Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 29

user:Skyisthebest
This user is editing a lot on Sky Television related articles. I'm not sure if this is an employee but the username is definately inappropriate. See Contribs --DFS454 (talk) 11:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This username is not necessarily a problem ... otherwise we'd block any username (and we have many) that sounded fannish: things like PhilliesFan or such. Daniel Case (talk) 04:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Errol Sawyer


Article seems to have been created for purposes of promotion after a user claiming to be Sawyer ran into trouble inserting unnecessary info on himself into Christie Brinkley due to feeling slighted for not getting enough credit for discovering her. The debate was subsequently taken over by Fischer, his wife/agent, who is now the main editor of Sawyer's article, and she doesn't seem interested in my repeated explanations of Wiki policy: the "Early Life" section is all OR, the career section is mostly quotes that push a positive POV (with citations that don't verify the text or link to self-published material from his website that's written by his agent), and the "Activism" section sounds like campaigning and is sourced using blogs and comments lists - reliable secondary sources on Sawyer are nearly non-existent; the only one there is doesn't do much more than verify that he discovered Brinkley, along with a few others things on Brinkley's discovery that are contradicted by other sources. Sawyer claims to know the author.

His agent/wife sidesteps COI claims by saying she didn't create the article (although it seems clear it was created on her behalf or Sawyer's), has repeatedly deleted maintenance tags for "destroying" the article, and justifies non-policy-supported content with allusions to her "academic qualifications" and edit summaries of "truth is truth." After first I just thought this was a matter of an editor pushing a COI too far, but now I'm thinking the article could just be deleted as spam and for the subject's non-notability in the absence of reliable sourcing. (Sorry this is so long.)   Mbinebri   talk &larr; 21:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Editors may add their comments at Articles for deletion/Errol Sawyer. EdJohnston (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

User:TonyMcConkey and Tony McConkey


has been editing Tony McConkey, removing criticisms without explanation. I have issued them a uw-coi warning. AnyPerson (talk) 06:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It does appear that the subject has been editing his article. But there was a paragraph in there which claimed he had been disbarred due to a bad real estate transaction. I removed that paragraph under WP:BLP since no source was provided. It can be restored if sources are found. EdJohnston (talk) 05:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * He just blanked the section on election results. AnyPerson (talk) 22:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've left a final warning for Tony M. He has not acknowledged any of the comments left for him. He has never left a Talk comment or an edit summary. If he reverts again, in my opinion he can be blocked for disruptive editing. Meanwhile, anyone who'd like to search for sources is welcome to add them to the article. (They probably exist). EdJohnston (talk) 22:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Reporting: Keratoconus Commercially Motivated Edits
I am writing to report commercially motivated and unfounded editing of the medical article for Keratoconus.

To summarize: there is a treatment method (C3-R) being used in the US that is very expensive(~$2000/eye) and has been shown as ineffective especially when compared to alternatives. The problem is that the alternatives are not yet approved by FDA (they are in clinical trials).

Only a few clinics are administering the ineffective C3-R treatment at good profit and have strong reason to edit the article to hide or bury these studies.. Someone is continually removing edits and citing random websites as sources to support this procedure.

The user related to the commercially benefit of these edits, has been editing this article under different "sock-puppets" including User:Scubadiver99 and User:Corneadoc... among others. Arpowers (talk) 07:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Shar1R and Comsec Consulting Ltd.


This is intended more to keep tabs on this user, who is acting disruptively at Deletion review/Log/2009 January 25 and has gone as far as to threatening deletion on many other articles (see WP:WAX). It is possible that WP:ANI might be necessary here. User has a direct conflict of interest with the article in question, which was speedy deleted for blatant advertising/spam. MuZemike 06:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think what we have is a new user suffering from righteous indignation. S/he has asked for my help (mainly, I think, because I suggested gently that they step back from the issue) to resolve the situation.  I have made some suggestions for them on my and their talk pages which I think will be well received since they asked for help.  I think pretty much everyone here has made a mess of things at some point.  I know I have.  Fiddle Faddle (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Nicely done with the userified version, and my complements for rescuing a new editor who may have been overwhelmed and put off by all the templates and policy-speak. Arakunem Talk 16:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * At User talk:Shar1R the user seems to have got the message. Per Arakunem, thanks to all who flagged the problem and who were patient with this editor. I suggest closing this report in a couple of days unless something else happens. EdJohnston (talk) 16:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Massey Energy
I would like to ask somebody who is more experienced of dealing with potential COI issues to assist handling the Massey Energy article. I'm not sure if this a right place to post it as there is no incident yet. Vice versa, the company has indicated beforehand at the talk page about their intention to improve the article and most of potential addition are justified and sourced with reliable sources. However, the proposed amendments concerning community service seems to be problematic. The company also indicates that they will use a PR firm for the editing. Beagel (talk) 18:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Hector Echavarria


I think the IP was either Echavarria or someone associated with him, and that Lilavalladares currently is. Lilavalladares has in any case been editing his page and created one for both his production company (Destiny Entertainment Productions) and his new film Never Surrender (film). When I found the article it was more or less completely unreferenced and non-NPOV so I did a small copyedit (diff) removing the worst and put up a request for sources on the talk page but nothing's happened yet. Just now, Lilavalladares re-added/added (diff) some more unreferenced sections, one of which starts with:
 * "Hector has always been a leader and an inovator in the world of martial arts, his incredible martial arts competitive carreer is just half of the story. Hector has helped other sport champions and martial arts stars achieve their full potential [...]"

Assistance greatly appreciated. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:50, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

User:David44357
I noticed that this user had made many edits regarding Fabrik Inc. and its brands such as SimpleTech and G-Technology. He would either write a substantial portion of such articles (which often did sound like somewhat of an advertisement but had many, many citations) or add mentions to the company and its brands to articles on related topics such as External hard disk drive, Toshiba, Samsung Group, etc.

I looked further into his contributions and saw that he made edits to a number of other articles as well...including quite a few edits The Hoffman Agency, a public relations firm. After looking at, it seems that the majority of the edits that he made were regarding clients of The Hoffman Agency...these include Fabrik, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Friendster, SolarWinds, and possibly others.

As you can probably see I strongly suspect that this individual is making edits on behalf of a PR firm. I'd already warned him about a potential conflict of interest on the SimpleTech/Fabrik topics and he responded but seems to have made a few more edits. Scootey (talk) 04:00, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Responding to Scootey's concerns from here and my talk page:
 * I'm not sure what sockpuppet refers to, but the IP address and my username are indeed one in the same. I sometimes make revisions without logging in.
 * I made the initial new Wikis for most of the Wikis mentioned including The Hoffman Agency, Fabrik, SimpleTech, G-Tech, SolarWinds, and others - the Gerson Lehrman Group, Sarantel, etc.. My name does occur frequently in the history section as I complete the work, but I generally am not reversing the work of others. I also wrote approximately half of the current Wiki on Public Relations, a whole new section in external hard drive, etc..
 * Admittedly, the Fabrik Wiki content had some copy/paste marketing goop that should not have been included and has since then been corrected. This is probably what raised a flag for Scootey.
 * I have followed the guidelines set by the Wikipedia FAQ for organizations of verifiability (references as mentioned by Scootey) and neutral point of view. I've also frequently discussed changes on discussion and talk pages and have not deleted the works of others.

I think I have made substantial genuine contributions to Wikipedia content both on company Wikis and subject-matter Wikis. Each Wiki includes an immense amount of in-depth online research. Many of these Wikis were non-existent, in poor condition, sometimes full of broken links, etc.

Based on Scootey's observations above, I can see his reason for concern, but I think a close investigation of the new Wikis I've created, the research that goes into it, and the factual information I've consolidated onto Wikipedia articles would reveal a positive contribution to Wikipedia.com.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by David44357 (talk • contribs) 00:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Scootey is right that there's a problem. There's a deal of correlation between the contributions of and clients of the Hoffman Agency (compare the list ). Plus ... we're not allowed to explicitly "out" editors any more ... but if you digg a little you find a very short trail to the Hoffman Agency.
 * As examples, the edits that introduce Fabrik into articles look considerably promotional -
 * Article creation ("Fabrik is the third largest external hard drive provider in the world. Now there will finally be a centralized hub of information on them on the web")
 * Product placement in External hard disk drive, replacing a Seagate drive with a Fabrik one as example image - {"Not to show any bias for brands, but an eco-friendly drive is just way more interesting and modern...")
 * Product placement in Computer data storage ("Adding image of eco-friendly hard disk to show some modern trends...")
 * and there looks to be some fairly transparent canvassing like this one to get the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (another Hoffman client) mentioned in the Nanotechnology article, or this one to keep The Hoffman Agency on Wikipedia. If there's a COI, it's a little disingenuous to come on like all these topic ideas are just altruistic enthusiasm. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Quoting David44357 "...but the IP address and my username are indeed one in the same. I sometimes make revisions without logging in."

Interesting. Let's do a whois and nslookup on the IP, shall we?


 * The Hoffman Agency PBI-CUSTNET-1562 (NET-209-76-124-64-1)
 * 209.76.124.64 - 209.76.124.127
 * ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2009-01-28 19:10


 * Non-authoritative answer:
 * 126.64/26.124.76.209.in-addr.arpa
 * name = ws-209-76-124-126.hoffman.com.

Admit it. You're making edits for your clients that you've been paid to make, and you're editing the articles of their competitors to add them in for special "Competitor" sections and removing anything that looks like advertisement in them while at the same time filling your clients' articles chock full of advertising material. You're completely misrepresenting your motivations and your COI has affected more than just your clients' articles. Lahnfeear (talk) 04:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The clients probably weren't stupid enough to ask him to do this, but it's clearly inappropriate and needs to be stopped immediately. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And there's more from the IP : product placement via "Competitor" sections; trying to get speedy deletion of PacketTrap (a competitor of PacketMotion); canvassing for the inclusion of guess-who's bamboo hard drive in Green computing ; adding a Hoffman client to Agentless data collection ; and so on. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * He just blanked his talk page of all the comments about his COI. Just more of the same pattern... Lahnfeear (talk) 02:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm adding to this report. The edits correspond exactly with David44357 and the ip 209.76.124.126. Obviously either a meatpuppet or sockpuppet of the same user. Lahnfeear (talk) 02:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:SOCK request
 * Could someone with a little more experience submit a Sock report with a request for an IP check for these users? I think there's more than enough evidence at this point to investigate further. This is a case of systematic, subversive edits with an intent to hide intent (see Saranixon's recent, meaningless edits to Laundry to bury the obvious  COI edits in prior articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lahnfeear (talk • contribs) 02:39, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * They won't go for it; IP checks are reserved for major abuse such as banned users evading blocks. What more do you want than what's been raised here quite sufficiently via edit patterns? BTW, even in these circumstances, focusing on edits rather than the editor is good etiquette, so could you tone down this third-degree "Admit it" kind of approach? Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fine. Thanks for responding. It just seems wrong that a company paid to, and I quote from his site, "connect clients with...audiences through...Web 2.0 approaches. Whether it’s contacting a journalist via Facebook, harnessing client resources to comment on blogs, or building content for one-off stories," is getting away with this long and systematic series of advert edits, and continues to behave in the exact same way despite being notified multiple times about the problem. They're using WP as a brochure and it just pisses me off. Doesn't the pattern exhibited by these three accounts still show viable reason for a Meat/Sock concern? Anyway... Sorry if I made it too personal. Lahnfeear (talk) 03:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Generally these things work on a initial wait-and-see basis. An entry at WP:COIN attracts a focus on the problem editor(s) and their topics, and very often they just stop once caught at it. Alternatively they may keep going, but there are far more editors on their case to catch promotional edits (again sometimes making the problem editor(s) eventually give up). Usually things are allowed to go through those options first. But ultimately, there is nothing directly sanctioning a COI as such: the guiding principle is WP:NPOV, and we focus on the editing behaviour in breach of it. Who the subject of a WP:COIN alert might be is just the initial handle for understanding the territory. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Bill robb
— is adding large amounts of material, and creating a number of new pages, cited to himself on his website www.valueseducation.co.uk (although his attempted contributions to Peace education also include a considerable amount of uncited material as well). HrafnTalkStalk(P) 11:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

On closer examination of his edits, one of Bill robb's first edits on wikipedia, was to describe himself on Values education (the article with the same name as his website, which he has thereafter edited considerably, and cited himself profusely) as "a leading expert in the field - Dr Bill Robb". This seems to have set the pattern for his later edits. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Pam Evans
- Does anyone have spare time to take a look at this? Addressing copyright concerns, I noticed conflict issues, in that not only is the subject purportedly editing the article herself but the other primary editor is citing as sources personal correspondence from the subject to him. (He is involved with Peace Mala, an organization she founded.) I have provided each a COI advisory, but would appreciate it greatly if a contributor here could undertake to evaluate it for cleaning as necessary for neutrality and to remove OR. I try not to mix my copyright problems with other issues if it can be avoided. Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Details added above. Personally I think an AFD might be appropriate for Pam Evans. Her sole notability is as founder of Peace Mala - I suggest a short paragraph there - and all the ghastly cruft about schools and classes she taught before seems of little encyclopedic interest. Update: I've opened an AFD on grounds of insufficient separate notability. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmni

 * -- (new name of Hmni)
 * -- (new name of Hmni)

has been editing Hello My Name Is Records, which the article notes is referred to as HMNI. insists that we not block them for the username because that would be biting, so we are referring this here from UAA in order to take appropriate sanctions for violating COI. Daniel Case (talk) 04:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See Articles for deletion/Hello My Name Is Records. Depending on the outcome of that discussion, we could decide how to approach Hmni regarding the issue of COI editing. He has already received the uw-coi warning. EdJohnston (talk) 05:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Editor has changed his name to Rramzshaw, in response to a suggestion. He has been cooperating with others. No urgent problem any more. It may be time to close this as a COI complaint. EdJohnston (talk) 17:23, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

MODx
- MODx article was listed at AfD and then this user pops up being unWP:CIVIL because I listed his vanity page. Did a good search for his username and it seems he is a developer for MODx 16x9 (talk) 13:31, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Where is the incivility? (He did make a joke when replying to you in the AfD, but what he said doesn't seem worrisome). Anyone who has opinions about the article is welcome to comment at WP:Articles for deletion/MODx. EdJohnston (talk) 15:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I apologize to 16x9 if you took my joke as uncivil. I likewise appreciate the process you're putting the article through. I am in fact the project co-founder but am trying to update the article to be in compliance with Wikipedia guidelines, warts and all. For example, listing security issues and an article that was not altogether flattering of MODx certainly doesn't make MODx look good. I'm not sure what a vanity page is though? While I did agree with the original AfD request, I can't honestly see how an unbiased individual would say that the original listing reason has not been rectified (Notability and Reliable Sources). Rthrash (talk) 16:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

PR Firm promoting Warren Farrell, etc
I noticed that Warren Farrell had become very promotional. I checked the editor and found that had made a major re-write back in October 2008. The same user also wrote articles on one of Farrell's books, The Myth of Male Power, on an erotica site, Unseen (Unseen.tv), and on a limousine service, LS Worldwide Transportation. The latter article was quickly deleted as having no assertion of notability, but a version can be found here: user:Rsskga/LS WorldWide Transportation. At first I assumed that Rsskga was either Farrell or a close friend, because the article is illustrated with scans of his diplomas and some press clippings which only he would have. However on searching Google I found that Rsskga is actually the principal of a Media Marketing/SEO firm named All the Queen’s Men. It would appear that Farrell, Unseen.tv, and LS Worldwide Transportation are her clients. (On Wikicommons she claims the LS logo is her creation.) The articles cite Rsskga's offsite postings and press releases as sources. So, unless someone has a better suggestion, I'm going to put a long comment on the user's talk page explaining NPOV and V, and strongly suggesting that she stop editing Wikipedia on behalf of her clients.  Will Beback   talk    23:59, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Rebreather



 * The dispute is currently about whether to include this external link at the end:


 * Janwillem Bech's big rebreather information site (warning: contains advertisements)

I want to link to that site, because it contains much useful information about rebreather scuba diving. See discussion at Talk:Rebreather. Much of that discussion centers on including/deleting longer pieces of text which I have accepted the loss of; the current dispute is about the one link quoted above.

I am accused of conflict of interest, apparently because: Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Many years ago before I heard of Wikipedia I submitted a short text article (about the Siebe Gorman Salvus) and a few images to that site.
 * 2) As a result, the long list of thanks on http://www.therebreathersite.nl/Zuurstofrebreathers/General/thanks_to.htm (one of that site's many pages) includes a link to my website. (I do not stand to gain financially if more people access my website.)
 * 3) That site contains advertisements as well as useful information. (I have no financial connection with any of the firms with adverts there.)
 * To be honest I'm not sure if this is the best place to report this, but I just want to mention that anyone who sees this here should look over the talk page of the article and see that Anthony has been defending what is in essence a link farm for years. At one time an RfC was called for the links and most everyone who commented said they should be removed, but nothing ever came of it.  About a dozen different people in all have brought the linkfarm up for question over a long period of time and they were all single-handedly refuted by Anthony.  There is a strong consensus that the link doesn't belong on the article and this consensus has been taken from the past two years.  As for the Conflict of Interest, I have no doubt that Anthony has one with the site.  He has fought its removal tooth and nail over the past few years by editing it back in without discussion, taking it to the talk page and then editing it back in without consensus to do so, editing it in with a warning that it contains objectionable advertising (which is in itself a violation of WP:ELNO), and even pleading on the talk page for its inclusion "it's just one link".  The site he wants so passionatly to be included personally thanks him on its page, which is what tipped me off for the conflict of interest.  He has also inserted the link in other articles dating back to 2004 (!), sometimes referring to the owner by his name, as if the two know each other.  This type of behavior is most unbecoming for an established editor, and especially an administrator and it must stop.  Although he has a vested interest in the subject, he does not own the page.  Anything that is on that site that can help the article should be implemented into the article and properly cited.  An external link is not needed here. Themfromspace (talk) 12:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I let the "link farm" be deleted on 8 June 2008: it can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rebreather&oldid=82888098#External_links ; I put it in a long time ago because such a list is difficult to find and people may want the information; OK, OK, I accept that "Wikipedia is not a directory".
 * The other affected big text section is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rebreather&oldid=262473007#Some_makes_of_rebreather, which I also have now let be deleted.
 * This now seems to go back to the old dispute: "What if a site contains advertizing, but also good information and/or images which cannot be found elsewhere?".
 * Some people supported my side in those old discussions, which are in Talk:Rebreather. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "sometimes referring to the owner by his name, as if the two know each other": Many web sites are commonly known of as " 's site" without readers having personal or financial contacts with him. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As you can see from the Rebreather talk page, I've been involved in the most recent debate about external links in the article. I don't believe Anthony has a conflict of interest, certainly not of the form described in WP:CON. However, he has allowed himself to be put in the position where a perception of a conflict of interest could be reasonably made. Anthony is a long-term contributor to wikipedia, particularly to WikiProject Scuba, and has contributed a lot to scuba-related articles. The problem in the Rebreather article arises because there are many external sites with a lot of information, and others which would be clearly of interest to readers (particularly those who are divers). Anthony really wants the article to provide as much information and interest as possible - I have no doubt of his sincerity. Unfortunately, the result of trying to provide that information and interest by providing links to those sites leads him to fall afoul of our WP:EL guidelines. In the case of Janwillem Bech's rebreather site, it is an excellent reference site for divers interested in rebreathers, but Anthony's appreciation of that site has allowed him to appear to have a conflict of interest. I don't think this is the place for the debate. I do think that what wikipedia requires of us is to try to incorporate as much information into the article itself, and leave the external links for specific items that can't be incorporated, like copyrighted images. Working on the article itself to arrive at a goal we all want will be more productive. --RexxS (talk) 19:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * "to try to incorporate as much information into the article itself": If e.g. I use http://www.therebreathersite.nl as a source of information to write Wikipedia matter, then I would have to refer to http://www.therebreathersite.nl as a reference of the ordinary sort to prove the information, and as a result I would still be referring to http://www.therebreathersite.nl . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 19:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Implementing it as a reference is perfectly acceptable and that is a way you could link to the site from wikipedia. Requirements for citing reliable sources are much different than what goes in the "external links" section of an article. Themfromspace (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Copying that much matter in, including rewording it to avoid copyvio, would take "a month of Sundays" (as people say here in England). That is why it was easier to link to it. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You do not have to copy it all in! Just have one fact in the article derived from a link, and then ref the link.  Simple!  --BenBurch (talk) 16:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Wikifan12345 and January 2009 attacks in Gaza
I feel this user might have a conflict of interest in this matter and should probably not be editing this article. His edit summaries are revealing of a passion for the situation in Gaza that is probably unhealthy for the article. He's been driving home a phrasing of the lead that I don't believe is neutral enough, and he's continually reverted me when I've tried to insert a version of the lead that was more neutral. Further to that, he continues to introduce degrading grammatical errors that I have repeatedly attempted to fix. His civility with me has been less than good; he even took to spamming my talk page with a censorship template. That brings me to the other point. He's been labelling my attempts to improve and neutralise the lead as "censorship", which I think only furthers my point about a conflict of interest. I'd appreciate an exterior opinion from someone. Here are some diffs to illustrate what I'm saying: I should note that it could be said I'm in a dispute with this user; I've come here for some resolution. I say this because I don't want to paint the wrong picture. What's fair is fair. The problem isn't being sorted out between us, so I hope someone else here can provide insight. &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 05:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * A passionate summary
 * And again
 * Spamming my talk page with a censorship template, as if to imply I'm trying to drive an agenda.
 * Domineering the article by reverting a good faith edit by someone else without explanation.
 * Hmm. Ok, well, I personally think this is simply unproductive, but I'll bite if my privileges as a user are in jeopardy. Every edit I have performed in the article has included a simple rationale, both in the history and in the discussion page.  I requested Anonymous to go to the discussion page several times, yet he refused continually.  My accusations of censorship were justified.  The original lead did not truthfully reflect sources being cited, and I told anonymous this several times.  I even highlighted my concern in the talk page and asked for differing opinions.  Anonymous seemed to be confusing neutrality with facts, which I cordially questioned, though the argument soon became heated.  From what I understand, Anonymous became obsessed with syntax, blurring the line between execution and killed.  Further edits seemed to create a false-sense of neutrality, using less-offensive words (like assaults to beatings), and rewriting sentences that did not properly reflect their cited reference.  In his userpage, he started saying how he was the one who started the article.  Here was my rationale: You being the creator of the article is irrelevant, and in no way gives you ownership of articles - per Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. You say you are not the owner of the article, but seem to be infatuated with the fact that you started it, and that somehow gives you the right to tell me and everyone how it should be written. [Source] As far as I know, Anonymous is the only user who has complained.  Not sure how important this is, but veteran Israeli/Palestinian writer Cerejota has yet to revert or agree with Anonymous's opinions, even though he is currently editing the article.  I have no problem if you guys want me to take a break, as I will voluntarily do so, but I have to disagree with Anonymous here.  thanks! Wikifan12345 (talk) 05:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks for stating your view. I'd just like to say that my point in regards to "ownership" of the article was that no-one owned it; not me, as the writer, or he, as the dissenter. I made that point because it was my perception that he was attempting to gain a monopoly over the content, seen in his reversion of people without explanation. &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 05:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd also like to expound upon what seems to be the salient point of the disagreement for WF; "neutrality" vs. "censorship". What needs to be recalled when we consider this is that the leading statements of an article should be concise, provide a good overview, and be neutral. The phrasing of the article that I gave was worded to the effect of "Hamas is suspected", while WF's seemed to imply that they were certainly guilty of the crimes and that was that. While it is true that Hamas has admitted some responsibility for the attacks, they have on the other hand denied the allegations (strange as that may be, different spokespersons have said different things). This makes the statement "Hamas was responsible for the attacks" a grey area, based on their responses and what we as encyclopedists know and can source. Further to that, it makes the neutral but similar statement "Hamas is suspected of involvement", which is much more neutral and which gives due consideration to the whole scope of the matter and Hamas' responses, much more appropriate for the lead. The body of the content should be used to discuss Hamas' part in the killings, and where the situation is in regard to their actions, not the lead; and that's exactly what's there. The actions of Hamas and what seems to be a campaign against suspected collaborators is fully discussed in later sections of the text, sections which I wrote (again, I'm not trying to claim ownership of the article by claiming I wrote it, I'm just pointing out that I myself wrote sections of the article that soberly state what's gone on and what Hamas has done); thus, claims of censorship by me are somewhat debased. Grey areas, disputed areas and uncertain areas do not work well with the lead, especially in an article such as this. That is all I have to say. &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 06:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm tired and I may respond more thoroughly later, but I will say this: I stand by everything I did. I've looked carefully through wiki rules and believe I have violates no laws.  Every edit I did was explained through edit summaries, and major editing was discussed in talk.  Take the time and look through the references in the article and compare to Anonymous' version, you will hopefully see the inconsistencies and whitewashing.  Wikifan12345 (talk) 06:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Further evidence of COI in this talk page section. The user's combative responses to discussion on this page seem to be more indicative again of a COI in this area. &mdash; Anonymous Dissident  Talk 08:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

An outside opinion: this seems to me to be a misunderstanding of the WP:COI guideline. Wikifan12345 evidently has a strong POV on this conflict, but an interest doesn't automatically imply a conflict of interest. It might do if he was directly affiliated with the combatants - i.e. the Israeli military or Hamas - but I don't think you are claiming that. I can't see anything to action here, quite frankly. (Though Wikifan12345's conduct is concerning in other regards; I've raised an issue relating to him on Arbitration enforcement). -- ChrisO (talk) 01:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I meant COI and I perfectly understand the guideline; thanks for the correction. It seems to me that his POV may be influencing his actions and that his activity on other articles could be suggestive of a conflict of interest. &mdash;  Anonymous Dissident  Talk 05:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I request a delay because I'm involved in more "important" discussions. I'll suspend my involvement in the article mentioned, though it's clear nobody else has had a problem with what I've done.  I don't see anything controversial about it, I gave a rationale for everything I did and asked people to go to talk instead of settling disputes like this.  Every time someone has a different opinion they tell on you, kind of childish IMO.  Wikifan12345 (talk) 17:36, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I have a strong opinion and I have not been told on yet. But then again I didn't call the opposition racists. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 18:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Ian Cognito

 * - written like an ad, doesn't contain any references 200.27.146.116 (talk) 21:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That really is a content issue; I don't see anything much that would count as overt COI activity. I'm busy at this instant, but a skim of NewsBank (UK recent newspaper archive) finds plenty of reliable third-party coverage. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:21, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Foswiki


See Articles for deletion/Foswiki. It seems that the developers of this TWiki derivative (all noted above) have rallied rained down on the AFD in the form of SPAs. MuZemike 04:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Mystery Method


A single purpose account, Vitasmortis, seems to have a COI with the Mystery Method page. According to a research, that can be found on the talk page of Mystery Method, it revealed that the user is very likely involved with a commercial company that has an interest in the article. The user also blanked his talk page before and did not disclose his COI. Coaster7 (talk) 00:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Details added. I agree there appears to be a problem. That said, there's also a deal of hostile SPA activity by accounts that have been very busy trying to take down Mystery Method and Mystery (pickup artist) while building up two different articles of considerably duplicated content:
 * I'm looking at
 * and a bunch of smaller-scale SPAs (see ).
 * is a trifle socky: sole edit to create a detailed COI analysis against User:Vitasmortis
 * Love Systems is a newer incarnation of Mystery Method Corporation (looks as if there was some kind of corporate schism).
 * This is complicated, but it smells of multiple parties with partisan conflicts of interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * and a bunch of smaller-scale SPAs (see ).
 * is a trifle socky: sole edit to create a detailed COI analysis against User:Vitasmortis
 * Love Systems is a newer incarnation of Mystery Method Corporation (looks as if there was some kind of corporate schism).
 * This is complicated, but it smells of multiple parties with partisan conflicts of interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This is complicated, but it smells of multiple parties with partisan conflicts of interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I tried to do an AfD for Mystery method, but I'm having trouble (even after updating it to a second nom). Can someone help me set it up? ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

This is not about other pages other than Mystery Method. There seems to be a discussion on whether what to include on that page. Before the edits of Vitasmortis, the page was fine and neutral. However, his edits made it look like a sales page and claims were made that had no source to verify. The Mystery Method is a well known and notable method of seduction in the media that has evolved in other methods of seduction. I'm not sure why you call me a SPA? I'm solely responsible for creating the Love Systems and Nick Savoy page. The first AfDs of those pages were of a year ago and I was not involved in those. That list of was for the very first AfD and none of them were around for the recreation. I was solely responsible getting those pages back up with help of other notable Wikipedia users for getting authorization of recreation. Ever since these pages were up, I've branched to other articles. As my first post says, this is about the Mystery Method page and SPA Vitasmortis. Coaster7 (talk) 05:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This is not about other pages other than Mystery Method.
 * Not so: WP:COIN is about whatever appears relevant to the article, and it's not wildly uncommon to notice spinoffs and/or COI complaints that might result from possible conflicting COI. Before the end of January, the majority of Coaster7 edits were to Love Systems and Nick Savoy (created with a large amount of canvassing). I agree about Vitasmortis, but patterns of edits focused on inclusion of one person/company and exclusion of who presumably is an estranged business partner of that person/company also look unusual. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 10:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with this. I alerted Coaster7 of the COI page on 23 January; and since then, he's made a more conscious (and quite conspicuous) effort to edit other pages.Benjamin Dominic (talk) 06:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll

 * - This appears to have been created by the self-published writers of this book solely as advertising. It reads like a press release.
 * Self-published, reviews are blogs, etc., I've put a Speedy Delete tag on it. dougweller (talk) 10:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

"Masonic conspiracy theories" as part of the Freemasonry project
The article Masonic conspiracy theories purports to present conspiracy theories regarding Freemasonry. Instead, it seems to be a white-wash job created by Freemasons themselves, in order to provide a distorted view of conspiracy theories.

Blueboar has committed himself to "edit" articles regarding Freemasonry, and has admitted to being a practitioner of Freemasonry himself. The 2 other editors (MSJapan and WegianWarrior) seem to be providing support rather than making any significant contributions. Ukufwakfgr (talk) 21:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * User is forum shopping. See contribution history. Theresa Knott | token threats 22:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That has no bearing on the facts, and it was an honest mistake. Ukufwakfgr (talk) 00:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. My aim was to inform others that another noticeboard might be a better place to answer. Theresa Knott | token threats 00:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Having observed a little of the talk page interaction at, I have doubts that is engaged in a good-faith attempt to improve the encyclopedia here.  Jayen 466 22:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Why do you make this claim, and why do you feel a need to weigh in at all ? Ukufwakfgr (talk) 00:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * why do you feel a need to weigh in at all?
 * That's what WP:COIN is for: to ask for independent views of situations where COI might apply.
 * However, I agree with Theresa Knott that this is not a COI issue, just a content dispute. Even if proven, COI claims re membership of some quite large religious/political group don't generally wash. It'd have to be a far closer connection than that (e.g. at the level of the Master of a particular Lodge editing the article about that Lodge). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I neglected to properly indent that message. It was directed towards Jayen466, who has not contributed in the talk page, and whose changes were reverted by me and so may feel personally affected.
 * A conflict of interest is relevant to official capacity. An example may be a pharmacologist writing about preventative nutrition. Unless he has a compelling reason to discuss it (eg: as part of a holistic regimine, or in the interest of scientific research), it might detrimental for him to do so in earnest. Ukufwakfgr (talk) 11:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, no, that's not how COI is interpreted here. It only covers close personal or business interest, at the level of writing about ones' own company: see COI for examples. Quoting specifically, Editing in an area in which you have professional or academic expertise - such as your example of a pharmacologist writing about preventative nutrition - is not, in itself, a conflict of interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The article, if presented accurately, would be inconsistent in tone with the other articles in the Freemasonry project. That is why I brought this up in the COIN. Pharmacologists are not infaliable. Ukufwakfgr (talk) 14:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Ukufwakfgr: your concerns, although they may be valid, do not rise to the level of COI as far as Wikipedia is concerned.  Devout Catholics get to edit articles about their religion, members of Mensa get to edit articles about their organization, and Freemasons can edit articles about freemasonry.  Your other complaints (e.g., "tone") are not issues for this noticeboard.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This is not the article about Freemasonry, but an article describing conspiracy theories, which are mostly defamatory statements. Ukufwakfgr (talk) 02:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * which are mostly defamatory statements.
 * Whether true or not, that's again a content issue, and nothing that's dealt with here. You've now been told by three editors that this is not the place to deal with this particular problem. I'm marking this as resolved. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Where can I go to discuss "content issues?" Ukufwakfgr (talk) 03:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The article Talk page, where I see discussions are already ongoing. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 05:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Also where Ukufwakfgr just accused me of being a Blueboar sock for using the phrase "Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, Pot.".--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

User:CCFSDCA
Per this WP:AN/I notification. is creating pages about holidays around the world, using by the editor's own admission, his unpublished (and unsold) manuscript as the sole source, even adding a credit to himself in his initial drafts. The editor clearly has some fundamental misunderstandings of a host of policies (ranging from obvious conflicts of interest to the complete unreliability of sources), so perhaps someone who has the time should have a word in his ear. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 00:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Dann Glenn


- This seems like it meets notability criteria, but appears to be self-promotion with links to buy various CDs, etc. Nearly all editing was done by a single editor, which raised my suspicions. I only started editing this week, so I don't want to throw accusations around, but something just didn't seem right about this one. Thanks for looking this over. Jvr725 (talk) 01:50, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that notability is met, but the article seems promotional. The use of images makes the article look like advertising. Someone who has the patience could do a cleanup. Some of the image licenses appear defective (submitter claims that he owns them, but they include several album covers and a book cover). Unless he is the designer or the publisher, I doubt that he owns them. EdJohnston (talk) 13:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Korn/Ferry
Can someone have a look at this series of edits:. Thanks. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Whois on 65.125.188.130: OrgName: KORN FERRY INTERNATIONAL
 * COI tag added to article. I see the COI issue was raised at User talk:65.125.188.130 on 18 December, with no acknowledgement. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 18:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've removed two sections which were copied from websites as copyvios and removed five external links all of which were to the same site per WP:ELNO #4 & WP:LINKSPAM. There might be an article to salvage once the advertising is pruned, otherwise I suggest it's off to AfD. --RexxS (talk) 04:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If Wikipedia spent more time filling in articles about major businesses, and less time on [fill in blank here], corporations wouldn't feel the need to create their own articles. This very clearly met WP:BUSINESS, and I found cites for all of the claims within minutes of looking.  THF (talk) 12:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Next Generation 9-1-1
Sole creator is user:NextGen911. I haven't read article thoroughly, it's also on the userpage I believe, but I think it needs work... ChildofMidnight (talk) 08:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * seems to be well sourced, although use of citation templates in the in-line refs would make the references easier to use. Some of the content (check with a few google searches for key phrases) is taken directly from reliable sources and the PD status of US Gov publications avoids copyvio problems with those. It's a pretty good article as a single draft and unless any content turns out to have been directly lifted from copyrighted sites, I'd guess it can be left to the normal processes of other editors making amendments.
 * seems to have considerable expertise and an interest in this field and I don't think there's any CoI in the intentions stated on the userpage and the contributions so far. --RexxS (talk) 14:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for checking on it Rexx. I think the way the citations were done threw me because it looks like they are from primary sources, but upon closer inspection it looks okay.ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. You're also correct to suspect the sources. I think there's that fine line in considering WP:V when the source is what the subject of an article says about itself (primary source). In a case like this of a government agency explaining an initiative of its own, one could concede the authority of the (primary) source, particularly as the general content is corroborated by other (secondary) commentaries. Just may humble opinion, of course, others may disagree. --RexxS (talk) 18:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly it would be best to have independent sources. Government agencies are known to push their own programs. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I went through the article and removed links to the author's commercial page on the subject. It's a good start for a page and further edits will continue to improve it.  Jc3 (talk) 19:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Per Jc3. Seems like the POV issues have been addressed. Mister Senseless&trade; (Speak - Contributions) 21:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

James H. Fetzer


has been editing the article, adding a lot of material. It seems adequately sourced, but notability and lack of bias still needs to be determined. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've had a look at the article and tried to format the first four refs to help verify them. The first cite to University of Minnesota was being used to support a statement that the cite did not mention. The link in the second reference to ABC News produced a "not found" - google searching for the claimed article gave no ghits. The fourth reference is a dead link. At this point, WP:REDFLAG tells me that the sourcing on the article is not the high-quality required for exceptional claims. I would consider many of the sources given as self published sources and come under the remit of questionable sources. Once the sourcing can be verified, then unsourced statements can be challenged with confidence, particularly as I believe much of the article has become a platform for Fetzer to promote his views on JFK and 9/11. Those views would be better discussed in Assassination of JFK and 9/11 Conspiracy where they can more easily be judged for WP:NPOV. This biographical article about Fetzer may well state his views, as that is probably his principle claim to notability, but in my opinion it is WP:UNDUE to expound them at this length. --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * On further review, the article make sufficient claims for notability and has some cites from respectable news sources to back that up. The problem at present is that although the article looks adequately sourced, in fact about half of the 42 cites are self-published sources and then there are three links to blogs, two to YouTube and a couple to newspaper articles in Spanish. It's not that every single one of those are inappropriate, but trying to distinguish where SPS or YouTube or Spanish is acceptable as a source is a tedious job. Anyone else who can spare the time to take a careful look? --RexxS (talk) 02:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Article very badly needs a top-to-bottom rewrite. I'd rather not be the one to stick my hand in the crazy, though, since if I do it, I'll be accused of being part of the conspiracy because of my day job. THF (talk) 13:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Fiskeharrison again


This user has been previously discussed Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_28 and Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_28 and COI warned on a few occasions. After a short sojourn he's back editing Alexander Fiske-Harrison. It appears that the usual COI warnings simply don't suffice. --Blowdart | talk 15:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course I have a COI, and I am aware "COI editing is strongly discouraged" (N.B. NOT forbidden) according to your COI guidelines, which is why I have left the long called for improvement of the article to other hands. However, since the demand to improve the article has been there some time, I eventualy thought to do something about it myself, while following the guideline that "Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged to declare their interests" - hence my username IS my surname. Alexander Fiske-Harrison --Fiskeharrison (talk) 15:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello Alexander. Per this edit you almost doubled the size of the article about yourself (3,958 bytes went up to 7,474 bytes). I thought we had reached a sort of truce, where you would stop fiddling with the article (especially the promotional language) and we would accept the new version. If that deal is no longer in place, then we have to start reviewing your behavior for promotional editing. It is traditional to block spam-only accounts, and you are not improving your reputation on Wikipedia. EdJohnston (talk) 20:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As last time I AFDed his articles he accused me of a personal vendetta I'll leave it up to others to decide if a revert is needed on the article. --Blowdart | talk 20:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * User:Fiskeharrison's interpretation of WP:COI is in any case selective: "(N.B. NOT forbidden) ... Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged to declare their interests" are both true, but they don't offer carte blanche to a free hand with an article. WP:COI simultaneously stresses the constraints of policies such as neutral point of view, what Wikipedia is not and notability. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, but this strikes me as deeply childish.

Obviously, I have a conception of how the information is best presented and I do not claim this is the the most objective - I am happy with how it now is. However, this article has been flagged, not only for improvement, but standardisation, for a while. The info is there, the references ready-made on my user-page, and no one does anything? Why not?

So, instead, they wait til I do and then cry wolf? Come on. Let's face facts, there's people who would rather the article didn't exist, despite the judgement of their peers, who sat and watched when they oould themselves have improved the piece, in the hope I would transgress...--Fiskeharrison (talk) 02:45, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It is time to give a final warning to Fiskeharrison. We have policies and we don't like it when they are ignored. There has been plenty of discussion here (it is now the second thread on this topic). He feels that his interpretation of COI is the only one that matters, and he doesn't need to listen to us. If he will agree to propose his changes on Talk, and wait for support from others, then we don't have a problem. If Fiskeharrison reverts Blowdart's latest fix, without first getting consensus on talk, I think he should be blocked. EdJohnston (talk) 03:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * But that is exactly what I did! It was stated that the article needed improvement. I stated on Blowdart's page, and others, and the talk page for the article, where the correct information was. I did not edit the page itself. After a while, when no one had responded, or edited the page, I did so, within the guidelines. Now, those who were unwilling to edit it themselves, are protesting that I did so. I simply don't understand. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 10:03, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * PS I did not double the length of the aticle - if you look at the edit, FIVE lines were added on the published page. By WIKIFYing the references - which had notably not been done by anyone else - more bytes, but no more information, were added. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 10:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Moving this conversation to people's talk pages to ask for truces doesn't exactly exhibit good faith either. --Blowdart | talk 10:46, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Which is why I didn't. The comment truce was used above,"I thought we had reached a sort of truce", which I found rather out of place. It is a quotation. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 10:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * As for your personal accusations, I'll point out two things. 1) wikipedia has the concept of a watchlist, when I tag articles the first time they go onto my watch list and 2) it's not uncommon to keep an eye on people who have broken rules before. I'd suggest laying off the personal remarks, especially those you hide elsewhere. --Blowdart | talk 10:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I hide nothing. Otherwise I'd be editing this in an internet cafe somewhere without signing in. It is not in my nature. My complaint is that you are willing to watch, but not to do the editing yourself. You say COI, I say disingenuous. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Whilst the community could not agree on the notability of your page, and thus it survives, that lack of decision does not mean I am expected to suddenly support a page that I feel is non-notable and a source of vanity. You however are still expected to abide by the COI principles. However you are correct when you use disingenuous, your attempts at justification certainly are. --Blowdart | talk 12:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

And there we have Blowdart's honest appraisal and his own COI revealed. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 14:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that I view your page as barely notable is neither here nor there. I suggest you read WP:COI yet again and understand it, stop editing pages about yourself and stop trying to redefine it to justify your own actions; that is the issue here, not that I consider you non-notable. --Blowdart | talk 14:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No, what is actually important here is that the page as it stands is more encyclopedic. Essentially what happened was I spent hours creating that version and you spent five minutes removing a quote from a magazine editor which I am quite happy to concede was extraneous, and removing two links which are elsewhere on the page. I do not see what you are trying to do here other than give me a slap on the wrist for Wikifying an article which the consensus was it needed wikifying, after I had waited over two weeks because I had rather someone else do it to minimise the chance of COI. I have not reverted edits, defended a stance nor promoted a line. I acknowledge the strong discouragement of my intervention, hence my delay. What you are advocating, against policy guidleines, is an outright ban. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 15:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that conversation has reached an impasse. Since no one was willing to wikify the page as the editors watching it had stood against it in AfD, I did so. Blowdart has taken it back to a position he feels is correct and I happy to leave it at that. Please note before I did this, I did contact the administrator User:MBisanz, and I quote his response of January 24th: "You are free to edit it, or ask someone else to edit it, or place comments on the Talk: page where others would be free to add to the article. Our COI policy lets subject edit their articles so long as they do so in a neutral manner." However, I still thought it best to wait. Via con dios. --Fiskeharrison (talk) 16:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem is that your editing wasn't all that neutral; it added a lot of chaff and wikipuffery. I think there's a bit of overreaction to it on this page (though I'm not privy to the history that may justify the anger), but I'd recommend working through the talk page in the future.  I've cleaned up the article somewhat and have it on watch.  If you have third-party reliable sources discussing the sentences that have fact tags, I'm happy to add them.  THF (talk) 14:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Billie Lawless


My guess is that there's some serious autobiography going on here. I would think that the artist probably is notable, though I haven't looked closely; most of the sources seem to go back in one way or another to his website (which this article is rapidly becoming): according to OTRS, Lawless hired Amy Sparks, which is why he claims the ability to release her "review" of his material under GFDL and which is why her claims like "Lawless rips political statements out of their contexts and illuminates them with biting irony" would be unusable. I've been involved on the copyright end on this one, and I try not to mix my copyright work with other stuff (since it may feel like its personal), but I think this one would benefit from a few more eyes to help ensure WP:NPOV. Several of the SPA creator(s) have been given COI notice, but I suspect that any efforts to force this article to conform to policy may meet resistance. I bring it here in case anyone has time and energy to take it on. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * He's definitely notable with the 3rd party coverage he's received. This just needs a good rewrite. Mister Senseless&trade; (Speak - Contributions) 21:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Varian v. Delfino


User:Crisler works on two types of articles -- those relating to this lawsuit, and those relating to the death penalty. The article is awfully favorable to the respondents in Varian v. Delfino, and, coincidentally, the respondents in that case have since written annual guides to the death penalty. "Crisler" is the last name of the human resources officer at Varian whom Delfino and Day had their litigious dispute with.

User:Suebenjamin and User:Amberjacker also only write about this lawsuit, and use the same unusual edit-summary style as Crisler.

(Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, the litigation involved a corporation overreacting to sockpuppet behavior by ex-employees on Internet message boards.)

The possible WP:COI and WP:SOCK problem bothers me less than the WP:NPOV issue; the article, about a minor California Supreme Court case of little precedential value that arguably flunks WP:NOTNEWS, needs a rewrite, as does the BLP article about Judges Whyte and Komar.

This is cross-posted at WP:NPOVN; please respond there. THF (talk) 12:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Tort reform and User:THF

 * - On this edit on January 13th User:THF replaced the article, with what appears to be something like a cut and paste job of an op-ed he created a few years ago about how successful tort reform lobbyists in America have been.  Wik idea  20:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * - This user will be known to a number of the Wikipedia community. He does not appear to be fit to participate in any constructive dialogue and wants simply to reshape the encyclopedia to reflect his conservative political persuasions. As a vocal lobbyist for tort reform, he appears to have a rather large conflict of interest.  Wik idea  20:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I propose that the user be confined to the talk page of tort reform topics, in keeping with a strict interpretation of WP:COI. These edits wash with WP:BRD. Cool Hand Luke 21:04, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See my comment below&mdash;user was asked by Wikidea to edit the article. Cool Hand Luke 21:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It was also interesting to note that before today, he actually appeared in the lead of the article!  Wik idea  21:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, someone else added that in.
 * By the way, you're the one who suggested he edited the article. Why are you dragging him to WP:COI/N now that he actually has? Cool Hand Luke 21:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would like to complain about the ludicrous trolling here. I was confining myself to the talk page.  Wikidea then whined that I was confining myself to the talk page instead of editing the article:


 * As an American tort reform professional I'm sure you have plenty of ideas. Here's your chance. I suggest that you change something. Wikidea 13:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

So I did, explicitly acknowledging that my edit needed other eyes to rewrite it. When other editors wanted to change it, I told them to go right ahead.

And now, without even approaching me on my talk page, he's complaining that I did exactly what he asked me to do? This is disruption of the worst order. I also want sanctions for the violation of WP:OUT. THF (talk) 21:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Replacing the page with an op-ed was not a very constructive approach, was it? I think your changes might have made a good contribution to the US tort reform page, but you still have your open bias to remedy. This is the previous pattern of just wishing to trash articles, not improve them.  Wik idea  21:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) It wasn't an op-ed, because I didn't write it, much less agree with all of it. It was an earlier version of the article that was cleaner than the appallingly substandard version I replaced.


 * 2) You give no defense for your trolling, your violation of WP:NPA, and your violation of WP:OUT. You were explicitly warned about your personal attacks in the past, to the point that it almost resulted in arbitration sanctions against you. THF (talk) 21:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is straightforward WP:BRD. He makes changes (as you asked), and you fix anything you find erroneous. At any rate, THF is not the only biased editor here&mdash;he is the most open about it, however. Cool Hand Luke 21:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikidea has removed all of the legitimate tags on the page. I don't particularly care whether the page is User:Questionic's version or Wikidea's version, though Wikidea has a very bad history of violating WP:OWN, as demonstrated by the fact that he arbitrarily reverted twenty edits made by Questionic.  But per WP:NPOVD, Wikidea has no right to remove legitimately placed tags for NPOV disputes that have not been resolved. THF (talk) 21:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is not a straightforward WP:BRD because the entire article was blanked. I did not ask him to do that, I was asking he participate in changes to improve the article, not replace it with something about the US. The tort reform article is meant to be global. Once again, the changes User:THF made may have been relevant for the US tort reform page. User:THF is not fit to participate in anything to do with the article at all. That includes his standard strategy of shoving up neutrality tags, and then saying "the whole article needs a complete rewrite". And then when someone complains, you see this barrage of shrill complaints about one Wikipolicy or another. Lobbyists for the Republican party's values are not very well equipped to engage in productive or collaborative editing on topics which may be political, and this is just another example of it.  Wik  idea  21:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * He wasn't editing it though. You asked him; if he was so unfit, why did you ask him? Cool Hand Luke 21:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Because he'd complained about the neutrality of it, put up tags, and refused to say what more he wanted to see, except that it needed a "complete rewrite". That's not collaborative editing. It's more of the same.  Wik idea  21:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure this out. I presume that the edit Wikidea is complaining about primarily is this: 12:21, January 13, 2009, made by THF with the edit summary: "per multiple invitations on talk page, first cut; still needs a lot of work". Just looking over that version, I that it had no citations and replaced a version that had 25. THF has been here long enough to know that articles require sources. I don't understand how he would have thought it was acceptable to replace a sourced article with one written without any sources.  Will Beback   talk    21:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Beback, please don't misrepresent my edit. I replaced a very very bad version of the page with a slightly less bad earlier version that had improperly formatted references instead of footnotes.  So it's not true it had "no sources"; it had 34 versus Wikidea's 25.  And to repeat, this was precisely what I said I was going to do on the talk page:


 * "Changing things" to fix minor mistakes here and there won't fix it. The article needs a complete rewrite.  History has shown that the owner of the article refuses to edit collaboratively and resists even minor substantive changes, and it's not worth the fight to me, but braver and more patient editors should rewrite this if they get a chance.  THF (talk) 12:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * ''As an American tort reform professional I'm sure you have plenty of ideas. Here's your chance.
 * I suggest that you change something.  Wik idea  13:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I propose to delete the current version and start over with a stub. If that's not acceptable, then I'll let others argue with you.  After seeing your tantrum at competition law, I don't have time to play your games.  Also, it's offensive when you template experienced Wikipedia editors.  THF (talk) 17:00, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You're mistaken about me: I don't play games and I don't have tantrums. I contribute productively to an online an encyclopedia. Propose an alternative text - you have said absolutely nothing about what you want to see, except above, the removal of a single 'l'. Clearly, you still have nothing whatsoever to contribute. I could be wrong, but you're doing nothing to demonstrate otherwise. And no, more snide comments won't qualify. Some cases, materials, references would.  Wik idea  11:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And sure enough, I did exactly what Wikidea invited me to do, and sure enough, Wikidea threw the temper tantrum I predicted. Note that Questionic made twenty edits to the draft I put up there, and I didn't revert a single one of them, keeping my comments to the talk page. Wikidea, who has done this before on other pages such as competition law, reverted every edit made by every other editor to restore his own personal essay that violates NPOV and NOR. THF (talk) 22:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected about the lack of sources, though I'd have thought that THF would know how to format them. I'm also concerned about some of the sources, which include a blog and a mysterisou news collector called Newsbatch, and the general NPOV issues with that draft, which seems to discount the views of opponents.   Will Beback    talk    22:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It was a slightly-improved touchup of an ancient version of the article with obsolete formatting that had been written by other editors; it wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination, but it was leaps and bounds ahead of what Wikidea had done, and very explicitly a stub placeholder for discussion, and I tagged it myself as needing further improvement. I didn't want to put further work into it beyond that without further consensus, because every time I've worked on a page where Wikidea is an editor, he asserts ownership and will revert a month's worth of edits and compromises done by other editors -- just as he did here.  Questionic had started putting his own personal stamp on it, with me restricting myself to the talk page.  As I said on Questionic's talk page, I don't think I should be editing the mainspace version, and I don't particularly want to.  If I'm going to write about tort reform, I'd much rather do it in a place other than Wikipedia; I edit Wikipedia as a hobby and to learn things about the pages I edit, and I'm not going to learn anything editing the tort reform page.


 * Separately: you're an admin. Do you find this discourse appropriate for someone who'd been warned in an arbitration not to engage in uncivil behavior?THF (talk) 23:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that the remakr is inappropriate and I've left a message on the user's talk page.   Will Beback    talk    23:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, User:THF is not fit to participate in editing collaboratively. Replacing the entire text on a global tort reform page with something about US tort reform is not suggesting improvements, or proposing alternative text. User:THF is not fit to participate because he is not interested in improving or accomodating strands of knowledge outside the lobbyists he works with. He has a conflict of interest. He was the only one to complain, and could not express clearly what his complaint was about. He will go on relentlessly arguing for a very narrow set of viewpoints at the exclusion of all else. It shows no interest in making this a resource for learning.  Wik idea  22:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec X n) Isn't it kind of moot now? The proposed changes have been reverted, and I don't see any edit warring.  There a principle in tort law, or basketball, "no harm no foul".  The article remains in serious need of a thorough rewrite, though, IMO.  I've poked a bit around the edges... I think if we could figure out what the different sections are actually saying my simplifying and streamlining the English we might get to the substantive question of whether the content is complete, well-sourced, duly informative, balanced, presents a worldwide view, etc.  That's the equivalent of replacing it with a stub, just excise all the fluff section by section and see what's left.  Each trim can be pretty noncontroversial if it only eliminates redundancy, weak language, stuff that's an irrelevant aside.  That approach might take a couple hours instead of two minutes, but it's more transparent and doesn't get anyone's hackles up.  Wikidemon (talk) 22:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I would think so, but Wikidea came here with demands. Do we agree that this is resolved? Cool Hand Luke 22:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No. I would like Wikidea sanctioned for his trolling disruptive editing in bringing this meritless complaint after insisting that I edit the page, and for this uncivil personal attack.  How quickly would someone be blocked indefinitely if they went onto the global warming pages and told an environmentalist to "crawl into a hole somewhere, disappear and take your shallow, bigotted view of humanity with you"?  And Wikidea was previously warned about that.  Just because I'm affiliated with a center-right organization doesn't mean that other editors get to ignore WP:CIVIL. THF (talk) 22:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * THF's conflict of interest is the issue I raised. It is not just that he works for a right wing lobbyist group, it is that he works for them and pursues that agenda on Wikipedia. The pattern of tags, demanding "complete rewrites" and throwing around accusations of temper tantrums will continue. He will probably continue to follow his lobbyist values elsewhere, as he has done before.  Wik idea  22:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * In case you haven't noticed, two other editors have also said your personal essay needs a complete rewrite--aside from the fact that you insisted that I completely rewrite the article when I said I didn't want to get involved. And I don't work for a lobbyist group. I'm a published academic who's fortunate enough to have a job where I don't have to grade papers. THF (talk) 22:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, THF, a professional lobbyist, will try to turn his conflict of interest issues into a personal matter against anyone who disagrees with him. He is not a collaborative editor, and is unfit to engage with others in this area. Editors will see on the Talk:Tort reform page the lack of issues before he arrived, shoved up the neutrality tags, demanded a complete rewrite, could not say what was wrong, and then went ahead. On the contrary, the article was attempting to encompass a more global view of tort reform, not just US tort reform.  Wik idea  22:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It appears that you're the one turning it into a personal matter several times over by personally attacking him. Consider this a warning. Cool Hand Luke 22:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please consider your own conflict of interest, Luke.
 * And again, THF has a clear conflict of interest as a staunch tort reform advocate. He is not a collaborative editor with anyone that does not conform to the views of the people who have employed him. The pattern of tags, demanding "complete rewrites" and throwing around accusations of temper tantrums will continue. He will probably continue to follow his lobbyist values elsewhere, as he has done before.  Wik idea  22:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:COI. I have no interest in promoting any group here. If you'd read the guideline, you'll also find that outing and personal attacks are forbidden&mdash;even against editors you think are editing with a COI. You've done both, and you should not do it again. Cool Hand Luke 23:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Once again I'll restate the issue. THF has a clear conflict of interest as a staunch tort reform advocate. He is not a collaborative editor with anyone that does not conform to the views of the people who have employed him. The pattern of tags, demanding "complete rewrites" and throwing around accusations of temper tantrums will continue. He will probably continue to follow his lobbyist values elsewhere, as he has done before.  Wik idea  23:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The record will show that I collaborated with User:Questionic just fine. The record will also show that Wikidea frequently writes pages chock full of his personal opinions and original research that require complete rewrites, and that I'm not the only one who thinks so.  The record will also show that Wikidea has been blocked in the past for personal attacks, was unapologetic then, and is unapologetic now for violating WP:CIVIL, but admins are refusing to do anything about it. THF (talk) 23:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You've repeated that several times byte-for-byte. It seems he was trying to edit collaboratively at your own invitation, and he has not warred on the article at all. Your comment about "his lobbyist values" seems to be a personal attack; I see a clear pattern of incivility. Please stop. Cool Hand Luke 23:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a conflict of interest matter (and now Luke is included). THF is not a collaborative editor and has been pushing the agenda of those he works for on the tort reform article. It has to stop - and look at this Karl Rove style of rubbishing of me he's using. Divert attention, cause a fuss about something else, attack the person; distraction. Again, the pushing of his agenda does not make him fit to be editing these articles on Wikipedia.  Wik idea  23:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreeing with THF about your problematic behavior gives me a conflict of interest? Will Beback also agreed about the incivility above, and I think he doesn't share THF's politics at all. This isn't a conspiracy against you, it's a chronic behavior problem, and you should fix it. Cool Hand Luke 23:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm puzzled why this is coming up now. THF hasn't edited Tort reform since January 25. I later made a bunch of edits to it, in which I was trying to balance the pro tort "reform" that I saw in the article. If you look at the article talk page, and at my talk page THF was not thrilled by my edits but he was civil and collaborative. I soon figured out his relationship to a conservative think tank, but I thought he was behaving well on the Tort reform article during the short period I edited it. I can't speak for his behavior in the distant and shadowed past, but I don't see anything in the past month that should earn him such an attack, including his tentative effort on January 13 to clean up the messy article as it stood then, and as (I learn from the diff posted at the head of this COI) it had stood unchanged since January 3. Questionic (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I hadn't noticed what had been done is the answer. Your helpful changes to THF's partisan replacement article, I think could well be added on the US tort reform page; tort reform is meant to be a global page. The issue is that THF has a clear conflict of interest, and is not fit to be a collaborative editor. His only comments before amounted to "complete rewrite" and that is what he unfortunately got away with doing. It is unsurprising that he wanted to be "collaborative" after replacing the page and then dealing with criticisms. I expect, as I say, that he will continue in his partisan approach; he is not capable of accomodating views beyond a very narrow range of issues. THF is not fit to edit any of these pages on an open encyclopedia, because he is a lobbyist on the issue.  Wik idea  10:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Can someone enforce WP:STICK here? The original nomination was disruptive trolling, and he's still harassing me.  As User:Questionic and numerous others can attest, I'm perfectly capable of collaborating with editors who disagree with me on the underlying issues.


 * The accusations here really seem to be projecting. I have tried to work with Wikidea before, on criminal law and competition law, and he refuses to collaborate, and I'm not the only editor he's had a problem with: it's a long long list of over a dozen editors.  He'll lose an RFC, and continue to edit war against consensus.  He asked me to make specific objections to this article, and I listed eighteen factual errors and omissions in a single paragraph of original research he wrote, and he dismissed every single one of the proposals in a single sentence, spending more time with an additional personal attack rather than addressing the factual mistakes and omissions in his editing.  That paragraph is not unique: the entire article is riddled with factual errors, original research, and Wikidea's idiosyncratic point of view.  He's not even noticing that Questionic, who disagrees with me on every fundamental tort reform issue, agrees with me that Wikidea's version of the article is a "mess." THF (talk) 10:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Please note the irony in the professional lobbyist telling others to quit; the same Karl Rove style of hectoring and bullying as before he "retired". His conflicts of interest do not make him fit to be editing these pages on Wikipedia (nb he also suggested his own op-ed for the American Enterprise Institute on the Talk:Tort reform page as a good source). He wants to put up a slanted view of US tort reform on what should be a global tort reform page. He is incapable of overcoming his overwhelming bias in these issues, and is uninterested in improving this encyclopedia.  Wik idea  14:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * But see Talk:Competition law for Wikidea's idea of collaboration. THF (talk) 14:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Separately, it is libelous to call me a "lobbyist," because that falsely implies that I am violating federal tax law in my academic work for a non-partisan non-profit. Wikidea has been repeatedly told to stop the personal attacks. THF (talk) 14:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

IANAL and I am also not an admin, but I would like to someone who is an admin to enforce Wikipedia policy by taking some action against Wikidea for his attacks on THF and his disruption of the editing process on Tort reform, now being actively edit-warred as this dispute here drags on unresolved, with accusations and angry responses flying back and forth.

I put in many hours of work gathering good references to clarify the arguments made pro and con various aspects of tort reform. Wikidea nuked the whole article back to its state on January 3, and wants everybody to re-start from there. I'm not about to waste my time on an article that is being nuked and re-nuked, now on almost an hourly basis. Please, somebody, block Wikidea until he cools down a bit. It is my opinion that THF, despite having a pro-insurance-company POV on tort reform, has behaved honorably in revealing his POV and civilly in collaborating with editors who don't attack him. There is a difference between having a POV and having a COI.Questionic (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Patmcgreen
This user discloses their relation to Cass Community Social Services on his user page. I have asked that he stop editing the article because he has violated WP:NPOV each time.--Ipatrol (talk) 23:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, and? If he refuses or edit-wars, then there's an issue requiring intervention of admins or other editors.  But it seems as if the article is cleaned up and the editor hasn't even had a chance to object to the notice.  This isn't yet ripe for intervention, as it may well be moot if the editor behaves himself.  Feel free to come back and deleted the resolved tag if he doesn't. THF (talk) 00:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Upload of images of own works of art

 * - The user has posted a number of images of works of art that indicate on the file data that they were created by the uploader. The image captions in the page given a brief description of the work and then go on to say "by Victor Heyfron M.A." As far as I can discern, this is a sculptor that is at least notable locally in England. Would this be considered a conflict of interest? I removed the credit from the images on articles last night, but they were returned this morning. I'm not quite sure where they fit in with articles, but they are quite good works. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 13:13, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've noticed this too. Yes, they are decent enough works, but I'm not sure what they add to the articles, other than as a promotion of the artist. They are busts and portraits of the articles' subjects, which adds very little, if anything, to the articles. I'm also concerned about this setting a precedent. What's to stop anyone else from uploading their own drawings, paintings and sculptures? If Victor Heyfron is notable, he should have his own article. But I see no value in having his works displayed across numerous articles. And the caption is a bit pompous; why the M.A.? Is there a particular policy around uploading your own works of art to be used in this manner?  freshacconci  talk talk  13:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've left them all in place pending the outcome of any consensus opinion with the exception of his portrait of Rembrandt which I deleted and warned him about..The Rembrandt addition is gratuitous and irrelevant...to say the least..Modernist (talk) 17:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Generally, if someone has provided quality images, Wikipedia is still in an early enough stage that we permit the pictures to be used. See COI.  The captions should not promote the artist unless the artist is independently notable.  IMO, this is a case-by-case basis: if adding the image improves the quality of the article, it's a good edit; if it hurts the quality, it's a bad edit, and it's only a COI problem if the artist takes it personally and edit-wars over it or refuses to abide by talk page consensus--and that's just a problem problem, which would be a problem even if we didn't label it COI.  The COI policy should be clearer here, and I've proposed additional language at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest. THF (talk) 17:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Freshacconci that the issue is value to articles. If we were talking about subjects previously unillustrated (or lacking PD images, or ones where the existing ones aren't very good), these'd be a useful and generous addition to Wikipedia content. For instance, I think the one at Eric Morecambe is definitely an asset, as the photo isn't great and is also non-free. But as it is - without prejudice to the quality of the work, which is very good - they seem unnecessary for articles where good photos and/or iconic artworks already exist. And promotional. I see this has been raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts, where they have some experience in this territory. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 17:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)I generally agree with THF's position on this. I think there are two issues where my experience with artistic contributions to Wikipedia is worth considering:
 * Is there an obvious financial incentive? I was often accused of trying to launch a photography career via Wikipedia, but three years later--and rejecting paid photography offers from people like Philip Alston and Kimiko Hahn--it's become more clear that wasn't the case with me.  But if someone wants to some day be a professional photographer, bully for them for trying to learn the skill through us.  That's different than creating works of art, photographing them, and then putting the photographs on Wikipedia.  I'm not saying that this should be disallowed - but it does raise issues in that we don't want to become a showroom of art work people are trying to sell (it boggles the mind what that would do to the Barack Obama page)  Thus, if there is an obvious financial incentive, then COI is an issue.
 * What is important is not to discourage artistic Wikipedians from trying to contribute their particular talents. For example, someone who does excellent sketches of famous people certainly has room on this project, even if they get paid to do that on the Boardwalk (or wherever).

Obvious financial incentive is difficult to discern in most cases. It grew tiresome to continually read people accuse me of motives that I did not possess. I don't want to see that repeated with other artists, because it is discouraging and we need them (even if they are amateurs). I think THF is right, that it's a case-by-case basis. User:Raul654 eloquently stated the basic principles back during the Pubic Hair Wars: ''It is not a conflict of interest for a photographer to want his pictures used in our articles. Unless someone can establish David has some motive in getting his photos used in our article that goes beyond simple pride in seeing his work used, there is no conflict of interest for David here. With that said, I think the debate should be focused solely on the merits of David's photograph versus any other candidate photographs. On this point, I'm going to remain neutral, because I'm at work and I really shouldn't be looking at such things ;) Raul654 14:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)'' I used to edit-war over my photography because, way back, it was something that made me feel good about myself that my work was used to the point I tried to force it. Pride--or "makes me feel good about myself"--in no way equals a COI. I can't stress this enough.  I urge caution in forming policies and guidelines that treat photographic/illustrative/artistic contributions any differently than text contributions.  Talk page, consensus, value added, etc. are all the same principles.  COI tends to be another dagger people unsheathe in argument to frustrate a contribution.  Without an obvious financial incentive behind the contribution, COI is an illegitimate argument that violates AGF and CIVIL.  Last, I do not support captions with the names of the photographer or artist unless they are well-known for their work. At all. It's a distraction on the article, and there is plenty of room for attribution on the file page and in the file name. -- David  Shankbone  18:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with THF, David Shankbone, and the earlier statement of Raul654; pushing your own photos is not a conflict of interest in the sense that we understand WP:COI. One may be biased in favor of one's own photography, but that doesn't disqualify one from debates about it. It would be very unusual circumstances for this to be a WP:COI problem. Case-by-case analysis. Cool Hand Luke 20:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * not a conflict of interest in the sense that we understand WP:COI
 * Sorry to quibble, but in what way do we understand it?
 * Some of the comments here assume that financial interest is the touchstone. The core definition doesn't mention that - only advancing an outside interest vs the aims of Wikipedia - and putting one's own works, with prominent attribution, across a range of articles already well-furnished with images, comes readily under WP:COI. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that's right. If the works don't have attribution in mainspace, then they're less problematic; if they detract from an article because the image is of inferior quality to existing images, then insisting on their inclusion smacks of self-promotion.  If we have a rule prohibiting self-attribution unless independently notable, then we can be more confident that the insertion is for the right reasons.  THF (talk) 23:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep: after all, use of self-created images is routine here. For instance, many editors add self-created photos to geographical articles, but there's never any problem when the image fills an empty niche and is only credited as far as needed for the licensing formalities. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 23:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I deleted three images earlier and I put them back pending discussion...The sculptures of politicians and actors I returned - the picture of Rembrandt - who has plenty better ones of his own - does not belong in that article...that said, I think they all are advertisements for his work..however he simply uploaded at will ignoring all and any comment to anyone..Modernist (talk) 23:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The inclusion of the picture of Rembrandt was a mistake - for which I apologise! If the captions of of other inserts reek of self promotion then they can be removed. As for relevance of portraits of notables, if they are of a high quality- there can be no doubt of their relevance as 'portraits' of quality are a sign of the esteem accorded to a personality. Many thanks. Victor Heyfron (no letters after my name!) My first edits, and I am learning fast!

Rodin777([User talk:Rodin777|talk]]) 11.45, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Ihor Podolchak
This article is being heavily edited by this user:, whose name would appear to be identical with the subject. The article is essentially a long list of awards, projects, and press releases. Las Meninas (film), another of his favorite articles, is even more spammy. The artist himself would appear to meet notability requirements, but I thought posting here would be a good idea.  Litho  derm  00:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Fred Shapiro
was edited by, first by blanking the page, then by removing content, and warning others not to put incorrect information in My article in the edit summary, assuming ownership of article by doing so. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 00:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

, who has been editing this article, has a conflict of interest: he created a film shown in the Dead Sea Scroll exhibits that have become the subject of controversy; his film was criticized by historian Norman Golb who is also involved in the controversy. IsraelXKV8R, who is personally involved in this controversy, keeps deleting any discussion of the controversy from the Dead Sea Scrolls article.

For the film, see this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Qumran. IsraelXKV8R is Robert Cargill, the film's author (see his user page). Note that a paragraph mentioning Golb's review of the film appears to have been removed from this article advertising Cargill's film, as documented in the discussion area. Now, paragraphs describing the controversy involving the museum exhibits (and mentioning Golb) have been deleted by IsraelXKV8R from the Dead Sea Scrolls article.

Golb critiques Cargill's film, Cargill removes paragraphs mentioning Golb from wikipedia article = conflict of interest.

P.s. Note that the pretext used to eliminate mention of Golb's review of Cargill's film (that the review is "self-published") is false. The review was published on the Oriental Institute website of the University of Chicago after review by Institute authorities. The Oriental Institute does not belong to Golb and, like any university, has strict requirements as to what can or cannot appear on its site.

Rachel.Greenberg (talk) 02:09, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Stevie Vallance
, is being heavily edited (almost completely rewritten) by (20 edits so far), all edit summaries start with "I am Stevie Vallance....". Wuhwuzdat (talk) 02:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Needed serious clean up. I did some basic MOS stuff, but needs alot of help. Sources would be an awesome start :) Thanks and Cheers, --Tom 21:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Vreda
This person is a member of University at Albany's Media and Marketing, Office of Outreach senior writer. His only contribution is to the University at Albany, SUNY page. This is the URL which stated that he was hired by the University for such position. http://www.albany.edu/pr/updates/apr11/tablecampus.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Baboo (talk • contribs) 13:19, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I left him a message. As Baboo notes, he is a professional marketer.  Some of his edits are fine.  The most problematic one is his continued removal of the University seal.  Obviously this comes under WP:NFCC, and I'm not going to add it back because I disagree with the interpretation of policy that says logos and seals are permitted even if there is no commentary on them.  Chick Bowen 01:02, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Mary Yang and User:Maryang
has repeatedly blanked much content and the image from. Someone may want to take a closer look.  Doulos Christos   ♥ talk   14:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I wonder about the notability; the article has no third-party demonstration of it. There's a cloud of COI around the whole area when you also look at:
 * who has edited, and been given repeated COI-related warnings in relation to
 * See also the IP edits
 * and many similar IPs all originating from Texas A&M University. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See WP:Articles for deletion/Mary Yang, which is now running. Nobody has yet nominated the journal mentioned above (IJFIP) for deletion or the article on Jack Yang. It is reasonable to add Okan Ersoy to the above list of articles to be reviewed for COI edits. The IP 165.95.162.17 has been blocked two weeks for spam. EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * and many similar IPs all originating from Texas A&M University. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See WP:Articles for deletion/Mary Yang, which is now running. Nobody has yet nominated the journal mentioned above (IJFIP) for deletion or the article on Jack Yang. It is reasonable to add Okan Ersoy to the above list of articles to be reviewed for COI edits. The IP 165.95.162.17 has been blocked two weeks for spam. EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * and many similar IPs all originating from Texas A&M University. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See WP:Articles for deletion/Mary Yang, which is now running. Nobody has yet nominated the journal mentioned above (IJFIP) for deletion or the article on Jack Yang. It is reasonable to add Okan Ersoy to the above list of articles to be reviewed for COI edits. The IP 165.95.162.17 has been blocked two weeks for spam. EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * and many similar IPs all originating from Texas A&M University. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * See WP:Articles for deletion/Mary Yang, which is now running. Nobody has yet nominated the journal mentioned above (IJFIP) for deletion or the article on Jack Yang. It is reasonable to add Okan Ersoy to the above list of articles to be reviewed for COI edits. The IP 165.95.162.17 has been blocked two weeks for spam. EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

User:81.157.164.52
is adding links to documents that are just advertising links to a motivational speakers site. I assume this is their own business site. Suggest block. --KingStrato (talk) 17:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Tim Howard (attorney)


Gentle guidance on CoI and/or NPOV would be helpful, as well as a cleanup of the article. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 19:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the autobiography needs a complete rewrite (and has needed one for ages), but if I'm the one that does it, someone will complain. THF (talk) 19:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Ved Mehta
---
 * — I have just reverted this article to a revision from 2007, before a number of less than ideal additions by, , and , none of whom have edited anything other than that article. Some information those accounts added was useful, much not.  Perhaps simply going back in time two years is too brutal an approach?  Opinions and other actions welcome.  The article could use some attention either way.  Thanks. Chick Bowen 00:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, see User talk:Vedpmehta for a previous discussion that indicates Mr. Mehta is not pleased with the article as it stood then. I've cleaned it up some and added some more info--it needs a lot more. Chick Bowen 00:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, Chick Bowen's last version of 15 February is the best one so far. After Chick did his work, a brand-new editor named LBThompson reverted the article back to the previous essay-like version that sounds excessively promotional and isn't properly wikified. His edit summary was: I uploaded a more complete biographical entry, approved by Ved Mehta himself, and restored the "What the Critics Say" section. I am notifying LBThompson of this discussion. EdJohnston (talk) 19:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've reverted, and I'm going to ask on WP:AN for another admin to protect it. I won't do it myself, since I'm involved, but we are not getting through to these people. Chick Bowen 23:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The IP who removed the cleanup tag, 64.206.97.34, seems to have edited a range of articles, so he is not a single-purpose account. I will leave him a notice of this discussion. Full protection might be overkill at this stage. No objection to semiprotection. EdJohnston (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, semi was what I had in mind. Since these are new accounts, it would still have the desired affect.  Note that the IP you mention above tried to add the cleanup tag before removing it (but substed improperly, evidently). Chick Bowen 00:02, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Since the IP reverted *his own* cleanup tag, it's hard to blame him too much. Nobody has yet undone your revised version of the article. I would wait and see before doing the semiprotection. In the past the community has supported blocking of persistent COI editors who go against consensus and won't talk, but the time is not ripe yet. EdJohnston (talk) 01:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Following the notice at AN, I have to agree with Ed. It's not ripe for protection as the other editors seem to have stopped. I would not be surprised if it continues though. I'm watching the page now so feel free to message me if it does start up again, as I will then be happy to protect it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for watching it. More eyes will be a big help. Chick Bowen 22:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Companies, organizations, and products related to Tariq Farid
Attention is required. Uncle G (talk) 13:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Sockpuppet investigations/Faheemmumtaz
 * Fruit bouquet
 * Salma K. Farid Academy
 * Salma K. Farid Academy
 * Salma K. Farid Academy


 * Some crazy history there. Tariq Farid looks like it has survived deletion, but that seems calm.  Salma K. Farid Academy seems calm now.  Dipped Fruit was closed as delete, but the admin just never did it and it got rewritten and kept somehow (which I'm not particularly a fan of).  I'm concerned about User:Eaowners, who claim to be "a small group of Edible Arrangements Franchisees", in violation of WP:SOCK policy.  That user seems to have a particular agenda against Mr. Farid.  Is there anything specific?  For the sockpuppetry, a CU might be needed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:46, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I tagged Dipped fruit for G4 speedy deletion as a recreation of deleted material. The thing that was deleted per AfD on Jan 16 was spelled Dipped Fruit. Then a respelled article Dipped fruit was created (with no intervening DRV) and a redirect got created between the old and the new names). EdJohnston (talk) 14:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Article: Practice Management
Apollo Medical Solutions is mentioned under the heading "Best Practice Management Software In Market" -- which seems a little biased. If someone could look into this, I'd appreciate it. I hope this is the right place to flag this. Thank you. (unregistered, 2009.02.17)
 * Thanks: I reverted it as obvious spam. Feel free to do the same if you see similar repeat edits.   Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

People to People Student Ambassador Program
User:66.162.130.202 and User_talk:D2F appear to be the same person ( the latter created after I warned them ). The IP is in a netblock used by network:Org-Name:Ambassador Programs Inc. Also several other editors that dispute the content have recent accounts that have either only edited that article or have a few minor edits outside of that article (gmail, hotmail). In addition the other party to the lawsuit has also made edits to the page and been warned but seems to have gone away. Reboot (talk) 22:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

in Re:

Jokestress is in real life as she says on her user page Andrea James. Andrea James maintains a website where she expresses her dislike for the term "homosexual transsexual" and anyone who either identifies with it, or simply does not find it 100% objectionable ("Internet fakes: "transkids.us""). She has been part of what can and has been described as a campaign against this term, and those who promote it in any way. Which is made clear by wathching this video of her talking at a womens conference about the term. She has made a small part of her career on the bashing of this term. Lately her contributions to the article in question have consisted soley of adding an NPOV tag, then not explaining what further objections she has. Her COI is getting the the way of her editing on this topic her emotions on it are just too strong. Please help. (we have tried all forms of dispute resolution. It's kind of hard to mediate when as one mediator put it one's position is based on WP:IDONTLIKEIT.)--Hfarmer (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Amparis
In this diff [] admits being the webmaster for hanco.com. She has been creating spammish articles promoting companies related to this website, including, (copyvio from hanco.com), and  (thinly veiled spammy corporate history of Hanco, disguised as a bio of their founder) Wuhwuzdat (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

S-550 Space capsule - self-disclosure of COI
I want to self-disclose a conflict of interest - I have just created the S-550 Space capsule article. I am the owner of the (tiny) aerospace company which designed the S-550, Venturer Aerospace, and I was the lead engineer on the design.

I created the article as the capsule design had long been a redlink on Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and List of private spaceflight companies. Both those articles reached the point that most of the other listed vehicles were covered with Wikipedia articles. I believe that at this point, the coverage of the rest of the industry and COTS competitors justifies having filled information on mine in, which I had held off on doing for the last three years to avoid placing my design in a more prominent position than its then-competitors who were equally competent but don't have an active Wikipedian on staff.

I tried to write descriptively and neutrally and all that - I've been around Wikipedia for a long time and do not want to use it to toot my own horn. However, I know that I'm not a perfect judge of my own bias, so I'm posting here and posted a disclosure along these lines on the article talk page.

I have referenced a MSNBC media article which covered the vehicle and its competitors, two blog postings by prominent new space industry bloggers, the NASA proposal respondents list, two PR notes on my organizations' website related to that vehicle and a conference presentation on earlier work on the same website, and the still-somewhat-proprietary design proposal document.

Review and input welcome, and I intend to avoid WP:OWN as hard as possible, so if it's really borken somehow feel free to just fix it, though as always discussion on the article talk page is great. Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

COI Query on Scriptural Reasoning article
Dear Sir/Madam

I should be grateful if you would kindly assist with a potential Conflict of Interest issue on the article Scriptural Reasoning.

Scriptural Reasoning ("SR") is the practice of Jews, Christians and Muslims meeting to read their sacred texts together in order to promote better understanding. There are TWO traditions in SR - the first "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" is founded by David Ford at Cambridge and consists of a "Scriptural Reasoning in the University Group" of I believe around 35 people as referenced on the SSR's own website, plus one or two other linked groups in the UK and United States. The other "The Scriptural Reasoning Society" ("Oxford School") split from the first due to major academic disagreements over issues about protecting equality between the faiths, and democracy in organising, and has a UK and German membership of around 200.

Scriptural Reasoning is not a very large activity of thousands, but worldwide probably numbers a couple of hundred to a few hundred at the very most.

Between July 2006 and November 2008 - for a period of over 20 months - the article was one of low level editing activity. On 27 November 2008 and within a matter of a few days all of a sudden a number of new editors arrived, all connected in real life with David Ford's "Society for Scriptural Reasoning". I know and have identified a couple of them in real life.

These include:


 * Speculation about identities of three users below redacted per WP:OUTING Gordonofcartoon (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thelongview


 * Mahigton


 * Laysha101

The primary activity of these three users has been:
 * Repeated removal from the article of material on the article concerning the "Scriptural Reasoning Society", and active replacement promotion and addition of material advertising the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning".


 * Repeated removal from the article of critical material concerning David Ford and the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and the "Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme" to which they are connected by employment, by membership or by personal and collegial connection.

Wikipedia regulations on Conflict of Interest and Defending Interests state:

''An important guideline here is our guideline on conflict of interest. You are strongly discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organisations in which you hold a vested interest. However, if you feel that there is material within the article which is incorrect, or not neutral in its tone, please point this out on the article's talk page.''

Editing articles that you are affiliated with is not completely prohibited; you may do so as specified within the COI guideline, but you must be extremely careful to follow our policies.

and furthermore:

"On the other hand, the removal of reliably sourced critical material is not permitted. Accounts of public controversies, if backed by reliable sources, form an integral part of Wikipedia's coverage. Slanting the balance of articles as a form of defence of some figure, group, institution, or product is bad for the encyclopedia. This is also the case if you find an article overwhelmed with correctly referenced, but exclusively negative information. This may present a case of undue weight, for example, when 90% of an article about a particular company discusses a lawsuit one client once brought against it. In such a case, such material should be condensed by a neutral editor, and the other sections expanded. One of the best ways to go about this is to request this on the talk page."

Conflict of Interest Editing: Self-Promotion
Since his arrival on 27 November 2008, Thelongview has swamped the article with repeated references to the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and its projects with only a single passing reference to the (larger in membership) "Scriptural Reasoning Society" (Oxford School). This includes removal of the whole section relating to the latter while maintaining the section relating to the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning".

He has added duplicate links to what are essentially duplicate names of the same organisation (his edit): SR began as an academic practice. Notable academic forms of SR include SRU, the 'Scriptural Reasoning in the University' group (which evolved from SRT, the Scriptural Reasoning Theory group), and the Scriptural Reasoning Group of the American Academy of Religion. The international Journal of Scriptural Reasoning publishes articles on scriptural reasoning. It has an international body of editors and contributors, and is non-refereed. It is part of the international Society for Scriptural Reasoning. There is also an associated Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning.

SR has also become a civic practice...There are several developments of SR as a civic practice in the UK - sometimes using the SR name, such as SR at the St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace; the Scriptural Reasoning Education project,

Every single one of the above are simply other names for the same outfit the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" and "Cambridge Interfaith Programme:


 * The American Academy of Religion is an annual conference, not a separate entity and user Thelongview names himself as one of the Steering Committee members on this.
 * The St Ethelburga's project is defunct
 * The "Scriptural Reasoning Education Project" was merely three training sessions in summer/fall 2008 led by one person from the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning"/"St Ethelburgas"
 * The "Journal of Scriptural Reasoning" and "Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning" are not genuinely peer-reviewed academic journals, but merely pages on the same "Society for Scriptural Reasoning" website.

The Scriptural Reasoning Society ("Oxford School") also has an annual conference presence at the JCM Conference in Germany and the Limmud Conference, it has projects of academic research called "Scriptures in Dialogue" and online Scriptural Reasoning "Scripturalreasoning.net" and partner groups. All of these have been deleted by user Thelongview

User Thelongview has made claims about "notability" and "minority opinion" to support his promotion of his own group and deletion of material concerning another group. He has not however responded to the query as to how large his constituency actually is -- as far as I can see, it consists of around 35 people, while the "Scriptural Reasoning Society" has a membership of 200. There should therefore be at least equal coverage given to both groups, if not slightly more favouring the latter body over the former. The assertions of "minority" opinion are either spurious entirely, or entirely abused in this case.

He made statements of opinion that Scriptural Reasoning "was invented" by David Ford and colleagues, and "notable forms of academic SR" which is a matter for debate, as being a paid employee of the these organisations has promoted them competitively. Clear COI.

Conflict of Interest Editing: Removal of Criticism
The three users above have systematically removed all critique of their organisation and of David Ford to which they are linked either as paid employee, collegially or personally.

These critiques about academic differences of Scriptural Reasoning methodology and critiques of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme's commodification of interfaith activity, are referenced to documents such as The Guardian Newspaper and to "Oxford Ethic" and other statements published on the "Scriptural Reasoning Society" website, and to the Fatwa on Scriptural Reasoning issued independently by the Shari'a Court of the Islamic Cultural Centre and London Central Mosque.

As before, the three users who are either in every single case either employed by or connected to the organisations or persons who are being critiqued have removed such critical materials claiming that these matters are "not notable" or that the references are not suitable for inclusion according to Wikipedia guidelines. These assertions appear arbitary and motivated clearly by Conflict of Interest.
 * Diffs please supporting this claim. Toddst1 (talk) 19:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Meatpuppetry
Due to the suspicious arrival of these and other users, including completely newly registered users to Wikipedia such as Laysha101 all on or immediately after 27 November 2008, all connected in real life to a single group of 35 people, the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning", I had originally filed a meatpuppetry investigation, but after personal notes made by them on my talk pages, purely as a gesture of goodwill on a human level since I know the identity of some of them in real life I dropped this -- purely for the sake of harmony and in the hope that they might behave thereafter. But I seem to have been naive to have trusted in the good faith of the other side.

I should appreciate your advice and assistance on these matters. With many thanks for your kind help.

--Scripturalreasoning (talk) 06:59, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * A spot of advice: bear in mind Too long; didn't read. If this is going to be the style of discourse, most disinterested editors will be disinclined to get involved.
 * First thing: do you also have a COI to declare? "Role accounts" are not allowed, and an account called Scripturalreasoning focused on the single article Scriptural Reasoning tends to ring alarm bells. Particularly, you mention at Talk:Scriptural Reasoning being in direct consultation with the Scriptural Reasoning Society Trustees, so COI guidelines apply to you too. You should not be editing the article.
 * Also, the kind of legalistic warnings here at Talk:Scriptural Reasoning and here- which come down to "drop requests for sourcing of this, or I'll post highly contentious material to prove it and you'll regret the exposure" are an unacceptable threats in response to reasonable quests for reliable citation of unsourced hostile material. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:05, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I've had a solid look at the article history and dicussion. The editors Scripturalreasoning complains about may have a COI, but are editing well within policy and guidelines, with no sign of breach of WP:NPOV. The edit pattern of Scripturalreasoning, on the other hand, appears to be a highly tendentious one focused on introducing, via a deal of fairly disruptive wikilawyering, poorly-sourced synthesis into the Scriptural Reasoning article. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, there are several errors of fact, and misrepresentations, in what Scripturalreasoning writes here; I can list them if anyone's interested, but I rather doubt they are (and this page is not the place for detailed arguments on issues like (for example) what the American Academy of Religion is).Laysha101 (talk) 21:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The issue of COI has been ventillated extensively on the Scriptural Reasoning talk page. I have addressed it there by arguing that the best response to potential COI is to attend carefully to WP:V, WP:OR and WP:NPOV.  I'm an experienced writer of encyclopedia articles on a variety of topics, both on Wikipedia and from university presses, writing on things I know about.  Scriptural Reasoning is one of those things.  I believe Scripturalreasoning does not understand the verifiability and original research policies here, does not follow them, and does not acknowledge that they are an adequate safeguard against COI.  The long-windedness of the case above is typical, I'm afraid, and has proved hugely disruptive for the article in question (see the almost endless talk page).  The speculative outing of my identity is also typical, and I object to it here, as I have elsewhere.  I do not, on any Wikipedia page, list any of my affiliations.  I'd be grateful for the speculation above to be removed quickly, please, by anyone competent to do this. Thelongview (talk) 06:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Details redacted per WP:OUTING - sorry, should have done that earlier, but I missed how specific it was in all the verbiage. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Firstly, user Gordonofcartoon, before any further preaching from you, and before any further conversation by me with you, please remove the statement which you have written on my personal talkpage, "And please stop this total arse about...", as foul words are not what I have used in writing to you, and they are not acceptable. --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 09:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * As you wish (but as I said, where I come from it's only a robust synonym for "nonsense").  Gordonofcartoon (talk) 11:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Update
User:Scripturalreasoning just posted the following to Talk:Scriptural reasoning :
 * Contrary to the perception on this page, while I have declared clearly my involvement in the "Scriptural Reasoning Society", I am however, not a Trustee of this or any other organisation, and I do not even hold any official officership (Convener, Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, anything else), and so do not formally have any institutional COI by virtue of being an employee or officer of any Scriptural Reasoning organisation. Also, for the record, I have no "loyalty" at all for the Scriptural Reasoning Society as an institution/structure, despite my having contributed a lot of work to it. My loyalty and commitment is to certain values of parity, equality, truth and non-exploitation in the practice of Scriptural Reasoning as a whole (whichever group does it). The SRS can get stuffed as far as I'm concerned, if there is any hint of its Trustees and officers abandoning those ethical principles to which I am passionately committed. I therefore freely declare a COI with my wanting the article to represent some of these ethical elements in the debates around Scriptural Reasoning Theory and Practice, but that's hardly a formal COI in the Wikipedia sense.

... which is clear enough, though it omits the possibility of a close personal/professional affiliation as a non-employee (in what capacity was "my having contributed a lot of work to it"?). It also doesn't alter the COI potential of being in direct consultation, apparently in some influential role, with the Trustees of the society concerned Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

PS Following from that, this statement has just appeared on the Scriptural Reasoning Society website:, which makes claims about the identities and motives of some editors here. The whole thing has an attack-by-proxy flavour. Communicating with an organisation to solicit external pressure on Wikipedia editors about article content can hardly be viewed as a suitably neutral relationship to the topic, or an example of collegiate editing. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Before engaging in wild personal accusations of my "soliciting external pressure", you might want to get your facts straight first. Since I am not a Trustee, Chair, Secretary, etc of any organisation and make no decisions or statements on its behalf, and since the statement you reference makes no named mention of Wikipedia nor lists any usernames of any Wikipedian, all that exists is your own fantastic speculation about motives and personal connections.  In addition, since I happen to know that the Scriptural Reasoning Society has received at least one telephone contact from the officer of an external organisation precisely in relation to the Wikipedia article [naming it and discussing its recent editing and criticising it] and precisely attempting to "solicit external pressure" in regard to its editing -- you might want to be advised of that first before you say anything else.


 * Anyone is entitled to talk to their colleagues. I mean look at the mysterious way that within a matter of days after 27 November 2008, a load of editors suddenly arrived -- including the three users listed above who all know each other as colleagues in the real world -- plus various others from the Society for Scriptural Reasoning.  Soliciting pressure? --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 17:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * the statement you reference makes no named mention of Wikipedia nor lists any usernames of any Wikipedian
 * Others can decide how far that's disingenuous. You're not in a moot court, and that kind of legalistic quibble doesn't work here. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 18:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Funny how deafening your silence on the fact that the first knowledge that colleagues have had was from the phone complaint to them of a lead officer of a national organisation of which the groups which I have critiqued are affiliate members. The Wikipedia article was raised by them and criticism of the edits on it -- external pressure -- made by them...any answers?  Maybe you want to ask the other users connected to the groups in question? --Scripturalreasoning (talk) 19:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Eliseo Soriano
I need a few people to come over and try to hack out the mess at this site. There seems to be several COI editors battling it out since December each accusing the other of wrongdoing. In the midst of the battle, verifiability and NPOV have taken hits. Themfromspace (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Living Things (band)

 * : A non-neutral version full of spelling, formatting, and grammar errors is repeatedly being inserted by who professes to be band management.  Reverts anyone who changes this version. Gamaliel (talk) 16:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Gamaliel has left an appropriate warning at User talk:Healer313. Gamaliel and an IP editor have now tweaked the article to the point that it is acceptable by wiki standards. If Healer continues to revert to his preferred version, he should be given a short block to get his attention. EdJohnston (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Auditory Integration Training


This topic has for some time displayed the sole point of view of a medically-biased contributor 'Eubulides', and is incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable for that realon. Recent attempts to add more correct and balanced NPOV entries have been quickly reversed by that editor. Repeated attempts by me to have hime acknowlege that AIT is a non-medical issue, and therefore the medical sources are not the sole reliable resources on this topic are ignored and overrun, in order to maintain a medical bias in this article. I have now begun to receive cautions about 3RR from medical editors while Eubulides who performed the reversals has received none! ... I would welcome assistance to clarify this matter, from a non-medically interested editor Jvanr (talk) 08:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Article link added. You're asking editors to take sides on what's mainly an ideological/political point: AIT self-defines as non-medical (else there'd be FDA issues) but to outsiders, as a therapy for various learning disorders, it comes under medical scope (there's even a Cochrane Review ). NPOV requires that both stances be mentioned. So that part is a content issue: Eubulides being "medically biased" is hardly close enough a relationship to count as COI.
 * OTOH Being an AIT trainer - apparently one with a major involvement in the development of the AIT hardware - a WP:SPA here to Right a Wrong, is far closer, and needs considerable attention to avoiding advocacy (see WP:SOAP) and abiding by WP:NPOV. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Jvanr happens to be forum shopping, so caution should be used here. -- Fyslee (talk) 16:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Five or six editors have now attempted to reason with this SPA, COI editor. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * AIT is a treatment for a medically-recognised condition, therefore this is a medical topic and the peer-reviewed medical literature is the most appropriate source of citations for the article. Websites associated that promote a fringe theory and are associated with a political pressure group are not by any stretch of the imagination reliable sources for anything apart from the views of their authors. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:31, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with what Tim wrote. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Egyptian yoga (again)
Last year ChildofMidnight raised COI issues - Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 28 - about the now-deleted Egyptian Yoga article (see Articles for deletion/Egyptian Yoga). A then editor User:HID-IIY took their ball home on January 1st, but I hadn't noticed the article had been recreated and is being edited by a new SPA with the same style, as well as IP edits that track to Switzerland, where the associated Institut International de Yoga is based. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 03:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * - passed to AFD.

SEO Again


See also Sockpuppet investigations/ClintonCimring.

I am concerned about this sequence of apparently promotional edits. The two accounts links about appear to be intertwined in their editing interests. Perhaps they are close friends or even sock puppets. Jehochman Talk 01:16, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * SEO 2.0 added to the list. Google the names together (no WP:OUTING problem since both user pages give detailed bios). Clinton Cimring runs an SEO company; Jan Bellows is a client in partnership. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 01:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The Bellows account is now indef blocked as a sock. ClintonCimring was blocked 31 hours. We should keep an eye on Cimring's contributions after the block expires. I think the supply of good faith is running out fast. EdJohnston (talk) 14:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Marc Mysterio


- Repeatedly that he is Marc Mysterio, most if not all edits have been centered on Marc Mysterio, including creation of the Marc Mysterio article. He apparently also made numerous attempts as various unsigned IPs to give undue weight to his cover version of a Daft Punk song at the Daft Punk article, but this activity seems to have cooled down. just64helpin (talk) 22:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Scrubbed. Unfortunately, WP:MUSIC is so permissive that an AFD wouldn't work. THF (talk) 23:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess administrator intervention is needed, because and his IP address,  are now edit-warring on Marc Mysterio and the WP:MOS-mistitled "Let Loose" (Marc Mysterio song), and who knows where-else. Beyond my ability to deal with as an editor without admin tools. THF (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * 24 hours for User:Canuckdj and 1 week for for abuse of multiple accounts. EdJohnston (talk) 20:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. THF (talk) 20:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Now editing from. -- THF (talk) 18:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've semi-protected the Marc Mysterio article. EdJohnston (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Edits made are proporely cited and noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.222.224.161 (talk) 18:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's for regular wiki editors to decide whether your edits are proper. If you showed the slightest interest in following our policies about promotional editing, it might be worth discussing the article with you. Until then, we will simply revert your edits, block and protect as needed. EdJohnston (talk) 18:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Lee Hasdell and User:ClaudioProductions, latest round

 * Lee Hasdell is the father of User:ClaudioProductions and the latter has a bad case of WP:OWN. He is insisting on posting information he has found online on blogs and other non-reliable sources, which confirms other information he says he has from his father the subject. He has been repeatedly blocked for violating the 3RR rule and otherwise editwarring. A number of editors (admins and others) have failed to get through to him. Frankly, I am inclined to say that we need to block him indefinitely for disruptive editing in perpetual violation of WP:NPOV, WP:OWN and WP:RS. Orange Mike   &#x007C;   Talk  21:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Endorse ban - I have been keeping tabs on this editor ever since he attempted to do some of the same things to the Tupac Shakur page. But really, how we know that Lee Hasdell is his "dad"? I was going to ask someone that before but figured it was a joke. If this is indeed true, why doesn't his "dad" verify anything? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Endorse ban - i'm not sure if it matters whether lee hasdell is truly his dad or not. if it is his dad, we have a COI editor who refuses to listen, violates WP:OWN, edit wars, and continually wars to add original research and poor sources. if it's not his dad, we have the same situation, except the editor is lying about who his dad is. either way, it's bad. Theserialcomma (talk) 03:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we're long past the point where a topic ban restricting him to the talkpage is appropriate. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Owner of quack device has received advice
According to this section Talk:Electro_Interstitial_Scanner, the owner has appeared and he has also been attempting to edit the article. I left a welcome message and advice about his COI on his user talk page. I hope he will read and heed it. -- Fyslee (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Link added. Oh, lordy. As far as I can see, there is no notability whatsoever. Whole thing off various promotional websites like EIS System and Cenzitek. I've created an AFD: Articles for deletion/Electro Interstitial Scanner. We might also want to look at the contributions of the article creator, . Ghod knows what relationship Albert Maarek has to this, but the lack of notability is the main thing to consider. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It's quacky enough that Barrett has investigated it here.


 * BTW, that user (Naseem...) has a habit of creating unencyclopedic hagiographical type articles that are lacking in many Wikiformatting respects, as well as not NPOV. For some reason I don't find a "user contributions" link on his userpage. That's rather odd. Is it in mainspace? -- Fyslee (talk) 02:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm seeing the user contributions link, on the left of the user page; not clear why you wouldn't. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 01:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Forum for Stable Currencies

 * I have moved this article from userspace, so the link below is no longer current. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Volunteers,

It felt as if I had my wrists slapped when User:Cameron Scott slammed the notice "run of the mill pressure group" and the threat of deletion down, and like a wounded animal, I accepted the proposed deletion. But out of the blue of Wikipedia's cyber space came help. Now User:Moonriddengirl has userfied and repaired the article such that I'd welcome your critique.

Is this now "fit for publishing"?

Yes, my Conflict of Interest is pure passion, combined with commitment, perseverance and persistence. But I am perfectly neutral, information and informational as well. And I do appreciate communication of the kinder kind.

Looking very much forward to your comments,

Sabine McNeill (talk) 22:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The article looks fine and I don't see much evidence of a COI in it as it is currently written. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's not a "run of the mill pressure group" after all? Could you maybe have referred me to WP:ORG on a neutral level of conversation?

Sabine McNeill (talk) 10:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me also: well-sourced and neutral in tone. Only thing I'd suggest is that the links to the blog and meetings archive are unnecessary as, although they're at different URLs, they're both readily accessible as menu items on the main site. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank You!

Sabine McNeill (talk) 10:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "Maybe it's not a "run of the mill pressure group" after all?" actually I still think that this is the case but the additional sources just about get it past our notability standards and I'm not going to argue the toss over it at AFD or the like. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In my opinion the article needs more work. The opening sentence uses the jargon of a particular philosophy, by saying: "Forum for Stable Currencies is a political advocacy group in the United Kingdom seeking economic democracy through freedom from national debt." Economic democracy, though we have an article on it, is not a neutral term that all groups agree on the meaning of. It's a code-word like social credit that goes along with a certain political view. (It doesn't help to explain the views of a group to our readers by using one of their own buzzwords as part of the definition). My quick scan of the article suggests that the supporters of this group hold views that are very non-standard among regular economists, so a bit of outside perspective, like a criticism section, would be good to have. EdJohnston (talk) 06:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, when the original contributor of this content asked me to restore the originally PRODded article, she also asked for assistance with the issues that led to its deletion. I added literally every reliable source I could access (and one that I've since learned was unreliable). There is at least one other source that discusses this group, a November 10, 2003 article in the New Statesman (see ), but I can't access it. It doesn't look extensive. As for the rest, I'm helpless in this respect. :) I took Econ I in my first semester of college and never looked back. I have removed the resolved tag, though, since it seems more conversation may be appropriate. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Rick Warren and Saddleback Church and Saddlebacking

 * Rick Warren has a BLP, along with associated pages of his megachurch, and is the subject of the primary article in which a couple of dedicated editors with proven COI have been obstructing progress for over nine weeks. This also spilled over into closely related articles about the megachurch and media coverage of protests against it.


 * User:CarverM - this person failed to identify himself as not only an employee but actually one of the closest professional colleagues and personal assistants to the subject of the BLP, and gamed the system with contentious reverts and obstructive wikilawyering until they were finally exposed via Google Search. All the while they were accusing me and other editors of failing to AGF, failing to adhere to NPOV, etc, to the point where administrators (and finally a mediator) had to be called in, but then CarverM still did not divulge their Conflict even after weeks of tedious debate which could have been averted by a simple honest recusal.


 * User:Manutdglory - although they were not proven to be one of the closest professional colleagues and personal assistants to the subject of the BLP, they did however make a serious slip when they inadvertently revealed their affiliation as a paid member of the specific megachurch belonging to Rick Warren. This is not as egregious as the above situation with CarverM, but it definitely aggravated the whole rigmarole intensely, wasting tons of administrative and meta-discussion negotations because Bad Faith was not being divulged.

They tried to smear me as a "vandal", then they tried to literally evangelize to me on my TalkPage about their blood sacrifice cult despite my objections to such activity, then they went to several administrators and tried to portray me as lacking civility or somehow disrupting the editorial process, when all along they were only gaming the system. I'm not expecting anything like an apology because they've already proven their determination to treat me with the most egregious contempt, but i do think i deserve to have the unfair tarnish expunged from my reputation! Thank you for your consideration, Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1 19:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hard to expunge the taint of "lacking civility" when you use phrases like "blood sacrifice cult" in your request. Judging by your user page and the passion of your statement here, it's obviously a subject you care very strongly about, and you should perhaps take your own advice and step back from this set of articles. THF (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is precisely the kind of obstinate insistence i encountered for two months, as i called a Spade a Spade and called a COI a COI, and was somehow being labelled as contentious and lacking civility when i presented explicit proof of examples (diffs such as 1 and 2, along with direct quotations at the appropriate points) where the Scapegoating tactics of a Blood sacrifice Cult were being directly applied to me and to anybody else who disputed their neutrality and complained of their Conflict. I'm not exaggerating, i'm specifically describing documented activity. I'll gladly go on wikibreak now, in order to keep the steam from shooting out of my ears any more, but i will not accept blanket dismissal of my terminology and SPADE when it has been so demonstrably pertinent! Thanks! Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1 20:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * To an outside observer who is no fan of Rick Warren, you aren't seeming very neutral either. I see nothing wrong with this edit you complain of unless you are deliberately looking for a fight, and this talk page comment seems like a legitimate and remarkably restrained complaint about a WP:CIVIL/ WP:NOT and WP:NOT violation: if you made the comment "Religion is the opposite of education; faith is the opposite of intelligence" on a talk page, it's hard to imagine a legitimate reason for doing so. THF (talk) 20:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No. No. NO. No, thank you kindly, "deliberately looking for a fight" is absolutely emphatically not what transpired, and this is exactly the kind of obstinate refusal to SPADE i have dealt with for over two months. If you find "it's hard to imagine a legitimate reason for" specifically taking the appropriate opportunity to make those assertions (in context) about religion, faith, superstition and fantasy-- as they pertained directly to the contentious issues for so long-- then i would politely ask you to review the voluminous contents of the salient parts of those TalkPages before characterising my statements as "hard to imagine a legitimate reason for" while you characterise the statements from the sources of editorial COI as "legitimate and remarkably restrained". I absolutely emphatically will not accept such characterization, and i view your attempts to dismiss my frank, unapologetic, SPADE language as yet another kind of subtle smothering censorship of varying viewpoints. This will not help us improve encyclopedia articles, and it will not make the editing any more congenial and friendly, so long as you unfairly demand that i kowtow to their religious contentions. As i quoted elsewhere, when you kowtow to the religious, you gain their goodwill... to continue kowtowing. (viz: The Human Evasion.) Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1  20:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Adhering to WP:CIVIL is not "censorship." It's a mandatory policy, and there's some real WP:KETTLE going on here where you treat the religious editor's good-faith polite remarks as somehow more offensive than your clear attempt to provoke. To repeat, don't bring your outside issues to Wikipedia, which is really what COI is all about. THF (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * (EC) Whether Teledidonix314 has been a bit over the top about this isn't really relevant to a COI report. His personal views do not necessarily make for a COI, and they should not be used to nullify his report about two other editors with clear COIs. Simply disagreeing with the subject of the page on issues is not equivalent to being a member of his church, as User talk:Manutdglory admitted to doing while justifying his edits as an insider, nor is it worse for transparency's sake than being a close personal colleague of the subject as User talk:CarverM has been found to be. Manu has already been indef blocked for abuse of editing privleges. The unchecked COI on the page naturally spills out onto talk pages, and it's perfectly understandable the situation would get frustrating for uninvolved editors. Dayewalker (talk) 20:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * COI is only a problem if the editors aren't editing neutrally and refuse to adhere to the COI guideline. If the complaint is being brought by someone who clearly isn't neutral, either, and hasn't identified a single problematic diff, I discount the complaint considerably.  There isn't a hierarchy of violations of NPOV. Furthermore, if Manu has already been blocked, it's hard to see what COIN is supposed to do further. THF (talk) 20:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

request for a topic ban on User:CarverM

 * Precisely this, thanks. Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1 20:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)



If you wanted a topic ban, you could have asked for that instead of complaining about innocuous talk-page edits. I would oppose a topic ban unless I saw a pattern of POV-pushing edits, and what I see from a spot-check is wikignoming by adding correct citation formats and discussion on the talk page, neither of which violates Wikipedia policy. That doesn't mean that POV-pushing edits haven't been happening, but they aren't immediately obvious to non-involved editors, but you need to make a better case than "A conflict of interest exists," since that by itself isn't a violation. An intelligent Bayesian assumes that you come to the table with your best case, and when your proposed diffs are entirely innocuous, it's hard to see where the real problem is because one assumes that the diffs you aren't showing are even more innocuous. THF (talk) 20:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

For one thing, it's extremely poor taste and bad faith to ask for a topic ban without even notifying the user on his talk page that this thread exists. THF (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * As the mediator that responded to their request at WP:MEDCAB, I think I have a good gras[ of what the issue is, and can relate it here in a more neutral manner. The heart of the issue is that the BLP subject is notable mainly for the controversy that happened when he was selected to give the invocation at President Obama's inauguration. We have been attempting to reach a consensus on how to present information about the controversy. There are many references that meet WP:RS backing up each and every sentence in the proposed paragraphs. A phrasing was proposed before I was asked to step in, and was quickly shot down by the people who have since been revealed to have a conflict of interest. I came in, spoke to the editors involved to get a feel for their concerns, and proposed my own version which (I thought) addressed those concerns. Instead of gaining consensus, the same editors threw an alphabet soup of policies at me that it supposedly violated, including WP:NPOV, WP:COATRACK, WP:BLP, WP:V etc. My proposed version had been specifically crafted to make sure that the paragraph was well within all those policies.


 * After that, I encouraged those opposing to come up with a better alternative, as they had yet to do so. The one editor who had opposed my proposal but is not named here, User:Collect, took my advice and proposed his own. Although I did not personally agree with his omission of sourced information from his version, I supported it in the interest of gaining a consensus. The point i'm trying to make is, CarverM has yet to offer a suggestion to improve the article. He seems to be the sole voice that refuses to budge an inch, and in my opinion, he doesn't want any of the material in the article, no matter how well-sourced it is. Rather than coming up with an alternative, he just throws around policy wikilinks without saying how the proposals can be improved to better reflect those policies.


 * Now, it has been revealed that he holds a high-ranking position and is one of Warren's closest advisors. To me, not disclosing as major a COI as this is unacceptable, and it is clear that his goal is supporting and promoting Warren, not building a better Encyclopaedia. I fully endorse the request for a topic ban or even a full ban from editing. Firestorm  Talk 21:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Still waiting for someone who wants a topic ban to politely notify Mr. Carver; not sure why noone wants to give him a chance to defend himself. I frankly don't see why his conflict of interest is any worse than that of an anti-religious gay-rights activist seeking to demonize the church. But since WP:MEDCAB is involved, I'll withdraw. THF (talk) 21:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note I have left such a note at CarverM's talk page on behalf of all here - but have requested that he not come here to respond until he deals with my first request - specifically because as my Admin response details below his first post at my talk page seems to have instigated this matter here.-- VS talk 21:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * THF, with all due respect to your literacy, and now an undue level of respect for your characterization of "an anti-religious gay-rights activist seeking to demonize the church" (please don't make me get into a debate with you about whether you should redact such an outrageously denigrating failure to AGF), i think it's important to note there are ten pages of archives under the Talk:Rick Warren discussion, and we now have at least three administrators and a mediator there because of the inordinate amount of impediment which was resulting from CarverM and Manutdglory intentionally gaming the system. CarverM is explicitly involved in COI discussion today with the Mediator and Administrators who have been attending the debacle. To think that i actually was tricked into believing i owed the COI instigator an apology is despicable. To think that i actually went back and politely made strikethroughs on anything potentially inflammatory to editors who were operating under the Assumption of Good Faith is so amazingly ironic, i am incensed at having put so much effort into my own Good Faith in this situation. I'm sorry if you don't immediately grasp what has been going on for nine weeks, but a cursory glance at my edit history should make it somewhat clearer as soon as you follow the points of contention under COI, AGF, NPOV, RS, abuse of WP:V WP:GNG WP:BLP and such ad nauseum. Thank you.


 * With all due respect for your claim of "extremely poor taste and bad faith", if you had so much as glanced at the offenders' contributions, beginning with diffs i highlighted, and especially under the three main Article pages for which this COIN is titled, you would not express this. I am barely past the stage of Newbie, having been seriously editing this encyclopedia for only a couple months, and if my beginner's approach is insuffucient, might i kindly suggest you ask the more proficient administrators and editors involved in those pages (e.g., Virtual Steve, Kevin, Schrandit, BenCCC, Adam_sk, FireStorm ((mediator)), etc) to provide you with the sort of thing you need to convince you of the level of violation? I've been explicitly asked to take a wikibreak from this so as not to inflame further, and i think i've had quite enough of playing Sherlock Holmes with the contributions and webpages of CarverM et al. I didn't even know about the existence of these Noticeboards until i stumbled across all this Administrative business last month as i unfairly had my efforts dragged through the mud and vilified as the "attacks of a radical gay activist" and other such dismissive attempts to discredit my contributions. I'm sick and fed up of a lifetime of this tawdry and reprehensible behavior out in the real world, and i find it very disheartening (but not surprising) to see it imported into Wikipedia as well. Thank you. Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1 21:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I stand by everything I said: WP:COI violations, no matter how egregious, do not justify remarks like "Congratulations to Rick Warren and all you other evil hatemongers and scapegoaters and fantasy-based superstitious barbarians" or "your fantasy-based supporters". And that's from your own diff!  Only the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows what you've been saying that you haven't shown me.  By your own diffs and comments here, you have persistently violated WP:CIVIL and WP:NOT throughout this, and I'm disappointed that admins didn't intervene earlier about those violations, because you still seem to think they're justified.  And Carver is not a mind-reader that knows you've opened up a complaint on this board.  As to the substance of the complaint, I'll defer to WP:MEDCAB and User:VirtualSteve, but your approach has been very counterproductive to this uninvolved editor. THF (talk) 21:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * copied and pasted from Virtual Steve's TalkPage---


 * No, THF, i will not accept this characterization, because those remarks were specifically made when i was a newbie who had not been given instruction from any kind of Welcome Wagon and had not been assisted in any serious way (at that time) by an administrator or mediator, and had only just barely begun to stumble upon the rudiments of WP:CIVIL due to the polite suggestions of other editors there; and those remarks of mine were not made until i had been specifically goaded by the two editors who have clear-cut COI, beginning with Manutdglory telling everybody i was a 'vandal' and CarverM telling everybody i should be dismissed as a 'radical gay activist'. If only we knew then what we know now about what should have been divulged! And there i was, falling all over myself to divulge every possible shred of COI i might have, for the sake of helping all other editors to identify my possible newbie Non-NPOV and keep it cleanly out of the Article space and strictly on the Discussion space where i could be instructed! As a newbie, i could have been shown the error of my ways and given education in the context of Good Faith; instead, you are chastising me for failure to be Civil when i was the actual subject of those kinds of personal attacks. This hypocrisy is precisely why i feel such ire, and your usage of WP:KETTLE is only adding insult to injury.


 * On top of such provocation-- which was a spectacular WP:BITE if ever i've now heard of such-- CarverM then proceeded on my TalkPage, on administrator TalkPages, and on the Talk:Rick_Warren and Talk:Saddleback_Church to post such claims as "I have never hidden my affiliations nor brought them up. So I am unsure as to why this is an issue. I suppose you will try and bring up COI but I suggest it's not relevant. I have endeavored to keep my edits and suggestions to the facts. If you choose to try and disqualify my edits then I suppose you should also do so for any editor who identifies themselves as gay. As to the Google hit that you most likely found related to a video game, those were all a lie fabricated by a blogger looking for a "scoop". Again, irrelevant to the issue of the Rick Warren article." But these claims are posted after they wrote this, and more damningly: their remarks are posted immediately below the extensive discussion about COI and puffery in which they did not identify their COI. Their reference to the Google Search is because they are embarassed that we finally discovered their Bio on the church's Public Relations pages as well as the extensive media coverage of relevant controversies in which their Conflict Of Interest has direct bearing on the tendentious edits which provoked those remarks about "apologists, barbarians, scapegoaters, etc" from me; and Rick Warren himself even responded on those public webpages found in the Google search investigating CarverM's heavily publicized affiliations. Furthermore, Manutdglory and CarverM are both trying the same tactic each time their COI is finally proven beyond a shadow of a doubt: they try to throw up the skunk-spray diversion of "No Outing!!" despite the fact that all revelations of personal identity have been through their own admissions and through their own usage of their actual personal names on their User-IDs!


 * So you are proposing to punitively retroactively sanction me for something i did wrong as a total newbie two months ago, despite the way i was unwittingly goaded in my first interactions with any editors (who, it now turns out, had distinct COI reasons to goad me). This is unbelievable, especially since i repeatedly apologized to the very people who goaded me, and refrained from repeating my newbie mistakes despite their repeated treatment of me with Bad Faith and Non-NPOV and deceitful COI non-disclosure! Where has my mistaken newbie behavior caused harm? Where has my strong unApologetic language (such as on these Discussion pages) ever appeared in some harmful way in any Article page? Why are you so eager to sanction me for something i already learned to fix two months ago, and you haven't even taken the time to respond to where i politely pointed out the opportunities for you to educate yourself about this entire Conflict debacle with my amateur efforts to give Detective diffs and do your Administrative tasks for you? And all the while, i manage to not scream at you for the outrageous unfairness of the whole situation, while you (THF) focus on my newbie mistakes instead of the current COIN where i have no expertise and have never before performed this type of filing. The only reason i'm not asking for an apology from THF is because i can assume they simply have not had the opportunity to witness the nine weeks of frustration which were deceitfully and manipulatively and intentionally foisted upon me. Teledildonix314 ~  Talk ~  4-1-1 22:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Admin response As most at this thread will know I have been one of two or three admins that have followed and acted at this dispute for the past couple of months and I think I can safely say I have a more detailed grasp of the tension on this page than most others. I have read the flurry of comments at my talk page that arose over night on this matter.  I have also read the comments here - which in terms of recency occured because CarverM came to my page to make a complaint about Teledildonix without providing diffs to susbtantiate his complaint.  He then left another comment which at first glance appears to be an attempt at poisoning the well.  I would ask that all editors in the Rick Warren arena note that I have asked a question of CarverM both at my talk page, which has also been placed at his talk page.  If everyone could remain calm, loose any further indignation at this point and await a return or not by CarverM which (in either case) I will consider and place my conclusion comments here. - with thanks -- VS  talk 21:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Conclusion CarverM came to my talk page to make a serious complaint about Teledildonix's this editor continues his personal attacks and attacks on others spiritual beliefs . I responded to his request by asking for diffs. CarverM then dropped his request . Meantime Mike Doughney, an editor it should be noted that has been blocked recently for behaviour in this area but who has returned with the grace to attempt to assist this difficult situation, raised a complaint about a serious COI that CarverM was in fact an aide to Rick Warren .  CarverM immediately returned to my talk page and appeared to agree with Mike as to his COI  and this resulted in a flurry of activity at my talk page by both sides of the Rick Warren editors.  In particular Teledildonix (with some reason) came back to show his indignation to which CarverM responded.  Most telling was the comment by Firestorm  who made an appropriate cry of foul in relation to CarverM stonewalling any attempt to put information into the article which reflects negatively on Rick Warren when they had come to that page to attempt mediation.  Firestorm suggested a visit to this page with a complaint and Teledildonix decided to commence such an action  - he did so as a relative "newbie".  CarverM's further responses unfairly poisoned the well against Teledildonix  &  without providing diffs to show that they came after the period of time that Teledildonix (and others) were warned to not breach CIVIL or personally attack.  I then attempted to gain direct insight from CarverM at his talk page however I was required to press for any response.  CarverM did eventually come back to say that he was M Carver referred to by Mike Doughney  but again provided difficult opposition as to the provision of diffs as to why he had complained of Teledildonix's attacks upon him personally.
 * Given all of the above and the prolonged history at Rick Warren and related articles I agree that Carvem's involvement in this area of the project is absolutely not assisting. I am therefore topic banning CarverM from editing at either Rick Warren, Saddleback Church or any other article directly related to Rick Warren for a period of 3 months; that is until June 1, 2009. This will allow Firestorm and other editors to move further in their attempt to achieve a solution to the contents of these articles.  Should CarverM edit at these pages via any method his account will be blocked by me for all editing.  I will attend to posting information about this topic ban in the appropriate areas shortly.
 * I also note that editors will have views about other components of this thread and towards that point I ask that you await my further decisions to come shortly.-- VS talk 23:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Advice needed
Just a general question here. There is a particular User here who is employed by a particular research organisation, and who has been editing a series of articles about a topic which this organisation sees as its core area of interest. This user in real life is also an activist advocating the subject matter, which has apparently become politicised. Therefore it appears there could be a serious case of Conflict_of_interest.

I discussed the COI issue and the need for NPOV with the user on an article talk page and he appeared to acknowledge this. He is now editing these articles to his (or his organisation's) particular POV again, using sources (some written by himself in real life) published by the organisation he belongs to. The problem is he discounts the other viewpoint published by another rival organisation.

I could identify the articles and user (it's not related to Global Warming), but am concerned about the issue of outing, since Wikipedia's policy against harassment takes precedence over the COI guideline. However this User does identify himself and his Wikipedia username in his signature in messages on the public Wikipedia-l mail list, so I guess those Wikipedians who subscribe to this list may know who this user is, but the wider Wikipedia community may not.

Any advice on the best approach here would be welcomed. If the above is too general then I can provide specific details. Martintg (talk) 23:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If you think you see an article where improper editing is going on, name the article. Others can then draw whatever conclusions they wish about the situation, without that being considered to be WP:OUTING. If you think POV editing is going on, it is helpful if you can provide diffs. EdJohnston (talk) 00:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The article is Võro language, a typical diff here. Related article South Estonian language. This is as I understand the situation: The Estonian Language Institute claims it is a dialect, the Võro Institute claims it is a language. The literature seems to be split. An employee of the Võro Institute recently applied for an ISO language code, the Estonian Language Institute may appeal. The debate has now evolved to whether it is a reconstructed language derived from an historical dialect or not. The politics of regionalism seems to be mixed up in this. A gentle approach with some mediation is needed here, I believe. Martintg (talk) 01:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've asked Võrok to join this discussion. Can you make a list of all the articles that may be affected by this dispute? Should anyone else be notified? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 04:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably contact User:Miacek and User:Digwuren. The articles involved:
 * South Estonian language <-> South Estonian dialects
 * Võro language <-> Võro dialects
 * Template:Uralic languages
 * Martintg (talk) 04:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Võros, too.
 * --Võrok (talk) 10:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The situation is quite simple and even better, it is verifiable. The ISO-639-3 has determined that Võro is a language. As a consequence they have made the code that used to refer to Estonian a macro language. This means that from a standards point of view, Estonina and Võro are on the same level.


 * From my point of view, either this is accepted silently as a fact or a big huha happens and it has to affect how we treat languages in the WMF. This would mean that the Estonian Wikipedia is to rename to ekk.wikipedia.org. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 08:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll answer with a citation by another user from Talk:South Estonian language "ISO does not 'recognise' languages by handing them codes. Instead, the ISO 639 registry -- the Library of Congress -- maintains the language coding system, paying most careful attention to printed books. Since in recent years, a number of people have been printing books in Võro, the intent to precisely codify the linguistic standard now merits a separate language code -- but this does not mean any sort of royal assent over the linguistic entity's status as a language or dialect. If starting tomorrow, a hundred people would take it unto themselves to write and print new books based on the writing system found in the Voynich Manuscript, pretty soon it would have its own ISO code. Nobody will care if it's a language -- if the books are there, they need to be coded. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 22:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)" Miacek and his crime-fighting dog ( woof! ) 10:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Dear Wikipedians, I'm user Võrok. The discussion I am involved is going on on the talk pages of the above mentioned articles. You can find there also my longer explanations and arguments. In short: I wrote these articles some years ago with my personal skills, knowledge, interests and inspiration. Later it has been edited also by other users. The articles could be written much better, it could be more deep, neutral etc. All interested users are welcome to make it better. But it should not be done with a sudden abrubt renames, deletions, replaces and reverts, sometimes even without discussion, as it has done by users user:Miacek, user:Digwuren and in lesser extent also user:Martintg (see their edits in the history of the above mentioned articles).


 * I'm a native speaker, teacher, researcher and developer of the Võro language. Maybe it really means that I'm too involved and too much interested in saving and promoting my endangered mother tongue. Too much to be absolutely neutral as it is required in Wikipedia. However I have tried to be neutral and of course I have provided and/or accepted in the articles also other grounded POVs. Or tried to find compromises. I have not much time and energy to write in the English Wikipedia in my bad English, it is hard and tiring. Also the suspicious, anonyme, sometimes even ironic and unfriendly atmosphere dominating in comments and abrubt actions of some users (Miacek,Digwuren) do not encourage or inspire much. User:Digwuren even threatened me on my talk page of Võro Wikipedia, promising to start looking for the best way how to close up Võro Wikipedia, as a revenge for the proposal for the ISO code for Võro (discussion in Estonian). I have put a lot of time and energy into these articles and their discussions. Probably too much. I'm too tired to continue editing the articles and having discussions such actively but maybe at least some information, explanations and the copromise I proposed - naming the article South Estonian language just South Estonian (rather than proposed South Estonian dialects), restoring deleted by user:Martintg infobox or at least map, arguing against an obvious nonsense about Võro being an artificial or reconstructed language etc. - I hope it will help a bit in improving the articles. --Võrok (talk) 10:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem with your list of "speaker, teacher, researcher and developer" is that you left out advocate. Native speakers of any language do not necessarily have inherent COIs about it.  Teachers don't, either, nor do linguists.  But one who uses every chance to push his pet viewpoint about the special status of his favourite project -- one who doesn't refrain from going to the ISO 639 registrar out of process because he believes the result is more important than the proper way of achieving it -- is clearly too much involved with advocacy of the POV to be capable to neutrally contribute in matters having to do with the related controversy. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 14:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm certainly not a lawier, which associates to me with the word advocate, but ok, of course I try to give my best to save my endangered mother tongue. If I must be be called an advocate for doing that, then I am proud to be an advocate of my language. But (using terms of law) if I'm an advocate then Digwuren and some others are probably accusers or prosecutors of the language. As I said above, maybe I can not be absolutely neutral, but I have tried to be accepting also another POVs. But Diwurgen et. al. aren't either neutral, their contributions have been much more biased by their own POV and/or (probably strong Estonian nationalist) interest. They have used every chance to lower or degrade the position of the Võro: 1) showing that it is a dialect, not a language; 2) renaming it's article to a dialect; 2) renaming it to an artificial language; 3) renaming it to a reconstructed language; 4) questioning its number of speakers; 5) questioning its ISO code; 6) threatened to propose closing its Wikipedia; 7) cutting it out (naming it a crap) from the template of the Uralic languages; 8) proposing to merge an article about Võro-speaking people into a section of another article; 9) deleting infobox with a map of the language area and reverting the changes they dislike; 10) ignoring proposed compromises; etc. These probably can not be actions of neutral editors. One more thing. If I really must be called an advocate, then I'm certainly an advocate of of my language, not my university or institute. Nobody questioned here (yet) the institutions, so I don't have even a reason to advocate them.--Võrok (talk) 18:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that you're an advocate of an institute that is closely connected with the issue shows that you have a strong conflict of interests that no-one of the evil “Digwuren et al” group has. As for your points: “1) showing that it is a dialect, not a language; 2) renaming it's article to a dialect;” - is it a crime to follow the scholarly consensus and not your own research? “4) questioning its number of speakers;″ - I think this questioning was very well founded and you failed to give an answer to this “5) questioning its ISO code″ - yes, you probably gained this 'recognition' by an assault, so to say, bypassing the Estonian regulators of language; this trick might well get reverted. And so on. In short, you are just using Wikipedia to promote your own theories, largely unaccepted by the public, and that's the core of the problem. -- Miacek and his crime-fighting dog ( woof! ) 19:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The mainstream consensus is this. Martintg (talk) 20:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As I just sayd, if I ever have advocated something, then it is my language, not institute or university. Difference between us is here in the fact that I do not hide my real name (S. Iva - Digwuren just wrote an article about). So everyone can freely look out who I am and what are my possible interests but we don't know anything about who are Digwuren, Miacek et. al., which institutions or ideas could they advocate and wether they have some conflict of interests or not.
 * Regarding number of speakers, Koreinik etc 2000: A kiilt rahvas kynõlõs gives the number of active and passive speakers 70.000, active speakers about half of them. Salminen gives the speakers' number 50.000. Your point, that it is more than the population of the modern Võru County isn't serious, because Võro is spoken in all historical Võromaa (Vana Võromaa - Võru and Põlva counties with some parts of Valga and Tartu counties).
 * Regarding ISO code. It was requested by a group of requesters (including very well known linguists) from different institutions in Estonia and abroad.
 * "My theories" and "Scholarly consensus". I do not use Wikipedia to promote my own theories. There is proven enough in discussions also by other users that there does not exist a scholarly consensus in the question of Võro and South Estonian. There have been presented reliable sources naming them languages.--Võrok (talk) 21:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thankyou for identifying yourself, Sulev. What confuses me is the introduction to a 2004 publication on South Estonian Phonetics you co-authored, which states on the very first line: "The South-Estonian dialects differ from Standard Estonian more than any other Estonian dialect.". When did the word "dialect" become such a negative word for you? When I see this, I don't understand why South Estonian dialects cannot be about the 28 dialects of the region, but must be called South Estonian language. We already have the article Võro language which is the newly developed literary language in Southern Estonia, perhaps this could be renamed to Võro literary language, since as I understand it, it was developed from an amalgam of two sub-dialects of spoken Võro. We could have an article on the historical Tartu literary language too. Then to bridge everything together, have a disambig page called South Estonian with links to all these articles. Perhaps this way we can strip out all the nationalist/regionalist political under-current and focus on the linguistic aspects only. Martintg (talk) 23:12, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh you know that the question about differentiating between languages and dialects is a never ending story. The list of the wolrd's languages isn't final and stoned. I guess you know, that the problem of the dialects in Estonia is, that they hardly live any more. They all are nearly extinct or assimilated to the Standard Estonian. If Võro had stayed on the status of just a dialect (dialects aren't seriously protected or developed anywhere) then it probably would be nearly in the same situation by now. So obviously we do not have Estonian living dialects after 10-20 years (when the oldest generation will leave us), exept maybe South Estonian Mulgi and a North Estonian small insular dialect Kihnu where some revitalization is taking place. Dialects will then exists only in the historic linguistics, books, dialect maps and archives of universities and institutes. And probably some dialects inside Võro (if they aren't merged into the common spoken Võro).
 * But having the articles about South Estonian literary language or Tartu literay language and also Võro literary language is in principe a good idea. They are already existing in the Võro and Estonian Wikipedias. I have thought about it, but I don't know who would write the articles. But the article about Võro literary language can not substitute the article Võro language. Võro has its history, its dialects, its new common spoken language and other levels of the language pyramide where the standard language is just the top (Kasak, Enn 1998: Võru murre ja võro keel. Publ. of Võro Inst. no 4, pp. 13-19). Article about the literary language can be an additional article or a chapter inside the article about the language.--Võrok (talk) 01:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand now, to paraphrase, many dialects in Estonia are almost extinct, since dialects are never seriously protected. If Võro had stayed the status of a dialect, it would have suffered the same fate as many other dialects, a historical curiosity that only exists in books, museums and archives. Therefore Võro must be elevated to the status of a language, only then can it survive and flourish, and this has been the mission of yourself and the Võro Institute.
 * So even though eminent academics such as your Doctoral thesis advisor Professor Karl PaluSalu published a corpus of Estonian dialects which include South Estonian dialects in 2003 and yourself refer to South Estonian dialects in the introduction of a book in 2004, we should now no longer think of South Estonian dialects but of South Estonian language instead. Therefore there cannot be an article called South Estonian dialects in Wikipedia. Have I summed up your position correctly here? Martintg (talk) 11:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed with the last suggestions of Martintg here and on the Talk:South_Estonian_language.--Võrok (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A provocative deletion of Võro again by User:Miacek: Why Voru and not...--Võrok (talk) 14:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This thread is most likely caused by unfamiliarity with the subject. therefore here is a source that should spell out everything relevant and end this discussion: Language Policy in Estonia by Mart Rannut: The forefathers of the current Estonian nation moved into the Estonian territory at least from two different directions in different waves (cf. Viitso 2001), both groups speaking similar, however considerably differing Balto-Finnic vernaculars. This laid the basis for two different Estonian languages, North and South Estonian, in use during medieval times, even in print (both became literary languages in the 17th century). The role of the South Estonian literary language began to wane in the 18th century in conjunction with the publication in 1739 of the Bible in North Estonian and with the introduction of compulsory reading skills in 1729, based on North Estonian. In the 19th century South Estonian was devalued to a low variety vernacular without accepted literary norms; however it has been in continuous oral usage in Southern Estonia. The revival of Southern Estonian took place in 1990s, when a modernised literary form was created. On this language form two ethnic groups, the Võro and Seto base their ethnic identity.--Termer (talk) 07:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would be grateful if somebody fixes a mistake in the article Sulev Iva written by user:Digwuren. The mistake is that Võro is a reconstructed language. I can't/don't want edit the article myself because the article is about me.--Võrok (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks.--Võrok (talk) 11:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Themfromspace and John Stuart Yeates, Daily Record (Maryland), etc.
Resolved.

User:Themfromspace recently tagged the John Stuart Yeates article, written by User:Stuartyeates about his late grandfather. The article appears to be of a high standard and lacking of any other violations (e.g. WP:NPOV) that this conflict may have given rise to. In the absence of any other problems the COI cleanup template should be removed. It's somehwhat ironic to see Friendly being used in this fashion to WP:BITE the newbies. From feedback given in the case of Daily Record (Maryland) (another seemingly inappropriately tagged article) this editor "strongly believe[s] that any users of this article should be aware that the article was typed by a person very likely to be personally related to the company". Again, if the conflict has not given rise to other issues the tag should be removed. To their credit, articles like Mian Muhammad Aslam Advocate by User:Mianhammad59 stating that subject "successfully emerged as one of the best lawyers of Punjab province" are appropriately tagged. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 04:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, as I have already explained to this user elswhere, I believe the COI tag should remain on the articles for as long as significant amounts of information on the article have been edited in a conflict of interest. This is to let reader's of the article know that the article isn't up to the normal standards of a community edited encyclopedia.  It's also to let Wikipedians know that the article needs worked on and spotted for behavioural issues and POV problems.  I believe that what I am doing is the standard procedure when working with articles that have been edited by COI editors. Themfromspace (talk) 08:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As User:THF said above, "But that's not Wikipedia policy, and it's an abuse of the tag to use it that way, as well as dreadfully unfair and uncivil to editors who are adhering to the rules.". I couldn't have said it better myself. Many (most?) articles are not community edited anyway. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 11:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem here is in the wording of the template. I have no problem with the use of the COI tag being used (in this case anyway, I don't have the depth of experience to speak in generalities), but it would be great if it would be changed slightly to more of an encouragement for third party readers to contribute. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC) (hope I got the formatting right)
 * 1) John Stuart Yeates appears to be a notable botanist. I hope that whoever is actively working on this article, conflicted or not, will wind up improving the references to a satisfactory level. We would at least expect someone to do a search of worldcat.org to see if any of his publications are found in libraries. (That would allow supplying complete references for his books). If he published any well-known scientific papers, please refer to them, and supply full citations. The bios in Who's Who are essentially self-published so they may not merit inclusion.
 * 2) Daily Record (Maryland). This is a paradox, because one would think that a statewide daily newpaper would easily be notable, but I can see no third-party coverage at all! If no sources can truly be found, the article needs to be quite a bit shorter. The 18 items that are now in the reference list look like advertising blurbs or directory entries -- nothing that can establish the importance of the paper. (Except for that NNA award which, we are told, is given to small newspapers with under-16,000 circulation. WP has no article on the National Newspaper Association so it is hard to know if this award is significant). EdJohnston (talk) 02:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * look like advertising blurbs or directory entries
 * They're actually not references but misapplied external links (e.g. "Maryland Court of Appeals " instead of "Maryland Court of Appeals", and most just verify that these entities exist, not the Daily Record's stated relationship with them). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The topic is whether the COI tag is appropriate - if it's not notable then prod or AfD it. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 02:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of the time where I see an award listed like this it is to establish notability (usually there's some edit summary or talk page evidence of this). I'm not sure in this case but the references are indeed lacking so I've added refimprove. As you say, it is somewhat the paradox - maybe it's just a secondary source (presumably, like blogs, there are many newspapers that quote others but are rarely quoted themselves). Do you see any reason to keep the COI tag in addition to the refimprove tag? -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 11:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Microcredit Summit Campaign

 * Accounts
 * Accounts

Self evident case of COI. Intervention in the name of Neutrality is desperately needed. Thanks--Hu12 (talk) 05:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Tagged for Notability. This seems to be a kind of monitoring organization that wants to track and summarize the progress of microcredit. It does not appear to make any loans directly, but they hold conferences. This group is not very well known, judging from Google searches, and if no reliable sources are found, it could be a candidate for deletion. They did get a grant of $700,000 from the Gates Foundation, so somebody takes them seriously, but hardly anyone seems to write about them. If they do serious survey work in the field, perhaps they have academic publications? EdJohnston (talk) 06:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Admin in clear COI reverting changes to articles which encompass a project he is affilated with




All the articles above are clearly A7s, they have absolutely no sources, and there is no indication the subject is notable. There is nothing indicating why these subjects deserve their own article, there is no indication they are notable outside the tv series. The admin noted above has a clear COI, as he is in a project which deals with this exact series of articles, and he has reverted all my changes, along with threatening me with a block, even though the articles are clear A7s. Since he has an obvious COI with regards to the subject, he should not be making such changes.

Further, Geddon was previously deleted under an AfD, and I tagged it with a g4, which he reverted despite the fact the article was not changed to meet the problems addressed in the AfD.—  Dæ dαlus <sup style="color:green;">Contribs  00:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is absolutely no way that I have a conflict of interest with these pages just because I have an interest in the pages' subjects. And, as an administrator, I can remove CSD tags if I find that they are not applicable.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 00:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You can, but if you are comfortable that your assessment of these articles is the correct one then you should have no objection with letting someone else without the emotional attachment handle it instead of you. The AFD'd article, which you did not mention, would seem to be a particularly clear cut case. Threats of block also seem inappropriate. I don't think being part of a project is proof of bias, but your actions do seem questionable to an outside observer.  DreamGuy (talk) 00:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A7 is not (as it was pointed out on my talk page in a related discussion) is not proper for fictional subjects, and one of these articles was clearly not an A7 after I had rewritten it sometime after its initial AFD. The one that he tagged as G4 I now realize was probably the correct course of action, but deletion is not the proper course of action in any of these. The notability isn't exactly shown, but this is fixed through merge discussions or AFD (the former preferred over the latter, IMO).— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 00:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As a note to all The admin above threatend to block me if I took the subject above to an AfD.—  Dæ dαlus <sup style="color:green;">Contribs  00:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No. I threatened to block you if you continued to tag pages for speedy deletion or made a batch AFD for all of these pages.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 01:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ryulong, I just looked at two of the articles (the last two on the list above) and neither one had any reliable, secondary sources. So, they could be candidates for speedy deletion.  Could you explain why you would threaten someone with a block for interpreting policy in a manner that it arguably correct? Cla68 (talk) 01:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Speedy deletion for A7 does not cover articles about fictional subjects. He tagged all but the first page (since merged by myself) for A7. That was incorrect application of policy and disruptive editing. I am trying to get Daedalus to work collaboratively to merge the pages with the parent articles per his own statements (on my talk page). I still feel that this is not a matter for this noticeboard, but perhaps ANI.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙 ) 01:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, Ryulong. Daedalus, I suggest you use the regular AfD process instead of speedy deletion on these articles and see how it shakes out.  Cla68 (talk) 01:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, just redirect them all to their main articles and save everyone's time and effort. <b style="color:black;">Black Kite</b> 01:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree with Ryulong here, fictional articles aren't A7. Secret account 01:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Klamath Knot
I found this through a reference on an ecoregion article that this was a name for the area n question, which is the author of this book's term. I added WP:Notability and made some comments on Talk:Klamath Knot, and added the books category, and just now took out "Regions of California" and put in Geography of California/Oregon, and also removed a "forests" (ecoregion) category; one of the cites was clearly misrepresentative in being used to seemingly cite that this term was in common usage (the ref made no mention of it) and the other two cites are references to the book's publisher. I'm "giving it a chance" but maybe should just have made a speedy delete on grounds of non-notability and "reflexive reference"....someone trying to use Wikipedia to establish a term of their invention, in order to advance book sales, seems clearly suspect.Skookum1 (talk) 12:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Gliese IT
Resolved.
 * - Having trouble with an active incident described in the Josiefoxx76 SPI and AfD. SPAs popping up, removing tags (including CSD and AfD twice each), blanking SPI, etc. Not sure if there's anything else to do, need assistance/advice. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 19:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

AMAX Information Technologies
Resolved. The article I created,, was deleted due to an administrator noting that it contains blatant advertising. I am still new at creating articles and trying to comply with Wikipedia's guidelines. Please see Amaxhelen/AMAX Information Technologies where it contains the newer revision stored in my subpage. I really need any help making this appropriate to have it live in the database. Would also appreciate if someone can look over and point out any suggestions as well. Amaxhelen (talk) 23:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Account was blocked on February 27th. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 01:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Kappa96 and his "client", LaShawn Pettus Brown
got dinged with a couple warnings recently for repeatedly blanking Talk:LaShawn Pettus Brown. Then he left me a message requesting help with "our clients page". I re-evaluated the talk page and found it did indeed need to be trimmed to just project tags, and pointed the user to WP:EDITSUM. Still, the user has edited nothing but his client's page, LaShawn Pettus Brown, so I figured I'd drop a note here for further precautionary examination. Thank you! :)   Doulos Christos   ♥ talk   11:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * More concerning is this BLP discusses jail time and various court cases without references - may be one for WP:BLPN. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 14:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Samj and Save the Netbooks
Resolved. was created and is being maintained by User:Samj, who freely admits (on the talk page, but not in the article itself) to being the founder of Save the Netbooks, a campaign to have the "Netbook" trademark cancelled. Letdorf (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC).


 * Can you identify any NPOV violations in the article? It's not optimal for an article to be maintained by someone with a COI, but I don't see any obvious indication that User:Samj is violating any Wikipedia rules.  Your edits, such as linking to a Wikipedia user on the page, on the other hand, have not been appropriate. THF (talk) 16:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn't aware that linking to user pages from articles (when the identity in question is in the public domain) was deprecated. Can you point me at the relevant WP policy/guideline? 16:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC).


 * WP:USER: "One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage..." THF (talk) 17:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I stand corrected. But it sounds as if this policy is more to do with maintaining namespace segregation rather than any kind of Wikiquette/privacy issue? Letdorf (talk) 17:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC).


 * Well, that, and the fact that userspace is beyond other editors' control, and linking to the userspace from mainspace may result in misleading readers. If a RS mentions User:Samj, then you can create a sentence referencing it; otherwise, reliable sources have deemed StN's leadership not notable, and there's no reason for we mere Wikipedia editors to disagree. THF (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * By the way, the article has now been nominated for deletion by another editor. Letdorf (talk) 21:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC).


 * User:Samj needs a cluebat about conduct issues. Finding fault with every user's comment in the AFD doesn't look much like the caution/avoid advice in WP:COI, and there's also been incivility, AFD and COI tag removal and an unproven allegation of sockpuppetry. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * So you say. Bear in mind that I've been relentlessly, personally attacked (in my own name, thanks "Letdorf") over this non-profit endeavour both within and outside Wikipedia. The COI tag placement was unjustified as were the majority of the early votes in the AfD (citing COI without justification). The sockpuppet allegation was also sufficiently curious as to be reopened by another admin after one of the participants in the AfD debate promptly delisted it as "frivolous" and buried it as "irrelevant digression". -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 15:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I still don't understand your objection to being named in the article; on the talk page you voluntarily admitted to being both the creator of the article and the founder of the article's topic, you also explicitly state that the purpose of creating the article was to "to raise awareness of the campaign". Letdorf (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC).


 * Oh, and is now on a WP:POINT rampage of disputing COI tags and linking to his new essay Conflict of interest is a cause not a crime. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That essay title can be disputed, but the essay itself seems sound. Too many editors use coi as a punishment tag, rather than to identify problems with an article.  THF (talk) 21:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think people do use it as a punishment tag: more as one indicating the article has an intrinsic risk of bias while a COI editor/article relationship exists. Interpretation of WP:COI does appear to have shifted over the last few years; I take the old-school view that nobody's really capable of writing neutrally about topics where they have an interest. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 21:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * But that's not Wikipedia policy, and it's an abuse of the tag to use it that way, as well as dreadfully unfair and uncivil to editors who are adhering to the rules. THF (talk) 15:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I didn't add the coi to this article as a "punishment", merely as a caveat to readers, who may not have been aware of the authorship of the article. I can see your point about the difficulty of writing neutrally, but IMHO, this particular case is a blatant attempt to use WP to promote a personal crusade. Letdorf (talk) 23:36, 26 February 2009 (UTC).
 * The sticking point really is "what counts as non-neutrality?". Some say we only need look at internal article content neutrality (which is the thrust of WHYCOI); others take the view that overall self-promotional edit pattern (e.g. creating and defending articles related to yourself) counts as a more global non-neutrality that also counts as a COI problem. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 23:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Accusations of conflict of interest are extremely serious, both for the article subject and especially for the few of us who choose not to hide behind aliases by editing using our full names (which I note neither of you are - did you stop to think that this little rant will end up in Google?). [Ab]using this tag without supporting violations should arguably be a serious offense in itself (given it is essentially defamatory for both parties) but it's clear that this behaviour is rife and even editors who should know better (yourselves included) apparently do not. The offending essay (which you unfairly characterise as a "WP:POINT rampage") is intended as a gentle reminder rather than tackling the problem head on by wholesale stripping of COI tags from obviously clean articles. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 15:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want to alter the basis of how WP:COI works, take it to Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest. As far as I'm concerned, creation of self-created articles in inherently suspect as self-promotion. If Category:Wikipedia_articles_with_possible_conflicts_of_interest is getting large, it's because COI article creation is rife, and there's a huge processing backlog. As I said to you, if you feel a COI tag is inappropriate (e.g. because an editor is no longer editing) no-one is stopping you helping to reduce that backlog by properly investigating and removing it. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 17:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:WHYCOI is entirely consistent with WP:COI, as best I can tell. THF (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * And attempting to abuse WP for ones own ends is also a serious issue. It is every WP contributors' prerogative to "hide behind aliases" or not; and those that do not would be well advised to be extremely circumspect in what they do on WP, or indeed anywhere else on the Net. Perhaps the best policy for all concerned is to abstain from creating, or making significant contributions to, articles which deal with potentially controversial topics that one is intimately involved with. My interpretation of the coi tag was purely as a caveat: that the authorship of the article implies that the article may be vulnerable to NPOV or other issues. If this tag is intended to have a stronger meaning than that, then maybe we need another one.


 * As for the use of the word "rampage", I think this refers to the apparent "spamming" of the essay on numerous talk pages, rather than the essay itself. I'll leave it to other to decide whether essay-spamming is an acceptable activity on WP. Letdorf (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC).


 * Samj followed WP:COI in good faith, disclosed his COI, and was punished for it with personal attacks and hounding. This is a very good way to ensure that editors with conflicts of interest will instead edit anonymously, and will make WP's COI problem worse, not better.  See, e.g., the WP:SPA edits at Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman and Robbins.


 * And, again, "spam" implies bad faith, of which none has been shown. THF (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I've started a discussion at Template talk:COI about how we can best modify the templates (and create a new one) to avoid the problem we see here where one template is used to do two different things. THF (talk) 18:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Commonweal Institute


A whole batch of SPAs, some recently created, two with names of Institute employees, started editing this article, really WP:LARDing it up. THF (talk) 19:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Article has many issues in support of a coi warning so I have promoted the warning to a separate COI template in the hope that they will tend to the other issues themselves. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 11:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Thomas Hoeren and User:Putzlappen‎
Resolved. These users have to date only editted Thomas Hoeren‎. I am fairly confident one is the sock of the other (reported here and thus they are both the subject of the article. Babakathy (talk) 21:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Thomas Hoeren
 * User:Putzlappen‎
 * It looks to me that Thomas Hoeren, the German law professor, is notable. The article could be improved. I wonder if anyone has time to rewrite it :-). The many, many red links to organizations he is associated with don't assist the English-speaking reader very much. Stuff that cannot be provided with an on-line reference might be briefly summarized. I checked his article in the German wiki; it has many red links as well, but is somewhat better written. EdJohnston (talk) 04:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree he passes wp:prof. My concern was the COI. Babakathy (talk) 09:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Have cross-checked and verified main claims in article. Suggest case can be closed. Babakathy (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see that this COI has led to any other policy violations (at least none that you haven't already fixed). Added refimprove. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 11:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Jon Wiener
Resolved. was primarily written by User:jonwiener and I was concerned lest this rather under-referenced article was a COI. Can someone look into this? Thanks! Collect (talk) 17:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Currently reviewing. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 14:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Aniand (book)
Resolved. Someone want to have a look at this Aniand (book). Editor appears to have a COI. I didn't revert as vandal, but don't think what's being edited is proper either. I suspect, just a COI. Thanks — Ched ~ (yes?) 00:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I typed up a note on his/her talk page to see WP:COI, but didn't edit the article - it's an AfD anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter in the long run. — Ched ~ (yes?) 00:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * User has been sufficiently disruptive (socks, article deletions, afd tag removals, etc.) to have been blocked. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 12:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Gavin Lurssen
has been completely rewritten over the last few hours by User has removed COI templates, and ignored COI warnings. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 23:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Article appears to be free of related violations (if light on references, tagged accordingly). There's been two fairly busy IP editors since but User:Jeanlurssen seems to be acting in good faith. -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">samj <sub style="color:maroon;">in <sup style="color:green;">out 01:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)