420CapeTown

420CapeTown, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi 420CapeTown! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Cordless Larry (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 18:53, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

420CapeTown, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi 420CapeTown! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Jtmorgan (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 19:32, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi 420CapeTown. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing, which is mostly about health and medicine. Your edits to date are all about Kush Bottles and its CEO. The edits are also... those of an experienced editor, but you just started here. These two things make it appear that this is not your first account, and that you might be editing for pay. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, 420CapeTown. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

Comments and requests

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. Unmanaged conflicts of interest can also lead to people behaving in ways that violate our behavioral policies and cause disruption in the normal editing process. Managing conflict of interest well, also protects conflicted editors themselves - please see WP:Wikipedia is in the real world, and Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for some guidance and stories about people who have brought bad press upon themselves through unmanaged conflict of interest editing.

As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Kush Bottles, directly or through a third party (e.g. a PR agency or the like)? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, please disclose it. And again, if you are editing for pay or the expectation of being paid, you must disclose that. After you respond (and you can just reply below), if it is relevant I can walk you through how the "peer review" part happens and then, if you like, I can provide you with some more general orientation as to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 01:27, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Response

That is a lot of information to go through. Based on my understanding, you have two main concerns. Please correct me if I am wrong. The first is that I may have used other accounts in the past based on my editing seeming to be that of an experienced editor. The other is that I may have a close connection to Kush Bottles and its co-founders or maybe even been paid by them or someone to create the two articles I created.

First, I have not used any other account on Wikipedia in the past. I have edited without being logged in, but this was to fix minor things like spelling or grammar. I never created any articles other than the two I did over the past month. My edits would have come from IP addresses in Southern California. As far as experience, it was not difficult as it is simply HTML and I have read thousands of articles already on Wikipedia so the format was simple.

For the second concern, I will let you decide if I have a conflict or not. I donot believe I do, but there is quite a bit of information under the conflict of interest guideline so hopefully you can tell me. I co-own a dispensary in California and we purchase products from Kush. I have never meet anyone from there, so I do not know them personally, nor have they or anyone else paid me to create the articles (I am the one paying them actually as I purchase product regularly). And no, I don’t even get a discount. They have no knowledge of me creating these. Just something I have wanted to do for a while (creating Wikipedia articles) and planned on doing more (I have already written the article for the other co-founder), although I am now concerned by the text on my page and others may not want me to do so. Let me know if this creates a conflict of interest in your opinion.

I hope that addresses your concerns. If not, please let me know more specific questions and I can provide more specific answers. As far as the page that is being deleted at the moment, what is the process for me commenting there? Am I allowed to do so? If not, you can let them know that redirecting the page is fine. I have no interest in either of the topics other than being familiar with them.--420CapeTown (talk) 02:48, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

hey, thanks for your answer and thanks for calling my attention to your answer.

Um.. what to say. The main question was whether you have some connection with Kush and its CEO. I very much appreciate you answering that directly! So many get all defensive and weird, and I appreciate your simplicity and graciousness.

What you say is credible to me, and I hear you, that you pay them, not the other way around. :)

That said, what you created, is exactly what we see paid editors (PR people or freelancers) create - very often we get this pair of CEO + company articles created together. There is also unsourced stuff. None of the sources in the Kovacevich article say that he was originally secretary of the company. So that comes from you.

On the Kush article, there was a lot of padding with traders blog like motleyfool, the street, oracle, seekingalpha,... we don't use those kinds of sources, as they are very prone to manipulation by people pumping stock or shorting it, and are all focused on fleeting events that might cause the stock to move. This is not what we are about here.

The tone is pretty good. But this pairing of CEO + company ~looks~ bad, and there are some red flags for folks who look out for this kind of stuff.

In general Wikipedia is what we call a lagging indicator of notability. Writing about relatively new companies and people is always going to be on the edge of spamminess, and is really hard to do here... Jytdog (talk) 03:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Nicholas Kovacevich

Hello, 420CapeTown,

I wanted to let you know that there's a discussion about whether Nicholas Kovacevich should be deleted. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicholas Kovacevich .

If you're new to the process, articles for deletion is a group discussion (not a vote!) that usually lasts seven days. If you need it, there is a guide on how to contribute. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

Thanks,

SamHolt6 (talk) 06:20, 5 May 2018 (UTC)