Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard

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Welcome to Conflict of interest Noticeboard (COIN)
Sections older than 14 days archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) This Conflict of interest/Noticeboard (COIN) page is for determining whether a specific editor has a conflict of interest (COI) for a specific article and whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Conflict of Interest guideline. A conflict of interest may occur when an editor has a close personal or business connection with article topics. Post here if you are concerned that an editor has a COI, and is using Wikipedia to promote their own interests at the expense of neutrality. For content disputes, try proposing changes at the article talk page first and otherwise follow the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution procedural policy.
You must notify any editor who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{subst:coin-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.
Additional notes: This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue, such as when an editor has repeatedly added problematic material over an extended period. Do not post personal information about other editors here without their permission. Non-public evidence of a conflict of interest can be emailed to paid-en-wpwikipedia.org for review by a functionary. If in doubt, you can contact an individual functionary or the Arbitration Committee privately for advice. The COI guideline does not absolutely prohibit people with a connection to a subject from editing articles on that subject. Editors who have such a connection can still comply with the COI guideline by discussing proposed article changes first, or by making uncontroversial edits. COI allegations should not be used as a "trump card" in disputes over article content. However, paid editing without disclosure is prohibited. Consider using the template series {{Uw-paid1}} through {{Uw-paid4}}. Your report or advice request regarding COI incidents should include diff links and focus on one or more items in the COI guideline. In response, COIN may determine whether a specific editor has a COI for a specific article. There are three possible outcomes to your COIN request: 1. COIN consensus determines that an editor has a COI for a specific article. In response, the relevant article talk pages may be tagged with {{Connected contributor}}, the article page may be tagged with {{COI}}, and/or the user may be warned via {{subst:uw-coi|Article}}. 2. COIN consensus determines that an editor does not have a COI for a specific article. In response, editors should refrain from further accusing that editor of having a conflict of interest. Feel free to repost at COIN if additional COI evidence comes to light that was not previously addressed. 3. There is no COIN consensus. Here, Lowercase sigmabot III will automatically archive the thread when it is older than 14 days. Once COIN declares that an editor has a COI for a specific article, COIN (or a variety of other noticeboards) may be used to determine whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guideline.
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Help answer requested edits

Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests is where COI editors have placed the {{edit COI}} template: Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests Talk:Bashir Al-Hashimi Talk:Alameda Belt Line Talk:Australian Maritime College Talk:Roy Bahat Talk:Madeline Bell (hospital executive) Talk:Brentwood College School Talk:Breyers Talk:Julie Carpenter Talk:Cinq Music Group Talk:Citadel LLC Talk:Clover Health Talk:Cumming Corporation Talk:Dahua Technology Talk:Sonalde Desai Talk:Nina L. Diaz Talk:Daniel Diermeier Talk:Dixy Chicken Talk:The Donkey Sanctuary Talk:Earth Journalism Network Talk:Mary Baker Eddy Talk:Edge Hill University Talk:Darnell Edge Talk:Elan (director) Talk:Empire (magazine) Talk:Energy Capital Partners Talk:Etraveli Group Talk:Far East Organization Talk:Global Citizen Awards Talk:Globe Life Talk:Golden State Foods Talk:Grail (company) Talk:Grammarly Talk:Grayscale Investments Talk:Greystar Talk:Grove Collaborative Talk:Hannover Re Talk:Harsco Talk:List of Harvard University people Talk:Jacob Helberg Talk:Henley & Partners Talk:Human Appeal Talk:Huron Consulting Group Talk:Illa del Rei Talk:Index Ventures Talk:Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Talk:Edward D. "Ted" Jones Talk:Christian Kälin Talk:Jeffrey Katzenberg Talk:Kennedy Center Honors Talk:KieranTimberlake Talk:Kathleen Kingsbury Talk:A. Gary Klesch Talk:Labcorp Talk:Kewsong Lee Talk:Leviton Talk:Chris McCarthy (executive) Talk:MoneyWeek Talk:MongoDB Inc. Talk:Netvibes Talk:NextEra Energy Talk:One Energy Talk:Oneok Talk:Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation Talk:OUTtv (Canadian TV channel) Talk:Amy Padnani Talk:V Pappas Talk:Barbara Parker (California politician) Talk:Perkins Eastman Talk:Pod Point Talk:Poster House Talk:Joely Proudfit Talk:Shlomo Rakib Talk:Research Corporation Talk:Reworld Talk:Rivulis Talk:Elizabeth Rowe (flutist) Talk:Rakefet Russak-Aminoach Talk:Science Inc. Talk:Simprints Talk:Dragan Šolak (businessman) Talk:Spotfire Talk:The Student Room Talk:A. G. Sulzberger Talk:Steve Tappin Talk:Tenants and Owners Development Corporation Talk:Tencent Talk:Theatre Development Fund Talk:Topps Talk:UK Biobank Talk:United States Postal Service Talk:Unity (game engine) Talk:List of University of Chicago alumni Talk:Dashun Wang Talk:Mark Weisbrot Talk:Martha G. Welch Talk:Wingtech Talk:Xsolla Talk:Zions Bancorporation Talk:Zyn

Swenzy

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

Additional eyes on this newly created article, please. It has major issues with style and tone, and is mostly the work of a single editor.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 09:02, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• This article is problematic and smacks of advertising. The "other" editor, an IP, just removed the advert tag I had placed on the article. I have no evidence yet of a COI, but there is definitely promoting going on. Drmies (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• I am the creator of the article, This was my first article, my Wikipedia experience isn't all that great that explains why the article isn't perfect. Can someone fix the article so it doesn't sound like advertisement? Thank you 50.162.190.150 (talk) 22:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem I'm seeing right off the bat is undue weight. It looks like there's coverage that's rather insignificant but instead of not being mentioned or having a sentence or two in a larger section, the subject gets an entire section. I'm not normally one who suggests we get rid of content but it's overkill. The "Brian's Announcement" Hoax section was an advertising campaign (for what, I'm still not sure) and the section has 49 different references. There's also several attempts to quantify the size of the campaign with the number of retweets and webpage hits but there's no indication from a secondary source that 1000 retweets is impressive.

Personally, I have no desire to comb through all this but anyone else is welcome. I think a better plan would be to nuke the article back to a stub and start over. I probably would have nominated it for G11 because I think it did and still does need a fundamental rewrite. The information in the article's current form will be saved in the article's history for reference.

On a side note, is there any indication of a close connection. I skimmed the talk page and edit history but didn't see anything explicit. There's definitely advocacy going on here, though. OlYeller21^Talktome 18:21, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, "Brian's Announcement" was a viral hoax campaign to promote a petition to bring the character from the show back. The report and facts are backed up on rolling stone, huffington post, metro uk, Europa press links. There's tons of information regarding each of those campaigns that I can sit and write about 30 paragraphs and tons of news sources that extend to over a week for each one but I researched the subject and only picked out the best source links and information. Each campaign could be possibly significant enough to get their own article due to the mass number of news sources and severity of the hoaxes. But, to keep things short I didn't add too much details. But I will very shortly add photos and more info on each campaign as there's a lot of important info that is not in the article. 50.162.190.150 (talk) 05:30, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I completely disagree that each event qualifies for its own article. The references provided are mere mentions of the website and were only even mentioned because they were mislead by Swenzy. At any rate, none of those hoaxes garnered significant coverage from independent and reliable sources. That you're presenting the situation any any different light really makes me question your neutrality. OlYeller21^Talktome 15:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

50.162.190.150, do you have a close connection to Swenzy? Please keep in mind that having a close connection doesn't bar you from editing the article. OlYeller21^Talktome 16:03, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I put an "Advertising" tag on the article, and on another article recently created by the same editor. I also removed the "list of hoaxes". After a few searches, it's not even clear that "Swenzy" is a company. Their own site uses the name "Swenzy LLC", but that's not coming up in Dun and Bradstreet. Their own site's "About" page links back to Wikipedia. The Daily Dot article about them indicates that attempts to locate the "company" were not successful. This may be an attempt to use Wikipedia to make a scam look legitimate. John Nagle (talk) 08:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Swenzy is an unusual case, because their stated business is promotional hoaxes, along with fake "likes", "views", and other black hat SEO. Some of the info about them is fake, and it's not clear how much. WP:RS sources are hard to find. Some of the press sources may reflect repetition of fake info generated by Swenzy. So we have fake info and COI editing to deal with. John Nagle (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

One particular concern is that at http://www.swenzy.com/ , clicking on "About Swenzy" at the top of the page leads to the Wikipedia article Swenzy. This may give a casual visitor the impression that Wikipedia has checked and endorsed this material. It has not, and there are doubts about whether Swenzy is a real company or trademark.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 20:56, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Related problem article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Povolotski This proposed article, from the same editor, appears to be a promotional piece for the claimed CEO of Swensy. --John Nagle (talk) 04:26, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Ever get the feeling you are being punk'd? 131.137.245.207 (talk) 12:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Little Kids Rock

• Little Kids Rock (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Rush (band) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Leona Lewis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)}
• Good Charlotte (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Pianofan1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The editor has made such edits to around 50 other articles of musicians, adding the same content, "X has shown support for Little Kids Rock". Seems to be coatracking and promotional. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• Good point. I've rolled back all the edits I could, and will give an "only warning" for spamming--perhaps an indefinite block is already warranted, but I don't (yet) want to deny them the chance of responding here, or at the AfD for the organization. Drmies (talk) 17:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Updates and corrections for BP article

Hello, as I have introduced myself here before, I am a BP employee and the company's representative on Wikipedia working to update articles related to BP. I have suggested several edits to the BP article and I was hoping editors here might be able to review them. They are fairly small requests related to the company's ranking by revenue, correcting inaccuracies in the "History" section, and updating the "Operations" section. All the requests are listed out in detail on the Corrections and resources sub page of the BP Talk page but to simplify things, below are details of the specific edits that I suggest:

BP's Global 500 ranking:

• Current text in Article introduction: the fifth-largest company in the world measured by 2012 revenues,

Suggested text and citation: the sixth-largest company in the world measured by 2012 revenues

• Current text in "Corporate affairs": fifth-largest company in the world measured by 2012 revenues

Suggested text (current citations are already updated, just the text here needs amending): sixth-largest company in the world measured by 2012 revenues

Inaccurate information in "History":

• Current text in "1979 to 2000": Prior to the worldwide stock market crash in October 1987 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher initiated the sale of an additional GBP7.5 billion ($12.2 billion) of BP shares at 333 pence, representing the government's remaining 31% stake in the company.

Suggested text and citations: Following the worldwide stock market crash in October 1987 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher authorized the sale of an additional GBP7.5 billion ($12.2 billion) of BP shares at 333 pence, representing the government's remaining 31% stake in the company.

Updates to "Operations":

• Current text in "Operations": As of December 2012, the company had a total of 79,700 employees.

Suggested text and citation: As of October 2013, the company had a total of 85,000 employees.

• Current text in "United States": As of March 2013, the company employs approximately 21,000 people in the US,

Suggested text and citation: As of October 2013, the company employs approximately 20,000 people in the US,

• Current text in "Oil refining and marketing": As of February 2013, BP owned or held a share in 15 refineries worldwide, of which seven were located in Europe and four were in the US.

Suggested text and citation: As of June 2013, BP owned or held a share in 14  refineries worldwide, of which seven were located in Europe and three were in the US.

I requested help from editors on the article's main Talk page, but while the editors who have replied there do not have any issues with these edits, I have yet to find anyone willing to make the changes. I would appreciate any help that editors here can provide. Thanks. Arturo at BP (talk) 23:03, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done All of the requests have now been completed. Thanks. Arturo at BP (talk) 19:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Please watch Aam Aadmi Party. Thanks.

• Aam Admi Party (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Please watch Aam Aadmi Party. It is being controversial article after so frequent, severe and repeatidtly changes are being made to the article. By looking on article and inspecting the edit history, it is concluded that there were possible paid editing or biased editing in promoting of Subject, and most of the editors like redfish18 (talk · contribs) are either Party's members or Sypathetical users to the party. Article looked like full adverstisement of article Aam Aadmi Party at encyclopedia. I had tried to make the article more encyclopedic, neutral and justified, and generally made it an article rather than an ad. We were succesful in getting Article semi-protection status to prevent it from vandalising. Now some users like rayabhari rayabhari (talk · contribs) are distorting the neutrality of the article by editing in unjustified comments, which they claims is right according to their opinion and which is in strong contradiction to the facts we found. They have been making big deletions and trying to justify his doing by his own opinion. KLS 13:09, 20 January 2014 (UTC) Kuldeep Singh (talk)

Asia World

Hi, I have just proposed some additional content on the talk page for Asia World. My COI is that I work for Bell Pottinger and Asia World is my client. Please see my user space for more details and feel free to get in touch either on the Asia World page or on my talk page. Many thanks. Vivj2012 (talk) 12:48, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

BBC Voice project

Hi, I'm writing to declare an interest. I have been working with the BBC on a project on which they have been releasing clips of their broadcast radio programmes, under open licence. We held an event last Saturday, in which volunteers identified suitable clips and they and I added some of them to Wikipedia articles (example edit). We ran out of time, and the BBC continue to upload the material to Commons. They have asked me to add the remaining clips to0 articles. A few of the clips are of BBC personnel. I don't foresee any issues (the material is not promotional, and no text content is being changed - though I'll do small fixes as I go), but thought it best too mention the work here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:51, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I'm also creating stubs for some of the notable programmes from which the audio is extracted, for instance The Film Programme. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:35, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any problem here, in fact it looks like a great addition to Wikipedia/Commons. I don't see any problem with the volunteers or even the BBC directly, uploading the clips to Commons. I don't see any possible problems with volunteers including the clips into articles. The only question that might come up (and people might disagree on this) is your statement "I have been working with the BBC" - does that mean that you are working "for the BBC", i.e. being paid by the BBC (beyond them paying for lunch or other minor expenses). My guess is that it doesn't mean that, but you might want to be clearer. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:27, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a Wikipedian-in-Residence type paid role, hence the disclosure here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Cee-Jay

• Cee-Jay (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Trceejay (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The user who created the Cee-Jay article has 'ceejay' in their username. 331dot (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

That does NOT make it promotional. Just being it has "ceejay" in the username. That's irrelevant.