Wikipedia talk:Hints on dealing with conflict of interest problems

Suggestions
I like what you've done very much. These are suggestions for missing coverage.

Prevalence of self-sourced and fake references. For the former, especially press releases that aren't labeled as press releases, sometimes reprinted verbatim by what one would sometimes think are RSes. For the latter I'm thinking specifically of yourstory.com and bangalorean.net (both now blacklisted). In the latter case I believe items were placed there specifically to bolster Wikipedia articles.

This doesn't mention socking at all, but it's frequently a corollary to COI editing. How to file successfully. How to use the checkuser=yes flag in a recurrence.

How and when to use connected contributor, paid and uw-paid. How to ask nicely for admin help with nonresponsive editors.

I'll contribute if possible but this upcoming week is going to be busy. – Brianhe (talk) 21:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Good points. Please feel free to edit. A section on templates useful in COI work would be helpful.  By the way, is there some user talk template for images for "This requires an ORTS ticket?"  John Nagle (talk) 20:51, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Uw-copyright-new is probably the one you want. There are other templates for copyright issues listed at WP:WARN as well. - Brianhe (talk) 21:00, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of something which specifically mentions Donating copyrighted materials, for when a COI editor posts a picture of their product/work/box/etc. That's allowed, but has to be done correctly through ORTS. This often comes up in bio articles where someone posts a professional-quality portrait claiming it's a selfie. John Nagle (talk) 05:48, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Uw-copyright-new does mention Donating copyrighted materials at the fourth bullet. Brianhe (talk) 08:51, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

NMS socking scandal
Great stuff here! Have you considered dealing with one of the really bad and embarrassing cases of paid COI editing we've had here? I half expected to see it beside your "Rich crooks with PR people" section.

New Media Strategies had a team of paid sock puppets working, by contract, for the Koch brothers. Their shared IP busted them. They were caught and exposed in the press, an SPI followed here, yet they were unblocked and some are still here, with other editors, and at least one admin, carrying their torch very aggressively. Here are some links:


 * Sockpuppet investigations/MBMadmirer/Archive
 * User:Jeff Bedford, one of them, who declares he edits neutrally.
 * One of his many sandboxes, which was then used below:
 * Added without collaboration.
 * Just previously, this criticism had been removed to whitewash the article.
 * Talk:Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers/Archive_1 - Note the participation of those sock puppets.
 * 2011 - Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’
 * 2015 - BREAKING: Koch Industries Implicated in Multi-Year Wikipedia "Whitewashing" Scandal (Note the named current editors, study their editing, and you'll see strong COI whitewashing efforts. They work together and effectively block any negative content, regardless of how well sourced. They will often come back later and delete it.

Now to put this in context, compare this with Alva's activities discussed at Jimbo's talk, ANI, and COI. Alva declared his COI and cooperated with other editors, yet is threatened severely.

NMS had a whole paid professional PR team secretly and deceptively whitewashing multiple articles for two of the most wealthy and powerful men in the USA, yet they got away with it (very quickly unblocked) and some are still active. Because of the named current editors who still guard those articles, it is fruitless to even attempt an NPOV version on those articles. They constantly whitewash right wing political subjects. I wonder what User:Jimbo Wales thinks about this whole situation? Why is he so concerned about Alva? Is he at least equally concerned about the Koch brothers' influence here? It's much worse and systemic. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:51, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

What's about academic researchers
This is a helpful page to understand COI. I wonder whether you could edit in a section of how you deal with academic researchers who, in my experience, are able to edit in references to their peers (and enemies) as much as to their own work. The own work might be considered COI. Think of a page on an insect and a researcher who studies that insect who contributes a reference to a qualitative contribution to understanding the insect, authored by themselves. So, not a case of excessive change to that page, but adding a relevant contribution. How to consider/handle this? Disclosure: as an academic researcher, I am an interested party in this question. Ingmar.lippert (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2020 (UTC)