Talk:John Robert Beyster

Conflict of interest (COI)

According to the previous revision of his userpage, the user Bizzwriter is Peter Economy, Dr. Beyster's co-author on the book The SAIC Solution. Bizzwriter has been a significant editor of this article:

• He added the majority of the biographical information in the article (initially uncited). He also made a number of edits immediately thereafter (and then a few months later), including one that adds a citation of the book he co-authored with Breyster (despite WP:SELFCITE).
• He also deleted (twice) a paragraph about a controversial claim about Beyster's behavior towards women, edited in by an IP user; the IP user initially did not cite the source and their edit was previously reverted by another user twice for that reason, but the most recent version before Bizzwriter's deletion did cite the Vanity Fair article in question. (That said, the now-deleted material seems to have been directly copypasted from the Vanity Fair article anyway, so the removal was likely justified regardless, but there seems to have been no discussion over the edit war on this talk page.)
• He added a link to Beyster's Facebook page to the article.

• A few months later, he added some information about Beyster's boat and some promotional language about SAIC's support of some entries in America's Cup.
• He also made a number of edits following Dr. Beyster's passing to fix verb tenses and add a line about his death, as well as adding a number of citations (of others' work, not his own), mostly to the biographical info he added earlier (though some sources were cited multiple times using separate footnotes, which I've since fixed). One of these sources was the article on the Leidos company website, which was cited 6 separate times.

Of the above edits, the first was the most potentially problematic due to the promotional language/tone and the citation of his own book; the deletions of potentially controversial material could have been a problem and deserve a second look, but in this case the removals were probably warranted.

However, Bizzwriter has also edited numerous other articles (most of them associated with Beyster or SAIC in some way), including several that just add a citation of his own book:

• Leidos: His earliest edit to the page just adds a citation pointing to his book. He later also added links to Beyster's blog and the FED page, and added another mention of his book under the "Links" section (without actually including any link).

• Beyster Institute: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beyster_Institute&diff=prev&oldid=206358476
• iconectiv: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iconectiv&diff=prev&oldid=206364449
• Network Solutions: His first edit there again just adds a citation of his book, with no other changes. He later edited the page again to add the names of the other founders, as well as some other info.
• Grosse Ile Township, Michigan: He added a whole blatantly promotional paragraph on Beyster, in addition to citing his own book; he also subsequently made some minor copyedits to that paragraph.
• Los Alamos National Laboratory: He added a sentence about Beyster and then cited his own book.
• Composite Health Care System: As above, he added a sentence about SAIC and then cited his own book.
• America's Cup: He added a blatantly promotional sentence about SAIC "playing a major role" in Dennis Conner's victory, then cited his book.
• Regional Bell Operating Company: He added a sentence about SAIC acquiring Bellcore, citing his own book.
• Saudi Navy: He added a line about SAIC's development of their C3 centers, citing his own book.
• University of Michigan: He added a mention of Beyster just so he could cite his own book.
• Rady School of Management: He added a line about the Beyster Institute's founding and when it became part of the Rady School, then cited his book.

Other self-promotional/COI activity includes basically the entirety of the SPORTS for Exceptional Athletes article (as quoted in the single citation in the article, he is "the father of a Special Olympics athlete who is also helping to form the new agency"), as well as the (now deleted) article on Beyster's Foundation for Enterprise Development. He also edited the Employee stock ownership article to include a link to the FED website. Finally, he has also made a number of edits to the article on Eliza Tibbets, most of which seem fine, but this edit to the "Further reading" section just adds a book written by him and Patricia Ortlieb to that section.

Anyway, the latter section of this message is more to point out that it's not only this article that has been affected by the COI editing. As noted in the former section, a substantial portion of the biographical info in this article (including much of the promotional language/puffery) was written by this user. The article may need significant rewriting to follow WP:NPOV. V2Blast (talk) 03:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)