Talk:IPG Photonics

Conflict of interest

Two accounts editing this and related articles, User:CRanjiSMA and User:SMAir2009 (f/k/a User:SMAInvestorRelations, have been blocked as employee accounts of Sharon Merrill Associates (SMA), an "investor relations" (i.e., publicity) firm working for IPG Photonics. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't employee accounts allowed, as long as they are individual employee accounts? CRanjiSMA seems likely to be Christopher Ranjitkar. AFAIK, the conflict of interest policy discourages corporations from editing their own articles, but does not prescribe automatic blocking for doing so. The username policy prohibits sharing of accounts, and therefore generic corporate accounts are not permitted. I don't recall a blockable prohibition on individual accounts that express a corporate affiliation, although there might be a policy that encourages such users to change their account name (I don't recall.) --Srleffler (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

These were single-purpose accounts of a PR firm working for the subject: spammer accounts, in other words. Ranjitkar still wants to be unblocked so that he can improve his client's article. There was no encylopedic purpose, and no intent to contribute to the Wikipedia project. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:42, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like biting newcomers and failing to assume good faith. You are presuming that just because they made the mistake of starting out editing an article that concerns them, that they cannot do any other kind of editing. Labelling them SPAs seems premature too. CRanjiSMA's edit history only includes 15 main-space edits, and 5 of those are unrelated to IPG Photonics. SMAir has 4, of which 3 are not conflicts of interest and the fourth was a typographical change. I disagree with labelling their edits here "spamming" as well. If they persisted when told to stop, it would be spamming. It's not clear to me that they have done that. I didn't read their edits in great detail, but from what I saw it looked like a genuine (but biased) attempt to improve the article. It's not easy to write NPOV. We shouldn't jump on newcomers for failing to immediately understand Wikipedia's neutrality policies.--Srleffler (talk) 00:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]