User talk:Karenblackhall

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Hello, Karenblackhall, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion 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! EdJohnston (talk) 13:01, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

September 2011

Hello Karenblackhall. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Abdominal trauma, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about following the reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. As an employee of Cochrane you should not be adding its external links to articles. That said, Wikipedia would benefit from a quality article about the organisation given its wide-reaching work. Biker Biker (talk) 12:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the COI notice? Please don't add information about Cochrane onto Wikipedia. Perhaps a better approach is to post information about Cochrane on an article's tag page and suggest that other editors add it if they think it is relevant to the article. --Biker Biker (talk) 11:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is your last warning. The next time you disrupt Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Please stop adding Cochrane-related content to Wikipedia. You will not be warned again about this serious conflict of interest Biker Biker (talk) 15:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello and sorry it has taken me this long to figure out how to respond. I openly acknowledge that I am employed by one of the Cochrane Groups. However, our group genuinely thought we were doing a service by including information about the results of our reviews. These reviews are produced by volunteers, with no financial gain for themselves, using rigorous and transparent methods and abstracts are freely available through the Cochrane Library. If there is a unanimous agreement that by adding information about our reviews is not useful or of interest to those reading Wikipedia, and that I have breached the conflict of interest agreements then I will not add any more content to Wikipedia and I apologise for the problems this has caused.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Karenblackhall (talk • contribs) 21:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Karen. As others have pointed out, your edits have brought value to Wikipedia. I urge you to keep contributing. However, please do follow the advice of those who direct you to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policies regarding self-promotion and conflict of interest. Try to avoid over-hyping the Cochrane Library and/or making the language of your edits sound like advertisements. If I can be of any assistance to you in this or any other regard, do not hesitate to post a question on my talk page. Cheers, Ebikeguy (talk) 19:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cochrane reviews

Cochrane reviews are high quality sources (See WP:MEDRS) and their addition is welcome on Wikipedia's medicine articles. I don't know if there is a conflict of interest. Perhaps you, Karen, or BikerBiker would care to clarify the concern? pgr94 (talk) 15:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Karen Blackhall is an employee of Cochrane. I fully accept that Cochrane's reviews are high quality but it is not for an employee of the organisation to put those reviews into articles. What we have right now is a single purpose account where the only contributions are a Cochrane employee posting Cochrane reviews to a large number of articles. I have suggested (see my message on this page on September 15th) that she post any relevant information to an article's talk page and suggest to other editors that they consider adding it to the article. I believe that is a much better approach. --Biker Biker (talk) 15:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a reasonable concern. This webpage indicates a Karen Blackhall with a connection to Cochrane reviews though it's not clear if she is an employee. This may indeed be WP:COI. pgr94 (talk) 15:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Blackhall's contributions appear to be promotional in tone. This seems to be a case of an employee attempting to use Wikipedia to promote his/her business and a potential violation of WP:NOTADVERTISING. I encourage Blackhall to follow Biker's advice and familiarize herself thoroughly with Wikipedia's policies regarding conflict of interest. Ebikeguy (talk) 16:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Cochrane Library has 28,000 volunteers so she may just be a volunteer. Is it still COI if she is a volunteer? Karen, you are strongly encouraged (but not obliged) to declare any potential conflict of interest. Biker, do you have any evidence she is an employee? PS what's with all the bikers here??? pgr94 (talk) 16:05, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google tells us that "Karen is the Information Specialist for The Cochrane Injuries Group". I have no problem with Cochrane, they are indeed an excellent organisation whose collation of existing research saves the scientific community a huge amount of time and money. But I would respond in exactly the same way if an employee of the New York Times, or (British) Daily Telegraph were to do nothing but add references from their respective company's websites. It is best to leave it to others to judge the merits of your organisation/charity/company's publications. --Biker Biker (talk) 16:08, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Given that these kinds of reviews are exactly the type of material we want for our articles, this entire exchange stinks of WP:BITE. Sure, the user may not be adding material in the correct and formally blessed manner, but it's exactly the type of material we need. Encouraging the user to not be overly promotional is one thing, but let's not scare off contributors who could potentially add a lot of useful content, even if it does require some sprucing up by a more experienced editor. SDY (talk) 16:24, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BITE indeed. Karen, please be aware of the guidance at wp:COI on how to participate if you have a conflict. It is equally valid advice even if that conflict is only perceived, as appears to be the case here. Please do not be dissuaded from participating by this initial exchange. You are precisely the kind of expert editor Wikipedia needs more of. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the tone of some criticism has been bitey, but the perception of conflict is backed up by some rather strong evidence, both in the promotional tone of Blackhall's contributions under this user name and the contributions of 193.63.251.69, which appear likely to be Blackhall editing anonymously and receiving warnings that the edits were in violation of WP:NOTLINK. Blackhall is a public relations specialist, and her editing history suggests that she may be looking for ways to circumvent WP:COI rather than sincerely attempting to follow the policies described therein. Her future edits will allow the community of editors to render judgment on that question, but in the meantime, suggesting that the possibility of conflict is only perceived, not real, in this case is inaccurate and inappropriate. I also encourage her to continue contributing her significant expertise to Wikipedia, in a manner which is consistent with Wikipedia's rules and policies. Ebikeguy (talk) 17:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that editors with a conflict of interest are indeed welcome, and they are in no way banned from editing articles they have a conflict over. It's just that it is much easier to work on subjects where you don't have a conflict. That said, the edits in question looked like blatant advertisements to me. There is no need to always plug the name of the source outside the <ref></ref> tags. Sometimes there is a reason, like controversial subjects, where the source is highly partisan, it makes sense to mention the source by name and explain their methodology. But these edits were simply citing facts and all you need to write is the fact followed by an inline citation.

Therefore completely reverting the edits was better than leaving them in place. Keeping the source but editing out the advertisement would be even better, but that's no reason not to revert.

So it's fine to cite Cochrane, but in general, there's no reason to mention their name outside the footnote. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:05, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Except there is a reason to indicate the source of the review, because it's a specific and recognized source with known methods and values that some of our readers will immediately recognize. It's not a "partisan" source per se, but it's exactly the same logic. I don't expect general readers to understand it, but Cochrane is an authorative publisher of systematic reviews, and saying that a treatment is supported by a Cochrane review is like saying that Amnesty International condemned something as a human rights abuse instead of just some weekend activists on their blogs. SDY (talk) 17:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All citations on Wikipedia are authoritative, or they shouldn't be cited at all. A bare cite with no qualifications is praise enough. Giving Cochrane a special status in that regard makes no sense. It's really only cases where you've got good reason to include a questionable source that you have to include some kind of disclaimer or qualification. The central point is that the article is about the subject, not the sources. It's off topic to give so much attention tot he source. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Dennis. The source of the cite will be clearly available in the footnote, no need to include it in the body unless there is an overwhelmingly good reason to do so. Adding "The New York Times states..." might add some punch to many citations, but it would also clutter up the body of the article and generally add off-topic verbiage to the article in question. Ebikeguy (talk) 17:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I started restoring the references without realizing the discussion was still ongoing. I guess I'd better stop... pgr94 (talk) 17:30, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary! Please restore appropriate references and Wikify where needed. Your expertise in this subject matter should give you all the tools you need to determine which insertions are appropriate and how to tweak them to meet Wikipedia standards.Ebikeguy (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Karenblackhall has never posted to an article talk page nor has she ever responded to concerns expressed on her user talk. Regardless of the quality of her edits, this is a concern. So far, she seems to be a machine for adding links. Sometimes she adds some text to an article which is drawn from the linked study. Failure to communicate is something that is rightly criticized here. EdJohnston (talk) 17:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, it's a new user who may not understand our customs and practices. We can be welcoming and gently correct the flaws, or we can mass-revert, block the editor, and shut off potentially valuable contributions. Some of these edits are extremely useful and just needed a bit of tweaking, instead of being treated as vandalism or other assumptions of bad faith. SDY (talk) 17:45, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) But some sources are more authoritative than others (with a nod to George Orwell). In fact WP:MEDRS makes very clear a hierarchy of sourcing, which should be followed in medical articles. At the top are systematic reviews and Cochrane reviews are archetypes of what we expect to see in our very best sources. If a claim or finding is non-intuitive, or otherwise unexpected, then I can see a value in attributing that finding to a Cochrane review where that is the case. Otherwise, we have the guidance at A Simple Formulation which suggests that have no need to attribute uncontested findings (called "facts" for our purposes), and in most cases we would welcome facts cited to a Cochrane review, but would not expect to see them attributed. @Pgr94: If you want to carry on re-writing the Karen Blackhall's text to fit our policies, I don't think anyone here will be worried about an experienced editor such as yourself adding well-sourced content to articles. That's what we're supposed to be doing, after all. --RexxS (talk) 17:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello and sorry it has taken me this long to figure out how to respond (I am new to Wikipedia). I openly acknowledge that I am employed by one of the Cochrane Groups. However, our group genuinely thought we were doing a service by including information about the results of our reviews. These reviews are produced by volunteers, with no financial gain for themselves, using rigorous and transparent methods and abstracts are freely available through the Cochrane Library. If there is a unanimous agreement that by adding information about our reviews is not useful or of interest to those reading Wikipedia, and that I have breached the conflict of interest agreements then I will not add any more content to Wikipedia and I apologise for the problems this has caused.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Karenblackhall (talk • contribs) 21:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not be discouraged. It is apparent that you've only spent a few hours on Wikipedia so far, and that's nothing like enough to learn your way around. Its a big, complex undertaking with a unique 24-hour culture. Fortunately, there's no deadline so you can take your time learning your way around. If you haven't yet noticed, each article has a corresponding talkpage hidden under the "discussion" tab at the top (just as this is the discussion page accompanying your user page). For the time being, I would advise you to simply suggest proposed edits to an article in a comment at the bottom of the corresponding talkpage. Other editors will deal with the mechanics of working that in, in a way that shouldn't cause anyone grief. Does that seem workable to you? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:16, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sad to say, I am discouraged, it is almost impossible to keep track of what is acceptable and what isn't and I feel it is becoming too time consuming to add even the smallest amount of information. I will try, in future, to add suggestions as you say.

I'm sorry that you're discouraged. I have two suggestions for you:

Read WP:MEDCOI. It won't stop overzealous people from telling you made-up rules about who's allowed to edit Wikipedia, but at least you'll know the real rules. (Note that they're not trying to tell you made-up rules; it's just that so much goes by word of mouth that they don't realize that what someone told them once upon a time isn't entirely true.) You'll also want to keep a link to WP:CITESELF handy.
Come say hello at WT:WikiProject Medicine. Wikipedia is an incredibly complicated place, but you don't have to do it by yourself. The "WPMED" folks are friendly, experienced with Wikipedia's byzantine notions, and very interested in having top-quality sources in articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please Consider Signing Your Comments

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. Ebikeguy (talk) 21:20, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Restoring edits

First of all I think we have restored nearly all of your edits. Secondly a big welcome to Wikipedia and sorry to see the issues you have had to deal with. We at WP:MED hold Cochrane's work in great esteem as has been stated above and really appreciate you effort to add a summary of Cochrane's content. A couple issues on formating. 1) You can use the PMID to automatically format the references (click on the down tab in the edit box than click on template and journal) 2) We do not typically state the number of participate in a meta analysis or the number of trials as this is more detail than needed for a general encyclopedia. Just clearly and neutrally state the conclusions. Cheers. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Resilient Barnstar
	We were all new editors once. Sorry about the initial welcome you have received. We at WP:MED appreciated your efforts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:28, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I want to say thanks for all the help and advice. I just want to point out that I intended to be clear, helpful and transparent rather than promoting (and I admit I may not have read the rules thoroughly!). Any similar edits about Cochrane or LSHTM that do not clearly show me as the contributor, were NOT added by me. There may be others at my institution or within Cochrane that are contributing to Wikipedia but I have not attempted any edits under an alias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.63.251.222 (talk) 18:55, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was asked to comment here as an uninvolved, experienced editor. I have no specialist knowledge of the subject area. FWIW, it seems to me that Karen's early edits were overly promotional, but through inexperience rather than any bad faith. She has obviously learned about COI through a fairly rough ride, and I can't see any real problems with the most recent edits. Cochrane appears to be an entirely appropriate reference, but I think it's been accepted by everyone that it doesn't need any descriptive wording in the text, which would be difficult to justify even for an editor without COI.

On balance, my feeling is that it should be just "systematic review" in the text, rather than "Cochrane systematic review"; I don't get the sense that the Cochrane is so much superior to other reviews that it needs automatic mention. It looks as if I've arrive too late for the party, since all seems sweetness and light above. Usually I'm asked to intervene in what amounts to trench warfare. Good luck Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:09, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Usually we just state the facts without qualifying the study design, who the researchers where, where they are from etc. Just the conclusions as all the other details are in the ref.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:25, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving out "Cochrane" seems like an acceptable approach. --Biker Biker (talk) 18:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]