Colin McTroll

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi -- I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with regular editing. In light of this and this and this, I am giving you notice of 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, Colin McTroll. 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, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
• instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
• when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the 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 take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, 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. 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 Millennium Products, other makers of kombucha products, or U.S. Representative Jared Polis, 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. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here, just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 20:45, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog I have no connection to any of these entities. Nor do I intend to ever go anywhere near editing anything that overlaps my RL. If I did unexpectedly decide to go there I would be very surprised. If that ever happens I would immediately happily declare it, probably just go to the talk pages only to make suggestions, and allow other editors to decide the final content.

Now that I see this COI thing is your focus I can easily understand why you saw my efforts through the perception lens of promotionalism. We do see what we surround ourself with!

As far as kombucha goes, I just drank 1.4L of GT's Gingerade from their new big bottle. Never had that size before. Actually took 3 days so it's not as dramatic as all in one gulp. That big bottle on the table had the domestic co-conspirator (there is no conspiracy, it's just a joke) tell me about the alcohol content issue they had read about before and I thought hey I should go check out wikipedia because well that's kind of a big bottle. So that's how I landed on the article! And I noticed that there was no article on Millenium or GT's kombucha which is the biggest U.S producer (per sources) which is maybe borderline encyclopedic - although I thought I might try to find an actual market share and work up other info about the company first. Who knows where that basic sourcing research would take me. Anyway, if Alex or whoever etc wants to jump down my throat within seconds of trying to add stuff I can see I'd better let them have the parking space - the kombucha thing is just a big empty bottle and a curious mind about things as far as I'm concerned so I can do other things than kombucha articles.Colin McTroll (talk) 21:34, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I have a hunch that the recently widely distributed home KT kits are going to be be way more apt to be alchol production risks, so I think I'll take a look at what people and experts say bout that. And there is the thing that the co-conspirator sometimes leaves their drink out of the fridge like overnight. Personally I don't do that, it's out, pour, replace. Anyway, TMI. Colin McTroll (talk) 21:39, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Actually as should be clear from my userpage, my focus is NPOV. As I say on my userpage, people who come to WP who want to add content that is "rah rah" for X or "Y sucks", are called "advocates" here in WP. COI - where people have some financial connection (or in the case of articles about people, personal relationships) -- is just one thing that drives advocacy. Being a fan (or hater) of something more generally drives non-neutral advocacy editing as well.

I will take your word for it, that you have no connections that create a conflict of interest. But please do read WP:YESPOV and WP:SOAPBOX which are policy. You may also find the essay on WP:ADVOCACY helpful. We ask everyone to check their "likes" at the login page... please try to make sure that you are covering all aspects of things when you edit about them, and not just the "good" stuff. The best way to do that, is by finding very strong sources, and accurately summarizing them, giving WEIGHT according to what those sources (and only those sources) say.

Good luck! And thanks again for replying so nicely. Jytdog (talk) 22:17, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

btw, your username is not the most good-faith inducing one.  :) You might want to consider changing it, which you can do easily here. Jytdog (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

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A goat for you!

Thank you for finding ways to graze around Wikipedia and the fill in gaps in coverage, like the article Barbara Shapiro! Great find and fix!

Sadads (talk) 00:49, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Military history WikiProject World War I Op-Ed Series

		The Teamwork Barnstar
		In recognition of the role you played in cleaning up my God-awful spelling and grammar in the World War I Op-Ed series published by the Military history WikiProject's newsletter The Bugle over the last four years, I hereby present you with this teamwork barnstar. It is thanks to so many different editors like you who took the time to copyedit the nearly four year long series that it ended up being as successful as it was, and I am grateful for your help since spelling and grammar are not my strongest suites. Yours sincerely, TomStar81 (Talk) 14:34, 2 December 2018 (UTC)