User talk:ErskineCer

Logging in
Please make sure that you log in when you edit. Given the controversy around MDPI, we need to understand who (what user) is saying what. There is also (always) a risk of people spoofing another user. So when a comment like this appears, which seems to be you continuing the conversation, we have no way of knowing if that is actually you or not.

It is also unclear if edits like this are from you, or someone else.

So please log in when you want to write anything, anywhere in Wikipedia. Jytdog (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yes I added a comment on the Talk page of the MDPI WP page about the recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education and forgot to login. Jeffrey Beall provided the reasons behind the decision to remove his list in that interview -- it had nothing to do with MDPI. As mentioned already on the talk page: MDPI was removed from the list in 2015 and there was no reason to harass or pressure anyone to get a list taken down that did not include us. The lead of the WP article however suggested that we were behind the take-down, which is incorrect.ErskineCer (talk) 08:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just a quick note. You have been mostly following the COI guideline and PAID policy with respect to disclosing and not editing directly (although you do appear to have made direct edits while logged out as I noted above, which you should never do again).
 * But all you are doing, is advocating for MDPI.
 * Please be aware that if you continue battering the talk page of MDPI on behalf of that organization we will indefinitely block you.  We have done this before to people who, like you, disclosed and didn't edit directly, but were only here to advocate for their employer.  That is not OK - it violates WP:PROMO and WP:PAYTALK is the kind  of behavior we call "WP:NOTHERE".  One example of the community banning such a person is here.
 * You need to be here to build an encyclopedia. Not to advovcate for MDPI. Jytdog (talk) 18:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Final warning
You directly edited again here, and you did far more in that edit than your edit note said. Editing directly as a paid editor is strongly discouraged and misrepresenting edits in edit notes is WP:DISRUPTIVE.

If you do either of those things again, I will seek to have you indefinitely blocked. If I post here again, it will be to give you notice of that. Jytdog (talk) 14:41, 22 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I have declared my COI whereas you are engaged in disruptive editing by simply reversing all edits. I already posted on the Talk:MDPI page on 17 August 2018 about the issues with the Lead.
 * Disclosing is not enough; you have a Wikipedia account, and that obligates you to use it according to the policies and guidelines, aimed first at Wikipedia's mission, not your employer's interests. There is probably already enough evidence that you are here solely to advocate for your employer, to persuade the community indefinitely block or community ban you.
 * You can take what I wrote seriously or not. It's up to you. Jytdog (talk) 15:10, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The mission of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopaedia. At present, the article on MDPI contains misinformation and I am trying to contribute towards improving the encyclopedia by commenting on the Talk:MDPI page (see my comments from 17 August 2018). It appears, however, that you prefer to reverse edits and threaten with a "block" rather than respond to my comments on the Talk page in a constructive way.
 * Thanks for your reply. Jytdog (talk) 15:36, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Reply to your note on my talk page
Hello, ErskinCer, thanks for your note at my talk page. I assume you are taking about MDPI, your declared COI interest here. I see that I protected it briefly back in May when it was under attack by socks. Since then it has been fairly calm. I don’t see any vandalism or disruptive editing or any other need for protection at this time. The article is watched by 27 people, including 13 who have looked at it recently, so the article is not without review.

Here’s the recent history: In August, one sentence of sourced information, about a security breach in 2016, was added to the lede by an unregistered user. A regular editor (Headbomb) made a small correction. Then another user (non-autoconfirmed, who had made only one previous edit, in November 2017 - rather strange) deleted the sentence, and Headbomb restored it.

You then posted on the talk page, as you are supposed to do. You said that the breach information should be in the article rather than the lede, which is a good point. And you proposed adding some “clarification” about how MDPI handles email addresses. You also wrote several paragraphs of explanatory comment about the Beall list, without saying exactly what text you were proposing to add or remove.

When no one responded at the talk page within five days, you edited the article yourself (identifying yourself as an MDPI employee), replacing the single sentence about the security breach with a paragraph including exculpatory information sourced to the MDPI website itself. You also added updated numbers of journals and impact factor - something you hadn’t mentioned at the talk page. That edit was quite properly reversed by a regular editor (Jytdog) because of your COI.

So what should you do? Go back to the talk page. What you should do there is: 1) Post the exact edit you want to make: “I propose to move the breach material from the lede to a section of its own, which would read as follows:…” And 2) explain (maybe in a separate section) exactly what you want to have added to or removed from the Beall list material. If no one responds after a few days, send a ping to regular editors who have recently shown an interest in the article, such as Headbomb, Jytdog, and David Eppstein. They will discuss it with you, decide what goes in the article, and add it. (If you don’t know how to send a ping, ask and I will explain.)

For editing the article directly you could have been sanctioned for violating the rules about COI editing. I wouldn’t call for any sanctions in this case, because you did identify your edit as COI, and you did try to use the talk page first. If you do it again, however, that could be a problem for you. As you know, paid editing is allowed here, under conditions and limitations. It is important that you follow those conditions and limitations. --MelanieN (talk) 18:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Dear MelanieN, many thanks, I have taken note and posted on the talk page the suggested changes. As there has been no response in several days, I will contact certain editors via their Talk page.ErskineCer (talk) 06:58, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Re: Help Request for WP article about MDPI
Hi, I understand the frustration but there's only so much a single editor can do: certain prejudices and attack campaigns against MDPI definitely existed, whether deserved or not, so it's inevitable that they are at least somewhat reflected in Wikipedia articles. I'd actually say it's not hard at all to understand certain positions expressed by English Wikipedia users: the users most interested in such (relatively niche) articles often come with their own personal experience and opinions. Wikipedia users, and even administrators, can have all sorts of different passions, and sadly sometimes they don't even care about free/open knowledge or copyleft. Nemo 14:37, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

December 2018
Your recent edits to MDPI could give Wikipedia contributors the impression that you may consider legal or other "off-wiki" action against them, or against Wikipedia itself. Please note that making such threats on Wikipedia is strictly prohibited under Wikipedia's policies on legal threats and civility. Users who make such threats may be blocked. If you have a dispute with the content of any page on Wikipedia, please follow the proper channels for dispute resolution. Please be sure to comment on content, not contributors, and where possible make specific suggestions for changes supported by reliable independent sources and focusing especially on verifiable errors of fact. Thank you. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I see this came right after special:diff/873312599, so I suppose the warning was directed to the reverted user and ended up on ErskineCer's talk page by mistake. Nemo 16:02, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * stated that the IP definitely has a WP:COI and was WP:SOCKing. So, if it wasn't Mr. Cer, it was somebody else from the same company. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I will ask our staff to refrain from editing directly and use the Talk page to request edits. I now see the information that was added by user Bjerrebæk is incorrect and has no source/reference. MDPI has offices in Basel, Beijing, Wuhan, Barcelona and Belgrade (https://www.mdpi.com/about). Overall, the feeling here is that the majority of edits made to the WP page about MDPI are negative. This is quite peculiar, as reusability and openness of scientific content are something I thought would be supported by WP editors? ErskineCer (talk) 08:02, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help with educating your colleagues. There would be nothing unusual in the conflict you describe: I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!. Nemo 16:46, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The article used to include the fact that MDPI is mostly based in China, with an HQ in Switzerland, and this, or more precisely the perception of the company as primarily a Chinese company, has also been covered/discussed by third-party sources (e.g. J. Beall, "Chinese Publisher MDPI Added to List of Questionable Publishers", Scholarly Open Access, 18 February 2014). One of the reasons for the interest in the company's location is that other publishers that were included in Beall's list often promoted themselves as being based in a different country or exaggerated their ties to a western country or city where they had established a legal HQ. If MDPI has now also opened offices in other countries, I have no problem with including that as well in the article. Whether Barcelona and Belgrade merit being mentioned in the lead would depend on the size/importance of those offices in my opinion. If they are very small (token?) offices with no HQ function it would be sufficient to only mention them in the body of the article.


 * Is it correct that more than 90% (perhaps closer to 95%) of MDPI's employees are based in China? I note that one former employee at the Barcelona office writes that "This is an open access publishing company that has its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, but massive offices in China and in my opinion only opened the office in Barcelona to offset rumors about its reputability" --Bjerrebæk (talk) 07:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for clarifying Bjerrebæk. At present there are 85 staff in Belgrade (many IT developers) and we will expand that team next year to about 150; we have 46 staff in Barcelona and we plan to expand there to 80-100 in the next two years. For both offices, the additional floors are already reserved. In Basel we are about 40 staff and have recently been able to secure an additional floor in our building, so we can expand here now and have a job ad out for hiring editors. There is a liaison office in Berkeley (SF) since last year and we have a number of freelancers there who are doing an excellent job. I believe we are transparent in terms of office locations on our website (https://www.mdpi.com/about), and have the phone numbers available for anyone to contact us. It is correct that JB criticised MDPI in 2014 and we took his points on board and also made changes to ensure we are very clear in terms of the contact information provided on the website and in e-mails. On each journal website under "Editorial Office" we have the names and address of the managing editor available. Our editors sign their e-mails with their name, title, address and contact information. Of course, Basel is MDPI’s headquarters and, apart from being founded here in 1996 (long before the first office was established 2008 in Beijing), all key decisions are made by the management team here. It would be unfair to describe the team here - which is doing an outstanding job in my view - as a “registered office”, or to disregard the work our editors do in Barcelona and Belgrade. There will always be some people who vent their frustration (and anger) after leaving a company on Glassdoor. I found negative comments from employees of many other companies there, see just some example from Elsevier: https://de.glassdoor.ch/Bewertungen/Bewertungen-Elsevier-RVW23224205.htm or https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Employee-Review-Elsevier-RVW9335837.htm or https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Employee-Review-Elsevier-RVW8994639.htm. Regards ErskineCer (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that "registered office" is a fairly neutral term for the official HQ address of a company. I understand that MDPI has now around a thousand employees in China, so with just 40 at the HQ it's only natural for the lead to also mention that most employees are based in China. However, given what you say about the size of the two other European offices, I wouldn't object to mentioning them in the lead as well. --Bjerrebæk (talk) 11:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Of course, JB is right that there are bad agents out there (OMICS, SCIRP, ...), and they are not only deceptive in terms of where their editors are based, but also advertise things such as a "Google-based Impact Factor" (!), and use perfidious tricks to get authors to submit. Unfortunately, with their actions these bad agents are not only harming individual authors, but also damaging the reputation of open access in general. ErskineCer (talk) 12:48, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Apple has millions of outsourced employees according to but I don't see China even mentioned in section 0 at Apple Inc.; applying a "nationality test" to the workforce doesn't seem to be a standard across English Wikipedia articles on companies. Nemo 19:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)