Richiechang2002

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Hello, Richiechang2002, 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:

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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) 04:13, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident in which you may be involved. Thank you. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 23:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi Richiechang2002- I work on conflict of interest (COI) issues in Wikipedia. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and questions for you below.

Hello, Richiechang2002. 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/questions

Wikipedia is a reference that the public relies on. Managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. I understand from this dif that you are a journalist so perhaps you have some familiarity with COI from your training.

Wikipedia highly values contributions by subject matter experts; at the same time, experts have some special challenges when they first start editing here. Please see the essay with advice for experts, WP:EXPERTS, which discusses both sides of that coin.

One of the challenges is related to conflicts of interest (COI). COI has some interesting twists here in Wikipedia, since we allow editors to be anonymous here, and editors directly publish their edits, with no mediation (no publisher, no peer review - just direct publication) Please do read WP:COI, especially the section on Writing about yourself and your work.

You may also want to read Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms and Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia.

COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review.

Disclosure first: We ask editors to disclose any external relationships they have that are relevant to articles they edit. If editors work in Wikipedia for pay (we call it "paid editing"), they 'must disclose that, per our Terms of Use. Would you please let me know if you have any external relationships that are relevant to articles you have edited? That will start the disclosure process (there may be more steps, depending on what you say when you reply)

Peer review step. 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. We can talk more about that too.

Please do respond on the disclosure question. I am happy to talk; if you have any questions or want to discuss anything, you can write to me below. I will see it, as I am "watching" this page. Best regards, Jytdog (talk) 04:22, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Dear Jytdog,

Thank you for your message and comments. I am rather new to editing on and contributing to Wikipedia, so I may not have been familiar with all the guidelines. Thanks for sharing them with me.

First, I am a journalist and I have written about the Sawdust in the past. I have a natural interest in the subject, as my specialty has been arts and entertainment in Orange County, Calif. You can see the articles I wrote in the references.

Second, I did make some early edits to the Sawdust page, mainly adding a category on the Sawdust's Winter Fantasy. But my additions have since been removed, and if you look in the history of this page, most of my very light edits have been scrubbed out of the piece. The last time I edited the piece was May 20, 2015, to take a comma and an extra space out. The only significant edit I made that remains is changing "49-year-roots" to "50-year-roots" for accuracy.

Finally, yes, I did for a very brief period work for the Sawdust Art Festival. But I no longer work there. I did not know that it was considered a COI to make small edits or to add a category if you worked for an organization. Now I know, and I apologize. I would like to reiterate that most of my edits have been scrubbed out, or are no longer part of the content.

Thanks for your interest, and let me know if there are any other questions. Richiechang2002 (talk) 21:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. That all makes sense. Couple things. First, it isn't clear from what you wrote, if you added citations to articles you had written in the real world (which we call "RW" or "RL" here), as references to the wikipedia article, or if someone else added them. If you cited them, please refrain from citing your own work (that is part of the COI guideline). If you didn't cite them... well good on you then! Others like your work. Also, it is generally a bad thing in an encyclopedia, to write anything like "currently" or "50-year-roots" as content like that becomes dated -- it is not encyclopedic. Much better to just say "As of May 2015" (instead of "currently") and give the founding year instead of saying how old someone/something is, at the time of editing (see WP:RELTIME for more about that). One of the many things that makes editing an encyclopedia different from writing a news article under a byline and dateline.

Finally, I don't have any other concerns about COI with regard to you and the festival article. Please do be aware of WP:ADVOCACY for things you love and strive to really achieve a [WP:NPOV||neutral point of view]], as we define that here. Thanks again for talking! Jytdog (talk) 22:43, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Dear Jytdog,

Thank you for your prompt response. You brought up a couple of issues in your message above. Yes, I did write a few RW articles about the subject, but NO, I did not cite them. Someone else did. Also, thank you for your clarification regarding time references. I will certainly keep that in mind.

Would you be able to provide any insight as to when or whether the advert and COI tags might be removed? BC Space has no affiliation at all with the Sawdust. And I have provided my clarification above. Thank you! Richiechang2002 (talk) 00:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)