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{{notice|This is the ] for the ]. Issues related to ] should go to the noticeboard, not to this talk page. This talk page is for discussing issues relating to ''the noticeboard itself''.}}
{{shortcut|WT:COI/N|WT:COIN}}
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==Proposed template change== == Runza ==
I'm proposing an additional category in the ] to reduce the number of posts at ] and ], please feel free to comment here ]. ''']''' <sup>]</sup> 13:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


Hello. I am seeing a probable COI edit on an article that I'm watching, ], . Could someone with experience in such matters contact the editor please? I would do it myself, but I'm not familiar with the procedure and I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment. P.S. A related article that the editor has not changed, so far anyway, is ]. Thanks. <span style="font-family: cursive;">— ]<small><sup> (])</sup></small></span> 14:40, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
== Fathom SEO's Career Education Corporation spam ==
:Thank you. <span style="font-family: cursive;">— ]<small><sup> (])</sup></small></span> 17:08, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
:]Midwestern ] (]) 05:30, 14 April 2023 (UTC)


== Does anyone know what happened with Saudi Arabia trying to edit Misplaced Pages? ==
Hi. This one should probably have started out here, but it went to ] first, probably because it first looked like link-spamming. There may be some link-spamming but it turns out this is really more about an SEO firm adding articles about their clients, burnishing their spin and then search-optimizing these articles with lots of internal wiki-linking. The internal wiki-linking makes a lot of sense and by itself is not necessarily a problem for us since we're supposed to be doing this for all our articles (see ]). The potential problem, though: when someone searches for "elite+small+college+new+england", a search engine will return our "Acme Polytechnic University & For-profit Diploma Mill" article high in search engine rankings (and above other Misplaced Pages articles). When the searcher then clicks on the search result link, they go to a POV article speaks of Acme PU&FDM in glowing terms.


I'm looking into the issue but I can't find any sources/articles on it here, or any centralized discussion of the whole problem. Does anyone know where I can find this? ] (]) 15:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Collectively, this firm's accounts have received planty of warnings and requests to stop.
:This board is for discussion about the operation of the COI noticeboard. Requests for help should be made at the ]. ] (]) 18:48, 17 April 2023 (UTC)


== Presentation on COI ==
Anyway, there's a lot already written on this at:
*] <small>(permanent )</small>


I've issued a public invitation to an online meeting where I will give a presentation on conflict of interests. That invitation was posted within one of the investigation discussions and so that it's not lost to page watchers, I thought I'd post it on this talk page.
There was also a WP:ANI report, now "resolved", at:
*] <small>(permanent )</small>


The New Zealand Wiki community has its monthly online meeting later today. Anyone can join in and we usually have a few Australians turn up, i.e. it's not just a domestic meeting, with overseas editors most welcome. I'll be talking about COI editing so that we as a community learn something from the investigation that's going on, with a goal of achieving broader understanding of how to manage COIs. Anyone watching this page is most welcome to join in: ]. I've asked ] to be on the programme in second slot so that there's an approximate time available for those who are only interested in this topic; tune in from 12:15 h ], which is UTC+12:00. for your convenience. ''']]''' 20:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
I think we should probably centralize all of our information in one place. I propose to keep working on this on the WikiProject Spam page since there's already a lot of data there, but if others think otherwise, let me know.<br />
--<font face="Futura">] ] </font> 23:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
:I personally have confidence in the WikiProject Spam editors, and I'm sure they will have our sympathy as they deal with this issue! Articles on private trade schools that don't have any reliable sources commenting on their significance might be candidates for deletion. Our article on ] seems to contain a good bit of well-documented criticism. ] (]) 03:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


:Here's a ; feel free to use the presentation and modify it as you see fit. It went well; there was a healthy amount of interest. The editors who spoke gave feedback like "I've learned a lot", "I'm definitely going to add conflict of interest statements to my user page", or "that was really useful, thank you". ''']]''' 05:02, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
==Archiving==
Why doesn't Miszabot archive sections with the resolved tag sooner than 10 days after last edit? ''']''' <sup>]</sup> 08:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
:The archiving timeout was originally set to 14 days, but it now is 10 days. MiszaBot takes away each complete thread as soon as the timestamp on the last edit is 10 days old. There is a proposal for the bot to take away resolved items quicker, and it's on Misza's to-do list. ] and ] could use this feature as well. If you see an especially verbose thread that is resolved but still hanging around, you can always archive it manually. My suggestion is to wait 3 days after it was marked 'resolved' in case anyone disagrees. ] (]) 17:46, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


== Discussion of potential interest ==


Editors who read this noticeboard may be interested in the discussion at ], regarding how to best obtain a random sample of Misplaced Pages articles on companies for the purposes of assessing problems like undisclosed COI editing. – ]''']''' ] 16:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
==User:Ideasintoaction==
(Moved to ]) --] (]) 20:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
::This report really should go on the ] page, I'll move it tonight unless someone else beats me to it. ''']''' <sup>]</sup> 20:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
:::Yes and thanks. I'm really far to busy to be trying to patch together reports like this between real life stuff. I'm glad I can rely on editors like you to help. --] (]) 20:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


== Unclear starter-template output ==
== A bot that notices possible COI edits ==


When filing a new COI report using the "To begin a new discussion, enter the name of the relevant article below:" item, the user is given ] as the skeleton. It has bullet-entries:
]
{{box|
shows an example of ] reverting the addition of a red-linked article name to the ] date article. The person whose article didn't exist was ], a British heavyweight boxer. (I know nothing about Povey, but his article has never been created). Sounds like a helpful activity! The bot is operated by ], and ] already shows two barnstars on its user page. It appears to devote its efforts to cleaning up the date pages. ] (]) 17:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
* <nowiki>{{pagelinks|article name}}</nowiki>
:Looks like a great tool Ed, but boy - the day we start give awards and medals to robots, I cringe to think about it! ] (]) 16:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
* <nowiki>{{userlinks|username}}</nowiki>
:: Welcome to cringe times. -- ] (]) 21:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
}}
::: I see what you mean. Glad you like the bot though. ]<sub>(])</sub> 22:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
Those seem pretty clear to the filer how and where to enter the relevant details. But the results of those templates when published are:
{{box|
* {{pagelinks|article name}}
* {{userlinks|username}}
}}
The outputs are very similar, but the concepts are quite different. Unless I recognize the differential link-sets, or the article name and username themselves, it's not clear which entry is for an article and which is for the involved user. Articles could be named for a person and editors could have non-person names, and there are cases where unrelated users have the same username as articles. I think it would be clearer if either each bullet-entry were tagged with what it is:
{{box|
* Article: {{pagelinks|article name}}
* User: {{userlinks|username}}
}}
or the article(s) vs user(s) were in separately-identified lists:
{{box|
* Article(s):
** {{pagelinks|article name}}
* User(s):
** {{userlinks|username}}
}}
I am only an occasional user of COIN, which makes this unclarity more noticeable to me but I also don't want to BOLDly change a tool that regulars might be expected to be a certain way. Thoughts? ] (]) 18:09, 3 August 2024 (UTC)


:Sounds like a reasonable improvement to me. (I also have the nagging half-memory that there are other noticeboards that use a similar format that might also be improved in the same way...) ] (]) 18:57, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
== Closed comment ==
::Preference among the two approaches? Either one completely solves my concern, so I don't have a preference. I can see pros and cons of both, in terms of readability, compactness, consistency with other notice-boards, etc. ] (]) 19:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)


== Semi-protected edit request on 6 August 2024 ==
I removed the closing of a discussion that did not seem to have any closure, other than unsourced dismissals from editors who may know what's going on with this incident. I still have serious questions and concerns about the activities of this admin that I occasionally come across in editing articles, and I seriously don't want to have them. It doesn't really matter about the who, what or why when the questions could be directly addressed or policies about admin privacy be directly addressed. ] | ] 04:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


<!-- Do not change this line. Your report should go below this line. -->
== Borderline COI question==
* {{pagelinks|Jake Braun}}
* {{userlinks|97.119.137.18}}
<!-- Copy and use the templates above if there are more users or articles. -->
This article was tagged with ] because of extensive edits by the subject. The subject attempted to remove the tag and had their account blocked indefinitely. See the COI noticeboard discussion at and the user discussion at ]. An IP address user has again attempted to remove the tag.


<!-- Template:Unsigned IP --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 00:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)</small>
This is a bit of a messy situation, and I thought I'd bring the subject up here rather than waste time filing a possibly unnecessary report, but I have a concern over a user with a COI. The article is ], the user is ].

The background is that Tucker Max is in a feud with the Gawker blog, and Theserialcomma is a commenter at Gawker (search for Tucker Max on Gawker for proof, they have some dozen articles about him, all negative). Theserialcomma has admitted his affiliation with Gawker and used Gawker posts to try and gain an advantage in talk page debates. Most problematic however, is his behavior on the Tucker Max article. He wanted the addition of a section devoted to criticism that wasn't only declared a BLP violation, but got the article semi-protected to prevent anonymous vandalism, and he wanted it so badly he filed two different RfC's trying to get it included. He makes it very clear that his POV is that Tucker Max is a bad person and ought to be represented as such.

Since the failure of the second RfC, he has been splitting hairs and (in my own opinion) wikilawyering over the inclusion of sources in the article. He also ] another editor involved in editing the article.

Part of the reason I'm posting this here is because the guidelines do say that COI reports shouldn't be used to gain advantage in a content dispute and I am in a content dispute with Theserialcomma, but I do think there is a COI issue here. Considering my antagonistic relationship with Theserialcomma, though, I'd want to have someone not involved in the article give me the go-ahead to file a COI.

I don't feel like digging through diffs, but I can provide them if they're needed. ] (]) 05:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


::BLP and ] come into play before COI. The material was sourced from the subject's blog, and an apparent facsimile of a document hosted there. That's waaaaay short of the standards, and I've removed it. If real independent sources can't be found, then the material is not for wikipedia.--] (]) 09:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

== advice please... ==

Advice please, on what to do when there is circumstantial evidence that a contributor is in a conflict of interest, but when asked, he or she denies it?

This particular contributor made edits that included information that is not in the public domain -- but would have been known by the subject of the article, or someone associated with them.

Thanks! ] (]) 06:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
:Have you engaged the user who left that information on the appropriate talk page? Depending on the nature of what was posted, there may be issues of ] and ] that make that material inappropriate, before we even get to ]. And as you mentioned "known by the subject", that implies that we're talking about a ] which has even more specific issues with what may or may not be added. The first step I would recommend is opening a dialog with the user, preferably on the article talk page (leaving a note on the user's talk if they don't notice the discussion), and tagging the disputed material with <nowiki>{{cn}}</nowiki>. ]] 13:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

==Important Policy update==
I have added the following paragraph to ] to reflect the actual state of matters. Please familiarize yourself with this, and feel free to discuss if you think this does not reflect actual practice.

:When investigating possible cases of COI editing, Wikipedians must be careful not to ] other editors. Misplaced Pages's ] takes precedence over this guideline. COI situations are usually revealed when the editor themselves discloses a relationship to the subject that they are editing. In case the editor does not identity themselves or their affiliation, reference to the ] may help counteract biased editing.

Thank you for you help, and thank you to ] for reviewing this edit. ] <sup>]</sup> 18:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

:Good to see it spelled out like that. Sometimes users' COI hunts can get a little too deep if the relationship is not immediately admitted by the other party. ]] 18:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

== WP:OUTING vs. WP:COI & WP:NOR ==

While ] addresses the serious issue of stalking, as currently written, it renders ] and aspects of ] (specifically ]) unenforceable. Any good-faith attempt to identify a user as having a COI usually necessitates some degree of real-life identification. Typically, the user name is a give-away, but otherwise only an intentional or inadvertent admission by a registered or anonymous user is usable evidence – and the problems are mostly with editors who do not want to have their COI edits exposed as such or are unfamiliar with WP:COI in the first place. I feel that the community needs to discuss whether WP:Outing trumps WP:COI and WP:COS or else needs to accommodate legitimate, good-faith enforcement of these policies and guidelines. While the issues have been raised before, there has been no resolution, and that lack of resolution is hampering the work of enforcing WP:COI. If you have an interest in helping resolve this problem, please comment at ]. Thank you, ] <small>]</small> 15:43, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
:I've tried to bring this issue up before. Editors are outed on this page all the time, and it appears that the community finds this acceptable. I would recommend that language be added to ] stating that outing is acceptable when establishing COI, but should be handled with care, such as by only naming the editor's real life identity on this page. ] (]) 21:35, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
::I think it needs interpreting with respect to intent. In comparison, for instance, listing an editor's bad edits would be a form of attack normally, but acceptable within a user RFC. Likewise, "outing" an editor is plain harassment if they're doing nothing wrong, but acceptable within limits during COI discussions (i.e. to the extent required to demonstrate the COI). ] (]) 12:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
:::I can think of a situation right now where the editor was adding his own website without identifying himself. And is now trying to change an article about a topic in which he is heavily involved. If I felt it necessary to bring it to COI, I'd have to out him, right? I agree, we need to change the wording of ]. ] (]) 16:13, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
::::We should not publicize information that might help identify somebody (who doesn't wish to be identified) unless it's in a context where it is necessary for protecting the encyclopedia. Certainly ] is the most frequent place where protecting the encyclopedia may require putting two and two together regarding someone's identity. That may happen also at any of the admin noticeboards, in some ] discussions and in ] reports. While these places may call for some reasoning about a person's identity, or at least, reasoning about their affiliation, it is perfectly in order to suggest to another editor that they have revealed too much about a third party and ask them to redact it. (Even at ], it sometimes happens that a disclosure goes beyond what is strictly needed, and redaction may be appropriate). Changing ] to allow just the appropriate inquiries is a good idea. ] (]) 16:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
:::::Here are the problems as I see them, having some small experience at COIN.
:::::'''1.'''All too often, people in an edit-battle (it's often not a war yet) will use COIN as an attempt to remove the opposition in the edit battle. The user in question of course feels that they are protecting the wiki by removing a (sometimes not there) conflict of interest. By the time they post to COIN, they've often already done some off-wiki research.
:::::'''2.'''Off-wiki research is completely un-regulated, so there's no applying limits to what an angry editor can do. If they stop at an IP lookup or a google search, and bring the info to COIN, it's innocuous enough. If they find "better" info and decide to convince the other party to stop editing, that's bad.
:::::'''3.'''If there's a Wiki policy that says "You may try to establish an editors identity under certain circumstances", and someone does go too far, as in #2 above, this could be construed as having been done with Foundation approval. A policy that says "Don't do it. Period." is black-and-white enough, but a "usually no, but sometimes yes" policy is just asking for trouble.
:::::Right now, one of the most restricted, and thoroughly vetted permissions you can get is that of Checkuser, and this is just to establish whether 2 accounts are the same person, without even identifying the user in the real world. Any account allowed to establish a '''real world''' identity would have to be even more restricted, and not something that should be ambiguously defined. My $0.02. ]] 18:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Changing ] would be a disaster. People's real life physical security is at stake here and absolutely nothing justifies releasing anything that could be used to figure out a real life identity. Does anyone here really want to be responsible for facilitating real life physical threats and attacks against editors? Not to mention any legal consequences for doing so. WP:OUTING clearly trumps all the other policies and guidelines mentioned and is the ethical and moral position to take. — ] (]) 17:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
:Becksguy's priority would require abolishing the ]. ] is designed to get rid of things like street addresses and phone numbers. The suggestion that ] might be editing the ] article in a promotional manner, based on a coincidence of names, is not intended to cause real-world harm to that editor, and is hardly an improper exposure. ] (]) 18:09, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Obviously no one here would intentionally do something to place an editor in harms way, but there have been credible physical threats made against editors, with various police departments and security staff notified of those threats. The issue is not Bigco editing the article on Bigco to make it look better, or some guy spamming for his products, as that's unlikely to result in physical threats against anyone (legal threats is another story). It's editors editing articles that are extremely contentious and dangerous and that inflame people to do stupid things. Such as articles questioning religion, human rights violations, dictatorships, war crimes, terrorism, alternative sexuality, the current election, fringe beliefs and so on. Those editors are the one's needing protection. Not some guy trying to sell his version of ]. I'm not advocating abolishing COIN at all. I'm just saying that in people's eagerness to prevent COI, they may not be aware of the very real and serious real world dangers of identifying some editors. Even if physical threats are not in the picture, there are still serious consequences that can arise from outing an editor: Problems with employment, family, reputation, being outed as a member of a denigrated group, and so on. — ] (]) 18:51, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
:These horror story scenarios need tempering with common sense. As you say, WP:OUTING is justly there to protect vulnerable people. But COI is rarely about this. Nobody is endangered by proof that, say, promotional edits to <nowiki>]</nowiki> come from an IP address corresponding to someone in the press office of XCorpSoft Inc Pty. ] (]) 19:15, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

: We've been over this before. There is a general tension between COI and OUTING issues. In general, if someone edits from an IP address there clearly isn't an issue. Similarly, if someone uses a username like COMPANY X to edit the COMPANY X article then there isn't any real issue with saying that there is generally a problem. This tension will exist inevitably and attempting to remove that tension in the way Cla68 suggests could be a very bad thing. In general we can handle almost any situation beyond that simply by dealing with the POV issues themselves. Even without knowing about COIs detection of serious POV issues is rarely difficult. ] (]) 19:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, as several above have said, that the OUTING concern is not about a member of a company editing the article on their company, usually to make it look better. Clearly that is a COI issue and is not a OUTING issue in terms of protecting an editor from harm. Also clearly, an anon IP editor is not an OUTING issue normally. My major concern is that any lowering of the OUTING protection bar to facilitate dealing with COI issues will also lower the bar for protecting those editors OUTING is there to protect. Arakunem's points are well taken. A policy to protect, such as OUTING, needs to be unambiguous. And that's why I oppose changing OUTING, unless it's to strengthen it. OUTING should be like CHECKUSER, very carefully guarded. — ] (]) 02:49, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

== ] self-promotion ==

{{user | Thacher Proffitt}}, which is a law firm, has been inserting external links into articles like ] and ], leading to reasonably good white papers on their site. I took the link out of ], but left the one in ]. The self-promotion is bothersome, but they're something of an authority on the subject; they were "instrumental in the creation of the mortgage-based securities market", so they helped create the problem. --] (]) 16:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
:* I have posted this to the main project page for comment. This talk page seems not to be the right location. <br>-- ] (]) 01:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

==Current guideline status==
Can I have some clarification about the current status of ]? I've been working on the assumption that a major conflict of interest is a disqualification from directly editing an article without extreme caution
:''if you have a conflict of interest avoid, or exercise great caution when:''
:''1. Editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with''
Is this still the case? ] (]) 02:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
*I've been taking the approach with COI editors, that the guideline does not prohibit them from editing, but it does require them to be very careful to maintain NPOV (accompanied by a description of the NPOV and V policies in a nutshell), and also that they should expect extra scrutiny on their edits. So yes, extreme caution is still "required" by the COI guideline, but I've been making a point to not use the term "disqualification" or similar prohibitions, as I've been finding that editors with a COI also have some of the best info on the topics, and in most cases so far, they are more than happy to stay within the policies once they are described. With most COI cases I've seen, if the editor does not want to play nice with the COI guideline, they are usually soon breaching NPOV, RS, and V, which then put the teeth behind the more friendly suggestions of the COI guideline. Just my experiences so far, others please chime in as well. ]] 02:45, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
::Thx. OK, "disqualification" is too strong, but I'm getting a bit tired about the laxness over people - artists in particular - getting pushy (on grounds that editing isn't explicitly forbidden) and being allowed to take a major role in writing and editing their own articles. It always used to be the case that editors with a close connection were expected to help via the Talk page only.
::Being the main editor of an article is not "careful" - I'm thinking currently of {{user|Fvlcrvm}} and that editor's central role in editing the COI articles ], ] and ]. I don't believe anyone is capable of writing neutrally about themselves, and an agenda to expand an autobiographical article could be viewed as self-promotional ''per se''. ] (]) 03:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

== Pre-listing quesiton to avoid crossing the line of outing ==

I'm on the verge of putting a listing on here because of a suspicion I've just had confirmed about an editor's COI, however before I do I want to make sure that I won't be violating ]. Here's how I came to my evidence:
* Several edits came from an IP address, which geolocates to the town the subject hails from, and when visited via http resolves to a web server the subject uses for commercial activities.
* The subject's biography contained references to the subjects blog, where the subject posts under a pseudonym which corresponds exactly to a wikipedia user who has been editing articles surrounding the subject.
Please let me know if my arrival at this information violates ], in which case I won't list a case here. Thanks! &mdash;/]/<sup><small>]</small></sup>/<sub><small>]</small></sub>/ 21:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
#Is there any abuse, or unbalanced editing, from this user?
#Have you tried contacting him to explain our COI rules? Sounds like you already have enough to justify giving a {{tl|uw-coi}} warning without having to directly query him on who he may be. ] (]) 21:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
:Thanks for your quick response Ed- to answer your questions/suggestions, yes I've informed both the username and the IP address of our COI policies via the {{tl|uw-coi}} template. Most recently it's been the IP address editing. One concern I had was that it was overturning a redirect that was decided at an AfD while adding little or no substantial content to the page, and calling the redirect vandalism. Additionally, it had been restoring a great deal of ]-type text to another article it's connected to, claiming the removal thereof was also vandalism. I've also been accused of having ulterior motives in my edits to those pages. While I attest those claims are untrue, I'd regardless like to list on here to gain outside assistance, provided it doesn't violate ] to do so. &mdash;/]/<sup><small>]</small></sup>/<sub><small>]</small></sub>/ 21:18, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
::'''sigh''' I'm starting to think this might be more of a case for ] since I'm still getting reverted. I've left a more detailed notice on the IP's talk and if I get reverted again without discussion I'm going to go over there. Thanks! &mdash;/]/<sup><small>]</small></sup>/<sub><small>]</small></sub>/ 22:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
:::I protected a redirect which was created as the result of the AfD. I personally don't think you would violate ] by naming the editor and the articles here. Promotional editing is against the rules regardless of the affiliation of the person who is doing the promotion. Admins can sanction for behavior without needing to inquire who the person really is. ] (]) 04:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
::::I've temporarily semiprotected two of the affected articles. It is hoped this will produce discussion. ] (]) 16:12, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
:::::Thanks Ed. I really appreciate the help on your part! &mdash;/]/<sup><small>]</small></sup>/<sub><small>]</small></sub>/ 17:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
::::::And I've made a report on COIN... since I'm sure at this point that if discussion ''does'' occur, the IP won't be doing it with me since it's convinced I have a personal agenda. Thanks again! &mdash;/]/<sup><small>]</small></sup>/<sub><small>]</small></sub>/ 19:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

== Not a COI? ==

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_27#Yggdra_Union:_We.27ll_Never_Fight_Alone - not a COI, as it was archived without comment? Or did I report it wrong?] (]) 14:48, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

== Global Security.Org ==

Hi, I read that this website was, er, "flagged" here, does anyone know what archive I can find the discussion in plz :) ] (]) 03:31, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
:I didn't find any COI complaint about Global Security. If you look at from May 2008, you'll see some editors discussing the reliability of globalsecurity.org as a link. To see some articles where it is currently being used as a link, check out this . The wide usage of the link suggests that a number of people consider it a respectable source. We *do* have an article on ]. ] (]) 00:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

== ] ==

I notice several non-closed/resolved reports were ]. Maybe some Admins can have a look. Thanks. ] (]) 23:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
:The archiver takes away the old reports on a schedule whether the reports are investigated or not. Most of the work of checking into a COI complaint can be done by anyone, not just admins. If you have the time to investigate an old report, feel free to open a new item at COIN, present your findings, and link to the old archived report. ] (]) 23:35, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

== COI report when not promoting oneself? ==

report was closed because the editor was not promoting ''himself''. However, ] says that it's "contributing to Misplaced Pages in order to promote your own interests ''or those of other individuals, companies, or groups''". The important bit is that you are advancing "outside interests" while editing, it doesn't mind that they are your own interests or someone else's. The report complains that an editor is advancing acupunter's interests, so it's inside the scope of WP:COI, and gives an example of such advancement.

I find that the closure reason was not correct. I would like this report to be re-opened, examined just like any other report, and closed for proper reasons. --] (]) 23:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
:Very broad COI complaints, 'person X can't edit because he is a Y,' are usually not taken very seriously here, especially when Y is a large group of people. Do you have something more specific? (Being an acupuncturist is not a COI in the same league as being the actual subject of an article, the brother of the subject, the business partner of the subject etc.). If you find that a person who is a member of a large group is editing non-neutrally it would be more logical to raise the issue at ] or open an ]. ] (]) 23:52, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

::Are my edits biased? That's also a necessary criterion for COI. According to feedback from most who interact with me, I edit neutrally. Therefore, my affiliations don't matter (in fact, WP ought to be thanking editors with expertise in particular areas, not sliming them with these lame accusations). --] (]) 02:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
::The line between "subject matter expert" and "conflict of interest" is often quite fine. The COI guidelines are intended to give an editor guidance about situations in which he or she might find it difficult to edit in line with the policies. They are not a stick with which to beat anyone who happens to be associated with a group, organization, or individual. ]<sup><small><font color="DarkGreen">]</font></small></sup> 02:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 10:30, 19 August 2024

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Runza

Hello. I am seeing a probable COI edit on an article that I'm watching, Runza, here. Could someone with experience in such matters contact the editor please? I would do it myself, but I'm not familiar with the procedure and I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment. P.S. A related article that the editor has not changed, so far anyway, is Runza (restaurant). Thanks. — Mudwater 14:40, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. — Mudwater 17:08, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
@@Midwestern 89.199.101.252 (talk) 05:30, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone know what happened with Saudi Arabia trying to edit Misplaced Pages?

I'm looking into the issue but I can't find any sources/articles on it here, or any centralized discussion of the whole problem. Does anyone know where I can find this? 35.2.38.93 (talk) 15:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

This board is for discussion about the operation of the COI noticeboard. Requests for help should be made at the Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Presentation on COI

I've issued a public invitation to an online meeting where I will give a presentation on conflict of interests. That invitation was posted within one of the investigation discussions and so that it's not lost to page watchers, I thought I'd post it on this talk page.

The New Zealand Wiki community has its monthly online meeting later today. Anyone can join in and we usually have a few Australians turn up, i.e. it's not just a domestic meeting, with overseas editors most welcome. I'll be talking about COI editing so that we as a community learn something from the investigation that's going on, with a goal of achieving broader understanding of how to manage COIs. Anyone watching this page is most welcome to join in: Misplaced Pages:Meetup/Aotearoa New Zealand Online/49#Conflict of interest editing. I've asked the organiser to be on the programme in second slot so that there's an approximate time available for those who are only interested in this topic; tune in from 12:15 h NZT, which is UTC+12:00. Time zone conversion link for your convenience. Schwede66 20:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Here's a link to the presentation; feel free to use the presentation and modify it as you see fit. It went well; there was a healthy amount of interest. The editors who spoke gave feedback like "I've learned a lot", "I'm definitely going to add conflict of interest statements to my user page", or "that was really useful, thank you". Schwede66 05:02, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of potential interest

Editors who read this noticeboard may be interested in the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Performing a random pages test on business articles, regarding how to best obtain a random sample of Misplaced Pages articles on companies for the purposes of assessing problems like undisclosed COI editing. – Teratix ₵ 16:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Unclear starter-template output

When filing a new COI report using the "To begin a new discussion, enter the name of the relevant article below:" item, the user is given Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Template as the skeleton. It has bullet-entries:

  • {{pagelinks|article name}}
  • {{userlinks|username}}

Those seem pretty clear to the filer how and where to enter the relevant details. But the results of those templates when published are:

The outputs are very similar, but the concepts are quite different. Unless I recognize the differential link-sets, or the article name and username themselves, it's not clear which entry is for an article and which is for the involved user. Articles could be named for a person and editors could have non-person names, and there are cases where unrelated users have the same username as articles. I think it would be clearer if either each bullet-entry were tagged with what it is:

or the article(s) vs user(s) were in separately-identified lists:

I am only an occasional user of COIN, which makes this unclarity more noticeable to me but I also don't want to BOLDly change a tool that regulars might be expected to be a certain way. Thoughts? DMacks (talk) 18:09, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable improvement to me. (I also have the nagging half-memory that there are other noticeboards that use a similar format that might also be improved in the same way...) ElKevbo (talk) 18:57, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Preference among the two approaches? Either one completely solves my concern, so I don't have a preference. I can see pros and cons of both, in terms of readability, compactness, consistency with other notice-boards, etc. DMacks (talk) 19:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 August 2024

This article was tagged with Misplaced Pages:Autobiography because of extensive edits by the subject. The subject attempted to remove the tag and had their account blocked indefinitely. See the COI noticeboard discussion at Cambridge Global and Jake Braun and the user discussion at User_talk:Spartaneditor. An IP address user has again attempted to remove the tag.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.15.211.66 (talk) 00:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)