Protein1EFN

Hi there

I work in Healthcare and have various Pharma Companies as clients (meaning of course I am conflicted from directly editing drug/heath related articles, so I do not do this!) I am very interested in your user account, aims and the comments below.

It is great to see the aim of increasing quality in Wikipedia health articles. The challenge I have is one of transparency. The fact your account is a group one to start with and does not provide details of who your individual contributors are, which companies they work for or are affiliated to etc does limit transparency. Would you be able to provide more information on this please? Ideally on your user page.

One specific question: I notice that you have edited an article on IMS Health. Do any of you work for or are you affiliated to IMS health in any way?

Thanks for providing any additional information!

Garymonk (talk) 14:16, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome

I have not heard of this organization. First of all we do not really allow group accounts.

Here are a few pages your group needs to familiarize themselves with

• WP:MEDRS: Basically use recent high quality secondary sources such as review articles
• WP:MEDMOS is also good

Would be happy to discuss further. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:06, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

This statement is also interesting "Most of us are voting members of wikimedia foundation and we speak at Wikipedia conferences about the importance of accuracy in healthcare related Wikipedia pages". Wondering what other accounts your group edits under? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:11, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Doc, Thanks for your note and the links. We typically stay away from editing the pages to avoid conflict of interests unless there is no response from the main contributors. (We get paid for consulting and training we provide hospitals, universities and pharma companies on how to use Wikipedia ethically and also legally). We get in touch with experts like you if a healthcare related page needs correction. So you might not see us editing pages. Certainly familiar with the links you have sent us. The reason we formed the group is to provide a bridge to the entities to ETHICALLY fix legitimate errors on healthcare pages. As you know hospitals and companies do not get involved in providing the wealth of information they have about some major topics, notably pharmaceutical products, fearing backlash. Some are paying unknown agencies to promote marketing material, which is not good for the Wikipedia community. Will be glad to work with you and other docs in the community. Hope to meet you soon in person soon at a conference. --WikiCorrect-Health (talk) 12:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Sure so can you explain what you were doing in this edit [1]? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:24, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

It was a good reference that popped up yesterday. We can remove if you feel it doesn't provide value to the page.--WikiCorrect-Health (talk) 12:36, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

It is a primary source. Please note the peer reviewed articles are NOT the same as review articles. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:17, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiCorrect-Health, you are invited to the Teahouse

Hi WikiCorrect-Health! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! TheOriginalSoni (I'm a Teahouse host) Visit the Teahouse This message was delivered automatically by your robot friend, HostBot (talk) 21:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, WikiCorrect-Health, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or any other editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One firm rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk 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 {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to Wikiconference USA

Please come if you can!

Hello! In New York City Friday 30 May - Sunday 1 June Wikiconference USA will be held as a national United States Wikipedia meetup hosted by Wikimedia New York City and Wikimedia DC. All are welcome to attend. Scholarship applications to cover travel expenses are accepted until the end of March and presentation submissions are requested until that time but can be accepted until closer to the conference.

Since you said "Most of us speak at Wikipedia conferences about the importance of accuracy in healthcare related Wikipedia pages. Come meet us at the next Wikipedia event near your city", I thought you might like to attend. What Wikipedia conferences have you already attended? Have we met? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Username violation

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "WikiCorrect-Health", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Trammel Museum of Art". However, you are invited to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you personally, such as "Mark at WidgetsUSA", "Jack Smith at the XY Foundation", and "WidgetFan87".

Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people, and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, or website, regardless of your username. Moreover, I recommend that you read our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please create a new account or request a username change that complies with our username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 01:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I note that you warned about your username eight months ago. Not good. Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Dear User talk:Jytdog, I have submitted a username change. Thanks again for letting me know about the violation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiCorrect-Health (talk • contribs) 02:37, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The username that you have requested, "IMSsocial", also violates our username policy and will be rejected. You did not read the link above to our username policy which I will place again here: Wikipedia:Username_policy#Usernames_implying_shared_use. If you want to be here, you must follow our policies and guidelines, which means taking the time to actually read them, asking about anything that is unclear, and going slow while you learn how they actually work. Please show this note to your boss. Jytdog (talk) 12:40, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Terms of Use

Please read WP:COI and especially the section about editing Wikipedia for pay. You must disclose your employer, your client, and your affiliation, when you edit Wikipedia for pay, in the ways prescribed in the Terms of Use. There are other guidelines at WP:COI for editors with conflicts, please do mind them. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Dear User talk:Jytdog,

We are in no way would want to violate the Wikipedia policies. Just following the FDA guidelines. I am from IMS Health and I have disclosed it in the profile page. Should we change the name to something like Wiki@IMSHealth. We really would like to follow the Wikipedia guidelines. Please let us know your thoughts.— Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiCorrect-Health (talk • contribs) 02:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Please hear me, I have a lot of respect for the work that IMS Health does, but what you are doing with regard to Wikipedia is terrible. If you continue as you have been, in my view you are going to damage the reputation of IMS Health. The issue of "paid editing" (which is what we call what you are doing) has a long background and is extremely controversial and you should be proceeding with a lot more care and respect. Please read Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Corporate_public_relations_industry and Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia. The WikiExperts incident described in the COI Editing article led to no less than five proposals about banning paid editing, consumed hours and hours of discussion, and led directly to a change in Wikipedia's Terms of Use (which you have been violating).

More generally, there is a wide range of sentiment about paid editing in the Wikipedia community. There are many who despise it and will do everything they can to make your work hellish here, under the idea that paid editing is simply corruption, and there are paid editors here who claim that they follow our policies and guidelines (PAG) (see Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms), and there are specific instances where paid editors are clearly following our PAG, and there are many editors who edit for pay and don't know they are doing anything wrong, and others who know it is wrong and try to hide it. Personally I don't mind the presence of paid editors in Wikipedia when they understand and follow our PAG and are respectful enough of Wikipedia to ask and learn about our policies and guidelines and follow them, and who go slow and respect the fact that the rest of us are volunteers and do this in our spare time.

Here are some of the bad things you are doing:

• your failure to follow Wikipedia's Terms of Use, which is both a policy matter and a legal matter. The Terms require you to disclose your employer, your client, and your affiliations. Please note that other companies that violated the Terms of Use received cease and desist letters from the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia. This is not a trivial thing. The specific issues with the Terms of Use are described in the first section of WP:COI and you have already been pointed to that policy/guideline several times.
• your very wrong attitude about what the FDA said (while they do regulate commercial speech about medical products, what they wrote is less rigorous than what Wikipedia requires in some ways and simply different in others; the FDA issued their guideline in ignorance of Wikipedia's PAG)
• your ignoring of the policy violation with respect to your username for eight months;
• your failure to follow the rest of our Conflict of Interest guidelines, under which you would not directly edit articles. (and by the way, your note on my Talk page shows what even after having been pointed to it several times, you still have not actually read WP:COI)
• as alluded to above, you do not understand the PAG that govern how we edit and source articles (and that govern paid editing and other conflicts of interest), yet you went ahead and made a massive edit to an article.
• in light of the above, your ad is very problematic:
  • it appears that IMS intends to make a business of this, and in light of everything above, this means that Wikipedia has a big problem on our hands and will have to escalate this to the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department if your behavior doesn't change.
  • Also, please tell me, who are the " top administrators" with whom you are working? (that is a direct question) You seem to be unaware that from within Wikipedia, that reads as though IMS is paying one or more admins and is not disclosing who they are, which in my view, would also be a violation of our Terms of Use since those admins would be "affilates" of yours (and from within Wikipedia, it implies corruption)

So really, IMS should re-think this program. As I said above, IMS Health is a trusted name and almost everything about this program's conception and the way you are executing it is wrong, breaches the Terms of Use contract, and risks harming IMS's good name. I suggest that you show this note to your boss.Jytdog (talk) 12:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I want to add here, that although Wikipedia is "an encyclopedia that anyone can edit", editing is a privilege (freely offered to all) that can be revoked if editors don't follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. More importantly, if you really want to get involved, it turns out that Wikipedia is a pretty complex place. Being an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that over the years, Wikipedia has developed lots of policies and guidelines (PAG) to help provide a "body of law" as it were, that form a foundation for excellence and for rational discussion when editors disagree. Without that foundation, this place would be both a garbage dump and a wild west - a truly ugly place. But with the foundation, there is guidance for writing excellent content and there are ways to rationally work out disagreements - if, and only if, all the parties involved accept that foundation and work within it. One of the hardest things for new people, is to understand not only that this foundation exists, but what it actually says and how we use it, and what its letter and spirit is. (I emphasize the spirit, because too often people fall prey to what we call "wikilawyering") The more I have learned about how things are set up here - not just the letter of PAG and the various drama boards and administrative tools, but their spirit - the more impressed I have become at how, well ... beautiful this place can be. It takes time to learn both the spirit and the letter of PAG, and to really get aligned with Wikipedia's mission to crowdsource a reliable, NPOV source of information for the public (as "reliable" and "NPOV" are defined in PAG!). I do hope you slow down and learn. There are lots of people here who are happy to teach, if you start to actually do your own homework and ask authentic questions about the policies and guidelines. I have reviewed pretty much everything you have written, and you have shown what I can only call neglect with regard to our policies and guidelines - you have shown no evidence of actually having taken the time to read and try to understand the policies and guidelines that govern how we work together, and have asked no questions. I hope you change that, if you stick around. Good luck. Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Dear Jytdog,

Thanks again for your note. Really appreciate your concern and input. We have reviewed all your comments and will be updating the description of the user page according to the policies. I do have one question though. Before making the specific edits to the TMS page, according to the COI policy, we suggested the edits to the authors via the talk page but received no responses for two weeks. What should an editor do in that case? Here is a link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation

Again, thanks a lot for all your comments. --162.44.245.104 (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

You should not directly any article where you have a COI. Just adding the material was dead wrong. I am getting sick of pointing you to the WP:COI page. If you take the time to actually fucking read it, you will see that it provides instructions on how to make a COI edit request. IMS is doing this to make money and I cannot tell you how frustrating it is - and how arrogant that you show yourself to be - that you continually refuse to even fucking try to learn about the policies and guidelines here and instead suck up my and others' volunteer time with your laziness. Read WP:COI already. Carefully. Every fucking word of it. Think about it. Ask questions if you don't understand something. I am about out of patience. (when I am out of patience I will stop talking to you and will simply initiate action to get you blocked or banned from Wikipedia) Jytdog (talk) 13:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Per the Terms of Use, please state on your userpage who the client is, for the TMS work you have done. And, by the way, if you have some kind of confidentiality agreement with your client, please know that (in my view at least) this would mean that IMS had put itself in a contractually impossible situation, as it would be impossible to honor both that confidentiality obligation and the disclosure obligation in Wikipedia's Terms of Use contract. Please also disclose the Wikipedia administrators with whom you are affiliated. Again, Wikipedia allows paid editors but you must be transparent and follow the Terms of Use. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 14:47, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

@WikiCorrect-Health: Just to counterbalance Jytdog's bold accusations, while you may be in violation of a legal agreement with the Wikimedia foundation, and you may well be editing in direct contradiction to the strong encouragement that people with a COI not directly edit related pages, and you are almost certainly in violation of the username policy, most of us do not have Jytdog's vitriol, and he is likely in violation of some Wikipedia policies as well, specifically WP:CIVIL and WP:DBN. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 15:40, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I am not in violation of any policies. The account has existed for over eight months now and if they were really acting in good faith to engage with Wikipedia, they would have at least have read WP:COI by now, which they clearly have not. As I wrote several times, I have no problem with the presence of corporate representatives in Wikipedia, as long as they respect our mission, policies, and guidelines, and I have worked with paid editors who post on Talk pages to get content into Wikipedia. I am not opposed to that at all. I acknowledge being a bit freaked out that an 800 pound gorilla like IMS has launched an initiative to edit Wikipedia on behalf of clients and remains this clueless, even today. I am emailing with them and am hopeful they will get with the program. Jytdog (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Well I suppose we disagree on the definition of civility, as mine does not involve berating people on their talk page. Maybe I missed that bullet point in WP:DR. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 16:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

:) Experienced editors have been talking with this account for eight months and the people operating this account have ignored what was written to them - blown off the time people took to write to them. I wrote a very clear message to them, with links to relevant policies and guidelines, and the response showed that they had spent zero time reading the link that matters most, WP:COI. So yep, I wrote a harsh note, telling them to do what they should have done ages ago - way back in march. Plenty of people come to WP and read COI and are able to frame a COI edit request - all it takes is a little effort. You know, actually reading what they were pointed to. Jytdog (talk) 16:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

You are back...

And you edited the TMS article here. Please fix the username violation on this account before you begin working here. The account had been deleted and we undid that to give you a chance to fix the username issue. Please do not abuse our efforts to work with you nicely. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:31, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Last month, an editing block was placed on this account by another site administrator, because the account name you are using is a clear violation of Wikipedia's username policy. I lifted that block, because you had requested a username change, and it appeared that you were making at least some effort to comply with Wikipedia's policy. (The new username that you had requested was also a violation of the username policy, but at least you had stopped ignoring the issue. That discussion is archived at Wikipedia:Changing username/Simple/Unfulfilled/2014/November#WikiCorrect-Health → SocialFromIMS.)

To be clear, the original administrator's block will be restored if you continue to edit without dealing with the username problem. While you have been pointed to the relevant policy page several times in the past, here it is one last time:

• Wikipedia:Username policy (shortcut link, WP:USERNAME)

See, specifically, the sections regarding

• usernames implying shared use,
• usernames that are promotional in nature, and remember that
• accounts used by more than one person are not allowed. Each individual human being who edits Wikipedia needs to have his or her own separate account.

TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:33, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades thanks for watching. I emailed IMS when I saw the edit and had reverted it. They said an employee had made the edit without authorization against IMS policy and that they were sorry, and will make sure it doesn't happen again. We need to keep an eye on this! Jytdog (talk) 14:35, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

We do not allow multi user accounts. Do we? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi I changed the name to Protein1EFN today. Seems like it has been accepted. We'd also like to know if it's advisable to create new accounts for our other editors. This account has been used by only one person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.44.245.104 (talk) 20:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Each individual editor – that is, each separate human being who makes any changes or contributions to Wikipedia – must have his or her own account. Accounts must not be shared between individuals. (As someone who contributes to Wikipedia as a volunteer, in my free time, I find it very frustrating that you don't seem to be reading the messages that are written to you. This was spelled out explicitly in my first post above; the point you're asking about has its very own bullet point and link directly to the relevant section of the policy. Heck, this point was spelled out to you in March [2], when you were a "team of 5": [3].

The holder of each account is responsible for clearly and publicly acknowledging and disclosing the potential conflict(s) of interest (COI) each one faces, without resorting to vagueness, hedging, omission, evasion, or fabrication. Note that a COI exists for all of your editors regardless of whether or not your company has been contracted to make specific edits on a third party's behalf. Disclosure of a COI should be made voluntarily and without requiring prompting or investigation by other Wikipedia editors. A failure to disclose a COI by any of your employees may result in editing restrictions or bans.

Generally speaking, Wikipedia administrators and other editors are willing to give the benefit of the doubt when new editors make mistakes. But you burn your store of goodwill awfully quickly when you ignore basic advice and instructions. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:01, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes every employee who edits WP for IMS needs an individual account, that only he or she uses. WP accounts are personal. They can be anonymous with regard to the person, but they need to be used only by one person. With regard to work each of those individuals does in WP via his or her account, per the Terms of Use, the fact that he or she works for IMS, the client or clients on behalf of which the work is being done, and any other affiliation needs to be disclosed (ideally on the relevant article Talk page, and on the editor's User page). And the WP:COI guideline should be followed (no direct editing of articles, but rather, changes suggested on the article Talk page with an edit request template). And ideally, somebody from IMS will disclose all the accounts someplace central (for example at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine or at WP:COIN or perhaps on the boss' user page), and IMS will keep that list updated as employees come and go. Actually... I wonder if there is a way to set up the big picture, parallel to the way course pages are set up - here is an example: Education_Program:Brock_University/NUSC_1P10_Professional_and_Therapeutic_Communications_(Fall_2014) - these are project pages, where all the participants are listed and all their edits are logged and tracked, and there is clear contact information there for everybody involved and for the responsible individuals. Any way this goes, it would also be useful if the boss would provide a way to contact him or her here in WP, so that problematic edits by employees can be reported (either by email, or perhaps more transparently, on the boss' Talk page) Doc James may have ideas about the best ways to manage all this. We could also open a discussion at wikiTalk medicine about the best way to manage.. Transparency is going to really really important here, all throughout. Jytdog (talk) 15:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

actually I am going to go ahead and open a discussion at Talk:WIkiproject medicine and post a link to it at COIN. Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes the education program extension is a great idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)