BonconteI

October 2022

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. MrOllie (talk) 13:59, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia, as you did to Freedom of movement. While objective prose about beliefs, organisations, people, products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not a vehicle for soapboxing, advertising or promotion. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 15:13, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi MrOllie,

What kind of promotional material would have I promoted? I do not understand. I linked to an article on the history of ideas in relation to freedom of movement.

Best,

BonconteI BonconteI (talk) 15:41, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Repetitively adding mentions of yourself and citations to your own work is self promotion. MrOllie (talk) 15:44, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

What does "repeatedly" mean? I have been working in academia for 15 years. I have never edited Wikipedia pages.

As I found it to contribute to knowledge by cumulatively adding all the relevant references today, how would that count as self promotion?

It is absolutely normal and even ideal one contributes over a topic one is an expert of. Expertise and conflicting interests are two different things. BonconteI (talk) 15:50, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

You have done so on every article you have edited. That is what "repeatedly" means. I understand that citing yourself is normal in the academic writing you are used to. Writing for Wikipedia is not the same as writing a journal article. This project and the community who maintains it have their own standards, which you should learn and respect if you want to edit here. MrOllie (talk) 15:53, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

The reference to self-citing is offensive and false. Read the articles I posted, and you'll see there are none. I am respecting the standards: again, if I cannot bring to the fore the fruits of more of a decade of studying, how else should I contribute? Discussing things I do not know? Linking to articles "out there" without advancing and updating the debate? BonconteI (talk) 16:12, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, BonconteI. 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 conflict of interest 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, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 14:07, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello MrOllie.

Thanks for the information.

I do comply with all the requirements. I am an expert in the areas I am intervening on - which I think is natural and guarantees the quality of my editing.

But I do not have any conflict as I did not intervene on a page/article on "yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors".

Best,

BonconteI BonconteI (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

No, you are obviously not complying. Inserting your name and opinions into every article you touch is exactly what the COI guidelines are discouraging. MrOllie (talk) 15:41, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

This is not true.

I did not edit any article about myself, as there isn't any. I inserted references to my works in appropriate articles. Why would that be a problem? The work I referred are peer-reviewed and part of the scientific literature. I only mentioned my name next to the names of my colleagues when they were mentioned, e.g. professor Serena Parekh.

What is the problem with that? How can I appeal to an independent evaluation of the editing? BonconteI (talk) 15:47, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

You are reading the COI guideline in an extremely narrow (and, frankly, self-serving) fashion - your interpretation is not shared by the community of Wikipedia editors.

You have to decide: Are you here to self-promote, or are you here to help build an encyclopedia? If you are here to help build an encyclopedia, as a subject matter expert you are no doubt familiar with a range of sources of diverse authorship. You should be citing them rather than yourself. MrOllie (talk) 15:51, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I am here to contribute to the encyclopedia. 

Decades of research are distilled in my articles. How can I advance knowledge without referring to them? If I am to cite other people only, I would have to leave the encyclopedia as it is. My possibility of advancing knowledge is limited to what I have researched and discovered, and these are my articles!

The articles obviously contain a lot of citations: if I were to unpack them, I would have to rewrite the article in its extended version in the Wikipedia page. This is practically impossible and is not how the encyclopedias work.

Of course, I did cite other scientists who published on the topic later than myself (the EESC committee) when this was possible and meaningful.

But for instance, leaving the article on the CEAS without the mention of the 2020 proposed pact is a serious lacuna for Wikipedia's readers.

I have absolutely nothing to hide and I could use my name, which you obviously know, but the Wikipedia guidelines don't encourage this and no one uses it - including yourself.

I think the reason of the misunderstanding is that I concentrated the changes in a single day. But this is only the most time-effective way to make my contribution. Let me condense the results of 15 years of research into a few citations - I'm actually done already - and you'll see I'm not intervening for the next 5-10 years as I will turn to studying and publishing on scientific journals before sharing my hardly-won knowledge with the public who deserves it when the time will be appropriate.

It is the profession and vocation of scientists to do so, and it would be contradictory to exclude scientists and experts from contributing to the matter. It is normally scientists who write encyclopedias, and Wikipedia is certainly no exception.

Again, expertise is no conflict of interest. I did not intervene on/create any page on myself, and if that is helpful, I am happy to remove my name from all the texts (of course I must be mentioned as author of my scientific publications). As I explained, I only inserted next to my colleagues when it looked like it would have been the most natural thing to do.

I am certainly not paid to publish on Wikipedia, nor do I get any immediate benefit from contributing as I'm doing.

I kindly ask you to reconsider your decision.

Best,

BonconteI  BonconteI (talk) 16:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Of course it is a kind of conflict of interest; you obviously have an interest in citing your own research. There is a clear, direct benefit, no doubt. Please read the conflict of interest guideline that MrOllie provided. The guideline is pretty clear, see for instance this paragraph (my emphasis):

Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB, and is not excessive. Citations should be in the third person and should not place undue emphasis on your work. You will be permanently identified in the page history as the person who added the citation to your own work. When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion: propose the edit on the article's talk page and allow others to review it. However, adding numerous references to work published by yourself and none by other researchers is considered to be a form of spamming.

Nablicus (talk) 19:18, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, I do not see anything I would have disattended in the regulation you quote.

Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB

My materials are clearly relevant as they are cutting-edge recent research recently published on scientific outlets.

is not excessive

As I said in replying to MrOllie, there can be a misunderstanding here due to the fact that I have concentrated the contributions from a decade of research into one day. Indeed, I have mentioned a bulk of hundreds of pages of published articles and innovative research into a few sentences, sometimes only a note. The timing can give the appearance of excessiveness, but once you realize that the proportion is 9 lines/dozens of articles/15 years of research you realize the citation of my work is far from excessive: to the opposite.

Citations should be in the third person and should not place undue emphasis on your work

They have always been in the third person. The emphasis on my work, if any, is due. I did never emphasize it except for my early denouncing of the EC Proposal as ineffective in late 2020. As I reported, my results published by Oxford were confirmed in the symposium of the European Economic and Social Committee in May 2021 (which I also cited). Therefore, a lack of reference to my name in that context would appear to me as a lack of due acknowledgment, but as my goal is to fill the serious lacking in the coverage of the 2019 proposed pact, I can agree for a non-ideal compromise where my name is not mentioned and only a note is inserted.

When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion: propose the edit on the article's talk page and allow others to review it.

I immediately looked for an arbitration: when MrOllie contested my changes, I asked how we could have invoked a third opinion, as I have no experience editing, but he did not reply.

However, adding numerous references to work published by yourself and none by other researchers is considered to be a form of spamming.

As I said, the references are far from numerous if one considers the 9 mentions I inserted refer to a bulk of work of about a thousand pages published over 15 years. The fact that for time-effectiveness I concentrated them in 1 day is therefore misleading.

As I recalled, I mentioned other people's work as well (the EESC, Aristotle and Aquinas in another article) and my articles are of course full of citations, in accordance with scientific methods and practices, and as recognized by the scientific journals who accepted them.

I therefore ask once again to reverse the accusation of spamming and restoring the edit.

Preventing the readers from accessing condensed and brief summaries of recent scientific research in the areas only becuase they are proposed by the author himself is in contradiction to the purposes and values of the encyclopedia. BonconteI (talk) 09:18, 27 October 2022 (UTC)