User talk:Beaucarrot
Hello Beaucarrot. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic, but that you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a black hat practice.
Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists, and if it does not, from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.
Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at User:Beaucarrot. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Beaucarrot|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message. Jytdog (talk) 02:04, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine!
[edit]Welcome to Wikipedia from Wikiproject Medicine (also known as WPMED).
We're a group of editors who strive to improve the quality of content about health here on Wikipedia, pursuing the mission of Wikipedia to provide the public with articles that present accepted knowledge, created and maintained by a community of editors.
One of our members has noticed that you are interested in editing medical articles; it's great to have a new interested editor on board!
First, some basics about editing Wikipedia, which is a strange place behind the scenes; you may find some of the ways we operate to be surprising. Please take your time and understand how this place works. Here are some useful links, which have information to help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:
- Everything starts with the mission - the mission of Wikipedia is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, working in a community of editors. (see WP:NOT)
- We find "accepted knowledge" for biomedical information in sources defined by WP:MEDRS -- we generally use literature reviews published in good journals or statements by major medical or scientific bodies and we generally avoid using research papers, editorials, and popular media as sources for such content. We read MEDRS sources and summarize them, giving the most space and emphasis (what we call WP:WEIGHT) to the most prevalent views found in MEDRS sources.
- Please see WPMED's "how to" guide for editing content about health
- More generally please see The five pillars of Wikipedia and please be aware of the "policies and guidelines" that govern what we do here; these have been generated by the community itself over the last fifteen years, and you will need to learn them (which is not too hard, it just takes some time). Documents about Wikipedia - the "back office" - reside in "Wikipedia space" where document titles are preceded by "Wikipedia:" (often abbreviated "WP:"). WP space is separate from "article space" (also called "mainspace") - the document at WP:CONSENSUS is different from, and serves as a different purpose than, the document at Consensus.
Every article and page in Wikipedia has an associated talk page, and these pages are essential because we editors use them to collaborate and work out disagreements. (This is your Talk page, associated with your user page.) When you use a Talk page, you should sign your name by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment; the Wikipedia software will automatically convert that into links to your Userpage and this page and will add a datestamp. This is how we know who said what. We also "thread" comments in a way that you will learn with time. Please see the Talk Page Guidelines to learn how to use talk pages.
- Thanks for coming aboard! We always appreciate a new editor. Feel free to leave us a message at any time on our talk page. If you are interested in joining the project yourself, there is a participant list where you can sign up. You can also just add our talk page to your watchlist and join in discussions that interest you. Please leave a message on the WPMED talk page if you have any problems, suggestions, would like review of an article, need suggestions for articles to edit, or would like some collaboration when editing!
- The Wikipedia community includes a wide variety of editors with different interests, skills, and knowledge. We all manage to get along through a lot of discussion that happens under the scenes and through the bold, edit, discuss editing cycle. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss it on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.
Feel free to drop a note below if you have any questions or problems. I wish you all the best here in Wikipedia! --Jytdog (talk) 17:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Working with a COI in Wikipedia
[edit]Thanks for disclosing on your Userpage that you work for UCSF. As noted above I work in WikiProject Medicine, and there is a pretty long term collaboration with our WikiProject and med students at UCSF to work on content about health - see Wikipedia:UCSF School of Medicine if you are not familiar with that.
What you are doing, namely writing about UCSF, is distinct from that.
I have finished the disclosure at the talk pages of the articles you worked on, so the disclosure is done there for local editors to see.
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. (We have an especially severe and endemic problem with universities -- we even have an essay about it, called WP:BOOSTER)
What we ask editors to do who have a COI 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, 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 propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:X - there is a link at "request corrections or suggest content" in that section -- if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request. You can also add a
{{request edit}}tag to flag it for other editors to review.
By following those "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 articles about UCSF or 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) 18:03, 4 October 2017 (UTC)