Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:21, 18 June 2015

June 2015

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. At least one of your recent edits, such as the edit you made to Roger Libby, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Misplaced Pages, please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at the welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make some test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page.Please do not remove templates on pages until the issues have been addressed EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing, as you did at Roger Libby. Your edits have been reverted or removed.

• If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page. Alternatively you can read Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
• If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Misplaced Pages's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Do not continue to make edits that appear disruptive until the dispute is resolved through consensus. Continuing to edit disruptively may result in your being blocked from editing. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Specifically at this link. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Misplaced Pages; use of multiple accounts

Hi Seattleeditor. I work a lot on COI issues in Misplaced Pages, and try to help editors understand how this place works. Misplaced Pages is a strange place and not at all easy for new people to understand. (People protest too quickly that it is not strange.... but it is, really!). This is a long post (which is part of the reason I am posting it here instead of at ANI), but I ask you to read the whole thing, carefully, and then respond. I am going to start out by giving you formal notice of our conflict of interest guideline and the Terms of Use - I'll have some further comments below.

Hello, Seattleditor. We welcome your contributions to Misplaced Pages, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Misplaced Pages, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

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

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

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Avoid linking to the Misplaced Pages article or website of your organization in other articles (see Misplaced Pages:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Misplaced Pages's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Misplaced Pages's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Misplaced Pages when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.

Comments

Reviewing what has happened, the following things are very clear:

• You have edited here under three different user names -this one, User:seattle24x7, and User:Searchwriter - both this account's userpage and Searchwriter's userpage says that each one is an alternate account for seattle24x7. (note: I just tagged Searchwriter's Talk page for a username violation and that account is going to get blocked)
• the seattle24x7 article on Libby is here. The section at the bottom of that piece describes the author of that piece: "Larry Sivitz is founder, publisher and managing editor of Seattle24x7, the founder of SearchWrite Search Marketing, an SEO, PPC and Social Media Thought Leader, and an SPJ award winner for Seattle magazine." It talks a lot about the importance of the internet for doctors to connect with patients.
• the seattle 24x7 article also points to LIbby's website, which prominently features a link to the Misplaced Pages article on Libby and features the Misplaced Pages logo (which seems a bit problematic, but that is a side issue)
• as was pointed out by SlimVirgin at ANI, the image of Libby used in WP article was uploaded by Seattle24x7 and it is licensed as Seattle24x7's "own work"; it is also used on Libby's website.
• You noted at ANI that "The "We" in my writing simply connotes that Dr. Libby sought my help since he was aware I had helped contribute to the original content."

If one looks at all that, it seems very clear that the Misplaced Pages article on Libby is part of a social marketing campaign for him.

Seattleeditor, I wrote above that WP is a strange place. I know it looks to SEO/marketing people like a perfect place to do their work, but it is not. Our mission is to crowdsource a neutral and reliable source of information for the public. We deeply cherish and fiercely defend our nonprofit status and mission - we are all volunteers here. This place is actually insane - the idea that something as important and truly useful as WP could be driven by volunteers not motivated by profit but idealism (and all kinds of other things, but mostly idealism) is a crazy miracle. But it is real. And ironically - one of the biggest reasons for its success. People would not give so much of their time and effort, if this were a for-profit enterprise. So, you have to get that into your head, that WP is very much not to be used for promotional purposes.

Your editing and talk behavior in WP violate the spirit of everything we do here, along with the letter of several policies and guidelines: WP:NOTADVERTISING (policy); WP:NPOV (policy); WP:VERIFY (policy), WP:SOCK, (policy), WP:COI (guideline); and very likely, the Terms of Use that each of us agree to, every time we edit here (see WP:PAYDISCLOSE for a description of the relevant part). That is quite a list.

As I said, this is a strange place and you either have completely misunderstood what we are about, or (to be frank) you are pretending you don't understand it. You are very dug in at ANI, so I imagine it will be hard for you to change course. In my view, you have two options at this point. You can acknowledge everything I wrote above and dramatically change course going forward, or not. If you do not, then you will very likely face what we call an "indefinite block".

I'll add here that I am probably going to make a posting at COIN with a link to the client page of Searchwrite and the team working at COIN is going to look for articles about those clients for evidence of promotional editing. You would save us volunteers a lot of time, if you would disclose if you (and your team if you have one) have edited other Misplaced Pages articles, under other accounts, so that we can review them.

By the way, you should read:

• WP:COI (if you have not already)
• Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is in the real world
• Misplaced Pages:Statement on Misplaced Pages from participating communications firms
• Conflict-of-interest editing on Misplaced Pages (which is an actual WP article about infamous COI editing scandals - events that many of us remember with anger or unhappiness)

Please know that paid editors are not banned from Misplaced Pages. (We have tried to create a policy to ban them, but we have not been able to come to internal agreement to do that). Paid editors are not welcomed by a big chunk of the community, but they are allowed to be here. Paid editors who stay and become members of the community abide by the Terms of Use and disclose edits they make for pay, and do not violate our policies and guidelines. (And our COI guidelines strongly advise paid editors not to edit live articles directly, but rather to offer suggestions on the associated Talk page. We have gotten some great contributions that way).

Like I wrote above, I am looking for a response from you. (I note that others might jump in here - I hope they don't right away, but people are free to do that) At this point, with the posting at ANI and many eyes on you, I recommend that you respond pretty quickly. We don't like to indefinitely block anyone, but we do it when people are intransigent.

If you decide to change course, I am willing to help you get oriented to how this place works. But you first have to come clean, completely. Best regards, Jytdog (talk) 13:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)