Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Common Cause

I've issued a public invitation to an online meeting where I will give a presentation on conflict of interests. That invitation was posted within one of the investigation discussions and so that it's not lost to page watchers, I thought I'd post it on this talk page.

The New Zealand Wiki community has its monthly online meeting later today. Anyone can join in and we usually have a few Australians turn up, i.e. it's not just a domestic meeting, with overseas editors most welcome. I'll be talking about COI editing so that we as a community learn something from the investigation that's going on, with a goal of achieving broader understanding of how to manage COIs. Anyone watching this page is most welcome to join in: Wikipedia:Meetup/Aotearoa New Zealand Online/49#Conflict of interest editing. I've asked the organiser to be on the programme in second slot so that there's an approximate time available for those who are only interested in this topic; tune in from 12:15 h NZT, which is UTC+12:00. [https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20240526T001500&p1=264 Time zone conversion link] for your convenience. Schwede66 20:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

:Here's a [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pC5WOWv25CObVrIXIcJSn4coweviWdamNUr7V2f2jmQ/edit?usp=sharing link to the presentation]; feel free to use the presentation and modify it as you see fit. It went well; there was a healthy amount of interest. The editors who spoke gave feedback like "I've learned a lot", "I'm definitely going to add conflict of interest statements to my user page", or "that was really useful, thank you". Schwede66 05:02, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Editors who read this noticeboard may be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Performing a random pages test on business articles, regarding how to best obtain a random sample of Wikipedia articles on companies for the purposes of assessing problems like undisclosed COI editing. – Teratix ₵ 16:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

When filing a new COI report using the "To begin a new discussion, enter the name of the relevant article below:" item, the user is given Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Template as the skeleton. It has bullet-entries:

{{box|

• {{pagelinks|article name}}
• {{userlinks|username}}

}}

Those seem pretty clear to the filer how and where to enter the relevant details. But the results of those templates when published are:

{{box|

• {{pagelinks|article name}}
• {{userlinks|username}}

}}

The outputs are very similar, but the concepts are quite different. Unless I recognize the differential link-sets, or the article name and username themselves, it's not clear which entry is for an article and which is for the involved user. Articles could be named for a person and editors could have non-person names, and there are cases where unrelated users have the same username as articles. I think it would be clearer if either each bullet-entry were tagged with what it is:

{{box|

• Article: {{pagelinks|article name}}
• User: {{userlinks|username}}

}}

or the article(s) vs user(s) were in separately-identified lists:

{{box|

• Article(s):
• {{pagelinks|article name}}
• User(s):
• {{userlinks|username}}

}}

I am only an occasional user of COIN, which makes this unclarity more noticeable to me but I also don't want to BOLDly change a tool that regulars might be expected to be a certain way. Thoughts? DMacks (talk) 18:09, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

:Sounds like a reasonable improvement to me. (I also have the nagging half-memory that there are other noticeboards that use a similar format that might also be improved in the same way...) ElKevbo (talk) 18:57, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

::Preference among the two approaches? Either one completely solves my concern, so I don't have a preference. I can see pros and cons of both, in terms of readability, compactness, consistency with other notice-boards, etc. DMacks (talk) 19:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• {{pagelinks|Jake Braun}}
• {{userlinks|97.119.137.18}}

This article was tagged with Wikipedia:Autobiography because of extensive edits by the subject. The subject attempted to remove the tag and had their account blocked indefinitely. See the COI noticeboard discussion at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_164#Cambridge_Global_and_Jake_Braun Cambridge Global and Jake Braun] and the user discussion at User_talk:Spartaneditor. An IP address user has again attempted to remove the tag.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.15.211.66 (talk) 00:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

With regard to User talk:Junekramer1, the editor appears to both have a COI with Paul Bilzerian ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Junekramer1 edit history], took [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Bilzerian_2008.jpg the photo of subject]).

And has now repeatedly [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Bilzerian&diff=prev&oldid=1288606172 deleted large amounts of cited material] from the Paul Bilzerian.

And in an effort to keep that article with the cited material deleted - [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection/Increase&diff=prev&oldid=1288720505 has asked for page protection] perhaps to keep their preferred version of the page - with the proper material now deleted - intact. What is the best path forward to address this? Thank you. 184.153.21.19 (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

:This is not a noticeboard, but a talk page for a noticeboard. User conduct issues are raised at WP:AN. Page protection is requested at WP:RFPP. 331dot (talk) 19:24, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

:For COI issues, post to the actual noticeboard. 331dot (talk) 19:25, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

This page lists an F1 tornado in West Frankfort, Illinois and states "A mobile home and a mine building were destroyed. 3,000 people were injured." This is incorrect as it is rural Southern Illinois and 3,000 people do not even live within the 1 mile journey of the tornado.

I made the change to "A mobile home and a mine building were destroyed. 1 person was injured and several miners were trapped underground for a short period of time, but none of them were injured." I didn't cite a source, because I am the 1 person injured and it was my mobile home destroyed. It was denied without a source, so I found a newspaper article called "Woman Survives After Winds Destroy Home, Southern Illinoisan, Carbondale, Illinois, April 28, 1994. This is the article where me, my brother-in-law and the mine officials are interviewed after it happens and it discusses the aftermath. There is not a link to the article, I obtained a PDF from newspapers.com I am happy to provide, I just don't see how to attach a file here. The only other news done was a television interview with me through a local TV station and being from 1994, I couldn't find it anywhere. I'm not even positive of which station. It was recommended to me, that even with this source, it's a possible COI to accept the edit.

The statement of 3,000 people being injured does seem to be applied to that one tornado in the outbreak and it is so incorrect. There are maybe 10 houses out there? Maybe.I don't believe 3,000 people were injured in the entire outbreak. If a conflict of interest, even with a source, still doesn't allow me to make the edit - can the 3,000 injured at least be removed? Olympiadunn (talk) 17:03, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

:{{u|Olympiadunn}} - It looks like the article was vandalized by an unregistered editor back in 2018, in a series of edits [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tornado_outbreak_of_April_25%E2%80%9327%2C_1994&diff=829500303&oldid=780328820 here] that were not completely corrected. There was already a source on the page for the injuries, and it confirms the one. The article you added for the other commentary is probably fine. Yes, that would have been a remarkably effective F1 to injure that many people in that area.Sam Kuru (talk) 17:34, 23 May 2025 (UTC)