JerHarr

JerHarr, you are invited to the Teahouse!

Hi JerHarr! 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 Liz (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:02, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi JerHarr. 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 very promotional with respect of Chromadex. 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, JerHarr. 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. Editing for the purpose of advertising or promotion is not permitted. 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). 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 Chromadex, 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), 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) 03:54, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog,

Thank you for the provided information. Yes, I do have a relationship with ChromaDex. I suspect that my user name on here is clear enough that a mildly motivated person could figure out who I am without much effort.

While I grant that perhaps the link to the publicly available information on the GRAS No Objection letter from the FDA MAY be construed as commercial, it does speak to the safety of the only consumer-available source, potentially of interest to those reading the article. But, yes, it does apply to a single company's product, so I'll give you that one. However, I struggle to see how either clinical trials or scientific papers, written and performed by 3rd parties (primarily research universities),and completely outside the control of any commercial company, could be construed as strictly commercial. Particularly as I did not in any way screen or limit those trials/papers, they are simply the latest research, positive or negative. What I DID do was make some effort to exclude most of those items that had our trademarked name in the title, out of consideration for the very concepts you state. While it is true that ChromaDex potentially profits from increased public awareness of nicotinamide riboside, the same is true of many, if not most, things.

All of that said, I do believe that the nicotinamide riboside article is lagging compared to current research, and there are many newer sources of information that could be included. I am more than happy to engage with you regarding the proper way to get the page updated.

Sincerely, JerHarr (talk) 20:33, 14 November 2017 (UTC)JerHarr

Thanks for replying! Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. (And you already have this bit down, but at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages when you save your edit.) That is how we know who said what. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

OK... so thanks for disclosing that you have a relationship with Chromadex. (It is actually not OK in Wikipedia to go google someone - things need to be explicitly disclosed here in Wikipedia). So you have a COI for Chromadex and related topics, as we define that in Wikipedia.

After it is clear that you understand the "ground rules" here I will be happy to discuss the content that you mentioned, but first things first.

To finish the disclosure piece, would you please add the disclosure to your user page (which is User:JerHarr - a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just something simple like: "I work for Chromadex and have a conflict of interest with regard to that company and related topics" would be fine. If you want to add anything else there that is relevant to what you want to do in WP feel free to add it, but please don't add anything promotional about the company or yourself (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).

I added a tag to the Chromadex and NR articles' talk pages, so the disclosure is done there. Once you disclose on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done.

As I noted above, there are two pieces to COI management in WP. The first is disclosure. The second is a form of peer review. 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 voilà there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world. So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article. Conflicted editors are also really driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest. If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI or who are paid, 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 through the WP:AFC process, disclose your COI on the Talk page with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, and then submit the draft article for review (the AfC process sets up a nice big button for you to click when it is ready) 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

(i) disclose at the Talk page of the article with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, putting it at the bottom of the beige box at the top of the page; and

(ii) propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. Just open a new section, put the proposed content there, and just below the header (at the top of the editing window) please the {{request edit}} tag to flag it for other editors to review. In general it should be relatively short so that it is not too much review at once. Sometimes editors propose complete rewrites, providing a link to their sandbox for example. This is OK to do but please be aware that it is lot more for volunteers to process and will probably take longer.

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. (There are good faith paid editors here, who have signed and follow the Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms, and there are "black hat" paid editors here who lie about what they do and really harm Wikipedia).

But understanding the mission of Wikipedia, and the policies and guidelines through which we realize the mission, is very important! There are a whole slew of policies and guidelines that govern content and behavior here in Wikipedia. Please see User:Jytdog/How for an overview of what Wikipedia is and is not (we are not a directory or a place to promote anything), and for an overview of the content and behavior policies and guidelines. Learning and following these is very important, and takes time. Please be aware that you have created a Wikipedia account, and this makes you a Wikipedian - you are obligated to pursue Wikipedia's mission first and foremost when you work here, and you are obligated to edit according to the policies and guidelines. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege that is freely offered to all, but the community restricts or completely takes that privilege away from people who will not edit and behave as Wikipedians.

I hope that makes sense to you.

Will you please agree to learn and follow the content and behavioral policies and guidelines, and to follow the peer review processes going forward when you want to work on the XXX 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. Best regards Jytdog (talk) 21:45, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Ok, so I added the requested statement (and the userpage to put it on). Peer review process is clear (I think), and conceptually makes sense.

I am still interested, though, to hear why you feel peer reviewed research, published by the respected source The National Institute of Health, as well as clinical trials performed the University of Copenhagen, University of Colorado, and University of Washington, all focused on the subject of the article should be construed as "corporate marketing". Given that you left the previously cited NIH paper from 2 years ago, is your objection actually the content, or strictly my failure to follow proper procedure in submitting the changes?

Thanks again. Sincerely, JerHarr (talk) 04:05, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for posting the disclosure and taking time to read this wall of text.  :)

Below, I am going to give you the "welcome message" from WikiProject Medicine, the group of editors who work on health and medicine topics. I am going to ask for more patience from you, and ask you to read this and the links in it, too. You will see that the sourcing guideline for content about health is WP:MEDRS. "Peer-review" is necessary but not sufficient... Jytdog (talk) 06:41, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I read enough of that to understand the primary and secondary sources issues, and why you pulled those edits. It seems to me that anyone interested enough to read those articles would be smart enough to understand that they are research, NOT proven beyond a doubt facts, but I understand that the assumption in WP world is basically that the opposite is true. In short: go to all possible lengths to avoid presenting something unproven at all, lest it be misconstrued as fact. WP should be the repository of research-proven (or at least independently duplicated) information, NOT front line research.

Is that about right?

Sincerely,JerHarr (talk) 14:34, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

You have the gist of MEDRS. High quality recent reviews and statements by major medical/scientific bodies. Jytdog (talk) 01:24, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for all of the help/information. This may be a bit too involved for the time I have to devote to it. Is there a listing somewhere of the white hat WP paid editors that the community has thus far found acceptable? I'd like to see this page up to date, and don't want future updates knocked down on COI from going about it the wrong way. Thanks again. Sincerely, JerHarr (talk) 13:19, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I understand that. I linked to the "Statement by participating communication firms" above -- there is a list of signatories and editors there. Jytdog (talk) 14:06, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine!

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

Welcome to Wikipedia from Wikiproject Medicine (also known as WPMED).

We're a group of editors who strive to improve the quality of content about health here on Wikipedia, pursuing the mission of Wikipedia to provide the public with articles that present accepted knowledge, created and maintained by a community of editors.

One of our members has noticed that you are interested in editing medical articles; it's great to have a new interested editor on board!

First, some basics about editing Wikipedia, which is a strange place behind the scenes; you may find some of the ways we operate to be surprising. Please take your time and understand how this place works. Here are some useful links, which have information to help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

• Everything starts with the mission - the mission of Wikipedia is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, working in a community of editors. (see WP:NOT)
• We find "accepted knowledge" for biomedical information in sources defined by WP:MEDRS -- we generally use literature reviews published in good journals or statements by major medical or scientific bodies and we generally avoid using research papers, editorials, and popular media as sources for such content. We read MEDRS sources and summarize them, giving the most space and emphasis (what we call WP:WEIGHT) to the most prevalent views found in MEDRS sources.
• Please see WPMED's "how to" guide for editing content about health
• More generally please see The five pillars of Wikipedia and please be aware of the "policies and guidelines" that govern what we do here; these have been generated by the community itself over the last fifteen years, and you will need to learn them (which is not too hard, it just takes some time). Documents about Wikipedia - the "back office" - reside in "Wikipedia space" where document titles are preceded by "Wikipedia:" (often abbreviated "WP:"). WP space is separate from "article space" (also called "mainspace") - the document at WP:CONSENSUS is different from, and serves as a different purpose than, the document at Consensus.

Every article and page in Wikipedia has an associated talk page, and these pages are essential because we editors use them to collaborate and work out disagreements. (This is your Talk page, associated with your user page.) When you use a Talk page, you should sign your name by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment; the Wikipedia software will automatically convert that into links to your Userpage and this page and will add a datestamp. This is how we know who said what. We also "thread" comments in a way that you will learn with time. Please see the Talk Page Guidelines to learn how to use talk pages.

• Thanks for coming aboard! We always appreciate a new editor. Feel free to leave us a message at any time on our talk page. If you are interested in joining the project yourself, there is a participant list where you can sign up. You can also just add our talk page to your watchlist and join in discussions that interest you. Please leave a message on the WPMED talk page if you have any problems, suggestions, would like review of an article, need suggestions for articles to edit, or would like some collaboration when editing!
• The Wikipedia community includes a wide variety of editors with different interests, skills, and knowledge. We all manage to get along through a lot of discussion that happens under the scenes and through the bold, edit, discuss editing cycle. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss it on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.

Feel free to drop a note below if you have any questions or problems. I wish you all the best here in Wikipedia! --Jytdog (talk) 06:42, 15 November 2017 (UTC)