User talk:Aik0808

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Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Aik0808. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the article Equinix, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• do your best to comply with 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).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Please declare your association with this subject per WP:PAID. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:05, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Equinix

For information:

This page is a textbook example of what a Wikipedia article shouldn't be. Highly promotional, the major contributor, with an undeclared Conflict of interest, states "I am not an Equinix employee, but my agency does marketing work for Equinix. My interest in editing the Equinix page is to provide historical information about the company". Does he seriously think that, as a paid agent for the company, his claim to only be interested in proving "historical information" is remotely credible. Section after section begins, "Equinix says...", "Equinix has...", "Equinix does...". Truly awful, and I've tagged for Speedy Deletion. It may well be that the company warrants an article, but I'm certain it's not this one. KJP1 (talk) 23:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes indeed, but, as reviewing administrator, I think the company important enough for the article to be worth fixing, and I did a first pass through it, removing almost all of the promotional quotations from the founder, and other sentiments of praise for the company. I have another round to go, and I shall be merging in the article on the data center. Be aware that any statement other than plain fact must be supported by an independent third party source, and an interview with a company executive is not an independent source, no matter where published.

According to our rules on WP:Conflict of Interest, any further contributions you may wish to make on this articles must be only suggested on the article talk page. Since you have an admitted COI, you should not edit the article itself except to update finances and number & location of data centers, and such plain matters. This applies also to all articles related to the company and its executives and facilities and subsidiaries. If you want to start a new one, you must do it in draft space. And you must declare fully on your user page and the article talk page(s).

And I need to point out to you that even the most highly skilled PR writer will naturally write in a style quite the opposite of what we want in an encyclopedia . A NPOV editor will write what the reader might want to know; a PR editor writes what the subject wishes to have said. I've seen a great deal or PR editing here; in my opinion, you did a rather good job of it from the PR standpoint; but that simultaneously made it, just as KJP1 said, a very unsuitable article for an encyclopedia. It's only fair to tell you that I have seen very few PR people here who do learn our style--and even if they do, the clients often refuse to accept the result, as what they want is PR.

I am not giving a formal warning, but if you do COI edits in mainspace again you will probably be blocked from contributing. If not by me, by some other admin. DGG ( talk ) 00:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 04:51, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Paid editing in Wikipedia

Hi Aik0808. Thanks for disclosing here that "my agency does marketing work for Equinix." That is a partial disclosure. You are also obligated to disclose your employer (the agency). I ask you below to disclose that.

You are what we call a "paid editor" and you have a conflict of interest for topics you are paid to work on here in Wikipedia. Please do review WP:PAID and WP:COI.

There is a lot of background that you might not understand. Above all, please be aware that paid editing is tolerated in Wikipedia; it is by no means loved or very welcome in the editing community. There has been a lot of tension between PR/marketing firms and the editing community in the past (there are still are). But out of past tensions grew the WP:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms, which you should also read.

The PAID policy and COI guideline protect the integrity of Wikipedia, and also protect conflicted editors and their clients. (see WP:Wikipedia is in the real world, and please also see the article Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia for scandals covered by the media caused by conflicted editing.)

That should give you the background.

There are two pieces to conflict of interest management in Wikipedia -- disclosure and a form of peer review, or perhaps prior review.

To finish the disclosure piece, would you please add the disclosure to your user page (which is User:Aik0808 - a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just something simple like: "I work for name of agency and Equinix is our client. I have a conflict of interest with regard to those companies and related topics" would be fine. If you want to add anything else there that is relevant to what you want to do in WP feel free to add it, but please don't add anything promotional about the company or yourself (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).

I added a tag at Talk:Equinix, so the disclosure is partially done there ( I will need to go fill in the name of your employer, once you disclose it). Once you disclose on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done, for this matter.

As I noted above, there are two pieces to COI management in WP. The first is disclosure. The second is a form of peer review. This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voilà there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world. So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article. Conflicted editors are also really driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest. If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI or who are paid, and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is:

a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft through the WP:AFC process, disclose your COI on the Talk page with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, and then submit the draft article for review (the AfC process sets up a nice big button for you to click when it is ready) so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and

b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to

(i) disclose at the Talk page of the article with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, putting it at the bottom of the beige box at the top of the page (already done for Equinix); and

(ii) propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. Just open a new section, put the proposed content there, and just below the header (at the top of the editing window) paste the {{request edit}} tag, in order to flag it for other editors to review. In general the proposal should be relatively short so that it is not too much review at once. Sometimes editors propose complete rewrites, providing a link to their sandbox for example. This is OK to do but please be aware that it is lot more for volunteers to process and will probably take longer.

By following the disclosure and "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. (There are good faith paid editors here, who have signed and follow the Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms, and there are "black hat" paid editors here who lie about what they do and really harm Wikipedia).

But understanding the mission, and the policies and guidelines through which we realize the mission, is very important! There are a whole slew of policies and guidelines that govern content and behavior here in Wikipedia. Please see User:Jytdog/How for an overview of what Wikipedia is and is not (we are not a directory or a place to promote anything), and for an overview of the content and behavior policies and guidelines. Learning and following these is very important, and takes time. Please be aware that you have created a Wikipedia account, and this makes you a Wikipedian - you are obligated to pursue Wikipedia's mission first and foremost when you work here, and you are obligated to edit according to the policies and guidelines. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege that is freely offered to all, but the community restricts or completely takes that privilege away from people who will not edit and behave as Wikipedians.

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content. If you are not sure if something is uncontroversial, please ask at the Talk page.

Will you please agree to learn and follow the content and behavioral policies and guidelines, and to follow the peer review processes going forward when you want to work on any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. Best regards Jytdog (talk) 00:59, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

pasted message below, that was left on my talk page in this diff Jytdog (talk) 15:17, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello Jytdog,

Thanks for the information you supplied. I have completed the COI disclosure as requested on my user page and will repeat it here: "I work for CXO Communication and Equinix is our client. I have a conflict of interest with regard to those companies and related topics."

I also agree to learn and follow the content and behavioral policies and guidelines, and to follow the peer review processes going forward when I want to work on any article where my COI is relevant. My understanding is that I may edit this page to add simple, factual, uncontroversial information, or for the purposes of correcting typographic/grammatical mistakes, but all other edits should go through the peer review process.

I'm very interested in having the tags removed from the article when it's deemed to meet Wikipedia standards. DGG has edited the article to remove promotional content. Please let me know if there's any thing I can do to help the article better conform to Wikipedia guidelines and policies. Thanks! Aik0808 (talk) 15:14, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I cut your reply from my talk page and pasted it here, to keep the thread in one place.

Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting (see WP:THREAD) - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages when you save your edit. That is how we know who said what to whom. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 15:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I had a quick glance over the Equinix page and i understand why it was tagged. It is really, really obvious/blatant PR work.

The first thing I always look at are the sources down in the reference section.

In Wikipedia, all that we do, is summarize reliable sources. The article should be shaped by what independent sources say about the subject - the bulk of the content should summarize such sources and give what we call "weight" - space and emphasis -- as those sources do. It is fine to fill around the edges with primary sources (like SEC filings and the like) but they should just be used to fill in around the edges.

Do you hear that?

I don't know how the community arrived at this, but it is deep in the guts of this place and kind of genius. Really following that, makes it difficult for PR people to come here and try to drive content based on press releases they create or content they post on the company website. (We all know that really good PR people can get articles places in many kind of publications, but at least it is filtered)

In any case, most of the sources in this page in WP are press releases, churnalism, company website, etc. When the sources are PR, the article is PR, and that is not OK.

It is going to be a lot of work to fix the article. It will have to be pretty much completely rewitten, driven by independent sources. That is the task you have in front of you...

Does that make sense, in terms of how we operate? Again this is all explained in User:Jytdog/How -- I tried to lay out how this place works from the ground up.

If you take the time to read it, and try to grasp the mission and the strategies that the community has come up with to realize the mission, all of this stuff will make sense. It is all very counter-intuitive at first, I know. Jytdog (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate your response, Jytdog, thank you. I have a couple questions. You emphasize above that it's critical to have outside sourcing for all material in the article, and that is absolutley clear to me. You also say most of the sourcing in the existing article is essentially PR content _ from the internal website, churnalism, press releases, etc., but that is not the case. Ten of the 48 citations are in the categories you describe. The rest are from sources that are independent journalistic entities, not PR operations. Equinix has absolutely no editorial control over these entities. I understand that 10 is too many, but as I work to revise the article to fall within Wikipedia guidelines, I am proceeding assuming sources like these entities are acceptable. Am I wrong?

My question is, I guess, more of a confirmation that absolutely no attribution to a company source is acceptable. I am thinking of the list of executives, for instance. My assumption was that attributing this kind of basic information to the company website would not be problematic, but it clearly is. Please let me know if I am mistaken. Aik0808 (talk) 20:48, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I fixed the threading of your comment above. Sources like this are churnalism. There are many of these, and similar from the trade rags Data Center Knowledge, DatacenterDynamics, etc. Trade rag sources need to be used really carefully; some are good and have analysis but some are just churnalism. As you know, i think..... The thing to do is find some really high quality sources and build the article around them, and use lower quality ones to fill in around the edges. Jytdog (talk) 21:08, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

What you are effectively getting, Aik0808, is being paid for writing a promotional article for your client, and getting it rewritten for you for free by our volunteer experts. Exploiting a non-profit run by unpaid volunteers for gain, could get your agency an unfavourable reputation. Please see WP:BOGOF. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:02, 6 March 2018 (UTC)