User:Ɱ/COI

I have good experience dealing with financially conflicted editors, having done so many times, but only before I started it myself. In 2014, Interactive Brokers paid me to write drafts, which uninvolved editors later reviewed and published. Through that process, the articles Interactive Brokers, Interactive Brokers Group, and Thomas Peterffy are the only live works I affected while under a financial conflict of interest. About 99.978% of my edits are as a volunteer.

I have no remaining financial conflicts of interest at this time.

What I drafted
(I make no direct edits any articles where I have a financial conflict, unless before employment or to satisfy non-free content criteria. I create drafts which are then approved and published by uninvolved editors.)

August 2017-January 2018
In August 2017, I accepted a nominal fee at the Century Association Archives Foundation, where my first responsibility was to improve the Wikipedia article on the Century Association and create an article for the Archives. My work was funded by the foundation, which maintains its publicly accessible archive within the Century's top floor. The foundation strives for a neutral and encyclopedic account of the Association, its history, and its members. I was working with assistance from a full-time archivist to disseminate information from the archive's annals and published books, along with another part-time archivist. I stopped work in January 2018 and nothing has been published, though this project drew my attention to all of the clubs and societies with articles on Wikipedia, most of which are poor and lacking structure and interconnectivity; I made improvements to these articles and categories and attempted to create a formal structural guideline for such articles.

May-August 2016
I worked on improving and updating "Interactive Brokers", while under Interactive Brokers LLC's employment from May to August 2016. After August, I made some improvements and asked for it to be reviewed and published, while I was under no remaining financial obligations. My work was completed in April 2017 with its publication.

October 2015
In October 2015, I accepted a flat fee from Frank Shiner for creating and extensive writing of the article "Frank Shiner". My research and writing was independent of his control, and most sources he suggested I refused. The article was deleted for a lack of notability. The article met technical notability qualifications but not subjective ones; bias against paid editing may have influenced the deletion discussion.

June-August 2014
I accepted a fee to improve the "Interactive Brokers" and "Thomas Peterffy" articles while under Interactive Brokers LLC's employment from June to August 2014. The articles were of very low standard and lacking in detail. The work also led me to create a draft to publish a new article "Interactive Brokers Group".

Ethics
I am a Wikipedia editor first. I have edited since 2009, and will plan to continue doing so for a long time. I am here to advance Wikimedia's aims of collecting and developing educational content and disseminating it effectively and globally. The aforementioned articles are the only ones I accepted money for. I was never under any obligation, and nor did I ever promise, to promote any product, organization, or other entity.

I have the strongest interest in best adhering to Wikipedia's COI guideline. I have carefully read through Wikipedia's policies regarding neutral point of view, verifiability and reliable sources, and see it as crucial to follow these and the other core content and conduct policies closely. I am firmly opposed to non-encyclopedic puffery, marketing speak, and original research that would detract from the any Wikimedia project's aims. When I create new articles, I leave the final decisions up to the consensus of others, and I am mindful of what constitutes enduring notability.

I recognize the inherent challenge of editing Wikimedia projects while mitigating the chance for bias presented by a conflict of interest, and for that reason I always ask for independent input and seek out consensus via article talk pages and related Wikiprojects before making any substantive changes. With this approach, I seek to bring a subject matter expertise and ability to obtain hard-to-find reliable sources to the community (to more fully bring articles up to Wikimedia's own standards), while also ensuring that resulting changes to an article are the product of community consensus.

I am also cognizant of wiki content ownership and view Wikimedia projects as a work in progress, so as questions or later input regarding the edits that I have made arise, please feel free to leave a message for me on my user talk page.

My pay-to-edit arrangements for all articles have all ceased.