Heichō

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Potential COI

Hi - I'm Girth Summit, an administrator here. Please can you explain the nature of your relationship with Bishop Ramsey School? Thanks Girth Summit _(blether) 11:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

I am not employed by, neither have I attended the school. I am a volunteer member of an advisory panel for the Hillingdon Council in education, and so am familiar with the schools though do not directly work with them often. I am hoping to work my way through all of the pages for Hillingdon Secondary schools, starting with this school. My previous edit to the page was correctly marked as having some promotional content that is duplicative of the school's website, but I have now removed all of this in the current version that is live. As far as my understanding of WP:COI goes, there shouldn't be a COI as it falls as a subject matter expert?

- Heichō (talk) 11:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Heichō, I'm afraid that I cannot agree with you that the content that is currently in the article is not promotional - I don't have time right now to list all of the issues, but it's unacceptably unencyclopedic, it reads like something the school would have written about themselves.

What is the nature of relationship between the Hillingdon Council in Education and Bishop Ramsey School? If you are a volunteer there is obviously no question of WP:PAID applying, but the WP:COI guidelines are broader in scope - if any of that council's work involves the school, and you volunteer for the council, then I would caution you that COI most likely does apply, and that you should not be editing these articles directly. I'll take a close look later on when I have time. Best Girth Summit _(blether) 11:54, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I will say one thing - you should not be relying on the school's website as a source of information for anything but the most basic of details - the current head teacher's name, the street address, that sort of thing. Our aim is to summarise what reliable secondary sources say about any subject - we are not generally interested in what the subject has to say about itself. If the only source for stuff about their vision or ethos is the school's website, press releases or interviews people associated with the schools, it's better to leave it out entirely. When I look at an article about an organisation, and see multiple citations leading back to the organisation's website, alarm bells start ringing. Girth Summit _(blether) 11:59, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, I've taken a bit of time to review the article properly, and I'm afraid that I have reverted all of your changes. There may be some content in there that would be salvageable, but it requires proper sourcing. I await your response about the nature of the relationship between the organisation that you volunteer for and the school itself, but based on what you've told me so far I do think that you have a conflict of interest, and that you should follow the guidance at COI when writing about any school that your organisation is associated with. You should not edit the articles directly, but you are free to make edit requests, supported by appropriate sources, for other editors to review.

I appreciate that editing Wikipedia can be challenging when you are new, and I apologise for any frustration that you might be feeling with regards to my actions here. For what it's worth, I'd like to tell you that I am a British teacher myself, and I do appreciate the desire to write about a school that you are proud of. However, Wikipedia's goals, and those of an any particular organisation that we might have an article about, are very different. I do not write about schools I have worked for, or that people I know work for, because it is very difficult to write objectively about a subject that you have an interest in promoting. I know you are trying to do the best for these schools, and that's admirable, but it is not why Wikipedia exists: that's what the school website is for. Best Girth Summit _(blether) 19:33, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

The Council stopped being involved with majority of the day to day running of the school in 2011, presently only managing the admissions process. My committee namely deals with the spread and 'fairness' of this very admissions process, and so I do not actually contact or meet the schools unless there is a major issue.

Ah, it's a shame that it has to be all reverted, I will take a look at the edit request tools and see what can be done there, making use of secondary sources.

Could I ask that the current image in the Infobox representing the school to be replaced with the one in my version? The reason for this is that if it is not replaced, the file might get deleted for not being placed in an article. It seems like a pain to reupload it under the correct licensing, and the 'reduced file version' should be coming soon from someone on Wikipedia who has Inkscape

Thanks, Heichō (talk) 20:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for expanding on your relationship with the school. To be clear, in my view that does give you a clear and unambiguous conflict of interest with our articles on all of these schools. I know you are not here with any ill intent, but COI editing is something that we try our best to prevent here, because it is so incredibly difficult to be objective about a subject you are personally connected with.

I have no problem with us using your image - since you took it yourself, and have released it under an appropriate licence, there is no problem with it staying in the article, and I would always rather that we had an image of a school itself rather than a logo. I have reinstated it.

By the way, for future reference, you may wish to take a look at WP:PING, which explains how you can notify another user that you have responded to them on a talk page. I'm afraid that Wikipedia is built on some fairly dated technology, communication isn't as easy as it is on a lot of modern platforms! If you want to notify me that you have replied, you can type {{u|Girth Summit}} at the start of your message; provided that you sign your post, I'll get a little red icon at the top of my screen telling me that I have something to look at. You should have received something similar when I posted this (but I don't need to ping you here - you automatically get notified about messages on your own talk page). Cheers Girth Summit _(blether) 20:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Girth Summit, thank you for this and for the kind help! - Heichō (talk) 20:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

That worked! No problems - as a teacher, I really do want schools to be fairly represented here, but I also have a responsibility to uphold the community's trust and prevent our articles being turned into marketing literature. Your version of the article was a looooooong way from the worst I've come across, but it was nevertheless too much like the kind of copy I'd expect in a brochure for comfort. Cheers Girth Summit _(blether) 21:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Bishop Ramsey School.svg

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Thanks for uploading File:Bishop Ramsey School.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Bishop Ramsey School.svg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Bishop Ramsey School.svg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:08, 17 October 2022 (UTC)