional articles, listed above. — Athaenara ✉ 04:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watch your name-calling. Perhaps I'm automatically COI for no other reason than my publications but the SPA label is out of line. I've edited lots of articles for a long time with absolutely no reference to me. Stop the labels or I'll just refer to you as Racist Athaenara or Child Molester Athaenara (you can pick).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hubbardaie (talk • contribs) 13:13, 30 June 2007.

by the way, one of the "Hubbard family" articles is redundant. I'm not sure how that happened. One simply has "family" capitalized in the title and the other does not.Hubbardaie 18:04, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It appears someone just redirected the duplicateHubbardaie 19:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you're not a SPA, it should be no trouble to point to say a dozen edits from the last month that are not about "Applied Information Economics", or "Hubbard", or disputes and discussions relating to same. Looking over your contributions log, I have trouble identifying those. Could you please provide such links? Facts are a better defense than name-calling. –Henning Makholm 15:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In defense of HubbardAIE, he didn't say "dozens". He said "lots", whatever that means. Again, facts first.BillGosset 17:32, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, I did not say "dozen", Henning Makholm pulled that rule out of thin air. Care is always needed about the facts. In fact, I found in short order three edits I made that had absolutely no reference to me: Anti-globalization, Nobel prize in Economics, and Vulcanization. I believe one would suffice to refute the "single" purpose position. Technically, I would need a dozen if I were accused of being a "sub-duodecad purpose". But, fortunately, I was only accused of being single purpose, so three is more than enough.Hubbardaie 17:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed he didn't actually create the article reference for his name but he did fill in some bio information after someone else created it. The sources on these other articles are mostly other information, not his book. We used this guy's methods in my firm a few years ago and he would know best. I've also edited some of these articles and added a couple of references. Other than listing himself as a "prominent Hubbard", the sources on the "Hubbard Family" article appear to be independent geneological resources.BillGosset 18:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? It sure looks like he created the article himself. OR did you mean this or this? –Henning Makholm 16:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I only created the article because someone else made it a link on the AIE article which I did write but linked to nowhere. Feel free to remove it or nominate it for deletion. Seriously, I don't care. I kept it short and factual because I figured someone would protest. You will notice that the hubbard family article uses two independent references.Hubbardaie 17:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This brings up another topic I've wondered about. I've published quite a few articles around financial portfolio management and statistical models. I haven't referenced all of my own articles in Wikipedia yet but if there is a rule against that, then that would seem to elliminate some of the most qualified people from writing on most topics (people who are published in that area). Is it frowned upon to reference one's own work? Even if it is supported by the work of others? In other AFD discussions I've seen, COI was itself not sufficient reason for deletion but a lack of supporting references can be.Hubbardaie 19:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would minimize further changes by yourself on any of these articles unless it is a purely minor change like fixing a link. The military logistics page includes only one brief comment about AIE and you provide one source. I added in the military logistics discussion that it should stay in but it would be a smaller part if the article grows (and it should). The other articles seem to have several other sources besides your own. And it's not like you are just referencing a business website for marketing since the work you cite has been published in respected sources. Still, its a fine line to walk. I would resist the temptation to make further changes yourself.BillGosset 19:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... I smell socks. BillGosset, are you sure that you're not Hubbardaie? For example, your only edit to Talk:Measurement is to sign a comment left by Hubbardaie three minutes earlier – which spoke of Hubbardaie in the third person, agreeing with him(self). –Henning Makholm 16:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, we have used the same computer, but we are two different people. Bill has visited and he previously revealed in the Military Logistics talk that I did work for his firm - you can verify those comments. He must have wrote the comment you refer to before I signed off and then corrected it later. We talk about wikipedia a lot. I've explicitly used the "HubbardAIE" username to be as forthcoming as possible when I write articles. Actually, I'm suspicious of most of you regarding your agendas and sock-puppet status. I didn't even have to admit that much. Most of you don't.Hubbardaie 18:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, I'm more like a "meat puppet", but I don't like the sexual connotations. He's ok but I'm really not attracted to him that way:-) Seriously, we only use the same computer when we are both in the same office. We should talk more about our arguments so the wiki-cops aren't so suspicious.BillGosset 18:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, comments from an admin:

It is generally inappropriate to write about yourself, especially a bio about yourself. I will be userfying it in a moment. For more information about this, please read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Autobiography. It is okay to occasionally cite one of your own works, see Wikipedia:No original research#Citing oneself, but it really needs to be kept to a minimum.
We don't need duplicate articles, so I've redirected Hubbard Family to Hubbard family.
It is acceptable for you to write about areas inwhich you are an expert. In fact, it's encouraged. But it is also recognized that if you're an expert, you will be knowledgeable about other references, particularly secondary sources, and it is preferred that you use those rather than referenceing your own works on a large scale.
User:BillGosset: I've dropped a welcome template on your page...I would suggest that in order to avoid the appearance of wrong doing, you carefully consider what and where you edit. There's absolutely nothing wrong with collaboration, but even "meat puppets" (in the non-sexual sense) are discouraged.
Be careful about civility...the responses above very quickly got a bit heated. If you really are an academic/professional, you will understand the need to act professionally, especially here.

I am always available to answer questions. AKRadecki^Speaketh 19:08, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on all points. Here are my individual responses:

I just made a note in your talk page (before I read your points here) that I was always ok with deleting my autobiography - which I honestly would not have written except that someone else made my name an article link (I felt obligated to fill in, who else would?). I wrote a point in the talk page that someone should then, at least, remove the article link to my name. I've recused myself from making any further changes to that article.
Thankyou for redirecting the duplicate. I'm not sure how it happened. I think it was the first full article I created and I may have done something klutzy with it.
Again, my username is meant to disclose my identity for the purpose disclosing my identity when making references to my articles. I was quite explicit during the creation of the AIE and the AFD discussion. I will at least make sure that additions to future articles include at least a majority of other sources besides my own.
I'm sure Bill was kidding when he refered to himself as merely a meat puppet. We know each other, have similar intersts, and live near each other, so we will probably be commenting on similar articles. Even though we have long since disclosed our relationship (non-sexual) in wikipedia, I agree we should steer clear. On the other hand, if Bill always discloses that we know each other, I don't see the harm. We'll both be sure to do that when we edite the same topic.
My apologies on the heated-sounding responses but I thought the SPA label was unfair. By the way, I claim only to be informed on my topics of expertise. I don't always claim to be a "professional" and I meet lots of professionals in heated debates. On the other hand, I concede your point for the purpose of productivity and community in wikipedia.

Hubbardaie 19:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Lucas (porn star)

Michael Lucas (porn star) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
216.57.17.234 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Lucasent (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Theshape4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I was not aware of this noticeboard until just now. I'm bringing this over from the BLP noticeboard, and I've edited my comment a bit to focus on the COI issue. The other editor's comment was just added today. The page is currently under full protection due to the continual re-adding of several contested passages which are violations of BLP, one not mentioned here which involves another individual. In this case, I don't think there is any doubt of the subject's notability. The issue is his desire to control the content of his page, via his own edits, and now, apparently, through recruiting others to edit his entry. Here is my edited BLP noticeboard post and a comment placed there by another editor: -Jmh123 21:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that Lucas uses an anon IP (216.57.17.234) and, until "outed," (see the Talk page) the username User:Lucasent (Lucas Entertaiment), to edit his own Wikipedia page. He usually stays within the boundaries, but has apparently recently recruited some of his fans to make sure external links to his blog, myspace, and Lucas Entertainment are included, as well as a passage about an "unauthorized" biography. Another editor has made a good case on the Talk page [27], I think, for not including these links and mention of the biography. Reversions have been going back and forth on this for days. Each contested edit could go either way, as to whether it should legitimately be included or not, but I'm bringing this up now because Lucas may be recruiting others to make sure the entry is written the way he wants it to be written. It is my personal opinion based on a long controversy over an entry on one of his new "stars" (now deleted via 2nd AfD and no longer working for Lucas), an entry that in my opinion was clearly intended to sell a DVD, that Lucas has been around Wikipedia a long time, knows how to work the system, and knows the benefits of Wikipedia for self-promotion and promotion of his company. See also Lucas Entertainment (now merged with and redirected to his biography). Any perspective, advice, recommendations, comments? Thanks. -Jmh123 20:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can offer my observations. When I first came across this article, I immediately noticed some conspicuous omissions vis-à-vis what I'd read about this actor Andrei Treivas (Michael Lucas): e.g., Lucas's work as a male prostitute in Europe and in NYC, Lucas's work under Jean-Daniel Cadinot, the fact that Lucas founded his production company with money he earned from working as a prostitute, and the fact that Lucas located his company in NYC (instead of the more traditional Los Angeles) because of the lack of competition in NYC. Over time these facts were added and some balance was achieved. Along came 216.57.17.234 (hereinafter referred to as "216") who proceeded to, at times, systematically, and at times, haphazardly, delete any mention of these facts or anything else s/he didn't like, most times without any edit summary and almost never with any dialogue on the talk page. The only time 216 wrote on the talk page was in response to a challenge to an awards box; s/he wrote that the challenging editor should go to Johnny Hazzard's page or Chi Chi Larue's page and edit their awards boxes, in effect saying, "this is my page, leave it alone and go edit somebody else's page." I cannot be sure that 216 and Lucas are one and the same, but it's a well-known fact that Lucas is a shameless self-promoter. 216 has added and re-added material that promoted the products of Lucas's production company, sometimes using the same phrasing as that used in the company's website. In a 4 April edit on a related page, that of Lucas's "La Dolce Vita" film, 216 added the entire plot section lifted directly from the production company website. And in one peculiar addition on 24 April, 216 added "lungfish" to the list of animals living with Lucas in NYC. Go try and find anything on the internet about lungfish and Lucas -- you won't. Based on her/his history, I don't think it will be sufficient to place the page under partial protection or to even block 216 from editing. 216's confederates will simply come along and edit as they please, as seen in the activity of Theshape4 while the page was under partial. I don't know the exact jargon to express this, but I would suggest two things: have the activities of 216, Lucasent, and Theshape4 investigated for the issues you've raised; and, have the page placed under the form of protection whereby additions can only be made by an authority from Wikipedia. Thank you for your good work. 71.127.230.77 18:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Molefi Kete Asante

Molefi Kete Asante (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Masante (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
24.126.96.187 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Article subject seems to be doing major edits to his own article. Videmus Omnia 01:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Even stated that he is "renowned". Videmus Omnia 01:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This required some digging. I tried to remove COI additions by Masante and 24.126.96.187, but I may have messed it up. Shalom ^Hello 15:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been working on the cleanup also; I think Shalom's changes were very much needed. — Athaenara ✉ 03:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

European Roma Information Office

European Roma Information Office (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - The latest in a series of articles created or extensively edited by SPA User:Valery novoselsky. The previous articles had COI issues and were nominated for deletion because they were about Novoselsky himself or a non-notable organisation he founded. (See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Novoselsky Valery and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roma Virtual Network.) Though Novoselsky also has personal involvement with the ERIO, I suspect that this latest article may actually meet WP:N and WP:V (however, it lacks secondary sources supporting notability). I don't have time to follow up on the notability issue myself, though perhaps others could. In the meantime the article could use some extra pairs of eyes to monitor COI issues arising from Novoselsky's editing. Psychonaut 10:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the COI tag as it is completely bollocks; check the history of the article and you will see it has been written entirely by me, which is why it is in reasonable shape :-) However, the SPA has twice emailed me in the last few hours; the emails have been entirely comprised of an exact copy of content from the website. John Vandenberg 14:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FTR, I didn't add the COI tag, and I also agree that it needn't be there at the present time. This report was filed only because I'm afraid Novoselsky's involvement may eventually turn this into yet another vanity article. Kudos to User:Jayvdb for keeping the article POV-free. —Psychonaut 18:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added the COI first, but now that it's rewritten, I won't add it back. Bearian 19:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Let the record also show that the article was not rewritten; there never was a COI. Accidents happen, but lets keep posts on noticeboards factual. John Vandenberg 05:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies. Bearian 17:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actaeon Films, Nightwalking, Amelia and Michael, and others

Tweetermonkeyman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Jimtusmcgregor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
87.80.29.32 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
193.203.68.206 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Daniel Cormack (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Actaeon Films (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
A Fitting Tribute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Amelia and Michael (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Nightwalking (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Make Me a Tory (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

In July 2006, Actaeon Films and Daniel Cormack were deleted per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Actaeon Films and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Cormack respectively. Daniel Cormack has stayed gone, but now the company is back. The two registered users created all but one of the film articles and recreated Actaeon Films (which will probably be re-deleted again per WP:CSD#G4) and the IP comes behind to embellish the articles. These aren't film masterpieces and there's not much about them to reference, and all have been sent to AFD.

These people may have more film articles that I haven't found, but at least we've found these. - KrakatoaKatie 14:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, Katie. I think you've listed all the relevant articles for deletion, and I followed up with {{uw-coi}} warnings for the logged in users. There's nothing more for us to do here. Shalom ^Hello 15:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Patrick Murphy (independent) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Massachusetts's 5th congressional district (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Massachusetts's 5th congressional district special election, 2007 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

In2itionmedia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Danielcmurphy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - another SPA.

Edits about a political candidate being made by In2itionmedia (talk · contribs), a single-purpose-account which is the name of the media group that operates the candidate's website. Article hijacking of a disambiguation page. Videmus Omnia 18:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Add to that vandalism of an opponent's page. Videmus Omnia 19:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is ridiculous...the other candidates have pages with their history and campaign promotional materials. How is this a "neutral resource" if all the candidates can't have pages with background information.— Preceding unsigned comment added by In2itionmedia (talk • contribs)

A neutral editor has moved the information to the article Patrick Murphy (independent), which I stubbed to remove the unreferenced information and peacock terms. Videmus Omnia 19:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thats fine the only reason i moved it was because the patrick murphy page was all about the guy running. the reason i didnt change anything on his page was because i commented in the discussion and thats my defense Gang14 04:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scientology

User:Bravehartbear made a lot edits to Scientology even though he's a Scientologist, I don't really know the policy (after all, is a Christian allowed to make edits to make edits to Christianity) but if you look at the difference, [28], it's pretty different and I'm technically on a Wikibreak. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know photographers are allowed to edit photography articles; stamp collectors are allowed to edit stamp collecting articles, astronomers are allowed to edit astronomy articles, Christians are allowed to edit Christian articles, fishermen are allowed to edit fishing articles, and even Scientologists are allowed to edit Scientology articles.

Are you suggesting that Scientologists should leave it up to other people (aka critics), who know virtually nothing about Scientology, to make sure that the articles accurately reflect information about Scientology?

This is exactly why I am on wiki break; Simply because a Scientologist edited the article combined with the result being 'pretty different', we conclude that there must be some wrong doing going on (conflict of interest perhaps), so lets come off of wiki break and file an admin report.

I don't know you Jeffrey, so I don't have a clue what your background or edit history is.. so please don't take this personally Jeffrey.Kleykamp, but do you really think that nobody else is watching that article? Is there something specifically wrong with the edits? Is there a violation of article content? Is there a violation of sourcing? Could you be more specific in your complaint? You took the time to come off of wikibreak to report a user. You named the user specifically in a sort-of-maybe accusation of conflict of interest. The least you could do is point out some 'bad edits'.

I had never even heard of Scientology before I got to wikipedia, but it sure attracts more non-specific non-accusations than anything I've ever seen before.

Jeffrey.Kleykamp, technically by your implied definition of COI, anyone from any religion (or Atheist or Agnostic) would have a COI when editing any article about religion. A Christian would have the conflict of interest to make the Scientology article 'bad'. A Jew would have a COI to make a Christian article BAD. etc etc.

(back to wikibreak) Lsi john 20:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you read his user page, it seems to be suggesting that Scientologists should edit the Scientology articles to make them more "positive" to Scientologists. Also, he made lots of small edits over 2 days which someone watching the article wouldn't notice, i.e. people watching the article only notice the difference between the current and last versions. And finally, yes, a Scientologist is allowed to edit the Scientology article. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps s/he believes that the articles are weighted anti-Scientology and that making them more positive means bringing them closer to neutral?

"I know that if you are a Scientologist you will be very shocked and very offended by the information in these pages."-Bravehartbear

There is a distinct difference between 'more positive' and unbalanced positive. AGF my friend. AGF. Lsi john 20:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, yeah, but it's beyond whether or not I'm not assuming good faith, I posted this here for someone to just look at the edits and see if they are against Wikipedia policies most particularly COI because I'm not going to do that because I'm, again, on a wikibreak. PS: I don't expect other people (that means you, Lsi john) on wikibreaks to do that, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS: if you read the article on conflict of interest you'll notice that a conflict of interest exists,

"A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as (a wikipedian)..., has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results from it"

Now whether this made his edits bad is a different matter. 20:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Again you read, and cite, only the parts you want to apply here. Thats called cherry picking, sir. And even what you cited, only indicates that a conflict of interest 'could' exist, not that it does. Everyone who has a strong belief about any subject, under that statement, could have a conflict of interest. Should we ban Boy Scouts from editing Boy Scout articles due to conflict of interest? Should we ban gays from editing any gay articles? I can name at least four VERY anti-Scientologist editors. Should we ban them too for conflict of interest? If not, then your unsupported post about a Scientologist, and conflict of interest, is in incredibly poor taste. Without having any specific grounds to imply that it does apply, you are making bad faith assumptions.

So you have concluded that Bravehartbear has a competing personal interest that makes it difficult for him/her to edit impartially. And you concluded that how? And anti-scientologists have no such personal competing interest? .. bah, hang them all.. burn em at the stake.. evil scientologists can't possibly edit impartially. (these types of closed minded bad faith assumptions and mis-application of policy and guidelines are exactly why I'm on wikibreak. I can't bear to see such nonsense get started, and I'm powerless to inject any sanity) (closing browser to avoid responding again) Lsi john 21:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I reported this because (1) there is a known conflict of interest and (2) I don't have the time to look if the edits made by the person really were bad which would normally be a reason not to report it (that is the case with boy scouts editing the boy scouts article). So, as you can see I have not looked at the edits, I'm reporting it so that someone else can look and see if the edits are truly worth being reported. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS: See Ad hominem, because you're saying that it's not a conflict of interest because I'm not good enough to follow the AGF policy. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PPS: Lsi john said "And even what you cited, only indicates that a conflict of interest 'could' exist, not that it does" but that is false, "A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results from it", that does not mean that the edits were bad, however. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From Conflict of interest:

A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, insurance adjuster, a politician, executive or director of a corporation or a medical research scientist or physician, has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results from it. A conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the person, profession, or court system. A conflict can be mitigated by third party verification or third party evaluation noted below - - but it still exists.

I'm seeking "third party evaluation" to the edits made by User:Bravehartbear to Scientology between 02:31, 22 June 2007 and 17:00, 25 June 2007 because I am temporarily not in a position where I can do that. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at a few of the edits, and they seem fine. You should provide specific diffs if you want to start a COI investigation. Additionally, you need evidence of COI. I don't see any evidence of COI here. If you are concerned about edits that might violate WP:NPOV and want a neutral editor to render a third opinion, you can try WP:3O. Bravehartbear might want to look at their own userpage and make sure it doesn't encourage editors to violate WP:NPOV, because Jeffrey.Kleykamp seems to have gotten that impression. Whether or not it's true, impressions are important. Jehochman ^Talk 22:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I got away from my wikibreak and took the time to look through the edits and found out that there aren't any problems, he just moved paragraphs around which made it look like major edits, i.e. two paragraphs that are approximately the same switch places and make it seem like he rewrote the paragraphs to make them look different when all he did is switch their places. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jeff many of the edits that you are mentioning were done in coperation with others on the talk page. If you see the talk page your will see extended discusions, agrements and compromises made. Some of the edits I made were made by request of other editors. For example there was an extended discusion about the intro and that some info there should be somewhere else in the page. Acting on that discusion I moved that paragraph. Bravehartbear 02:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with most of the editors here that possible WP:NPOV issues and adherence to any given religious faith aren't sufficient to establish WP:COI issues. That said, I continue to observe troubling aspects in the Scientology discussions at this board and WP:CSN. For example, this edit history demonstrates that the Bravehartbear user page was created six weeks ago by Lsi john with a smiley-face-wink ASCII icon. This creates an appearance of impropriety (per WP:MEAT) when they both come to the same noticeboard a few hours apart to voice similar opinions at the same thread. I repeat my recommendation of mentorship: if these editors are acting in good faith then some coaching would help quell the concerns of impartial observers. Durova^Charge! 05:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And, I'd submit that: a neutral observer would have a seen a smiley face, whereas someone looking for diffs to prove a conspiracy theory, will see a meatpuppet. I have no idea who Bravehartbear is (added: though I have seen them in discussions and I'm sure I have said something to them at some point). I have no idea if it is a male or female. I have no connection whatsoever to Scientology. My off-wiki identity is known to several admins. I didn't even know that Scientology existed before encountering it on wikipedia. And even then, it took me a month or more before I realized it was not the same thing as Christian Science. It was a smile, Durova.. nothing more. Peace.Lsi john 17:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be complete.. I researched that impropriety, and it was accompanied by this edit. As I recall now, something attracted my attention to that user's page (It was probably a conversation on Justanother's page) and when I got there, a) there was no user page b) I was fairly new c) I created a simple friendly 'smile' userpage, and d) posted a caution that the editor might want to remove their email address from public view. I would appreciate in the future if you would spend a bit more time with your investigations. Making (or implying) misconduct here, is not a very nice thing to do, given that diffs are then used repeatedly in future situations .. to prove prior repeated misconduct. (even if there was none). Peace.Lsi john 18:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I wonder, Durova, if you also noticed the very next 'stalkish' edit on that userpage, and how many times that type of editing has happened to me here? That conduct seems to have stopped, and thus is no longer a problem, I'm only noting it to see how thorough you were, or if it was a focused search. Peace.Lsi john 17:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Let's step back for a moment and try to develop a strategy for the Scientology articles. As an example, Search engine optimization used to be the subject of heated debate and lots of reverting between different unsourced versions. As it became a good article, and then a featured article, these problems disappeared. The editors of Scientology should work together to create a thorough, well-sourced article. Instead of this "us versus them" dynamic, all parties should look at the good article and featured article requirements, and try to satisfy them. When everyone works towards a common goal, differences of opinion are less troublesome. Scientology is a contentious subject, so these articles will have to include both positive and negative statements. Our readers must choose for themselves what to believe. Enlightenment cannot be imposed from the outside. Jehochman ^Talk 06:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, nobody is suggesting all members of any religion/organization/etc. be automatically banned from editing articles (including CoS members) just by affiliation. However if an editor begins making changes that go against the rules (removing WP:RS/WP:V sources, adding an unsupportable "positive" pov, etc.) and then continues the same behavior after being warned it's at that point a topic ban should be explored. Anynobody 07:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Paid editing again: http://spam.tech-home.com/

An owner of a company is offering $30-$100 to write a Wikipedia article on it. See [29]. Based on the user profile and this (which I found googling the company name and location), I believe the company involved is Tech-home / Tech-Home / Tech home / Tech Home - can someone pass the salt, please? Their website is http://spam.tech-home.com/ (remove the spam).

tech-home.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Original report on enwiki-l. MER-C 09:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Development and Underdevelopment

The user who created this article is the author of the book that is the subject of the article. The article needs an extensive re-write. This may need to be deleted and started from scratch. Bearian 17:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note: User:Quatloo PRODded the article, and I agree with his judgment. Shalom ^Hello 05:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Shattereddd - http://spam.invasionschat.com

Shattereddd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Says on user page, "I Own the website Invasions Chat (a chat website) and love to contribute to wikipedia. Especially the chat articles."
68.82.245.213 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Has been spamming invasionschat.com: [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36]
invasionschat.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Web chat site (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - Shattereddd spammed invasionschat.com here, then after a spam warning, he added Invasions Chat instead.
DigiChat (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - spammed by 68.82.245.213, also edited by Shattereddd --Ronz 17:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User removed this report, which was restored. Videmus Omnia 17:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Twice. --Ronz 18:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Four minutes apart at 17:45 & 17:49 UTC on 27 June. — Athaenara ✉ 10:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

68.82.245.213 is likely to be a compromised computer. 5 blacklists but dynamic IP so cannot block for long periods. http://spam.invasionschat.com is hosted in Boston, 68.82 is in Chicago. MER-C 07:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Terry Tolkin

Hi, can someone please look at the contributions of User:Terry Tolkin. He/She had been adding content (and adjectives such as "legendery") to a number of indie music articles about an A&R man of the same name. I've reverted a number of the edits, but do not want to go on a spree without a second openion. Thanks Ceoil 19:57, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative rock (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Big Black (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Butthole Surfers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Dutch East India Trading (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Luna (band) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Neil Young (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Scratch Acid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Stereolab (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
The Afghan Whigs (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Touch and Go Records (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Tribute album (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Terry Tolkin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Yes, he's promoting himself with (almost?) every edit he makes. --Ronz 23:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Peter DG Tompkins

Peter DG Tompkins (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Tompkins Table (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Norrington Table (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Peter Tompkins (talk · contribs)
Probably an autobiography, I have tagged this article. Bearian 21:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like almost all of his edits have a conflict of interest. --Ronz 23:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

3G Studios

3GStudios (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) created:
3G Studios (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

and made dubious additions (removed) about their unreleased, unannounced video game to:

Deep (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
The Deep (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

--Piet Delport 00:48, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Piet Delport. You have already reverted the "Deep" vandalism, so that's done. I've listed 3G Studios for WP:AFD, so that should be deleted within the next week. I'll check to make sure the user has been warned. Good work! Shalom ^Hello 03:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shannon Perrine

Shannon Perrine (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) All edits (save one) appear to be by the same person, possibly the subject. (Relisting because it appears the previous listing was removed unintentionally.) Amnewsboy 15:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Gmanhoobie (talk · contribs)

Gmanhoobie could be a fan of Perrine's. The article needs some work, so let's WP:AGF and see how Gmanhoobie contribues further. --Ronz 15:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had thought that it was a fan until I saw the description of "self-authored" for Perrine's image -- but I will say that I do think the article was written in good faith. Also, it appears that another editor has taken this article to WP:AFD. Amnewsboy 18:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That would be me. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shannon Perrine. —Psychonaut 19:14, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"self-authored" Good catch. --Ronz 19:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gina Genovese

Gina Genovese (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
GinaGenovese (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
NJCandidate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Article on a local mayor and current candidate for state senate. Appears to have been created by either the candidate herself, or someone in her campaign. Article was deleted several time as a copyvio from the campaign website, before the author stated permission, which she would be able to do assuming she is from the campaign. But in general because things were starting spiral out of control, with several people dropping increasing warnings on her talk page, and she barrelling on creating the article over and over, I blocked her for 15 minutes and during that time left a series of notes on her talk page. The article has now been stubbed, but the short block is well over now, and I will not be able to watch forever. So I was hopeing a few more people could keep an eye on the situation in case it fires up again. TexasAndroid 20:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Based on this edit, at least one of the editors may be Wendy McCahill, the candidate's partner. (See the last paragraph of this page). Definite sockpuppet or meatpuppet issue. Videmus Omnia 21:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

21 Ventures

Articles:

21 Ventures (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - owned by "David Anthony", created by User:Danthony21
BioNanoMatrix (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 21 Ventures listed as investor
BioPetroClean (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 21 Ventures listed as investor
Orion Solar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 21 Ventures listed as investor
Juice Wireless (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - 21 Ventures listed as investor
JuiceCaster (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - product of the above
Also sundry company logos.

Editors:

Danthony21 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (uploaded image with edit summary that it was his or his employee's creation)
ViceAdmiralColorge (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (According to his user page, an employee of Juice Wireless)

Walled advertising garden, seemingly promoting business ventures that the two listed users are involved in. Looks like at least one other article (Voip Logic) has already been speedied. --Calton | Talk 06:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tagged all as {{coi}}. MER-C 03:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:208.69.24.156

208.69.24.156 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

The above user has removed critical material from Mel Sembler. I have reverted his edit [39] (his only edit) and placed a {{subst:uw-delete1}} on their talk page. I clicked on "Whois" and the IP's net name is "THESEMBLERCOMPANY". I hope this is the correct place to post this - I'd like to know what to do next. Thanks in advance. Trugster 17:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yup,

Confirmed through RDNS. I'd wait and see what happens. MER-C 07:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edina Lekovic

Edina Lekovic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Lekociv (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Has been editing the aforementioned article, and the username is very very similar to the last name of the article's subject.--Flamgirlant 09:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That account was trying to remove a BLP violation from the article. It has now been removed, the page is protected, and the issue is being discussed on the talk page. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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