User talk:Charlielitton

Welcome!
Hello, Charlielitton, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction and Getting started
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
 * Simplified Manual of Style

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 22:36, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:SOCK
Please read WP:SOCK, and please disclose if you have edited here under another account. For example as User:UNeMedTTO or User:Amratlion.

Please reply. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 22:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia
Hi Charlielitton. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with regular editing. Your edits to date are promotional with regard to UNeMed‎. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:


 * avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
 * instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the request edit template);
 * when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
 * avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
 * exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you.

Comments and requests
Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you must do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose your connection with UNeMed‎? After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 22:40, 23 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not a big fan of anonymity, which is why my username is my real name: Charlie Litton. That said, I must sheepishly admit that I clearly bit off more than I could chew when I jumped into this with both feet. This is my first attempt at this, so I have never had any connection to any other Wiki account at any point. I clearly have much to learn about proper etiquette, style and, well, everything.


 * More importantly, I should address the more significant concerns you have. I am employed by UNeMed as a communications associate, and was tasked to "update" the UNeMed Wikipedia page. I am a journalist by training and hold a master's degree in communications with a journalism focus. I thought I wrote an impartial, fact-based report on the basic function of UNeMed as an entity of the University of Nebraska. I purposely didn't include anything that couldn't be verified in a third-party source. It didn't feel like I did anything to promote the business, which wouldn't do us much good anyway since we don't provide service to the general public.


 * I remember looking at the UNeMed page a few years back, and I'd agree that it was shamelessly promotional. I hoped to scrub the post of propaganda, and reduce it to the basic elements of our existence. It seems I missed the mark. Could you show me where I crossed the line of informational and into promotional? Or is this one of those things that's like poetry or art: You know it when you see it? (Not trying to be a smarty pants, I'm sincerely curious about the distinction.) Charlielitton (talk) 14:35, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I feel it's also worth mentioning that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is exactly like UNeMed: a technology transfer office for a state university. Their wiki page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Alumni_Research_Foundation), which cites only University of Wisconsin documentation, appears to be acceptable. Why would a UNeMed page be tagged as spam or advertising and not WARF? What am I missing? Charlielitton (talk) 16:01, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying!  Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this  in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread.  I hope that all makes sense.  (You already have this part down  but I include it here, as it is just part of the logistics.... And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages.  That is how we know who said what.)  I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that.  Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 16:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks again for replying! So first things first - let's finish the COI management thing, and then I can talk with you about bigger issues of editing here, like what we call [[WP:Notability}}.


 * Thanks for making the disclosure. So you have a COI for UNeMed, as we define that in Wikipedia.


 * To finish the disclosure piece, would you please add the disclosure to your user page (which is User:Charlielitton - a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just something simple like: "I work for UNeMed, the technology transfer office for University of Nebraska's Medical Center, and have a conflict of interest with regard to that topic"  would be fine.  If you want to add anything else there that is relevant to what you want to do in WP feel free to add it, but please don't add anything promotional about the company (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).


 * Once you disclose on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done. (Normally I put a COI disclosure tag on the article so editor's there can easily see the disclosure, but as there is no article now, I can't do that).


 * As I noted above, there are two pieces to COI management in WP.  The first is disclosure.  The second is a form of peer review.  This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense.  In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voilà there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done.  No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world.  So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article.  Conflicted editors are also really driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest.  If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors (what we call "disruptive behavior").


 * What we ask editors to do who have a COI and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is:
 * a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft through the WP:AFC process, disclose your COI on the Talk page, and then submit the draft article for review (the AfC process sets up a nice big button for you to click when it is ready) so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and
 * b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily -  and provide notice to the community of your request -  by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline.  I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:X -  there is a link at "click here" in that section --  if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request.


 * By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. (which I will say more about, if you want).


 * I hope that makes sense to you.


 * I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article (if it exists), without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content.   If you are not sure if something is uncontroversial, please ask at the Talk page.


 * Will you please agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the x article or any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss.


 * And if you want me to quickly go over the content and notability policies, I can do that. Just let me know. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 16:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * All very helpful notes, thank you. The peer review process sounds reasonable, and I'll go that route moving forward. I guess I saw the "Be Bold" initiative and took it a little too seriously, and dove right in without much consideration. Also...I just found out moments ago that another person in our office tried editing the UNeMed Wiki the other day. I can imagine it looked a little odd on your end to see such a sudden flurry of activity. At any rate, I'll take a step back to regroup and give this another go when I'm more confident and nimble with WP norms and practices.Charlielitton (talk) 16:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! I linked two other apparently UNeMeD WP accounts in the SOCK section above (one of them obviously so :) }, the other apparently because they were a WP:SPA who added promotional content - you can no longer see any contribs for them as they were all to UNeMeD which is now deleted).   And do let me know if you want me to give you the quick overview of content and behavior policies and guidelines.  Best regards Jytdog (talk) 17:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of UNeMed


A tag has been placed on UNeMed, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and FAQ/Organizations for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the. Jytdog (talk) 22:41, 23 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, in the name of consistency, here's a few more technology transfer offices with Wikipedia pages that should be deleted as well:


 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Alumni_Research_Foundation
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T3_Technion_Technology_Transfer
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Transfer_Center_of_Zhejiang_University
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIDDK_Office_of_Technology_Transfer_and_Development
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_International_Technology_Transfer_Center
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_European_Science_and_Technology_Transfer_Professionals
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yissum_Research_Development_Company_of_the_Hebrew_University
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCL_Business
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Institute_for_Advancement_of_Technology
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Technology_Business_Centre
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_Innovation
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICO
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Ventures
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovista
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkins_Consulting_Agency


 * Happy hunting!
 * Charlielitton (talk) 16:26, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing these out. Lots of work to do, always.  Academics are some of the worst abusers of WP out there (just look at pretty much any article about a university, and you will find lots of unsourced and badly sourced promotional content, battles visible in the history to remove negative information, etc etc.)  We even have a little essay just for university people: WP:BOOSTER. Jytdog (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * HA!...Yes, they seem to be a big fan of adjectives. Thanks again for your notes. Hopefully my next effort with WP won't require as much hand-holding! Charlielitton (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)