Tracy at S&P

I am currently supporting Doug Peterson, President and CEO, S&P Global, who has asked for some edits to be made to his page here - Douglas L. Peterson. I have submitted the initial draft, and while I was able to respond to most of the edits, I'm having some issues revising the paragraph we've prepared for Doug's leadership at S&P Global. I was advised to review the page on Wikipedia:Content forking, so my understanding is that the content written belongs on S&P Global. I'm wondering if there's any documentation specifically for a biography of a living person that includes content about the company/institution they run. We want to speak to Mr. Peterson's accomplishments as CEO, but only in the right way that abides by Wikipedia's standards and rules.

This is how we've rewritten the paragraph. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!



Under Peterson, S&P Global acquired the artificial intelligence company Kensho and machine-learning powered company Panjiva.

As CEO, he is also overseeing investments to build the company’s portfolio of products and services catering to the growing needs of companies and investors interested in environmental, social and governance (ESG) data, benchmarks and analytics. In 2018, S&P Global unveiled an evaluation tool to enable companies and investors to align ESG strategies with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and in 2016, S&P Global acquired Trucost, an environmental data and analytics company.

Peterson has sought to expand S&P Global in Asia-Pacific. In 2018, S&P Global announced its intentions to build a domestic credit rating agency in the third-largest bond market in the world, China, and in 2016, the company acquired a 49% interest in TRIS Rating, Thailand’s leading rating agency. S&P Global is the majority owner of India’s leading credit rating agency and global analytics company, CRISIL.

Earlier in his tenure as CEO, Mr. Peterson and the management team continued work to transform the company by divesting non-core businesses such as McGraw Hill Construction and J.D. Power, and investing in financial data and analytics businesses, including SNL Financial.

In 2016, Mr. Peterson announced that the company was changing its name from McGraw Hill Financial to S&P Global.

Tracy at S&P (talk) 16:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Hello, Tracy. Here are a few comments which I hope may be of some help to you. I'm afraid my comments don't answer many of the issues you raise, and it is very likely that someone else can give you more help than I can, and I would normally therefore leave your help request open, but I am not doing so, because, for reasons which I explain below, I don't think this is the best placed for it.
• Unfortunately I don't know of any documentation specifically of the kind you ask for. It is possible that it exists somewhere among the myriad pages of guidelines, advice, essays, etc etc that Wikipedia has accumulated over the years, but on the whole I doubt it, as I would probably have come across it at some time in the 12 years I have been here. (In my opinion by far the worst change that has happened to Wikipedia over the years is the gradual accumulation of more and more and longer and longer pages of policies, guidelines, etc, making it more and more difficult for new editors to find information. Originally Wikipedia had just a very few very simple general and flexible guidelines, but unfortunately we are never likely to be able to go back to that.)
• To me your proposed edit reads as an excellent illustration of the main reason why Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline discourages editing on subjects to which one has a personal connection. From what you have said, both here and elsewhere, I am certain that you are sincerely attempting to edit in an objective and neutral way, but the whole passage reads to me as promotional. It is written in the sort of terms that are used in a résumé or a person's profile on his or her company's web site, designed to impress us with the his achievements on behalf of his company. I regard that as a far more serious problem than some of the reasons given on the article talk page for rejecting some of your proposals. (Frankly, some of the reasons given there were very questionable, such as the statement that a particular type of information is "typically placed at the beginning of articles": that is possibly a reason for accepting the proposed content but putting it in at the beginning of the article, but it is not a reason for rejecting the proposed content.)
• Another point is that unless there is a specific reason for doing otherwise, discussion about editing a particular article are much better placed on the article talk page, so that they are readily visible to anyone taking an interest in the editing of that article, rather than on a user talk page, where they are likely to be unseen by many people who might contribute. Also, once there is already discussion one page, starting a second discussion about the same issues on another page is likely to be unhelpful, as it can lead to fragmentation of discussion, and duplication of effort. I am aware that on this occasion it is not totally straightforward, as both Talk:Douglas L. Peterson and Talk:S&P Global are relevant, but the best way to deal with that situation is to post your comments on one page or the other, whichever you judge to be more appropriate, and put a note on the other page mentioning the discussion and linking to it. That is better than starting discussion on a third page.

The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)