Awmerrell

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Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 18:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Latest comment: 8 years ago10 comments2 people in discussion

Hi Awmerrell. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing about health and medicine. Based on your edits so far and your username, you are either a Director of the Urlager Foundation] or someone who works for the AW Merrell Consulting Group. Either way, 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, Awmerrell. 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. In particular, please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate 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).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. 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. 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. Would you please clarify if you are Allen Merrell, or someone who works for his consulting company? After you respond (and you can just reply below), we can clarify what "conflict of interest" is in Wikipedia and how we manage it, and then perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here - I am watching this page. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 18:51, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hello Jytdog. I am indeed Allen Merrell and have owned and run The A.W.Merrell Group, a computer consulting company, since 1991. Before that, I was cofounder of The Upledger Institute in 1985 and CEO until I left in 1991. I am also a Director of the John E. Upledger Foundation and as such, watch the progress and involvement of all things craniosacral. And as an advocate of the work, it concerns me when it appears that CST is not getting a fair and balanced write up. I really appreciate your guidance and suggestions regarding my initial attempt to do an Edit on CST's main page and I welcome further thoughts to let me make suggestions, not as a COI, but as an individual who might understand the many sides and questions that arise when discussing controversial complementary medicine.Awmerrell (talk) 20:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

OK. Just wanted to clarity on whether I was talking to you or someone who works for you. I know you are probably anxious to get the article "fixed" but things will go a lot better, if you can let me guide you through some things. Wikipedia is kind of a weird place and we should first walk through what "conflict of interest" and advocacy are here in Wikipedia, and what we look for advocates or folks with a COI to do (and above all, it is be patient and learn how this place works, which will surprise you!) and then let me show you the basics. Once you have all that board, then you can turn to the article with those "new eyes" as it were. is that ok? Jytdog (talk) 20:55, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's more than OK...it's actually very fair and I look forward to your input and guidance. Thanks.Awmerrell (talk) 21:14, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

OK, great. So first, as you are still listed as a Director for the Upledger Institute, it seems pretty clear that you have at least an emotional commitment to it, if not an actual fiduciary responsibility - a desire and an obligation to promote it and help it thrive. What we are about here in Wikipedia (our mission) is to build an encyclopedia with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, neutrally stated and reliably sourced, working with anybody who wants to come and follow the norms here. We aim to capture all accepted knowledge one day. That's the mission. What generally happens when folks try to work on content where they have some external commitment, is that they just kind of fall into promoting it. They just naturally want to write about what is great about the thing, and they of course steer clear of anything negative or even grey. This bias is often something people aren't even aware of. (and this place is a laboratory of human behavior. If you stick around a while and just watch, you will be amazed at how... transparently un-self-aware so many people are). And if you browse around Wikipedia, you can find articles that are blatantly promotional. With this place wide open as it is, many people come here and write articles about themselves or their companies and generally those articles... stink. You read them and don't trust them. They are full of flowery language, too much detail, super-cool quotes, and generally lack independent sourcing. They're not scholarly, neutral articles - they are PR pieces. We do our best to keep up, but ... there will always be some of this, as long as we remain open.

I try to catch people early, and teach them. People who come here and write PR are really pooping in their own backyard. If Wikipedia does get overrun with promotional garbage, no one will want to read it, and the project will have no value. To anybody.

Anyway, so... what we ask people to do who are honorable and respect the mission of Wikipedia, and who want to work on content where they have an external commitment, is a) declare their COI (just the relationship), and b) follow the "peer review" processes here in Wikipedia.

This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voila there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher and no "editors" as that term is used in the real world.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft, disclose your COI on the Talk page using the appropriate template, and then submit the draft article through the WP:AFC process so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself.

By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. (which I will say more about, if you want).

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content.

Will you please agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the CST article or any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. And if you want me to quickly go over the content policies, I can do that. Just let me know. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 21:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

It does all make sense to me and I really thank you for taking the time to answer with such a long and complete explanation. And,of course, I will follow the peer review process going forward. Would you suggest that something as the inclusion of a Time magazine quote or an acknowledgement of an appointment of Dr. Upledger to serve on the National Institutes of Health Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council is uncontroversial? It was rejected also.Awmerrell (talk) 21:59, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

OK, so that was just putting the initial pillars down that touch the bedrock as it were, of why you are here, and why Wikipedia is here, and that those two things might not be aligned sometimes, and you are self-aware. Bedrock. Ok so now if I may, I have one more really really long thing, to explain how this place works. There is a kind of "rule of law" that provides the actual foundation for what we do here. The "rules of the game" for this place. Please bear with me, and read the following... Jytdog (talk) 22:28, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

As we discussed above, please don't directly edit the article as you did here. Please suggest content on the Talk page. I know we are not always as fast as folks would like, but this is a volunteer place. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 22:08, 8 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jydog. I apologise as I thought that I was just following: "I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content."Awmerrell (talk) 14:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

this is absolutely and completely unlike "the company is located at 44 Fourth Street". Nothing like that. Gr. Jytdog (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

How this place works

Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

OK, so I would like to get you oriented to how Wikipedia works. There are some non-intuitive things about editing here, that I can zip through ~pretty~ quickly....

The first thing, is that our mission is to produce articles that provide readers encyclopedia articles that summarize accepted knowledge, and to do that as a community that anyone can be a part of. That's the mission. As you can imagine, if this place had no norms, it would be a Mad Max kind of world interpersonally, and content would be a slag heap (the quality is really bad in parts, despite our best efforts). But over the past 15 years the community has developed a whole slew of norms, via loads of discussion. One of the first, is that we decide things by consensus. That decision itself, is recorded here: WP:CONSENSUS, which is one of our "policies". (There is a whole forest of things, in "Wikipedia space" - pages in Wikipedia that start with "Wikipedia:AAAA" or for short, "WP:AAAA". WP:CONSENSUS is different from Consensus. ) And when we decide things by consensus, that is not just local in space and time, but includes meta-discussions that have happened in the past. The results of those past meta-discussions are the norms that we follow now. We call them policies and guidelines - and these documents all reside in Wikipedia space. There are policies and guidelines that govern content, and separate ones that govern behavior. You can click each of the links below and read (and if you want to stick around, you should do) but here is very quick rundown:

Content policies and guidelines

WP:NOT (what WP is, and is not -- this is where you'll find the "accepted knowledge" thing)
WP:OR - no original research is allowed here, instead
WP:VERIFY - everything has to be cited to a reliable source (so everything in WP comes down to the sources you bring!)
WP:RS is the guideline defining what a "reliable source" is for general content and WP:MEDRS defines what reliable sourcing is for content about health (MEDRS is going to be very importannt for you.)
WP:NPOV and the content that gets written, needs to be "neutral" (as we define that here, which doesn't mean what most folks think -- it doesn't mean "fair and balanced" - it means that the language has to be neutral, and that topics in a given article are given appropriate "weight" (space and emphasis). An article about a drug that was 90% about side effects, would give what we call "undue weight" to the side effects. We determine weight by seeing what the reliable sources say - we follow them in this too. So again, you can see how everything comes down to references.
WP:BLP - this is a policy specifically about articles about living people. We are very careful about these articles (which means enforcing the policies and guidelines above rigorously), since issues of legal liability can arise for WP, and people have very strong feelings about other people, and about public descriptions of themselves.

In terms of behavior, the key norms are:

WP:CONSENSUS - already discussed
WP:CIVIL - basically, be nice. This is not about being nicey nice, it is really about not being a jerk and having that get in the way of getting things done. We want to get things done here - get content written and maintained and not get hung up on interpersonal disputes. So just try to avoid doing things that create unproductive friction. I don't reckon this will be a problem for you.
WP:AGF - assume good faith about other editors. Try to focus on content, not contributor. Don't personalize it when content disputes arise. (the anonymity here can breed all kinds of paranoia)
WP:HARASSMENT - really, don't be a jerk and follow people around, bothering them. And do not try to figure out who people are in the real world. Privacy is strictly protected by the WP:OUTING part of this policy. (you disclosed who you are by your username and the topic you chose to edit, so I didn't violate OUTING by addressing you directly....btw)
WP:DR - if you get into an content dispute with someone, try to work it. If you cannot, then use one of the methods here to get wider input. There are many - it never has to come down to two people arguing. There are instructions here too, about what to do if someone is behaving badly, in your view. Try to keep content disputes separate from behavior disputes. Many of the big messes that happen in Wikipedia arise from these getting mixed up.
WP:TPG - this is about how to talk to other editors on Talk pages, like this one, or the one in the article about you: Talk:YYY

If you can get all that (the content and behavior policies and guidelines) under your belt, you will become truly "clueful", as we say. If that is where you want to go, of course. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully it is digestable enough.

The really key thing, is that any content proposal you make, you should comply with these policies and guidelines. If you bring bad sources, or bring promotionally-worded content, folks will disagree. In a civil way! (hopefully) Jytdog (talk) 22:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

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