Marchsnowstorm

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Hello, Marchsnowstorm, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 22:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi Marchsnowstorm I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing. Thank you for declaring that you are a paid editor working on behalf of Novavax, here.

You seem to be aware of the disclosure policy, which is great, but you also directly edited the article in these diffs, in a non-NPOV manner. The fact that you cited references discussing, and even focused on, the failure of the phase III trial, but added no content about that, is not OK in WP. Every editor, including you, is obligated to follow the WP:NPOV policy. This is not optional.

Part of the WP:PAID policy notes that paid editors are strongly discouraged from directly editing articles, and edits like the ones you made, are part of the reason why.

Please let me explain.

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. You have started that with the disclosure on the article talk page.

To finish the disclosure piece, would you please add the disclosure to your user page (which is User:Marchsnowstorm - a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just something simple like:

"I work for Russo Partners, a PR firm in the biotech and pharma industries. Here is a list of articles I have worked on, on behalf of clients:

• Novavax

I have added the appropriate disclosure on the Talk pages of these articles."

would be fine, and you can update that list, as you continue to work. 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 (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).

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 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, 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 propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself.

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. (which I will say more about, if you want).

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content. If you are not sure if something is uncontroversial, please ask at the Talk page.

Will you please agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the x 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. And if you want me to quickly go over the content policies, I can do that. Just let me know. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 28 March 2017 (UTC)