User talk:IJ17

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia
Hi IJ17. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing. Your edits to date include promotional content about the SunStrand company. 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.

Hello, IJ17. 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. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the request edit template);
 * disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
 * do your best to comply with 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).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. 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. Unmanaged conflicts of interest can also lead to people behaving in ways that violate our behavioral policies and cause disruption in the normal editing process. Managing conflict of interest well, also protects conflicted editors themselves - please see WP:Wikipedia is in the real world, and Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for some guidance and stories about people who have brought bad press upon themselves through unmanaged conflict of interest editing.

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 need to 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 if you have some connection with Sunstrand, directly or through a third party (e.g. a PR agency or the like)? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, please disclose it and separately, if you are being paid, or expect to be paid, for editing, you must disclose that. After you respond (and you can just reply below), if it is relevant I can walk you through how the "peer review" part happens and then, if you like, I can provide you with some more general orientation as to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 16:33, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello Jytdog,
 * I would like to keep as much of my identity anonymous as possible, but I will try to clear things up. I am not affiliated with Sunstrand; however, I am from the nearby community and have interests in sustainability, hemp agriculture, and technology, among other topics. Thus, when I read about Sunstrand in a news article recently and researched the company more, I found that most of their information was scattered across the internet and therefore am now attempting to collect it all in a Wikipedia article. Apologies if my content is "spammy," I have attempted to keep my content in a neutral tone and simply shed light on a novel topic. I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to accomplish my goal without acting against Wikipedia values and policy. Thanks!IJ17 (talk) 19:55, 23 May 2018 (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 (see WP:THREAD) - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, 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. And you already have this part down, but 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 when you save your edit.  That is how we know who said what to whom and when.


 * Please be aware that threading and signing are fundamental etiquette here, as basic as "please" and "thank you", and continually failing to thread and sign communicates rudeness, and eventually people may start to ignore you (see here).


 * 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) 21:18, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * OK, to the heart of the matter. I will take your word for it that you have no relationship with Sunstrad.  (If I am misunderstanding you, and you do have some relationship - including say a family working for the company or the like then please clarify).  It is clear that you are a "fan" of hemp and companies trying to do things with it, and other sustainable things.  So the issue appears to be not so much conflict of interest, as what we call "advocacy".


 * There are a lot of things that Wikipedia is not (see What Wikipedia is not) and one of the things WP is not, is a platform for advocacy. Please especially see the section, WP:NOTADVOCACY.  "What Wikipedia is Not" is both a policy and our mission statement - something very essential to the very guts of this place.


 * People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead people to abuse Wikipedia - to hijack it from its mission of providing the world with free access to "accepted knowledge."  Some people come here and try to create promotional content about their companies (classic "COI"), some come to tell everybody how bad it is to eat meat, some come to grind various political axes... we get all kinds of advocacy (COI is just a subset of it)  It all comes down to violations of NOTADVOCACY.  A lot of times, people don't even understand this is not OK.  I try to talk with folks, to make sure they are aware of these issues.


 * For non-COI advocacy issues, we have three very good essays offering advice - the main one is WP:ADVOCACY.


 * Also, i wrote a sort of all-in-one-please orientation to WP, that explains what we do here, how, and importantly why.  It also has a section with advice about writing a new article, which you may find useful.  It is here: user:Jytdog/How.  Please have a look!


 * I wish you good luck, and if you ever want any help, please feel free to drop a note at my talk page. Jytdog (talk) 21:26, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello Jytdog, thanks for the explanation of policy for both the use and contribution to Wikipedia; I feel a lot more confident about navigating the site. I have looked over the resources you linked me, and am confused as to how my situation would fall under advocacy. The posts I have made about Sunstrand, along with all my other posts, have stemmed from independent sources and I attempted to summarize them in a neutral tone, as well as linked them to other relevant articles. Thus, if you could please counsel me on how to correct my post on biomaterials from hemp in kentucky and my draft of an AfC of Sunstrand, I would greatly appreciate it. I have decided to contribute to Wikipedia not because I feel the public should know more about topics I am passionate about, but because the topics have already been covered in other arenas and I would simply like to aggregate them here on Wikipedia. I have spent hours poring over Wikipedia and satisfying my love of learning and would like to facilitate that same process for others.IJ17 (talk) 13:26, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Sunstrand Materials (June 1)
 Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Legacypac was:

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.


 * If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Sunstrand Materials and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
 * If you now believe the draft cannot meet Wikipedia's standards or do not wish to progress it further, you may request deletion. Please go to Draft:Sunstrand Materials, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window, add "db-self" at the top of the draft text and click the blue "publish changes" button to save this edit.
 * If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:Sunstrand_Materials Articles for creation help desk] or on the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Legacypac&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:Sunstrand_Materials reviewer's talk page].
 * You can also use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Legacypac (talk) 16:58, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate the review. I'll get to improving it with more sources, and hopefully next time it will work out! IJ17 (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Sunstrand Materials


Hello, IJ17. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Sunstrand Materials".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the, , or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Dolotta (talk) 00:43, 12 January 2019 (UTC)