Nkakouros

Just checking

Hey Excirial,

I just want to check something with you. I'm working at the UMass Memorial Medical center (part of UMass Memorial Health Care). It's a great hospital where we do a lot of advanced interventions, but there is lack of awareness of this. As an avid Wikipedia user (and yearly donator to the project) I've been pestering them to update the wiki page. All that is there at the moment is some criticism about some (true and very unfortunate) mistake an associated charity did a few years back (it involved models in high heels and blue wigs!). Anyway - I told them that other institutions in the area have much more informative wiki entries (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Israel_Deaconess_Medical_Center or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_General_Hospital )

I told them that the UMass wiki should carry equal information. Information about the history of the institution, our Nobel Laureates, extensive research activities, internationally profiled researchers, and (similar to the MGH wiki) rankings (e.g. we have the best survival in heart attack and shock patients, highest rate of advance radial access programs, the ONLY vascular program in the US to perform two types of branch grafts, a surgical program in the top 5% of the country etc etc).. All this information is poorly reflected in the current wiki entry!

After months of pestering them to do something about it they made an effort but apparently, "We tried to counter this and Wikipedia said no to our posting because it was directly from UMMHC and threatened to block us altogether."...

I am not too familiar with wiki editing but I gather that you indefinitely blocked their account after they tried to do some edits. Again - I'm not too good on this but I tried to look at what they did and I think I can see the mistake. I can see subjective statements along the lines of "[we are] the region's trusted academic medical center" and "We are committed to improving the health of people in Central New England"... I would agree that these are not appropriate as wiki entries and reads like they just copy pasted from promotional material.

I just wanted to check your thoughts on the above and the block. Was it because of the subjective and promotional edits they introduced or something else? BTW -- they are convinced that the principal editor of the UMass Wiki is some neferious character from a nearby competitor institution who will "retaliate" when he/she sees any favorable edits to the UMass wiki..Ahem

How do you suggest we proceed?

Many thanks,

Nikos (talk) 20:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC) Nikos

OK. So we're cautiously proceeding with appropriate edits on this. Please give me a heads up before banning if any concerns! :p TA.

Nikos (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Hiyas Nikos

I am terribly late on this reply - apologies for the wait. For what it is worth I did actually start writing a response twice with little success: The first draft of the reply was written in a hurry and lacked half of the points i wanted to mention; the second draft was a lot longer (too long actually) and was written over multiple sittings. The end result was a piece of prose that was both vague and disjointed, up to the point where i was myself wondering what i was even trying to explain. And after that debacle i've been pushing it forward on my todo list two days, guilty as charged on that one.

So, what can you do if you hit a writer's block that keeps you from writing a decently structured reply? You just resort to summing everything up in a bulleted list!

• Why was the account blocked? That was done for two reasons:

• Username: The Username policy forbids accounts that seem to represent a certain entity such as a company, institution, group or similar. Accounts should always have a name that represent a single, identifiable user. My own alias "Excirial" is unique to me. "Nikos_At_UMass" would also work just fine; While it contains the name of the hospital it clearly identified you as a person. "Marketing_at_Umass" or "CEO_At_UMass" on the other hands wouldn't be allowed since they represent a role at the institution.
• Non Neutral Content: The second reason for the block was the addition of Non neutral, promotional content. Your own comment on the more problematic parts is entirely spot on, which is actually quite of a relief. Belief it or not but i had multiple discussions with PR people who believed that lines such " <Company X> produces the most stunning jewelry created by true masters of the jewel crafting art, for very competitive prices " were entirely neutral as they just stated what the company did. But i digress, as i am trailing off topic.
• These two rationales together caused the promotional editing block. Note that the added content would have been problematic regardless of the username; If the username had not been an issue it would have been reverted with a warning for promotional editing.

• What can i do now?

• Conflict of Interest: First and foremost be aware that you and any other UMass Memorial Health Care employees have a clear conflict of interest with the topic. The standard advice for people with a conflict of interest is: "If you have a (strong) conflict of interest you should not edit articles related to this conflict, as writing neutral, encyclopedic content may be excessively difficult in these instances.". While editing under these circumstances is not outright forbidden promotional editing is. Do be aware that editors adding promotional content / editors with a COI tend to be observed more carefully than usual editors since there is a higher likelihood that edits may be problematic.
• Neutrality is key: If you edit the article the most ideal circumstance would be one where i wouldn't even be able to tell you were related to the hospital (And if i would notice the edits shouldn't be promotional or advertising). Pretty much this sums up to:

• Use neutral language: Evade words such as "Top Notch", "Fantastic" and "Superb" like the plague. Also keep the general structure of a sentence in mind "UMass Memorial Health Care is the best hospital" is promotional and non neutral. "According to <notable medical journal>'s 2014 survey the UMass Memorial Health ranked first on the quality scale for midwestland hospitals" on the other hand, is not as you are citing what someone else has written.
• Don't draw conclusions: based on the source material. If the hospital won 10 notable awards those can be added. You cannot, however, draw the conclusion "It is a fantastic hospital" based on those rewards.
• Balance, Balance. A good article is a neutral description of the subject, and neither critical nor approving. Bad article's only highlight a subjects strong suits or attempt to send something crashing into earth with negativity. It is a somewhat vague topic to describe so an example may help. Osama bin Laden is pretty much universally disliked in the United States (A major English-speaking nation). Yet the article provides a neutral overview with no calls to arms against him as a person. It just sums up what other people write without adding its own judgement.

• Cite everything you add: Got a notable alumni? Good! Add a reliable source to back it up. Got a notable price? Great! Back it up with another source. No reliable source to back a claim up? Don't add it in that case.

Well, that turned out to be long, though thankfully i believe it IS somewhat more readable than the past two attempts I hope it proves useful! Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)}