Wikipedia:Conflict of interest

[[Category:Wikipedia wp:cois|Conflict of interest]]

[[Category:Wikipedia wp:ecois|Conflict of interest]]

This guideline describes what is regarded as a conflict of interest within Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Editing with a conflict of interest advises editors who find they may have a conflict of interest while editing.

Material that appears to promote the interests or visibility of an article's author, family members, or associates, places the author in a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is not in itself a reason to delete an article, but lack of notability is, and this is often a feature of articles written by editors whose interests the article promotes.

There is no list of criteria to help editors determine what counts as a conflict of interest. In most cases, the intention of the writer can be deduced from the tone and content of the article. If you do write an article on a little-known subject, or on one in which you are involved in some way, be sure to write in a neutral tone and cite reliable, published sources.

What is a conflict of interest?

See also: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not

The word encyclopedia derives from Greek and means, "a well-rounded education". As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it should contain only material that it is reasonable to believe others might want to know. Wikipedia is not a forum for advertising or a vanity press.

As Wikipedians and encyclopedists, our job is to put the interests of the encyclopedia first. Anyone who prioritizes outside interests over the interests of the encyclopedia is subject to a conflict of interest.

Examples of conflict of interest

Examples of conflict of interest can be an entire article devoted to a single person or organization; or it may present in the form of advertising links, personal website links in articles, personal or semi-personal photos, or any material that appears to promote the private or commercial interests of the editor adding the material, or of his associates.

Types of material that may be suspect include:

1. Links that appear to promote products by pointing to obscure or not particularly relevant commercial sites (commercial links).
2. Links that appear to promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages (vanity links).
3. Biographical material that does not significantly add to the clarity or quality of the article.

Autobiography

Don't write about yourself or about the things you've done or created. If you or your work is notable, someone else will notice you and write the article. In some cases, Wikipedia users write articles about themselves when the more appropriate action would be to create a user page. In these cases, the article is normally moved into the User namespace rather than deleted.

Close relationships

Friedrich Engels would have had difficulty editing Karl Marx, because he was a close friend, a follower and a collaborator. This applies to all situations where strong relationships can develop. Conflict of interest can be personal, religious, political, academic, financial, and legal. It is not determined by area, but is created by relationships that involve a high level of personal commitment to, involvement with, or dependence upon, a person, subject, idea, tradition, or organization.

Campaigning

Activities regarded by insiders as simply "getting the word out" may appear promotional or propagandistic to the outside world. If you edit articles while involved with organizations that engage in advocacy in that area, you may be in a conflict of interest.

Conventional handling of conflicts of interest

The perceived form of a conflict of interest is very often a question mark raised about whether material should be included in the encyclopedia or not. As an important convention on procedure, criteria on inclusion then should be applied, and discussion of who submitted the material should not. Talk about what belongs here takes over from talk about who is conflicted, which can be too close for comfort to the question of good faith. This convention helps to guard against anyone jumping to conclusions about the original posting.

The criterion most often relevant to handling conflict of interest via policy and guidelines on content is notability. It is also helpful to bear in mind saliency.

There is currently no consensus on the degree of notability required to justify an article. Consensus does exist regarding particular kinds of articles; for example, see Template:IncGuide. Borderline cases are frequently nominated for deletion and discussed on WP:AFD.

Submitted material also often needs to be filtered, especially if it is peripheral to an article rather than salient. It must be in line with policies on content. Even in the case of people who are demonstrably well-known, their unrealized aspirations, thoughts, and hobbies are seldom included in Wikipedia, unless verifiable. Wikipedia's policy on verifiability prohibits the inclusion of material not already published by a reliable source. But even if we could verify Tom Cruise's favorite breakfast cereal, that is something we should not include.

Deleting non-notable articles

All text created in the Wikipedia main namespace is subject to rules covering criteria for articles (what Wikipedia is not), encyclopedic quality (verifiability and original research), editorial approach (neutral point of view), as well as the Wikipedia copyright policy.

Articles that make no plausible claim of notability are usually deleted shortly after creation. Those that offer some claim of notability, however remote, are usually sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Deletion of the article normally ensues. Sometimes it may be moved to the user's user-page. The majority of creators just forget about these "vanity" articles and do not revisit at all; they rarely defend the article during the deletion debate, and usually such articles are not re-created after being deleted.. Because these creators are generally not active editors, it is usually sufficient to remove this content via proposed deletion, and save AFD for the more contentious cases. Users who created such articles are most likely inexperienced. If there is nothing particularly offensive about the page, please be kind to them. Before nominating such an article for deletion, try politely informing the author, and show him this guideline. He may readily agree to the deletion.

During debates at articles for deletion, disparaging comments may fly about the subject of the article/author and the author's motives. These may border on personal attacks, and may discourage the article's creator from future contributions. Avoid using the word "vanity" in a deletion discussion — such an accusation may be defamatory. Please assume good faith, and don't bite the newcomers.

"Who's Who" directories

"Who's Who" directories and registries should be viewed critically as evidence of notability. These registries' criteria for listing are, as a rule, overinclusive and may be nonexistent; some are vanity publishers and offer listing for a fee. The inclusion of a name in such a publication is therefore not sufficient to guarantee notability.

Citing oneself

See also: Wikipedia:Autobiography and Wikipedia:No original research § Citing oneself

You may cite your own publications just as you'd cite anyone else's, but make sure your material is relevant and that you're regarded as a reliable source for the purposes of Wikipedia. Be cautious about excessive citation of your own work, which may be seen as promotional or a conflict of interest; when in doubt, check on the talk page.

Where "vanity" is allowed

Signed-in users may use their user subspace to publish short autobiographies within the bounds of good taste and compatible with the purpose of working on the encyclopedia. See Wikipedia:User page. If you wish to write about yourself without working on the encyclopedia, consider starting a website or a blog instead. Wikipedia is not a free webhost.

Editing with a conflict of interest

In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a clear conflict of interest, or where such a conflict can or might be justifiably assumed based on the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged.

This section of the guideline is directed towards editors who are in the position of having such a conflict.

Of special concern are organisational conflicts of interest such as those posed by edits made by public relations departments of corporations or other public or private for-profit or not-for-profit organisations, or by professional editors paid by said organizations to edit a Wikipedia article with the sole intent of improving that organisation's image. Failure to follow these guidelines may put the editor at serious risk of embarrassing himself or clients.

Ignoring the guidelines, and the consequences

Exercise caution making additions or edits to Wikipedia about matters close to you. Please be advised that it is relatively ineffective to post to Wikipedia seeking publicity for matters that would not usually be well known.

Most articles created for publicity or public relations reasons receive few hits per month until nominated for deletion, and may only be seen by the user who nominates them for deletion. Someone could theoretically increase traffic to a website by adding external links to it, and this is sometimes done — but it may prompt earlier deletion of the page.

Unintended Consequences.

A word of caution. Remember that if you write in Wikipedia about yourself, your group, or your company, then once the article is created, you have no particular right to delete it, nor to control its content. Any other editor has an equal say in that. More than one user has created an article, only to find that, in the normal course of research, other Wikipedia editors have found new material that presents the subject in a less-than-flattering light. Such material will properly be added to the article, providing it is verifiably true and noteworthy — to the possible chagrin of the original creator. So, don't create articles lightly on subjects you care about. Ask yourself if there is anything publicly available on your chosen topic and its history that you would not want included in the article. Such material will probably find its way into the article eventually.

Avoid conflict of interest edits

If you fit either of these descriptions:

1. you are receiving monetary or other benefits or considerations to edit Wikipedia as a representative of an organization (whether directly as an employee or contractor of that organization, or indirectly as an employee or contractor of a firm hired by that organization for public relations purposes); or,
2. you expect to derive monetary or other benefits or considerations from editing Wikipedia, as, for example, by being the owner, officer or other stakeholder of a company or other organisation about which you are writing;

we very strongly encourage you to avoid editing Wikipedia in areas in which you appear to have a conflict of interest. Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy states that all Wikipedia articles must represent views fairly and without bias. A conflict of interest may significantly and negatively affect Wikipedia's ability to meet this requirement of impartiality. It is for that reason that editors with an apparent conflict of interest may be treated with suspicion, despite the policy here that one assumes good faith.

If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid:

1. editing articles related to your organization or its competitors;
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your corporation in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).

Rather than editing Wikipedia, you should write a potential article on your own website, or create a listing on another wiki such as Yellowikis. If you wish to have an article on Wikipedia, license your writing under the GNU Free Documentation License, and ask a Wikipedian to consider copying some or all of the article onto Wikipedia.

If you feel it is necessary to make changes to Wikipedia articles, despite an actual or apparent conflict of interest on your part, we strongly encourage you to submit content (changes or additions to articles or subsections of articles) for community review, and to let one or more trusted community members make judgements concerning posting some or all of the content into the main Wikipedia article space.

Full articles

If you wish to submit an entire article for community review, follow this process for submitting articles and subsections of articles for community review:

1. Create a user page for yourself that describes you and your professional background.
2. Edit that page and add a link to a subpage for every article you intend to create, using the syntax [[/Article title]] (note the leading slash).
3. Click the red link, and create your article. Make sure it conforms to Wikipedia guidelines (simplified version).
4. Add a link to this article, of the form [[User:User name/Article title]], to the list below.

Using user space or any other part of Wikipedia for advertising purposes may result in an indefinite block. Label user space articles with the below template so it is clear they are not Wikipedia articles. Also put {{proposed|type=article}} at the beginning of the article, and use <nowiki> around category markups so they are not included into by Wikipedia categories.

The community will review and comment on the talk page of that user subpage. If content is to be placed in the main Wikipedia space, it is to be done by someone who is willing to stand behind that content as if he wrote it himself, deleting, rewriting or moving onto the talk page of the article anything he is not willing to stand behind 100%.

Template to be used to label user space articles

File:Purple question mark.gif

This page is a proposed Wikipedia article. It is currently in user space, and is not an actual Wikipedia article.

Articles pending review

• User:Powerscore/PowerScore - moved to userspace by me; see User talk:Powerscore. Λυδαcιτγ 17:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Changes to articles

If you wish to suggest additions or changes to a pre-existing article, use that article's talk page.

1. Create a user page for yourself that describes you and your professional background.
2. Go to the talk page of the article.
3. Create a new section by clicking the "+" at the top of the page. Title it "Proposed change" or "Proposed addition". Type in the changes you wish to have made, and sign using ~~~~.

See also

• Wikipedia:Spam

Further reading

• The wide world of Wikipedia, and why PR practitioners should take note, an essay from the Public Relations Society of America. Note that this does not necessarily express the views of the Wikipedia community.
• User:Jmabel/PR Some good advice to PR firms and people.