Leland524

Welcome!

Hello, Leland524, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Jytdog (talk) 00:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi Leland524. I work on conflict of interest issues in Wikipedia. I saw your post on DGG's page and just wanted to follow up with you, and tell you a bit more about how we think about COI in Wikipedia, and give you some more advice about how we manage it. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, as a starter, and will have some further comments and requests for you below...

Hello, Leland524. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

• Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
• Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
• Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. 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 have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do.

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. You have already disclosed the COI at DGG's talk page, and I went ahead and added a tag to the Talk page of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs article that communicates your relationship to other editors who might work with that article. The last step would be for you to disclose the connection on your own Talk page, which is here: User:Leland524. Something simple like: "I work at Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs" - (that page is for communicating what you are up to here in WP to other WP users)

The other piece is peer review, which has some interesting twists here in Wikipedia, since Wikipedia editors directly publish their edits, with no mediation (no publisher, no peer review - just direct publication) What we ask editors with a COI to do, is offer suggestions on the Talk page for others to review instead of directly editing the article. You can do that easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I added a section at the bottom of the beige-colored box at the top of the Talk page that says "Individuals who have a conflict of interest with the subject of this article are strongly advised not to edit the article directly. You may request corrections or suggest content, or contact us if the issue is urgent."- there is a link at "click here" in that section. If you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request. Would you please do that going forward?

Please let me know if you are willing to do that. I am happy to talk, if you have any questions or want to discuss anything, you can write them below. I will see them, as I am "watching" this page. Best regards, Jytdog (talk) 00:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Next steps

Thanks for your help Jytdog. I'm thrilled to see the warnings removed but obviously would like more information about the organization added back to the page. It is best for me to write the content, add the sources, and submit it as a suggestion? Or is it better to submit a bunch of sources and general topics that I think should be added back in? Related, we are similar to a think tanks like CFR or the Carnegie Endowment but I see that most of their references lead to their own websites. What is the guideline? How many internal links can we have? Thanks, Erin Leland524 (talk) 19:43, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

sure. WP is notoriously uneven so while it is natural/human to compare to other organization's websites that is problematic (see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). In general, sourcing a whole article to WP:SPS is bad idea; articles ~should~ be sourced from independent sources; they are what are meant to drive article formation. (see WP:NOTABILITY and WP:Golden rule). (there is a dismayingly huge amount of COI/promotional editing from nonprofits in WP, that really harms WP's integrity.) In any case, the core sources holding up an article should be indpendent. Are you aware of any coverage of Berkley itself, that are really focused on it and its work? They would be the ideal place to start. Start with them, and see what you gather that is encyclopedic from them - content that people might care about 10 years from now. (that will help guide you away from treating the article like an extension of Berkely's website where you are announcing recent events and the like). See what you can do, and propose sourced content on the talk page - I would be happy to have a look. Good luck! Jytdog (talk) 21:14, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog, after a long pause with the Berkley Center's page, I would like to suggest some edits. I've added in external links where possible. Thanks, Erin Leland524 (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)