User talk:WikiRicky

April 2012
Hello Rich microvisk. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. I believe you may have a conflict of interest in articles relating to http://www.microvisk.com please take time to review the policies and guidelines linked here. Fæ (talk) 10:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Please be aware of the guideline of User pages, which applies to draft articles you might be sandboxing. Thanks Fæ (talk) 10:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Dealing with your likely conflict of interest
Thanks for asking for help, good move. I'm plonking in some standard advice below, then if you have questions we can deal with them one at a time. --Fæ (talk) 10:56, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Guidance on notability
Hi Rich microvisk,

Wikipedia has its own guidance for notability that may not be the same as your intuitive sense of what is notable. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of general knowledge rather than an index of profiles of companies and people. Each article needs several independent reliable sources to show significant impact on the historical record. The guidance for organizations is given at WP:ORG with a useful list of questions answered at FAQ/Organizations and for biographies WP:BIO applies.

If the articles you are creating have reliable sources to support the criteria defined in that guidance then you may have a reason to keep the articles from being deleted which you are welcome to raise on the article talk page or on any linked deletion discussion. If you are associated with the organization, person or product the article is about then you must follow the conflict of interest guidelines and avoid editing the article yourself but you are free to suggest and discuss changes. See PSCOI for an alternative simple guide.

Rather than starting "live" articles, you can create a draft first which allows you to get your article properly sourced before risking speedy deletion - see Userspace draft and Userfication.

If you would like some independent help you can ask one of the noticeboards at WP:Requests or try chatting with other Wikipedians on.

Thanks, Fæ (talk) 10:56, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

User name
Your username will remain a problem. Anyone editing an article with the a similar name as the organization being dicussed gets flagged by bots and tends to have a lot of spontaneus attention by Wikipedians. See Changing username/Simple if you want to change your name to something that is obviously just a personal nickname rather than making it look as though you are some kind of paid editor for your company. Cheers Fæ (talk) 10:56, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Rich microvisk/sandbox
The current draft you have created in your sandbox is written as an apparent advert. This will be subject to deletion as per our Spam guideline. If you want to keep this draft and improve it, you will need to make it well sourced with secondary sources (such as national newspaper articles or independent published books) and change the tone away from a first person advertorial in to something that begins to read as encyclopaedic in tone.
 * The Hoffmann-La Roche is a good example. The tone is neutral (rather than "we do this and that") and significant claims appear well sourced to independent publications such as Reuters or The Times. It has suitable Neutral point of view and even has balance with the critical section "Vitamin price fixing", which presumably the company's own PR section would find rather irritating to be so prominently featured. You would not go far wrong if you follow a similar tone and balance for the article you are drafting and can address the WP:Notability (organizations and companies) criteria. --Fæ (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

So I need to wait until we have some dirt before it can be 'even' sorry, not trying to be pedantic, I am happy to change the tone, but it has links to their products and drugs as well...
 * You can add information on products and services within limits, see WP:PRODUCT. --Fæ (talk) 12:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Spam links
For the moment I strongly recommend you avoid injecting your company name or links into other articles. Changes like this are highly likely to be seen as spamming Wikipedia and result in all similar changes being reverted and if you persist not only will you account be blocked but links to your company might be added to the black-list, making it very difficult to add such links to any article in the future. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:12, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Questions
Maybe should have written in here....

Hoffmann–La Roche

Our major competitor, pretty commercial page, not really asking to put anything more than they have...

Or are we suggesting this was submitted by an eminent historian? :)
 * The Hoffmann-La Roche is a good example. The tone is neutral (rather than "we do this and that") and significant claims appear well sourced to independent publications such as Reuters or The Times. It has suitable Neutral point of view and even has balance with the critical section "Vitamin price fixing", which presumably the company's own PR section would find rather irritating to be so prominently featured. You would not go far wrong if you follow a similar tone and balance for the article you are drafting and can address the WP:Notability (organizations and companies) criteria. --Fæ (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

On the spam links question, I would again ask how Alere are allowed to 'Spam' point of care testing, but I'm not, maybe I'm missing something obvious here?
 * I just suggest you take care, given your account name, and that you have yet to establish the article, I would seriously avoid being seen doing anything that looks like spamming the name, or links to, your company. --Fæ (talk) 11:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or  located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 11:27, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Dear god, it's a wonder anyone gets anything done on here, I will edit the text and await 'judgement' you may also want to follow my questioning on the spam warning... It smacks of double standards, which is never a good thing for those perched on the moral high ground...--Rich microvisk (talk) 11:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't really want to stand in judgement (too time consuming ). If you would like some independent comments on your draft, it might be an idea to raise a note at Requests for feedback where helpful volunteer reviewers will make suggestions or give it the nod. By the way, SineBot is just an automatic bot. You can always delete such notes once you have read them. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Coagulation this is littered with commercial products and pharmaceutical links, I've read the guidance, but I seem to be missing where, products like the PFA-1000 can be spammed into a clinical wiki but anything I link into seems to be fair game, can you clarify if this is simply because of the user name (Which I have asked to change) --Rich microvisk (talk) 12:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, this example include products that have their own articles. This means that they, hopefully, meet notability in their own right. That's a bit different to just injecting products or company names into articles without separate notability being addressed. See IINFO which applies for what is thought to be non-encyclopaedic stuff. It's a hard line to draw, so I can understand why it is frustrating. --Fæ (talk) 12:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, just to clarify, the specific link that was removed was adjacent to the name Alere, which is not in fact linked, or in fact anything other than a company name, which appears twice... in fact it gets worse...

in 'Prothrombin Time' "In a typical NPT setup a small table-top device is used; for example the Roche Coaguchek S, the International Technidyne Corporation Hemochron Signature, or the more recently (2005) introduced HemoSense INRatio. A drop of capillary blood is obtained with an automated finger-prick, which is almost painless. This drop is placed on a disposable test strip with which the machine has been prepared. The resulting INR comes up on the display a few seconds later. Similar testing methods are used by diabetics on insulin, and are easily taught and practiced. Local policy determines whether the patient or a coagulation specialist (pharmacist, nurse, general practitioner or hospital doctor) interprets the result and determines the dose of medication. In Germany, patients may adjust the medication dose themselves,[citation needed] while in the UK and the USA this remains in the hands of a health care professional. For example, patients using services such as Philips INR@Home [1] will phone in their INR results on a weekly basis and this information is transmitted to their doctor, who is also alerted if out-of-range levels should require an immediate intervention or adjustment to medications."

Absolutely littered with un linked product information, yet I assume, any attempt to add our system will also be rejected...? Frustrating is not the word, a flat playing field is all I ask for... --Rich microvisk (talk) 13:02, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree, using "for example" to then squeeze in a pointless list of commercial products is a problem. I have trimmed these from the example you pointed out. By the way, that other articles are not good, is a classic argument against the guidelines, someone even wrote an essay about it - Other stuff exists. --Fæ (talk) 13:13, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately that was not my point, I just wanted to add my name to the various list... :( Rich microvisk (talk) 14:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)