Cannabis Ruderalis

thcscience_admin

User:Veri854

Following my last discussion of his here, Veri854 did not bother explain his actions but had the gall to come write in my userspace (link), as opposed to my talkspace, to tell me to leave "his article" alone (which I did not notice until last week). Following the AfD nomination, because the articles had been salted, he chose to recreate them as two draft articles, thus he can no longer be trusted anymore and needs to be closely watched. Donnie Park (talk) 05:46, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

His last edit was in October. If he tries this kind of thing again, I'd bring it up at WP:AIV. --Drm310 (talk) 19:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
IIRC, one of the draft article was last reviewed and rejected on 25 November. Donnie Park (talk) 16:00, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Michael Weiss (journalist)

Gogetherray who's most likely also IP Editor 72.229.254.252 has been deleting large sections of cited work on Michael Weiss's page. Amounting to page vandalism. It's likely that it is Michael himself and would amount to conflict of interest editing. He has no talk page. The Armchair General (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Gogetherray has edited only Michael_Weiss_(journalist), so that does look like an SPA. I put a COI notice template on User Talk:Gogetherray, which hadn't been done. If they have anything to say about this, they should post here. As to the content, some of the "criticism" sections seem strange. The "self appointed Russia expert who doesn't speak Russian and hasn't lived in Russia" seems to be a valid criticism of a journalist. The business about him traveling to Syria is hard to evaluate. The source for that, a Shia PR site, says "The Brookings Institute and Huffington Post are both US organizations with highly questionable ties and sympathies towards the Salafi-Wahhabi extremist terror network." That seems unlikely. Better cites for criticism would help. This is in a very controversial area with propaganda on both sides, so we're going to have political problems. This may not be COI, just politics. John Nagle (talk) 21:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Agreed that the Gogetherray account has "COI" written all over it, but also that there are BLP red flags fluttering around the article. The "doesn't speak Russian" stuff was especially jarring as well as being unsourced. This article definitely needs a close examination from a BLP standpoint, but I would have preferred it if the subject (assuming that's who it is) had raised the issue in the BLP noticeboard rather than charging in like this. Coretheapple (talk) 23:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Some of the sourcing in that article is really inappropriate for a BLP and have removed. Am posting in BLPN to get more eyes on this article. Coretheapple (talk) 00:15, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Russia Today says he doesn't speak Russian, but that may not be reliable either.[1] A defense of Weiss not speaking Russian is on Medium.[2] Not a great source either. There are other Weiss-related diatribes from various sources and political positions. There's also Weiss's own Twitter feed, with four updates in the last hour.[3] Probably all we should have is a bare bio article - worked there, did that, wrote this. Otherwise we get into a political mess we can't resolve objectively. I'm thus inclined to let BLP handle this. John Nagle (talk) 00:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Absolutely. We need to tread carefully here, given the Russian involvement, and I agree about a bare bio article with every fact sourced. The primary problem is not COI but BLP as I see it. Journalist articles are frequently swamps of self-glorification, but in this case the COI seems in a defensive posture. Coretheapple (talk) 16:38, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Capital Float

According to recent edits, Capital Float is "the pioneer of digital lending in India". This article was discussed in the Smileverse case, archive 88. Editor also is adding questionable material to AuthBridge and probable refspam elsewhere [4]. Looked at as a whole, the account seems to be devoted to COI editing. Brianhe (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

There seem to be a lot of these "digital lending to business" companies.[5] Names include Mahindra Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Capital Float, Religare, SMEBank.in, Mandii.com and ICICI Bank. These seem to have been affiliates of AskMe, which is a unit or brand of Getit Infoservices Private Limited, which is majority owned by Astro All Asia Networks plc. AskMe seems to have come apart.[6] Operations were suspended in August 2016 and a forensic audit started. Neither the Getit nor the Astro article mentions this, and both articles have "ad" tags. All this indicates that Wikipedia's coverage of India's financial sector needs work. So I added a note at Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#India_financial_sector_articles_need_attention. John Nagle (talk) 05:03, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Nothing happened at "India-related topics" yet. John Nagle (talk) 20:30, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Antony1821 sockring

sockfarm
targeted articles (sample)

WP:Sockpuppet_investigations/Antony1821 is ongoing. This came across my radar because of some Greek/Cyprus articles on my watchlist from the recent Cypriano/Euclidthalis case. Bringing up at this time to invite more eyes on the articles they are hitting. The group has an additional interest in Asian commercial concerns which I may write more about later if somebody else doesn't bring it up first. Brianhe (talk) 03:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Took a look at Alpha Bank. Fixed some template problems, but didn't make any substantive changes. The article is mostly brochure-type material, without great sourcing but not overhyped. Looking for better sources turns up lots of stories on the Greek financial crisis, in which Alpha Bank, a major bank in Greece, is inevitably entangled. There may be useful info about Alpha Bank to be found; they've had typical mortgage/foreclosure/default problems and litigation. John Nagle (talk) 09:04, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Deon Taylor

A bunch of undeclared shills operating around Deon Taylor.

Thelmz

Roxanne Avent - co-founder of Hidden Empire Film Group, a Taylor company, partner of Deon Taylor
Darrick Angelone - "co-producing the film Meet the Blacks", a Taylor movie, previous listed as one of the key people of Hidden Empire Film Group [7]

Undiluted

created Hidden Empire Film Group, a Taylor company

James mojo

co-ordinated editing of Darrick Angelone, editing 8 minute after it's creation.
co-ordinated editing of Hidden Empire Film Group, editing < an hour after it's creation.
all editing this year surrounds Deon Taylor
previous editing primarily around Jacky Jasper (an associate of Angelone) and his blog diaryofahollywoodstreetking.com [8] [9] (much now deleted)

duffbeerforme (talk) 11:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at these, it seems to be a small studio which has produced some movies with really bad reviews. Supremacy (film), though, while not that successful, did appear in theaters, got reviews, won an obscure award, and does seem to pass the threshold for notability. Meet the Blacks also appeared in theaters, has box office revenue, has reviews, and qualifies as notable. I'd suggest keeping those and merging anything useful from the other articles into them. John Nagle (talk) 21:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Frederick Achom

* Maproom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I hope that someone with CoI experience is keeping an eye on Frederick Achom. The article was discussed here back in August, but I believe there is still cause for concern. Maproom (talk) 14:43, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Maproom, you should remove your username and userlinks from the top of this section. They make it look like you are the COI editor. Anyhow, that article is a mess of PR hype. I've just drastically pruned it from the final section. It was added [10] by a declared paid editor, Usman Khalil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (see User:Usman Khalil/Paid Work). But there's a lot more work to be done there. Establishment5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is another paid editor "working" on the article (declaration here). There's a third editor, Historywiki11 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), whose editing pattern strongly suggests paid editing, who is also adding similarly promotional material. He/she was specifically asked about this three days ago [11] by Shearonink, but as of today has not replied. I'm going to add the declared paid editors names to the talk page. Voceditenore (talk) 16:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Voceditenore, for your advice and responses. Maproom (talk) 16:05, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome :) I've just whacked some more promo out of it. Voceditenore (talk) 16:33, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
I'd just like to mention that Usman Khalil has been open to adjusting their edits and, in my opinion, has been editing in good faith while trying to abide by Wikipedia's guidelines. Shearonink (talk) 03:12, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
Well, that's good that he has at least declared himself as a paid editor, but he still doesn't seem to "get it". It's the classic conflict of interest. His job is to boost the reputation of his client and to tout the companies he has invested in. Wikipedia's "job" is writing neutral, factual, concise articles. This edit made less than a month ago is a prime example of why, in my view, the various editors the subject has hired should not be directly editing that article at all. Voceditenore (talk) 08:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

spammer coi trying to promote business

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Major_information_technology_companies&diff=754355926&oldid=748018064 they are trying to add in their COI company to promote themselves — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.15.244.34 (talk) 09:44, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

What makes you think @Light2021: has a COI? Someguy1221 (talk) 10:15, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
User:145.15.244.34, this isn't "spam" or "COI". Adding relevant articles to navigation templates is a perfectly normal, and useful activity here. There is no evidence that User:Light2021 has anything to do with the two articles he added. His only edits to them were to add the template, again a perfectly normal editing activity. I have now reverted your inappropriate removal of one of the articles from the template. Voceditenore (talk) 16:06, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Commonwealth Freedom of Movement Organisation

I am the owner of the organisation mentioned in the article, and the article has a COI box mentioned above it. I was wondering what procedure is best to remove the COI box from the article? Everything in the article is referenced from valid sources, and holds points for and against what the organisation is aiming to do. Can someone help and advise the best way to resolve this issue and remove the COI box? Thank you very much. Jrskinner003 (talk) 05:57, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

First, THANK YOU for taking the proactive approach to find a solution to this situation. At this point, there isn't anything you can directly do, because the tag appears to be accurate. Even further edits by you to attempt to conform better to policy wouldn't preclude the use of the template. However, bringing it up here can be productive. What you need to do is gather the attention of additional editors to further refine the article, and leave it up to one of them to remove the COI tag. One mechanism available is WP:RFC. Tiggerjay (talk) 19:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

David Packouz

No WP:HA or WP:OUTING here, but this page is consistently being edited by one editor Factdefender (talk), who appears to have strong connection to the case and insider information. User constantly tells me to "stop editing", and has a history of inserting WP:PROMOTION. I think it's clear that Factdefender should declare a COI if they want to keep editing this page. Will happily comply with them afterward. --FuzzyGopher (talk) 19:46, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not connected to the case or know any of the individuals personally. I am a musician and use the BeatBuddy that David Packouz invented, so perhaps that is my source of my interest in this case. But I don't think that is any more a COI regarding this case than you having been in the US Army. Or of an iPhone user editing the page about Steve Jobs. I simply find this story fascinating. All information I have is publicly available. I have just studied this story (perhaps too) extensively. My objections to your editing are entirely based on your disregard for facts and sourced information that you consistently ignore. I believe that we have made progress in our dialogue recently and look forward to continuing this discussion in a productive manner. Factdefender (talk) 16:05, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it's appropriate but I have added another contributor and 3 other pages that are edited by these 2 profiles. It is very curious that as musician(s) the only edits that these contributors do is to pages linked to the 2 people subject of this film. Even if there is no COI (which I very much doubt) there is clearly un unhealthy obsession with Packouz and Diveroli and all subjects linked to them which seems to be clouding their capability to be objective about this subject. As Factdefender admits himself he is fascinated and may have studied this story too extensively. It may be time now for these 2 editors to move onto another subject and leave the editing of these 4 pages to those that are probably more objective and less fascinated by these 2 unsavoury characters. Domdeparis (talk) 11:06, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Despite my niche interest in this story, I believe that my edits are far more neutral and well sourced than those of FuzzyGopher, and I invite an Admin to read through the David Packouz talk page to make a final decision on the issues discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Factdefender (talk • contribs) 22:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm not an admin but I have reread the talk page and it seems almost impossible that you do not have some kind of vested interest. The section on the Beatbuddy is pointless there is a page that gives all the relevant information. He is most defiantly not a notable musician so the part on his musical career is far from useful. You have removed only information that paints the subject in a negative light such as the un-safe helmets and failure to deliver the pistols. This information is well documented and is important but IMHO has its place in the part about AEY. You have changed the sentence of the subject being 7 months for conspiracy whereas the source that you cite says he pleaded guilty to fraud but from what I can find they were convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 371 which is Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. http://lib.law.virginia.edu/Garrett/plea_agreements/dockets/AEY.htm. I'm going to make some edits and see if that will come to some kind of consensus. Domdeparis (talk) 14:40, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Can I ask everyone to show good faith. One editor account is new and may not fully understand everything that is going on.
@Domdeparis - I cannot see where you assumption arises that they are both only editing the same limited topics.
One editor has 77 edits and is a one topic editor (including beatbox) whose account has existed since 29 August 2016
The other editor has 1000+ edits and only 30 are bots (well, automated as that includes TW) and whose account has existed since 13 August 2016 (= 12 a day avg.)
I am still researching, but would expect to find much less than could be gleaned from a sockpuppet check. Chaosdruid (talk) 03:55, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
Hi Chaosdruid i think I may not have been clear in what i was saying. I am far from suggesting that FuzzyGopher is limited to these topics I am suggesting that 2 undermentioned editors are 1 topic editors and possibly the same person as 1 stopped editing in July 2016 and the other started editing exactly the same topics in August 2016
The COI edits are still going on...Domdeparis (talk) 10:36, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

The original adder of the 1000+ chars on BeatBuddy with this edit is another "single topic" editor (also on Packouz et al.) - and they appeared between the two mentioned above Chaosdruid (talk) 02:32, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
And another ... Colon ... Chaosdruid (talk) 02:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
And another ... Veritas ... Chaosdruid (talk) 02:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I have reverted the edits on BeatBuddy. That's a bunch of non-RS added. Clearly some kind of promotion is going on here. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 07:22, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Billy Carson

One user with a suggestive name has created the biographical article Billy Carson as well as articles Pantheon Elite Records, United Family of Anomaly Hunters, and First Class Space Agency for organisations owned or operated by Billy Carson. There doesn't seem to be any massive subterfuge going on, but without wanting to out any editor, this does seem like an undeclared conflict of interest. Lithopsian (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of First Class Space Agency. No indication of notability. John Nagle (talk) 22:08, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Billy Carson did have a recording chart at position 84 on Digital Radio Tracker.[12] Not sure if that passes WP:MUSIC. John Nagle (talk) 22:13, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Nope, that's a WP:BADCHART. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:38, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
United Family of Anomaly Hunters has been speedily deleted for lack of significance. Lithopsian (talk) 22:42, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Possibly related: Zefome7 (talk · contribs), creator of Anjolique, a marginally notable musician with a record on Pantheon Elite Records. I put a "prod" on that one for lack of demonstrated notability. It previously survived a speedy deletion request as a copyvio, which was fixed by paraphrasing. John Nagle (talk) 20:07, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Two more accounts. Keeping in mind account names Zenforce and Zefome7, Carson has many companies such as Zen Force Media. SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Zenforce. See also User:Gufelagordge, an undeclared paid editor, who created Draft:Billy Carson, and User:Km111, another undeclared paid editor/sock puppet, who expanded that draft. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:38, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

All now blocked as socks. duffbeerforme (talk) 07:38, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Binary options churn continues

Here's another WP:NOTHERE pumping binary options. Just opening this thread for awareness, not requesting specific action at this time. Unless you want to !vote at the AfD. Brianhe (talk) 21:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Binary options people seem to be using Wikipedia aggressively as a marketing platform. Coretheapple (talk) 14:27, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
@Coretheapple: hallelujah. The history of Binary option over the past year is pretty dismal. There's a lot of churn from anons, SPAs and socks (not mutually exclusive), but no significant improvement other than Nagle's addition of the Times of Israel exposé in June and some formulae from Parsiad.azimzadeh. In fact the only other apparent GF contributor in the past year may be Limit-theorem. Sorry if I missed someone, but here's relevant diffs that I think make my point: Nagle + Nagle + Parsiad = year net. There were about 200 garbage edits over this time period. I wonder if it's time to consider indefinite semi protection? - Brianhe (talk) 05:15, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
One of the directors of Daweda Exchange, Eran Chertok-Gorodezky,[13] was previously the CEO of Ouroboros Derivatives Trading, the company behind AnyOption in Tel Aviv.[14]. AnyOption is on warning lists from securities regulators in Canada and France.[15]. So this looks like it comes from the usual suspects. Voted to delete because there seem to be no non-hype sources. John Nagle (talk) 05:36, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Things are looking up. The Israeli Securities Authority finally raided a binary option company and arrested the CEO and six others.[16]. There's a bill in the Knesset to prohibit binary option operations. Right now, it's legal in Israel for these companies to scam people in other countries. Only scamming Israelis is prohibited. This is starting to become politically embarrassing to Israel as a country. John Nagle (talk) 06:04, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
I'll certainly monitor this area as best I can. I'm glad you both have technical expertise in this area. Coretheapple (talk) 13:34, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Put warning template on their page. Their promotional edits were already undone. John Nagle (talk) 20:59, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Nordeus

Would someone like to take a look? I removed some content I thought overly promotional, and left some COI advice on the talk-page. The content has been stuck straight back, with no edit summary. I don't know if the editor has a COI, but it's beginning to look that way. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:05, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I reverted back to the previous version. Further checking will be needed DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Per (Redacted), the user is indeed working for the company. --Finngall talk 02:18, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Same material re-inserted (and the partially reverted) by another new account (Benoitd) who is apparently another company employee per (Redacted). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Finngall (talk • contribs) 15:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I have listed all of the connected contributors on the article talk page. It appears that there is a related article, Top Eleven Football Manager, which was created by the same user that created Nordeus. --Drm310 (talk) 07:37, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Drm310! And yes, the page on the game seems to need some attention too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
I've added some probable COI editors above. The Nordeus article still needs attention if anyone would care to take a look (I'm not going to get involved in an edit-war there). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:22, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Donna Hogan and Donnie Hogan

articles
users

Mickiray2004 (talk · contribs) seems to have a close connection, possibly a family member, of the siblings Donna Hogan and Donnie Hogan, based on edits and comments at Donna Hogan's article. Apparently the siblings have some sort of disagreement or feud. This user is con Donna Hogan and pro Donnie Hogan, as is seen on Talk:Donna Hogan, my talk page and viewpoints on the Article for deletion page for Donnie that culminated in this edit

Could the {{Connected contributor}} template be posted on the Talk:Donna Hogan and Talk:Donnie Hogan pages while the article for deletion process continues? And, perhaps block this user?CaroleHenson (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

COMMENT - I am just a hired press agent attempting to clarify the truth regarding the lives of this family. The fact that you continue to find reasons to get involved tells me that your motives are more about questioning the fame issue rather than focusing on the facts. Donnie Hogan did hire me to fix the issues that have been raised from false information provided on others pages. He has only posted his own articles and asked me to remove the false information about his family. Whoever created Donna Hogan's page used terminology that insulted several family members and it is Donnie Hogan's right to clarify these issues. He does not have to endure the insults of the Donna Hogan page creator. He just wants the truth to be told. He could care less about the existence of the Donna Hogan page as long as it is fact and family is not insulted.

He does have news interviews but it seems to me that those judging this page spend more time trolling the pages of Wikipedia rather than wanting to work towards the greater good of the website. Instead of working together, these users have continued to belittle other people, using terms like trivial and questioning the subject matter. One should not act like they are empowered when they volunteer. I believe a sort of empathy is required, not one person has shown that while bombarding me with ridicule during the FEW days since this pages inception. I am just trying to learn how to use the site and instead I am forced to focus on the drama being created by these people judging me. I would rather they just be silent and give me chance to do what I am trying to do which is create Donnie Hogan's. The page was only made less than a week ago and I have not had enough time nor given any kind of chance to learn how to do it correctly. Because of his famous sister once again he has been put in the spotlight and judged,,being called not notable ENOUGH,,and told he is here because of the feud with others,,,,this is purely judgement of two wiki users who have done nothing but harass the creator of this page constantly for the few short time the page has been up. I have done nothing but attempt to create a wiki page for a media it a am wanting to build for my client.

I am not the one who has turned this into the insanity it is now. It is the harassment of these other editors/wiki volunteers who will not give me a chance to find the evidence or work on the obvious editing that is needed for the page for Donnie Hogan, I am willing to change the page to a biography or learn how to post it correctly but I cannot do these things while people continue t judge me because of the family history. Yes the court case between Donnie and Donna made headlines. But if you have not noticed court battle that took place in federal court over copyrighted images and the book Trainwreck was left out of the page, but this is a part of their life. You can call it a feud, you can call it a page of someone who is related to some one else, you can call it all these things, but it is those things. These are facts and actual events that have taken place. If you judge someone because of life events, then that's the way it is.

But the fact of the matter is that I am a hired PR agent by Donnie Hogan hired to create a media kit and other genres of media relations. He is doing strong things in the world of advocacy and will continue to do so. The sad part is all the two wiki users are judging me on is the fact he has sisters, one very famous and he has a history with them. That history was partly very public. This was his life, He cant change it, you act like it is horrible thing he was in this family. This is just what is. He was a part of things that took place and I am in the process of gathering that information,, this is truth and history including lots of never before seen photos and media news clippings, All I am asking is a chance to learn how to create the page correctly for this website without constantly being hounded by other users judging what I am doing. I am trying my best to do things by the rules but I cannot even have a chance if I am judged and deleted and banned all within less than a week. Yes he has sisters, yes they have pages here, and yes he wants only the truth posted on those pages. It is his legal right!

I seriously doubt any page was created and perfected in that short amount of time. I am asking to move forward, to quit looking back and provide the correct information. And not to be judged by those who only are speculating. 50.200.95.98 (talk) 21:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)mickiray2004

  • Comment - The first sentence of the response ("I am just a hired press agent attempting to clarify the truth regarding the lives of this family") and later ("Donnie Hogan did hire me...") sure removes any doubt that there is a conflict. reddogsix (talk) 22:17, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment whatever, I have told you nothing but the truth, now leave me alone before I report you for harassment. PLease leave me alone. I have done nothing but told you the truth. People every single day hire press relation agents to do this kind of things for them. I am done arguing with these two volunteer wiki users who refuse to leave me alone 50.200.95.98 (talk) 22:57, 13 December 2016 (UTC)mickiray2004
  • Comment - I suggest you read WP:COI before you accept another engagement to edit Wikipedia for them. If you feel your are a subject of harassment feel free to report that supposed harassment on WP:ANI. reddogsix (talk) 23:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment - Since the user has declared their relationship, it sounds like we can directly go to adding {{Connected contributor (paid)}} now without having to have more discussion about this.--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:37, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment - Probably right, although it may be misinterpreted as a form of harassment. reddogsix (talk) 23:43, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment - I wasn't clear that there was a COI issue until today's posting at my talk page and am not sure how my actions to help the user in this set of edits or on the Talk:Donnie Hogan article could be considered harassment (or yours either), but I also encourage the user to pursue the WP:ANI route if that's what they think has happened. I already posted the template, but I reverted them until there is further discussion.--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
In addition, Wikipedia does take harassment quite seriously, and the community does all that it can to ensure that editors are not being inappropriately treated by others. Informing another editor of policy/guideline related matters on Wikipedia, however, is not something considered to be harassment. So, you need to be very careful when making such a claim. As the others have posted above, the place to "present your case" so to speak is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (ANI), but before you do I suggest you carefully Wikipedia:Harassment#What harassment is not so that you fully understand the relevant policy on the matter and then carefully read all the instructions at the top of the ANI page to make sure you follow proper procedure. I also suggest taking a look at the essay Wikipedia:Don't shoot yourself in the foot so that you have a better idea as to what goes on at ANI discussions. Anytime you're discussing the behavior of other editors, it's important to try and remain calm and focus on relevant policies and guidelines because such discussions can easily become heated and backfire on anyone who resorts to personal attacks against another editor. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) @50.200.95.98: @Mickiray2004: (I assume you are the same editor?) Having wandered into these articles from using a tool used to copy-edit Wikipedia, I have been watching this drama unfold with dismay... The real issue here is that Wikipedia should not be used for promotion of anything, be it a cause, a political entity or a person, nor especially should an article be created for that purpose. If the subject (in this case a person) is notable according to Wikipedia's standards then the article will remain but all soap-boxing will be removed. If not, the article will be removed. The fact is both editors you have attacked above were trying to steer you in the right direction re editing, notability and verifiability but you have rather verbosely insulted them so they are probably less willing help, now—which is a shame since they are highly experienced editors. We are not making any judgements on your client or his family, merely on the quality of the various articles related to him. You are right that they need editing if they are to stay and I and others have done just that. Just please be civil about it and you will get much further — Iadmc♫talk  17:27, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Add: Now someone has claimed this press agent is actually Donnie's wife... User_talk:CaroleHenson#why_are_you_mentioning_Donnie_Hogan_on_Donna_page. Are you?Even moreWP:COI if so... Please step back and let others decide what should happen according to WP:Policies and guidelines. Thanks — Iadmc♫talk  17:42, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


OMG!!! isnt it time that you quit obessing with this. I have told you the truth. I have told you everything and have hid nothing. Just delete the page if it pleases you so much, In fact I am doing it for you, SO you will be force to move on with you ife. OMGSHonestly I am not the kind to sit back, be insulted and stick around and hope I meet the approval of others. I have not been given any time to even attempot to build a page correctly while these editors, literally drool over the pages waiting to edit every single mistake. Literally within seconds of the new post.It is sad how these editors are being in such hurry to delete things before someone even has a chance to edit or even look if the link and makewas properly added, these editors should at least have the common respect to allow others to take the time to finsih what they are doing. No one can work while others are contstantly making changes. Please for the sake of others, learn from this and please do not be so cutthroat as an editor. It is a shame I am being put on a pedastol while others insult and harass others and it is clearly posted on thier talk pages. But apparently this is like hifh school and Im odd man out@@ They insulted me first, I responded, they asked to have me banned. Insanity!

Go waste yourtime harassing others. I am out. You people are sick! Siopathic posers who sit on thier compmuter judging others daily. Sad! truly Sad!


Later posers, have fun juding others the rest of your life,,,that's your sin! Not mine! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mickiray2004 (talk • contribs) 17:58, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

You didn't listen to sound advice. Your problem. Over and out — Iadmc♫talk  18:17, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
Mickiray2004 has been indef'd by User:Widr for vandalism. --Drm310 (talk) 04:56, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
I added another name, Glendale10 to the top of this section, based upon the edit and the edit summary of this edit. Lavalooma was also added due to his/her edits, like this and other edits to the Anna Nicole Smith and Donna Hogan articles, as well as other related people... and resulted in a warning to User talk:Lavalooma.
I also added the Anna Nicole Smith article to the top of the section because of the connection.--CaroleHenson (talk) 06:53, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Based on contributions - that seem to be entirely related to Anna Nicole Smith in some fashion - I added some additional articles. There are also articles about people who blog about Smith, such as Larry Seidlin that are edited.--CaroleHenson (talk) 07:03, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
I read several biographies about controversial celebrity A.N.Smith, her family, friends, associates. I don't know them personally, but they constantly talk about Smith on various blogs, reality shows; they wrote books about her etc. Donna Hogan, Donnie Hogan met Smith maybe twice and they wrote a book about her to promote their agendas. I just follow the news about them. Donna, Donnie, Seidlin, etc. they all exploited Smith's celebrity status. There is no conspiracy, I'm just an ordinary citizen who wasted time and energy on irrelevant people. Thanks. Lavalooma (talk) 09:13, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Lavalooma It sounds like I may have been wrong in assuming a close connection, if so, I apologize. It is just that all your contributions are centered around Anna Nicole Smith. I do understand becoming interested and involved in a topic! When that happens, it's even more important to consider guidelines like neutral and style and tone, regarding the content that is added and the editing and discussion processes.--CaroleHenson (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Philip K. Howard

articles
users

The article Philip K. Howard has a long history of promotional edits by single-purpose accounts. Philip K. Howard appears to have been started by a media agency, as evidenced by the early edits by User:GoodmanMediaPR. My belief is that it has been continually maintained, updated, and scrubbed of anything potentially negative over the years by the same agency via the edits of a long string of single-purpose accounts, only some of which are listed above. I have blocked User:CommonGood and User:GoodmanMediaPR for the username violations and tagged the article and talk page with COI templates, but haven't taken any other action. Could someone with more experience in this area please have a look at article content and make sure it is neutral? The related article, Common Good, an organization founded by Philip K. Howard may have similar issues. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:28, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

CommonGood has been renamed to ToddGack2016 and has disclosed that they do indeed work for Common Good. Common Good has been prodded and I expect will be deleted, one way or the other. The Howard article is a mess. I've removed some of the worst content, but it needs more attention. SmartSE (talk) 13:51, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

OWSLAjosh666

OWSLAjosh666 appears to have an WP:APPARENTCOI based upon their username with article OWSLA. OWSLAjosh666 has been advised about this both at User talk:OWSLAjosh666#Conflict of interest editing and Talk:OWSLA#Artist list, but has not responded to either post. Another editor User:OwslaHQ (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) had also been previously been heavily involved in the article and even declared a COI here, but that account has been soft-blocked for their username. In addition, User:OWSLAjosh97 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) also made a some edits to the article back in April 2016. While these accounts might not all be the same person, it does appear from this unblock request that multiple persons associated with the company were at least at that time editing the article, possibly from the same acount. Much of the editing being done by OWSLAjosh666 appears to be beyond things typically considered acceptable for a COI editor to make and no edit sums are being left or reliable sources are being cited. Is any of this enough to add a {{Connected contributor}} template for OSWLAjosh666 to the article's talk page and perhaps ask them to follow WP:PSCOI#Steps for engagement with respect to future editing of the article? Should OWSLAjosh666 be treated as a paid editor if it turns out they are an employee/intern of the company who is being asked by the company to update/maintain the Wikipedia article about it? -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:20, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

After a bit of research it does appear clear that OWSLAjosh666 has a close connection with OWSLA, as well as Blumhouse Productions and Ouija: Origin of Evil as they are the most frequent editor on those pages. Some google searching shows at least a very close connection, if not an official collection. That being said, looking at the contributions during the past 60 days, none of them seem particularly bad, just promotional if anything. Is there specific, recent edits that are of specific concern of yours Marchjuly? Tiggerjay (talk) 19:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look Tiggerjay. It wasn't one specific edit per se, but rather the overall promotional tone and the WP:SPA nature of the editing of the article. In addition, the article seems to have also been edited by a number of individuals associated with the label in the past, so it is not clear if some of these accounts are/were being instructed to do the editing by someone associated with the label. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:58, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
Okay it looks like this person is up to it again. I haven't had a chance to look at it more closely. Perhaps someone else can take a closer look at the recent edits of OWSLAjosh666. Tiggerjay (talk) 19:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Second Smartmatic incident

Following a previous incident, Ciudadania Digital has continued to edit the Smartmatic article in a suspicious manner. Ciudadania Digital appears to be a single-purpose account that has been whitewashing the article continuously. Hopefully we can figure things out this time.ZiaLater (talk) 09:06, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Another single-purpose user, Some.voter, has began to whitewash the article as well.--ZiaLater (talk) 05:11, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Ciudadania Digital has also uploaded multiple copyrighted images to promote Smartmatic.
Here is a list of copyrighted material Ciudadania Digital uploaded improperly:


Hopefully this can help with a decision.--ZiaLater (talk) 06:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I've started an SPI here: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Smmtt.
@ZiaLater: Those commons deletion requests are incomplete. If you go Commons:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and tick AjaxQuickDelete and QuickDelete you can report copyvios really easily using a link in the 'tools' section on the left of the screen. SmartSE (talk) 12:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
@Smartse: Thank you. I'll try to see if I can have them deleted correctly.--ZiaLater (talk) 12:45, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
The two accounts named originally, plus two I added, were CU confirmed socks who are now blocked. Please pipe up if you want this case opened, else I will archive it soon. - Brianhe (talk) 23:07, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

StarMaker App

Evanishandsome (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • nuke contribs • logs • edit filter log • block user • block log) has denied being compensated for edits. However, the two articles he has created (and to which he is the only content contributor) have a strong whiff of paid content. agtx 16:18, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

These are so incompetent, especially in referencing, that they seem likely to be someone associated with the firm, and therefore with COI, but not an outside editor. Most undeclared paid editors know to make references that seem at least plausible. A7 or afd. DGG ( talk ) 02:02, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
These are recreations of deleted pages under G11. I have re tagged them for CSD. Tiggerjay (talk) 08:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
@DGG:: you might want to take a look at The Voice: On Stage and StarMaker and view the history, as Evanishandsome may be a sock of a SOCK recreating this material. Perhaps a sock of a block. But since i wasn't around these articles when they were deleted IDK anything more. Tiggerjay (talk) 08:32, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Zopo Mobile

Adam Karmichael is the main editor of this page. He works for Zopo as he states here.

Claire.ma729 has done nothing but create promo articled for some of their phones [17] duffbeerforme (talk) 07:51, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

  • It looks like most of these survived a AfD as a redirect back to the first listed article. But you're correct, there appears to be a COI concern and cleanup needed. However as it relates to the users, Adam appears inactive, and all of the content Claire has done has been undone, and they have not edited for two week since the AfD's started. Something to keep an eye on but no additional action is necessary until abuse resumes. Tiggerjay (talk) 08:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I did some major trimming and editing today of the spammy content. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:50, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

ANI case for undisclosed paid editing and socking

Arbitrary end of listing

Of interest to people who visit this noticeboard: WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Earflaps - accusations of being an undisclosed paid editor and a sock puppet.

There really are too many potentially involved articles to list them all; here is a partial breakdown. – Brianhe (talk) 06:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

A community ban has been proposed in the same ANI thread and endorsed by at least one other editor. - Brianhe (talk) 05:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
User has been indefed based on SPI data. They will not be going anywhere though. Not sure how we are going to deal with their future socks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:32, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Doc James, thanks. I've arbitrarily listed here the chronologically last dozen creations from my editor analysis. This is just a taste. I deliberately left out any musician and album creations because of the sheer volume and deniability as a fan. But they should be considered as well. SmartSE has been adding more analysis of additions/expansions (vice full blown article creations). - Brianhe (talk) 06:49, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Wow, it looks like JzG employed the nuclear option (G5) on all the page creations. I'd invite COIN regulars to look at the other contribs for remaining cleanup opportunities. Brianhe (talk) 17:49, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Indeed I did. There were a few where other people had made substantive contributions and I mainly left those but most of these articles were as written by Earflaps, with only formatting and other minor fixes, and thus eligible for WP:CSD#G5 as Musiclover was blocked in April 2012. Incidentally, I am confident that an article could easily be written on Diebold Nixdorf, the deletion carries no prejudice against an ab initio rewrite. Guy (Help!) 18:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Articles deleted, accounts blocked. - Brianhe (talk) 05:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Articles
Accounts

A checkuser at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Waffen77 verified these are confirmed accounts of each other. This was a willful act to circumvent our policies and procedures to ensure the created articles remained intact and published. The farm was discovered at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kai Exos when a number of WP:SPA accounts supported each other to keep the article. While the article superficially looked well sourced, there was a unanimous consensus that it did not meet our inclusion criteria. Another example was at the article Rick Soukoulis where socks contested and removed the PROD notice. The article was eventually deleted again by unanimous consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rick Soukoulis.

Based upon this pattern I've gone ahead and blown up the rest of the created articles. Mkdwtalk 19:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not clear if there was a specific further action you believe is necessary. It looks like all relevant pages have been deleted, and users blocked. Is there something I'm missing? TiggerJay (talk) 20:32, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I think I took care of everything that I could see but I wanted to post it here for two reasons: documentation and in case I missed anything or if anyone had something else to add. Mkdwtalk 20:58, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Alexandre Mars

Jennepicfoundation was topic banned following community discussion. - Brianhe (talk) 22:31, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Jenn, the Director of Communications for Epic Foundation and her alternate accounts:

have been trying to create a promotional piece about the Foundation's leader at the request of the subject of the article [18] for a while. While the alternate accounts have been blocked, all have been trying to add promotional material and have been warned.(see talk pages of each) @MelanieN: (now on vacation) admonished her:

"Whoa, Jenn! You've been stuffing the article full of promotional stuff and we can't have that. I was only going to delete the latest batch; the External Links you added are inappropriate, except for the website, and so was the Press list. But I see someone has now reverted everything you added over the last few days. They are entitled to do that, per WP:COI. That means you are going to have to get consensus on the article's talk page for your edits from now on. I will add back a few things I thought were OK, but the rest will have to be looked at by the community. And don't even try to add back all those external links to Twitter (not allowed) and his blogs and so on. As for the "Press" section, that was pure hype, I doubt if any of it should be there. We had been allowing some edits from you because they seemed neutral and encyclopedic, and I thought you understood the rules. But after this latest batch - no. From now on, ask at the article's talk page if you want anything added to the article. Sorry, but you pushed the envelope too far. --MelanieN (talk) 19:53, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

However, this paid editor believes that she controls the article and says "It will be reverted back to the edits from summer 2015 as these edits were all APPROVED by the community" among other things. Please see the article's talk page.

At this point, I think we need a topic ban or some type of sanction to keep this in check. At a minimum, I'm requesting additional eyes on the article. Toddst1 (talk) 20:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, and thanks for the nice cleanup of the article. I did some work on this article in early July 2015, along with User:Ritchie333. We developed a reasonably encyclopedic article, and I sternly warned this editor at that time not to edit the article. She is the communications director of the Epic Foundation, of which this article's subject is the founder and CEO - in other words, her employer. But I didn't keep the article on my watchlist, and I see that within days of my warning she was inserting material into the article again. The article was then fairly stable for more than a year, but this month she replaced that article with a puffery bio [19] which she actually boasts is "Epic Foundation-approved". (Actually an IP made the change, but when the addition was reverted, her logged-in self restored it.) In the new material she described her employer as "the French Bill Gates" and loaded it with promotionalism: "made a fortune", "the world's largest mobile agency", "he is an avid runner and sports fanatic". She defended the material against a charge of copyvio by saying "We actually created all of this content ourselves, that's why it's verbatim across all of the platforms that you mentioned. These sites asked for short bios from Alexandre and we provided it to them. Please remove this copyright infringement notice as it is incorrect." Quite aside from the copyvio issue (this bio has been published elsewhere, and even if her shop wrote it and gave it to those other sources, that doesn't relieve us of our copyright obligations), the material is inappropriate. Everything is sourced, but the language is distinctly promotional. And above all that, she has been told, repeatedly, not to edit the article but to post suggestions on the talk page and let others add them, but she insistently demands her right to add anything she wants as long as it is sourced.[20] She totally doesn't get it. She doesn't see anything wrong with replacing the encyclopedic article here with a bio written by the subject's own foundation. She has been counseled and warned enough that I don't see any use in further counseling. She has no understanding of how inappropriate her behavior has been and clearly intends to keep doing it. I thank Toddst1 for removing the "Epic Foundation -approved" material and restoring the article to encyclopedic language. And I concur with his suggestion that the editor Jennepicfoundation and her alternate accounts should be indefinitely topic-banned from writing about Alexandre Mars or the Epic Foundation. The topic ban to be enforced by an indefinite block if the restriction is broken. --MelanieN (talk) 07:09, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Melanie. FWIW, Jenn confirmed that she had edited while logged out as that IP. I've left a notice on Jenn's talk page of this WP:TBAN. Happy Holidays! Toddst1 (talk) 20:57, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
And I have deleted it. It's not up to you to hand out this kind of notice. I was concurring with your suggestion, but not actually making a ban decision. In fact topic bans are not usually handed out unilaterally by a single administrator. We should take the idea to ANI for a community decision. --MelanieN (talk) 22:11, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
@MelanieN: My mistake. Your language seemed decisive and one noticeboard seems as good as another to me. I'll leave this matter in your court. Toddst1 (talk) 22:45, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
OK, I'm going to stick my neck out here. I see where the suggestion is coming from, but I think it's premature. Jennepicfoundation is no more disruptive and no harder of hearing than hundreds of other editors in similar situations. She's also been a lot more up-front about her position than many other conflicted editors. She's been told, very clearly and by several people, not to edit the article again. I'd like to suggest that any topic ban proposal be put on hold, and only acted on if she ignores that advice. And that, if by any chance that suggestion is accepted, it would be cool if MelanieN were to explain it to her, in an admin kind of way. Regards to all, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, she has been told, very clearly and by several people, not to edit the article - and she insists that she will keep doing it. Thanks for your kind suggestion, but I have taken this to ANI. --MelanieN (talk) 23:17, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I think a topic ban is appropriate here and it may even be worth contemplating WP:TNT for the article considering the number of CN templates littering the article (and the number of COI notices on the talk page). Mkdwtalk 06:10, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Issue now being handled at AN/I: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Requesting_topic_ban_for_User:Jennepicfoundation John Nagle (talk) 20:49, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

James Grant Group

This is a two month new article that I just became aware of. SPA creator, weird sources, and lots of celebrity client name dropping. Worth a discussion? Brianhe (talk) 18:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@DGG: This is a bit confusing, you may have deleted this previously ~Oct 15 as pure promotion [21]. But I can't tell if the Oct 28 recreation is the same. Brianhe (talk) 00:21, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
The version I deleted was much worse than the present one, an unambiguous advertisement, a clear G11. The current version is cleaned up in that respect, but it does not in my opinion show notability. It might be an A7, but it would be safer to use AfD. DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Apropos of which, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Grant Group. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Pomona Envisions the Future - User:Mary Cummins

Mary Cummins has expressed a close connection with this topic several times (newest to oldest)

  • I made the page. I took those photos. I was one of the painters, also cleaned and renovated it. I wrote the press releases and made the website. i didn't realize the painter and story were false at the time. The mural is not owned by the artists. It is owned by the person who owns the building. The bldg owner made that very clear as he will be building a building there in the future and didn't want a legal issue about the mural. with this edit
  • I wrote and sent out a fake press release. I didn't know I was being fed false information by the painter. in this edit
  • He worked as one of many painters who projected photos on walls, traced them with chalk then filled them in with paint by number in a studio that did grocery store decorating. His name is not on any of those murals. The artist lied to people about the mural and himself... I didn't realize at the time that I made this page that the artist lied about all of those things. with this edit
  • I painted part of that mural and I'm not an artist... We all wrote articles about it to help an artist who turned out to be a fraud. with this edit
  • I was forced by a friend to make the Pomona Envisions the Future page. I was also forced to take the photos and add them with this edit
  • Removed my copyrighted photos which were not authorized to be on the page. Also removed my un-cited references. in the edit summary of this edit

Since the user very openly declared the connection to the article, I posted a {{Connected contributor | checked = | User1 = Mary Cummins | U1-EH = yes | U1-declared = yes |U1-otherlinks =https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Pomona_Envisions_the_Future&oldid=756427450 |U1-banned = }} on Talk:Pomona Envisions the Future —CaroleHenson (talk) 11:45, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

As I made the page, the page must then be deleted due to connection to the article. Delete the page. Mary Cummins (talk) 20:39, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
(copied from User talk:Mary Cummins), As you have mentioned on Talk:Pomona Envisioning the Future, the article is drastically different than it was 24 hours ago (because that's where the sources that I could find for article content led). If you look at the statistics for the article, your user name does not even appear in the graph about percentage of existing content, and it shows only one of your edits having remained through the article clean-up. I am guessing that is because I could not find sources for the long description section in this version of the article.—CaroleHenson (talk) 21:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
This is due, in part, because you told me that published articles that you created contained false information and should not be used, as stated repeatedly beginning at 01:11, 24 December 2016 (UTC) in Talk:Pomona Envisioning the Future#Removal of citations and images section. I discussed what articles I was avoiding as a result in Talk:Pomona Envisioning the Future#Sources.--—CaroleHenson (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Charlie Zeleny

Per Voceditenore, "Charlie Zeleny now has several pairs of experienced eyes on it. Inappropriate edits will be removed quickly based on WP's policies and guidelines." Also, case filed by sockpuppet. - Brianhe (talk) 20:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


A SPA IP editor has taken an aggressive tone regarding the editing of the article Charlie Zeleny. He is exhibiting WP:OWNERSHIP by getting very aggressive on his messages on the talk page. Anytime corrections are made or puffery is trimmed out he gets upset. I recently asked him on the article talk page if he had a COI. He denies it but I think more eyes should check on this because it is affecting keeping the article in a neutral tone. Also the article subject endorses certain products and the SPA IP wants that kept in also. It really seems a bit promotional. There have been all sorts of odd references that had to be trimmed out, and this SPA IP editor also falsified the article titles in several references by adding the subjects name to the front on the titles. Is that done for promotion? Not sure. Please help. Thanks! Pauciloquence (talk) 13:12, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

For whatever it is worth, if you check the ip locale on the contribution page it matches the place where the article subject is from. I guess that might be a coincidence. Pauciloquence (talk) 14:00, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
This was spoken about earlier on the Talk page of [Charlie_Zeleny] There is no conflict of interest regarding the subject Charlie Zeleny. The drummer community on a whole seems to be under-serviced with many prominent and famous drummers and musicians that have incomplete, under-sourced pages that have not been fixed or updated for many years. This is one of the drummers on the list that needs to be cleaned up and fixed significantly and is being fixed with a variety of editors.
Nine paragraphs of explanatory text
These editors includ Bythebooklibrary and Voceditenore who are not just massively editing the article but bringing up points on the talk page and having us all go back and forth on as a community to fix this page. There are many more drummer and musician pages that we must all tackle after this to have the Wikipedia drummer community hold more weight.
Furthermore, there is no ownership claimed whatsoever on this page. There has been a positive and constructive dialogue going on between at least another 4 editors. This has been extremely helpful for having the page be edited to the point where it is becoming well sourced and encyclopedic in tone and has been personally encouraged by me.
Conversely, the negative contributions from Pauciloquence include the 3 revert rule of edit warring on Sat 12/17/16 plus deleting entire sections of information including a section about Gear that is featured on most prominent drummer wiki articles prior to posting about edits for the community of multiple editors to evaluate on the talk page.
There are disagreements of puffery or weasel words in the article also. The recent edits by Pauciloquence have been made to sound less encyclopedic and written with bad grammar and syntax (ie. "solo artist who has worked playing' duo with Jordan Rudess").
Any recent references added that are being contested were due to Pauciloquence's insistence of a myriad of sources for almost every sentence. This not only seems unreasonable and unhelpful for the general flow of the article but also appears to be sourcing overkill. Other drummers' wiki pages have much less than 49 source references (average is 6-14 max usually). When adding these references, as mentioned on the Talk page, each of these references were a cut and paste job with regards to the titling and format to try to preserve as much of the article before Pauciloquence continued to delete full sections of information. This appears to be a Targeted Negative Campaign and falls under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing. No false or malicious titling was intended, just was trying to speedily get as many valid sources up to preserve what was left of the page. This subject deserves to be updated similarly to match the other prominent drummers on Wikipedia. Furthermore, all the other prominent drummers and musicians who have incomplete or error messages on their page should also get an update to remove similar issues moving forward. The Wikipedia community deserves it.
Also, everywhere online it seems stated that the subject is a NYC Session Drummer so appears to be living in NYC. Looks like the subject is born and raised in NJ.
The Gear section has also become a contentious point. But please see these similar articles that are well written, well sourced and favorites in the drummer wiki community for examples of full gear lists. The situation is that there are literally hundreds of prominent drummer Wiki sites that fully list each drummer's gear (please see references below on this Talk page) and I know it is a mainstay in the drummer wiki community from the shares and connections I've seen on major sites like ModernDrummer.com, Drummerworld.com and more. It's not promotional, it's showing exactly what instruments each drummer plays and are listed as informative facts. Just like you would mention that a classical violinist plays a certain make and model Stradivarius violin, these pages are showing exactly what instruments are in the collection of drums and cymbals of each drummer on these pages. Very helpful to know for everyone in the Wiki community to know most definitely.
Here are similarly prominent drummers who have full Wiki listings of their specific Gear written in a similar format and style:
Chris_Adler, Vinnie_Paul, Mark_Zonder, Adrian_Young, Tim_Yeung, Ronnie_Vannucci_Jr., Lars_Ulrich, Jon_Theodore, [[Zak_Starkey], Questlove, Scott_Rockenfield, [Derek_Roddy]], Morgan_Rose, Tony_Royster_Jr., Ilan_Rubin, Phil_Rudd, Chris_Pennie, Thomas_Pridgen, Abe_Laboriel_Jr., Shannon_Larkin, Ray_Luzier, Shannon_Lucas, Jojo_Mayer, Larry_Mullen_Jr., Steve_Jordan_(musician), George_Kollias_(drummer), Tomas_Haake, Will_Hunt, Zbigniew Robert Promiński, Adrian_Erlandsson, Zac_Farro, Jon_Fishman, Carter_Beauford, Virgil_DonatiJohn_Dolmayan, Brann_Dailor, Stewart_Copeland, Billy_Cobham, Damon_Che, Terry_Bozzio
Thank you very much. 100.35.194.25 (talk) 14:26, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Note that for readability, I have formatted the various articles mentioned above to proper internal links in a horizontal format instead of the lengthy vertical list bare urls [22]. In any case, such lists of equally inappropriate articles are irrelevant to this discussion. Please do not add any more to this section. Voceditenore (talk) 10:50, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Pauciloquence that this article needs more eyes and also more input at Talk:Charlie Zeleny. It is more than simply a content dispute about the drumming gear. In my view User:100.35.194.25 is certainly editing as if he/she has a conflict of interest, not only because of the SPA aspect but also because of the nature of the edits, which are quite obviously promotional to a neutral observer, e.g. [23], and the repeated removal of valid maintenance templates, e.g. [24], [25]. Note that immediately prior to his edits, another IP, 173.54.202.104 (talk · contribs), had also added promotional material (same ISP, same location of Maplewoood/South Orange New Jersey, part of the New York metropolitan area). But this article has long been the subject of highly probable COI editing, in fact, probably from its creation.
In September 2011, Zeleny's official website looked like this and had its own bio. The following month, it appeared to undergo a restructuring and consisted solely of this. In December 2011, DrumDocZ (talk · contribs), the same name used by Zeleny for his official YouTube channel [26], began extensively editing this article with quite blatantly promotional language and adding an inappropriate level of detail which belongs on the subject's website, not an encyclopedia article, e.g. [27]. He also added multiple copyright images which are available on Zeleny's Flickr photostream. By February 2012 (2 months later), the new version of Zeleny's website had emerged and looked like this. The site remains like that today. Note that when you click on the "CharlieZ" link in the homepage menu bar, it now takes you directly to his Wikipedia article. Ditto the link "CLICK HERE TO READ MORE" at the bottom of the home page. Zeleny's official website also lists the WP article as one of his "channels" along with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. [28]. In my experience, that kind of arrangement (where the WP article is fully integrated into the official website) has often been a feature of articles with extensive editing by editors with a major conflict of interest. Voceditenore (talk) 11:21, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
Very interesting information gathered here Voceditenore. Let me try to track down what is going on with this in addition to the photos that are suspect at this point. I do think ultimately there appears to be a misunderstanding overall by many users editing on Wiki in general and specifically on the Charlie Zeleny page in relation to trying to follow other drummer wiki pages layouts, information and formatting. There are many drummer pages that are up without error box citations and are likely being referenced to as templates to create this page. I have personally erroneously been at fault for that since I've been trying to follow the information I see in other seemingly valid Wiki sites (especially the drummers and musicians) which I mentioned all over on talk pages. It turns out that much of the whole drummer community on Wiki have poorly written, poorly sourced and have a promotional slant on many other prominent drummers pages that don't follow the main Wiki policies and guidelines. But I've now been privy to that information and will only edit pages with purely encyclopedic content in mind moving forward. And if there are any questions in relation to specific information to use the help of more experienced editors and ask questions on the Talk page. This whole experience has been very informative on my end. I definitely look forward to having this article continue be updated and improved moving forward with all of the editors helpful contributions on the page until all the error boxes can be removed completely sometime in the future. Thank you very much. 100.35.194.25 (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
Your behaviour strongly indicates a conflict of interest, despite what you say above. Apart from editing nothing except this article and your extensive attempts at micro-managing it via its talk page, your early addition to the article is very telling. You listed dozens of obscure venues where Zeleny had allegedly performed, devoid of references, and not published anywhere else. It is highly unlikely that anyone apart from a close associate of Zeleny (at the very least) would have that information. Voceditenore (talk) 11:38, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Agree with Voceditenore about this – it's really hard to see how anyone without a conflict of interest could have had access to that material, or could have found the stamina to post all the various walls of text such as that above. Voceditenore, if I was wearing a hat I'd raise it to you. IP 100.35.194.25, please read other stuff and (just in case it applies to you) WP:PAYTALK. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:09, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Voceditenore Justlettersandnumbers Brianhe And now the very strange and semi-miraculous thing has happened. In just less than a two hour period after ip100 posts on the DrumDocZ page about the copyrighted images possibly being deleted if nothing is done, DrumDocZ shows up at wikipepia after a fiver year to the day absence from logging into wickipedia saying the flickr copyright notice has been fixed and that a email has been sent into OTRS? I see on the image pages the notice that OTRS has a 92 day backlog. I had expressed my concern previously to Voceditore that I suspected that three or 4 of the parties listed at the top of this post may actually be the same person. But I took her advice that since the DrumDocz editor had not posted since 2011, there would not be away to check. Also she told me the accounts had not been used exactly in any abusive way. Well now DrumDocZ has posted in the now, and something does not smell right to me. Is the 100ip editor actually DrumDocZ? Was 100ip editor who has been posting all the pov edits before he was stopped by the protections been really drumdocz, (whether he is actually Zeleny himself or not) trying to evade scrutiny to promotionalize the article. If any of the four are actually Zeleny should they not declare that, and if they do, be limited to edit requests mostly? Thanks to the protections to the article, and the excellent editing by Vocedtidore and others, the article is in a more neutral and natural state. I am concerned about the images and this sudden last minute appearance of DrumDocZ supposedly sending enough info to OTRS to prove that the actual Zeleny who is said to be the copyright holder, will be gone over with a fine toothed comb. Are these images going to be allowed to stay in the article for 92 more days until OTRS makes a determination? Funny, when I read back on the talk page in the article,[29] at first ip100 posted an explanation that sounded like he knew all about how the images were done, and by whom, and that a photographer had been commissioned. That is the post that had me initially wonder if ip100 was actually Zeleny. Now 100's explanation seems to completely coincide with the at the last moment explanations by drumdocz. May I please have some others thoughts on this? Thanks! Pauciloquence (talk) 08:21, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
That's a very long post, Pauciloquence! My thoughts:
  • It's both unproductive and unwise to speculate about the real-life identity of editors (at least one valuable contributor to this page lost editing privileges because judged to have done that)
  • If appropriate permission comes through for the pictures then that's a good thing. They can be moved to Commons, and there's still no obligation to include any or all of them in the article.
  • If there's agreement here that the editors listed above do have a conflict of interest, then we should tag the talk-page accordingly, revert any edit any of them makes to the article (unless to remove a BLP violation), and remind them of WP:PAYTALK if any of them show signs of wasting too much of the time of volunteer editors. The article has been cleaned up by an expert, there's little more to say or do.

Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:38, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers Thank you for your ideas. My point was that it may be that all four editors above may be the same person. I am not speculating about the real life identity of anyone. I am in no way interested in who anyone may be. I respect the anonymity Wikipedia gives editors. If it came off to you that I was, I am sorry, but I assure I was not, and have no plan to do so. I agree if the proper permissions are received and vetted by OTRS that will be a very good thing. I just wanted to share my thoughts about the situation in case in the future the article has more problems that occur with insertion of pov and promotional statements and material back into the article. Hopefully that will not occur. Thanks! Pauciloquence (talk) 11:59, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
Voceditenore Justlettersandnumbers BrianheHey everyone, just wanted to reach out to you here again to try to clarify. I reached out to the CZ website to alert whoever runs the site of the Wiki edits and copyright violations and to attend to them the other day. I did not hear back at all. But then wound up doing a search for drumdocz and reached out via a couple sites and links on that name. That's when the drumdocz user appeared and replied to my post and said they wanted to attend to the photos to avoid removal. I don't know who drumdocz is, nor do I know who runs the CZ website. But the combination of me hitting multiple locations over a period of a couple days must have gotten to someone close to the subject since the permissions changed on the Flickr site to allow these photos to be kept up on the Wiki page. I am glad that the 3 photos chosen were kept up (out of the overkill of 11 photos on the site) and that all the hard work from the multiple editors on the site has made the page more neutral and encyclopedic. I do think there is a couple more minor edits of well sourced and referenced information to cover in the 2012-2016 area including some production credits, but everything else seems to be in order. And to further clarify my situation, I am an avid fan of the work of the subject as I am a fan of many other drummers and musicians in the vein of the subject specifically the Blotted Science, Behold the Arctopus and other metal projects he's done. I was trying to look at other Wiki pages of similar players and model the tone, layout and information of those pages (albeit incorrectly since it turns out those pages are all not well sourced and have extraneous information). I also found an extensive list of more updated credits and biographical information that I've been referring to that I acquired from some pretty inventive internet searching. All these credits are unsourced and had to try to search for valid sources online for each though. I have a job that enables me to use the internet for many hours at leisure and wanted to try my hand at Wiki edits. Not sure I am going to want to continue after this intense back and forth situation on this particular page. But if I do, I will take the suggestion of Voceditenore, and get a valid user name to continue to work on all the drummer and musician pages that desperately need their sites well sourced and updated. Hope everyone has a great holiday. 100.35.194.25 (talk) 12:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
I'm very much in agreement with Justlettersandnumbers's comments above re the various accounts and how to handle this. I personally find 100.35.194.25's explanations for their editing pattern and talk page behaviour, which up to now have strongly suggested a COI, less than convincing. However, the "proof of the pudding" will be in their future editing. Charlie Zeleny now has several pairs of experienced eyes on it. Inappropriate edits will be removed quickly based on WP's policies and guidelines. Talk page badgering will not change that. Voceditenore (talk) 17:23, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
  • NOTE: The filer, Pauciloquence, has been blocked as a sock of indeffed sockmaster, WordSeventeen. I'm striking his comments here per WP:DENY. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 01:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:XTRDC and Mobile Phone Models

Replace this with a brief explanation of the situation. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 25 December 2016 (UTC) User:XTRDC apparently has the objective of creating as many stub articles as possible about various models of Sony mobile phone running the Android system, and has made no other edits. See contribution history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/XTRDC. In spite of no previous editing experience, this is a knowledgeable editor who has carefully avoided no context, because the name of the mobile phone is context, and avoided no content by providing minimal content, sometimes only an infobox, and avoided advertising or spam by providing so little content as to hardly be advertising. I submit that Use Common Sense overrides Assume Good Faith, and that we know that this editor has a conflict of interest and should be mandated to declare it. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

There's a main Sony Xperia article, with a table of all the variants. Proposed deletion of all the variants as duplicative of the main article. The main article is more useful; readers get to compare all the models. John Nagle (talk) 19:31, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
I agree; but that doesn't address the question that the editor hasn't declared their conflict of interest. Any claim that they don't have a conflict of interest is incredible in the etymological sense of unworthy of belief by a rational H. sapiens. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
Except that they are now creating and editing Huawei phone model articles. If it's COI, who are they doing it for? Anyway, user XTRDC, please talk to us here. Several editors think you're overdoing the phone articles. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 03:32, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

World_Financial_Group

During Vandal Patrol, I saw a change made on World_Financial_Group | which changed "World Financial Group is an MLM" to "World Financial Group is NOT an MLM" along with other changes to paint the company in a better light.

I placed a note on the user's page alerting the to the fact that I'd reverted them with a personalized explanantion as to why. They contacted me on my talk page with a list of reasons why their change should stay.

The reason I believe there may be a conflict of interest here is, this user is brand new |user created today , and his | first act was to go to that page today before he went anywhere else.

Secondly, based on his post on my talk page, (specifically his point #2) he shows very specialized information on how that company works, such as would available to someone who worked there).

Thirdly, his edit on the article painted it in a positive light, despite the sourced rreferences stating the contrary.

I believe this user has an undeclared COI on this article. If you think I'm wrong, let me know, I'll drop this like a lead weight. KoshVorlon 20:31, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Whether or not World Financial Group is a MLM is an issue for the Talk:World Financial Group page. That came up in 2010. A quick look indicates one could make reasonable arguments for and against. This is probably a "discuss on talk first" kind of issue. John Nagle (talk) 19:42, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
This is an old discussion and affects many articles -- MLM style companies feel that the term MLM is derogitory and try to get it removed. This article has had at least two major discussions about this, and one lastest several years. Essentially every once in a while someone will pop up and try to change it, and there isn't much to do except revert and point out their error. It has been a few days since they edited, so it might be a dead-issue - for now. I tried to find a guideline or essay on the topic, but couldn't... Does anyone know about one regarding MLM labeling? TiggerJay (talk) 21:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Paxful

These pages/users were reported at SPI but don't seem to be related to that case, nor to each other in certainty, however all have made dissimilar edits promoting this company. I don't have a very good nose for sniffing out paid editing, but this looks like it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:02, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is paid editing or not, but it really doesn't matter. It was put up for PROD, but then after doing more cleanup of this article, it ends up widdling down to nothingness. Even the "History" section was puffery to make it sound more than what it really is. At this point this page is really CSD#A7 material. I also put the draft page up for CSD since it is a copy of an existing mainspace article. TiggerJay (talk) 21:02, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I think these three accounts are all connected to each other but not necessarily to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/OfficialPankajPatidar. I'm not entirely sure its a PAID sock farm. The accounts do not really overlap and one of them was blocked for a promotional name so a new registered account would be expected. That being said it has the appearance of being routine COI/SPAM from someone at the company or someone closely associated with it. Mkdwtalk 21:18, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

SOCAN Awards

Since June 2016, C-ritch has been just adding the SOCAN Awards to numerous articles (example 1, example 2, example 3). The source, www.socan.ca, is not a third-party reliable source, but a self-published source. The user appears to be a single-purpose account, existing for the sole or primary purpose of promotion of the non-notable awards. I am concerned that C-ritch has a conflict of interest and is using Wikipedia to promote the SOCAN Awards at the expense of neutrality. I would like to know whether {{uw-coi}} should be added to the user's talk page and whether the user's additions to the articles should be reverted. 153.203.98.8 (talk) 20:14, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

The concerns I have is if SOCAN Awards are actually notable. If we presume the awards are notable enough, then I don't see a specific issue here. For COI we're more concerned about bias and controversy in these senses. For a comparison, take Academy Award for Best Director. There is no problem with using primary sources for the purposes of showing specific people won the official award. And even if someone from the Academy did edit this page to include a link to the offical website, that would not be considered controversial and is not prohibited. Although COI editing is discouraged. The question that needs to be asked and answered is if SOCAN Awards is notable enough award, and if not, then the links could be considered WP:SPAM. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
If the awards are notable enough, then the award resuls should be mentioned in a WP:RS reliable source. Are they? John Nagle (talk) 19:06, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I would say probably yes. Billboard covers them. Been around since the 1990's. Canada's premier music industry awards from what I can see (akin to the UK's Brit awards). So I would say notable for Canadian's, not necessarily for everyone else (this sentence has no real policy backing however). Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:14, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I would tend to agree. If they are Canada's premiere award, and it is RS as you have with Billboard, than that sounds good enough. And with that being the case, then COI really isn't much of a concern because it is uncontroversial edits which are permitted. TiggerJay (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
They aren't Canada's main music awards though. That is the Juno Awards, which get way, way more attention. I've lived in Canada my whole life and am interested in music, have never seen the press pay attention to the SOCAN awards at all, whereas the Juno's get tons of coverage. Fyddlestix (talk) 21:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Looking further, I can see that they do get some coverage [30][https://www.google.ca/amp/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3645788?client=ms-android-samsung], but note that these are very brief, cursory articles. Personally I would not call this a "major" award at all, and I don't think it's something that automatically needs to be noted in the bios on artists who win or are nominated (as I would expect for the JUNOs). Fyddlestix (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Jason Pontin

Refer to prior discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 108#Jason Pontin. Mr. Pontin mistakenly responded in the archive, which I will copy below. Brianhe (talk) 23:55, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't mind the "depeacocking" and demands for citations, and Wiki's editors can debate my notability (although I clearly meet the standards as editor in chief and publisher of the world's oldest technology publication, the chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, the founder of Solve, and a long-time well-known technology journalist).

But I strongly object to the implication that I've been editing some of the pages associated with Aubrey de Grey. I don't live in Boston, Virginia, and have never visited there. I have never edited a Wiki page from Washington DC. I've never edited Aubrey de Grey's Wiki page, nor the now defunct Aubrey de Grey-Technology Review page except to correctly quote the terms of the challenge and, if I recall, to correct the spelling of the word "foment". My TED Talk, which has been seen more than 1.5 million times, has nothing whatsoever to do with Aubrey de Grey and SENS: it does not claim that "projects like SENS cannot succeed." I said that technology can solve big problems if we really understand the problem. (Not to get into the whole stupid SENS debate again, but we cannot say that about aging at the moment.)

But more importantly, none of my disagreements with Aubrey de Grey activities have any place in the discussion of the notability of my page. The SENS Technology Review was a decade ago. Furthermore, Deku-shrub seems to have his own preoccupations and COI, as someone strongly interested in trans-humanism, which almost guarantees sympathy for SENS. (No working biologists are "transhumanists.") I really don't think my Wiki page should be drawn into the SENS debate by another of Aubrey de Grey's disciples. User:jpontin (talk) 18:37, 30 December 2016

Skyler Page

The artist's web site links to Wikipedia as the sole source of biographical information [31]. It is possible this page is being maintained for this purpose. I am listing one blocked account at this time, but others are readily apparent from the edit history. Brianhe (talk) 18:17, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Allen Meadors

Despite repeatedly being advised (see User talk:Juno771#Managing a conflict of interest and User talk:Juno771#Meadors's residence) to suggest proposed changes to the article on its talk page, paid editor Juno771 continues to add promotional, poorly sourced material to this article. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:58, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

How are my articles poorly sourced when some of them are from Wiki pages already published? Each is an online article, not a vanity site, everything you've asked for. I continue to be aggressively attacked for trying to add any information to the article. I have spent hours researching online and giving the full reference source information. Allen is not a personal friend and I have been working on the article for a month now. Everyone has been rude and condescending to me from the start as though I am trying to get one over on you rather than to learn how to get this process done as it is my job to do so. I have stated so on the page as you requested.Juno771 (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Examples of the poor sourcing include the claims made in the edit linked above, that "Dr. Meadors has over 50 publications and has spoken both nationally and internationally on a wide variety of health care issues" and "Dr. Allen Meadors has helped raise well over 100 million dollars in external funds for the institutions in which he has played an integral role", both unsourced. Where you have used sources, they include this, which is a wiki site and therefore not a reliable source. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Also, another sourcing problem: "Meadors participated in outreach efforts with UNCP's local community of American Indians in 2015", which is cited to two sources, both from 2009 (he was no longer at UNCUP in 2015). Cordless Larry (talk) 08:22, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
The issue here is not so much sourcing as your promotional, conflict-of-interest additions though, Juno771. Cordless Larry (talk) 11:26, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Juno771 finally started to request edits on the article talk page. I made the requested edit, and this is the thanks I got. Sometimes I don't know why I bother... Cordless Larry (talk) 20:41, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

User:President High School

President High School very recently created an account, and wrote a few sentences about the President High School on their userpage. I deleted it under WP:U5 and advised him to change his name to an individual one. This is obviously a quite new and well-meaning user, and he responded by giving his full name and indicating he wants to create a page for his school, pointing out that neighboring schools do have a page.[32] I presume he works at the school, or he could be a well-spoken student, I suppose. What should I tell him? Besides, of course, telling him that COI editing is discouraged. But it seems kind of harsh to tell him he can't create a page on the school. Would somebody better with schools than me (that would probably be most people here) like to talk to him? I'll link him to this page, but contributing here may be hard to handle for him, so better on his page, perhaps. Bishonen | talk 21:00, 1 January 2017 (UTC).

Frankly I don't see much harm in this, especially if it's a kid and not an employee. If the article turns into "President High School rocks and $RIVAL_SCHOOL sucks and Johnny is teh gay" we can deal with that on its own terms. And if it turns out well, we will have a decent new article written by someone who knows the subject, and whose positive experience could lead them to contribute in other topics. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:26, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
S.B.H.B.'s "watch and wait" above is probably best. Other than the username I don't see a problem here. Writing neutrally about one's school is possible. If they are a district employee (assuming that it's a public school along the American model) there may be a financial COI problem. But we don't know that. - Brianhe (talk) 04:09, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

When is an 'out' an (involuntary) exit

So I check I've got my wikilinks correct creating a user talk page message, and scan the verbiage again at WP:COI and the scary words are scary. As in the bold red note above

When investigating possible cases of conflict of interest editing, editors must be careful not to out other editors. Wikipedia's policy against harassment takes precedence over the conflict of interest guideline.

Checking recent changes I'd noticed an editor making a minor formatting error, and so dropped them a nice note pointing to the WP:MOS section about that. Later I checked to see if they'd fixed things and saw they'd continued editing w/o fixing the nit. That drew my attention to the fact every edit they've ever done was related to one person, and to the point it really was stuffing WP with all conceivable possible links between pages.

The editor's username is formed from first+mi+last+year, and so on speculation I looked that name up, finding a LinkedIn page describing them and their relationship with the person.

Now how the heck can I do anything about it? If I make at all clear to them (and everyone) that it is known there is a concrete COI, isn't that 'outing'? If I merely indicate to them my astonishment at the single-mindedness they are free to ignore the conflict. Or does the fact the username is so transparent mean they can't be 'outed', as they have specifically identified themselves? After all, AGF, that honest username lends weight to the possibility they simply are ignorant of the problem. Ideas? Shenme (talk) 23:01, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:COI, "If revealing private information is needed to resolve COI editing, and if the issue is serious enough to warrant it, editors can seek the advice of functionaries or the arbitration committee by email." Basically, there are times when one can email the information to admins and the like without making it public information. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
Is it really private though if they are editing under their WP:REALNAME? Would Shenme be in the clear to post to the other editor's userpage with something like "I noticed you have a name similar to someone close to" whoever it is? @Shenme: I encourage you in the strongest possible terms not to link to other websites anywhere you are discussing a Wikipedia editor, it's just too much of a minefield vis-a-vis WP:OUTING. - Brianhe (talk) 04:16, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
  • {{Uw-coi}} on the user's talk page, and wait for the user's response, before discussing hypothetics on this noticeboard? Since the template has been posted I'd set this talk page section "on hold", because one can't continue discussing a particular editor without them knowing they are being discussed (in which case the OP already disclosed too much to make this a hypothetical discussion about a john doe editor). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Abyssinian people

Consensus view is that this is a POV/content issue to be resolved through consensus editing process or, failing that, DRN. COIN is the wrong forum. Brianhe (talk) 14:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

His username shows a personal connection to the Abyssinian also known as Habesha peoples page. The Abyssinians are known as Amhara people mainly [33] but user denies this and instead misinterprets the source by replacing Amhara people with Amharic speaking peoples [34], this is a common Amhara nationalist motive to deny the existence of Amhara people and equate them with Ethiopia. This method was used to oppress the Oromo who contribute the majority and other Ethiopian groups that werent Amhara. He has expressed his dislike for my balanced edits and prefers only positive Abyssinian portrayal. [35]

Insinuates censoring material if it will help prevent "resentment or ethnic violence" [36] He claims discrimination never existed in Ethiopia. [37] He removes citations that portray Abyssinian labels to Oromo in a negative light [38][39] Duqsene (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Duqsene: This looks to me like a content dispute playing out at Talk:Abyssinian people/Archives/2017/October#Abyssinian people are the Amhara mainly, not a conflict of interest, at least not such a sharp one that the remedies available here apply. Have you tried modes outlined at dispute resolution? - Brianhe (talk) 02:28, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
@Brianhe: No I have not used DR. If I wasnt in a content dispute, how would you interpret the comments made? This isnt just about content but deliberate blanking and altering what the reliable source says. In his dispute resolution with another user, the volunteering member @Robert McClenon: called his comments nationalist outbursts.[40] I dont see how DR will solve the behavior of the user. Duqsene (talk) 03:00, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Since I was pinged, I will comment. I tried and failed to mediate a dispute to which this editor was a party. I don't think that they have a conflict of interest. I think that they are a combative nationalistic editor. I tried to caution them that they risked being blocked for nationalistic rants. I don't think that there is an issue in the scope of this noticeboard, although there is a disruptive editing problem. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:54, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Might be good to send this to ANI for a warning. I don't think he's quite reached the level of a block yet unless he's been spouting racist nonsense that I missed.74.70.146.1 (talk) 05:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, I respect everyones opinion and if some users think I have nationalsitic outbursts and perhaps If I was told for which nationalistic group I am being accused of then I very much appreciate it if I was told precisely. What I know is that I am not defending any nationalistic group in the Horn of Africa. My beleif is that people need to get balanced information that makes sense based on wikiepedia rule WP:Impartial. True, I have been dealing with several sockpuppetes such us these [41][42] created to disrupt Ethiopia related articles and because they use intimidation and bullying (as can be seen in my talkpage), rather than make a little effort to convince one another, to include unbalanced stories then I deal with them accordingly while respecting wikipedia rule. I tried to convince the editors by bringing sources written by neutral and relevant experts, by bringing other related examples and by explaining to them what they are arguing about does not make sense and contradicts with other professionally researched works. All these is so that we build a high quality encyclopedia. And if this is wrong way then I will appreciate it if I was advised to not use this kind of dispute resolution precisely and use another better alternative way to deal with disputes. — Thank you — EthiopianHabesha (talk) 10:31, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Duqsene, with respect please do not paraphrase my statment out of context. I never said Amhara people do not exist. What I said was the role of people speaking Amharic and Tigrinya language in the kingdoms before 13th centuary such as Axum and Zagwe is unknown. If you have a source saying Zagwe and Axum inhabitants spoke Amharic & Tigrinya language then please bring them and there is no way I will not accept your argument. What you are saying is the Spanish and French speaking people ruled the Roman empire, or the Roman empire identity is based on Spanish and French identity while these languages do not exist at that time and while historical documents show that the Romans identity is based on Latins language, culture, rule of law and religion. — EthiopianHabesha (talk) 10:48, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
I can tell that the subject editor is struggling to engage in dispute resolution in English. Maybe they don't know how to explain in English without coming across as strident. Has the subject editor considered editing a Wikipedia in their first language? I recommend closing of this thread because there is no valid case for conflict of interest, and it is not the purpose of this noticeboard to decide on disruptive editing or competency in English. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I do not know for who that message is for. As said everyone has their opinion but in my opinion convincing points matter. Instead of repeating over and over one beautifully written point that does not make sense it's better to have one badly written convincing point to reach consensus and edit collaboratively. Some of the sockpuppet editors I was dealing with do not have interest to read multiple books and enlighten themselves but come in here to disrupt with just one point that they themselves could not be able to clarify when asked. If I may use related example, since some may not be familiar to Ethiopia related articles, when I said it does not make sense to say "The Spanish speaking people led the Roman empire" user Duqsene is claiming I have said "Spanish people do not exist". That is the issue in a nutshell. — EthiopianHabesha (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Robert McClenon that this is an inappropriate forum for this issue and the thread ought to be closed. Anyone else? - Brianhe (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
@Brianhe: Yep, I too agree with @Robert McClenon. This is not the right forum Duqsene, though you are rightly concerned. Now that @EthiopianHabesha at least mentions "professionally researched works" are to be relied to improve Ethiopia articles, DRN and other forums may be more appropriate for you two. I support closing this out, @Brianhe. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 12:16, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Personally this reads like a NPOV issue if anything. Undue weight given to non-neutral material. (Also someone might want to look up the difference between the Eastern & Western Roman Empires during this time period.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

United States Marine Corps Forces, Europe

A large number of uncited, unreferenced edits have taken place at the above article. The IP has made a series of Marine Corps-related edits and MARFOREURAF has exclusively edited this article. "MARFOREURAF" is the acronym for the subject of the article in question. Exemplo347 (talk) 14:17, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Coliving

I noticed the article Coliving, which was created by User:Coliving. This edit for example shows evidence of a COI due to the addition of coliving.com as an external link. I have softblocked the account for a promotional username. That edit also removed some in-line references and a merge tag, proposed to merge to Co-operative living arrangements (Co-living already redirects there). I would merge myself as Coliving seems like a promotional content fork, but having blocked the account that does not seem correct as it might seem I blocked to get my own way. I'd like a review of the promotional nature of the page and the merge proposal. Fences&Windows 09:42, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_109

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