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This is an archive of discussions from 2006.
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← Archive 3   Archive 4   Archive 5 →

Conflict of interest discussions in 2006

Aaron Klein

Your helpful contribution to the discussion was here: Talk:Aaron Klein#Edit warring. Recently User:MikeJason has appeared and begun to make some of the same changes previously reverted when they were made by anons. MikeJason (talk) (contribs) is a new contributor to Wikipedia. Sigh.. Can you advise patience, or something? I kind of have two choices: (1) forget it, and think peaceful thoughts. (2) Propose the Aaron Klein article for deletion. (3) anything else? My colleague in POV-fighting, Robocracy, had earlier sponsored the page for semi-protection, which has recently expired. What can you do about logged-in contributors who misbehave, when they seem to be single-purpose accounts? EdJohnston 23:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The repeated reversions (cf. Wikipedia:Edit war) both before and after registration, in deliberate defiance of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, confirm that this miscreant is stubbornly resistant to the policy. I can personally do nothing but remark on it (I'm not an admin) but it's obvious the article should be kept and he should be blocked from editing it. — Æ. 00:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Athaenara. Recent updates at Aaron Klein by an anonymous contributor, mostly labelled 'minor edit' and 'brief add', often restoring previously-deleted material, deserve your attention, should you still be interested in this obviously non-earthshaking issue. I wonder if writing to WorldNetDaily would do any good. Perhaps we could denounce them for tampering with Wikipedia. EdJohnston 00:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I saw it, it's on my watch list, too. 192.118.11.112 (contribs) is undoubtedly MikeJason (contribs). He didn't puff it up promotion style this time, but WND links are still too numerous and other newsmedia links (which he should find if they're out there) are still too few. –Æ. 02:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Single purpose accounts update

→ Talk:Aaron Klein/Archive 1#Single purpose accounts 1 and Talk:Aaron Klein/Archive 1#Single purpose accounts 2

User SandyBMW identifies himself as Aaron Klein

See this item from the history log of the image that was recently posted to the Aaron Klein article!

10:30, 21 January 2007 . . SandyBMW (Talk | contribs) . . 70×123 (5,234 bytes) (== Summary == From WorldNetDaily. == Fair use for Aaron Klein == {{Fair use in}} {{WithPermission}} taken from: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/speakers/aklein.asp Note: This is Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily, holder of the copyright. I give Wikipedia) ...etc...

The new tags you added to the Aaron Klein page seem appropriate. EdJohnston 19:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I saw that image attribution also, and almost went down the rathole of tracking every image those user/IPs have ever added. Maybe another time, or another wikipedian ;-D   For now, I vented my wrath on the seven now eight nine talk pages. — Athænara ✉ 20:02, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Since anons have been removing the tags that you placed, I think this is enough grounds to ask for semi-protection for at least 30 days, at least until the problems with the article are addressed at WP:COI/N. Your call. EdJohnston 18:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree 100%—go for it! –Æ. 18:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I left this request at WP:RFPP:
Semi-protection requested for this page. The issue is not conventional vandalism, this page is constantly attacked by POV editors, most of them (recently) anonymous. In the last 30 days two different anons have removed tags from the page referring to the POV issues. Article is currently awaiting attention at WP:COI/N. I'm requesting a 'tprotect' for 30 days, which should be long enough for COI/N to take some action or give us advice. EdJohnston 18:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The request was declined:...There is not enough recent activity to justify protection at this time. If you see POV-pushing even after IP users fail to participate in discussions, then revert. Nishkid64 22:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC) EdJohnston 19:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can see Nishkid's point. Compared to articles with daily vandals or revert wars, this one's problems are small potatoes. It's reasonable to suppose that a few editors can keep up with intermittent problems. Now, about that sockpuppet thing ... (see next subsection (WW SSP); it's been there awhile.) Though frankly it is a low level problem, however aggravating over time—perhaps editor aggravation-tolerance needs to be adjusted a notch or two higher ;-D. — Æ. ✉ 21:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP SSP

The sock puppet report form requires designating one puppetmaster among the socks. If you had to make the call in this case, which would it be? — Athænara ✉ 14:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not fluent with this process. All I recall is that User:MikeJason made his first edit to the AK article on 22 November after Robacracy succeeded in getting the Aaron Klein page semi-protected on 17 November. This suggests that Mike Jason was a reincarnation of a previous IP. After protection went away on 5 December the POV warriors must have decided to go back to the safety of anonymity, and Mike Jason disappeared again. Mike J. never responded to any questions left on his talk page. His last edit was on 4 December 2006.
The oldest IP account was 192.118.11.112, the one that originally drew my attention to the Aaron Klein page, because he persisted in making eccentric edits to Floating point that I didn't understand. My first message to that anon was on 24 October, and I never got a response. That anon is still active; his last edit was on 28 January.
While you didn't ask about this, it occurs to me that the Aaron Klein page could be stubbified, because there are almost no reliable sources in the conventional sense. If we rule out blogs as unreliable (and there is some justification for that view at WP:RS) and rely only on printed sources, then the AK article, completely sourced from print publications, would become very small. One could well argue that WND and ConWebWatch are not reliable sources. I still can't believe that 'Klein barred from Syria' is accepted as a legitimate external link in the AK article. Note that even trivial biographic info, like the following sentence, has no reliable source: "Klein attended Jewish schooling from nursery through college." If the POV warriors want to pretend that we don't exist, and WP standards don't exist, then applying the letter of the law to an extreme degree might be a reasonable approach. EdJohnston 01:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Userfy
And another idea: userfication of autobio, disambiguation of name. Sample of the latter:
"Aaron Klein may refer to:
  • Aaron Klein—one of the "Ghosts of Gold Hill," murdered in 1842 in the Randolph Mine on Gold Hill, near Concord, North Carolina, in what is now the Charlotte metropolitan area.
  • Aaron Klein—mathematician, PH.D. (1966) Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  • Aaron Klein—designer of "Body War," an AIDS medical educational game in which "human immunity cells struggle against invading viruses, bacteria and tumors" 1986, BT Games.
  • Aaron Klein—member of Sierra College Board of Trustees (as of 2004).
  • Aaron Klein—2006 candidate, Montgomery County, District 20, Maryland House of Delegates; chief economist (five years) for Maryland State Senator Paul Sarbanes' Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
  • Aaron Klein—reporter, World Net Daily.
  • Aaron Klein—various high school and college athletes…"
(Just kidding about that last one…) — Athænara ✉ 16:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

→ (Full linkage version of list above in Talk:Aaron Klein/Archive 1#February 2007 status of the article.)

→ Update: Aaron Klein (disambiguation) now exists. — Athaenara ✉ 08:09, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, but then you'd need articles on all those people! EdJohnston 21:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, right, I'm writing the whole encyclopedia by myself—you got the memo, I see ;-P — Athænara ✉ 21:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

→ Related matters in 2009:

NewsMax

Athaenara, I've looked at the NewsMax article and it seems that there's POV-pushing there, as well. As it seems to me — and this is just a suspicion — NewsMax may be actually employing people to edit Wikipedia, the same way that Microsoft has. I'm User:Robocracy (the one who originally brought this Aaron Klein article to your attention) and I rarely use Wikipedia anymore (too lazy to even login now). A report for "long-term vandalism," including names of all of those who have pushed POVs on Aaron Klein, Newsmax and other Newsmax-related articles would be helpful. As it stands now, the Newsmax article itself looks like an advertisement and the "criticism of Newsmax" section I saw there months ago has since been totally removed. 69.138.31.96 01:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was good to hear from you again, Robocracy; I'm sorry you're not an active editor these days. I'm giving this newsmax thing some thought. (Aside: Have I become a magnet for POV issues in articles about conservative news reportage?) — Athænara ✉ 20:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, since this page is well-organized and archived, it has become a sensible place for people to file new info. You will soon have the data to write a WP history of important COI debates.. I like the {{Primarysources}} banner currently seen at Newsmax. If AK didn't have so many banners already, it would seem appropriate there as well. EdJohnston 21:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Primary sources—excellent point—added it. — Athænara ✉ 22:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aliweb

→ See also: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Aliweb/Archive (August 2009)

Hello Athaenara! Since you've been on the job, I have felt free to ignore the constant POV issues on the Aaron Klein page, and I've made no further edits (since 13 Nov). We have a similar problem now over at Aliweb, where the topic may be just notable enough to prevent deletion, but there is a troublesome user (with the same name as the page). Perhaps the remedy there is something like 'stubbification', where everything not verifiable is removed. I'm not sure I have as much patience as you do to keep tidying up the page after multiple assaults; deletion (if appropriate) would be simpler. If you could just look at the page and give me advice, that would be very helpful. EdJohnston 20:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I recommend the Wikipedia:Requests for comment (RfC) process, for "disputes over article content, user conduct, and Wikipedia policy and guidelines." The problem user's contribs page is also pertinent: Special:Contributions/Aliweb. –Æ. 23:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to let you know, Ed—I took another look at Aliweb, Talk:Aliweb, and User:Aliweb (talk) this morning, to see if there had been any improvement since your last post about it here, and was so repelled I posted about it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Aliweb*. Maybe you can add your considerably more than two cents? Athænara ✉ 12:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for following up. My only new finding since December is that Wikipedia:Username has an entry for

"Usernames that promote a company or website: Usernames of or closely resembling the names of companies, groups, or include the URL of a particular website are discouraged and may be blocked."

There is a section later on that page explaining how to ask that a username be changed. When the problem is commercial promotion rather than an offensive name, It's not as simple as taking it to WP:AIV, but there is a procedure.

A second possible step would be to file a user conduct WP:RFC asking the user to abstain from editing his company's own site. This is a heavyweight remedy that can actually lead to Arbcom action, not something I'd lightly do. A third possibility is an AfD debate about Aliweb. That's beginning to seem more reasonable. EdJohnston 15:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COI Noticeboard

There are (as you know if you've been reading Talk:Aliweb) at least six IPs involved, anywhere from one to perhaps as many as three people. Following advice obtained on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Aliweb, I posted on Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard: look there for Aliweb in one of the humongous noticeboard-standard section headings. —Æ. ✉ 13:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm impressed by your very thorough writeup at WP:COI/N. I didn't know there were so many IPs that worked on it. Do you have a remedy in mind? I am somewhat familiar with how administrators respond to WP:AIV but I don't know what standards they will use at WP:COI. EdJohnston 17:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. All Wikipedians share the burden with admins, and non-sock editors of that article have shouldered quite a bit of it. Whoever was using the socks is indifferent to Wikipedia policies and equally indifferent to efforts of Wikipedians to maintain them. Let's just let the administrative processes work now. Athænara 01:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out the WP:COI/N process has only existed since 27 December. The complete record of their past decisions is here. Once started, the process should be allowed to run, but I note that AfD might be simpler :-). I believe that the notability of Aliweb could be strongly contested for lack of any printed sources. If WP:WEB is the criterion we would have:

The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper and magazine articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations..

I doubt that any of this exists for Aliweb. The current references are blog postings, usenet messages and web sites. EdJohnston 15:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As cited in my first post on WP:COI/N, there is at least one printed source: Jeremy M. Norman's From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology, 2005, Norman Publishing, hardcover 889 pages, ISBN 0-930405-87-0 (also carried on amazon). I find WP:COI/N's emergence from the starting gate encouraging (cf. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Archive 1). —Æ. ✉ 02:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the pointer. While I do see that Aliweb is mentioned in a timeline associated with the book, the name 'Aliweb' does not appear in the index of the book itself (the index can be downloaded as a PDF). So one might have to lay hands on a physical copy of the book to confirm that it mentions Aliweb. (There is a note that the online version of the timeline is expanded from the one in the book). EdJohnston 03:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The spamming crew has returned with, so far, nine posts to the article talk page (in less than one hour) and five edits to the article (in less than five minutes). I've updated the WP:COI/N thread and asked on the talk page whether it is in fact the right venue. —Æ. ✉ 11:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Athaenara. Though I believe you did the right thing by filing the issue at WP:COI/N, I just noticed that (a) MER-C, the person who actually closes issues, is not an administrator (perhaps we should propose him for RFA :-), (b) He's on Wiki break from January 10 until January 28. I imagine his recommendations are heard carefully by administrators, though. EdJohnston 22:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For a few bumbling amateurs, I'd say we haven't done a half-bad job of extricating Aliweb from aliweb.com's clutches. — Athænara ✉ 06:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I archived the monstrous thing. How ironic it is that the mass of information about the disruptive and tendentious socks is greater than that of the article itself by a factor of 100 or more. — Æ. ✉ 12:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MER-C 2 RFA

In case this interests you: (RfA). Not uncontested, though. EdJohnston 23:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. — Æ. ✉ 23:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

→ Addendum: MER-C 2 RFC closed 16:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC). (Did not pass.)

Suite101 dot com AfD

An article that you have been involved in editing, Suite101.com, has been listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suite101.com. Please look there to see why this is, if you are interested in whether it should be deleted. Thank you. --A. B. 22:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks — I have not edited the article except to support its deletion (date:time 2006:UTC):
Hi -- you did not have to go to all that work above -- I was just routinely putting the standard "Adw" notification template on the various editors' pages per the WP:AfD procedure. Looking at the language now, I see the tone almost sounds vaguely like that of an indictment, which I certainly did not intend! (I just wanted to give a friendly notification.) --A. B. 01:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No problem—I like WikiWork, it increases my WikiSkills ;-) — Æ.

→ Addendum: AfD closed. Article deleted 06:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC).


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