User talk:WoodEcology

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, WoodEcology. 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 conflict of interest 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 conflict of interest 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 which forms all or part of work 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. MrOllie (talk) 23:39, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Respectfully disagree with COI comment
Dear MrOllie,

Thank you for getting in touch, and for your vigilance. I absolutely agree that my addition of a link to forest-ecology.com under the "See also" section of the "Forest Ecology" page did indeed represent a conflict of interest and it is quite correct that this is removed. I apologise for this, it was an honest oversight.

I do however respectfully disagree with your concerns that there is a conflict of interest on the pages where I have added a link and very small text edit to a recent publication with which I was involved as the lead author. To address your concerns I propose the edits I have included are retained for the following reasons.

The edits I have made were to add a recent peer reviewed journal publication to 3 wikipedia pages to which it is unquestionably relevant. The text edits were pure statements of fact and not opinions design to be informative. None of these edits as far as I can see violate any of Wikipedia's COI policies, that is the edits are not on pages about myself, family, friends, company, organisation or competitors or added for any form of personal gain, financial or otherwise. These additions were purely designed to contribute new research and modelling approaches that have progressed the topics and discussions on these relevant pages.

When consulting Wikipedia's own policy on using sources as citations that you have been involved in, I draw your attention to the directly quoted below points which I believe provide a strong case for the validity of my edits.

"Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications."

AND

"Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB, and is not excessive."

Please consider this evidence on balance and reinstate the proposed edits as they add considerable value in the form of current, peer reviewed research.

Kind regards,

WoodEcology.WoodEcology (talk) 09:01, 17 May 2019 (UTC)