Richard at Nonpartisan Education

Hi Richard, just a note to say thanks for responding to this and changing your username. If you want to, you can delete the above message to indicate that you have read it and responded accordingly. Happy wiki-editing. Melcous (talk) 07:16, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Richard at Nonpartisan Education. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about in the article Test (assessment), you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
• instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
• when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• exercise great caution so that you do not violate 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).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you. 331dot (talk) 16:38, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Thanks for the note. I have read the text at the end of all of links and believe that I've met all the criteria. There's no money involved. Our "organization" does not have a Wikipedia entry. Indeed, the organization to which you refer is a peer-reviewed journal. Would it help if I changed my name to just "Richard"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard at Nonpartisan Education (talk • contribs)

The issue is not your username (which is proper per policy) but the fact that you seem to be adding sources you are associated with to an article. If this is not the case, please say so. If that is the case, you should not add them to the article yourself. Conflict of interest does not just have to do with money, but with the perception of neutrality and bias. The best thing for you to do would be to post on the article talk page (click "talk" at the top of the article, then edit) and explain what you want to do and the reason for it. 331dot (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I would add that (since it's not clear to me) if you are a paid employee of this organization, you need to review the paid editing policy. If you are not paid, you do not need to. 331dot (talk) 17:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

February 2017

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did to High-stakes testing. Wikipedia is not a collection of links, nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include, but are not limited to, links to personal websites, links to websites with which you are affiliated (whether as a link in article text, or a citation in an article), and links that attract visitors to a website or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Because Wikipedia uses the nofollow attribute value, its external links are disregarded by most search engines. If you feel the link should be added to the page, please discuss it on the associated talk page rather than re-adding it. Caution for reference spamming (changing an existing reference link to a link leading to a company you're obviously associated with). - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 21:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

There are no neutral people in the world. What I will do now is what all those with resources do when they wish to add material to Wikipedia -- add it through someone else's computer. Organizations with money pay people to do that; I'll ask friends and colleagues to do it. I believe that Wikipedia should strive for balance. Wikipedia will not achieve balance, particularly on issues like education where virtually all the resources lay on one side of the issues, with the policies being described above. These policies favor those with the resources to pay surrogates.

OK, Thomas. I see what you did. You now added back a reference (on the "high stakes" page) to a web site whose main purpose seems to be my personal character assassination. The person in charge of that site, which has not published anything new in ten years, is publicly posting text that I submitted in 2005 as a standard blind review of a submitted journal article. You link to it. Apparently, you believe that that behavior is appropriate. But, my linking to an article that I actually wrote for public consumption is inappropriate, in your opinion. (He also posts an article of mine in violation of copyright.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard at Nonpartisan Education (talk • contribs)

Please sign your future talk page posts with ~~~~(or click the Signature button located above where you type your post) so we know you wrote them. 331dot (talk) 21:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• A) You would have been warned for reference spamming for that edit (replacing an existing reference with your own with no valid reason for it) even if you had had another username, and B) what you write above is a matter that has to be settled off Wikipedia, between you and him, not a valid reason for replacing the other reference with your own. Especially since we can't take your word for it, since this is the Internet where anyone can claim anything. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 21:35, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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OK, all Wikipedia editors. I formally request that reference 8 on this page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-stakes_testing -- be removed. Read it; it is obvious that it was meant as a blind review. As for Thomas' suggestion that I must "settle" the matter outside of Wikipedia, I believe that is rather callous, and irresponsible. You absolve yourselves of any responsibility for what you link to? Then, how do you explain the admonishments above on this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard at Nonpartisan Education (talk • contribs)

In order for editors interested in the article to see it, you will need to make this request on the article talk page. 331dot (talk) 22:08, 18 February 2017 (UTC)