User talk:Sarah Raremark

Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine!

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

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) 01:15, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia re Raremark

Hi Sarah Raremark. I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia, along with my regular editing, which is mostly about health and medicine. Your edits to date are promotional with regard to Raremark, and it would seem that you are signalling that you work for them via your username. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, Sarah Raremark. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places, or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic, and it is important when editing Wikipedia articles that such connections be completely transparent. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, we ask that you please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your family, friends, school, company, club, or organization, as well as any competing companies' projects or products;
• instead, you are encouraged to propose changes on the Talk pages of affected article(s) (see the {{request edit}} template);
• when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or to the website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please take a few moments to read and review Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies.

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

Comments and requests

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. Here in Wikipedia such disclosures must be made explicitly. Would you please disclose any connection you have with Raremark and whether you are being paid to edit on their behalf? After you respond (and you can just reply below), I can walk you through how the "peer review" part happens and then, if you like, I can provide you more orientation to working here. Please just below, to keep the discussion in one place. Best regards Jytdog (talk) 01:19, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog,

Apologies for the late response and thank you for the information. The posts were not intended to be promotional; merely to update the pages with information we believed to be missing. After reading the guidelines I do believe that we have a conflict as interest as we are a group of paid health content writers which write factual information about rare diseases for Raremark. Our apologies, we did not realise that COIs had to be disclosed. I am happy for the edits to be removed in these cases - please go ahead and do so or let us know how we can remove them. We would rather not edit pages at all as we want to remain as neutral as possible. Thank you for your help. Best wishes, Sarah Sarah Raremark (talk) 16:28, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog,

Just so you know I have updated my "Sarah Raremark" user page to disclose my association with Raremark. Please do let me know what the next steps are. Many thanks, Sarah — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarah Raremark (talk • contribs) 15:02, 6 November 2017(UTC)

Thanks for replying! 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 - 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. 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) 04:08, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

OK! Thanks for replying.

So above you wrote we are a group of paid health content writers which write factual information about rare diseases for Raremark. It is actually not OK for more than one person to use an account. A Wikipedia account is for one single human to use. You all will also have to be careful in various ways. I will open a new section about that, user a section called USERNAME.

Thanks also for making a very clear disclosure above, and starting to make the disclosure at your Userpage. However, the content promoting Raremark at your userpage is absolutely not OK. Please see the section below out that. I will say more there.

But you've started making the disclosure on your userpage (which is one place people will look for it) ....I added a tag to the two articles' talk pages you have edited (the other place people look for it) so the disclosure is done there. Once we work out the disclosure on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done.

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; 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) please the {{request edit}} tag to flag it for other editors to review. In general it 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 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.

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) 04:20, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Userpage

Please remove the content promoting Raremark from your userpage, User:Sarah Raremark . That content violates the WP:USERPAGE policy. Your userpage is only for telling people what you are doing here in Wikipedia, not to advertise anything external to Wikipedia.

Is there actually a company called "Raremark" btw? It seems to me that the company that runs Raremark is "ePatient Network Limited".

If that is true, what would be appropriate would be something very simple, like - "I work for ePatient Network Limited, a company based in the UK that runs a website called Raremark."

If you have any questions about making an appropriate disclosure, please let me know. You can reply here, just below this, about this topic. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Username

OK, so about you wrote we are a group of paid health content writers which write factual information about rare diseases for Raremark. As I mentioned above, per Wikipedia's WP:USERNAME policy, only one person can use an account. It is not OK to share -- every person who uses Wikipedia needs to be accountable for what they do here, and will get their own reputation here. So one person needs to be "Sarah Raremark" and everybody else needs to have their own account. It would be a very good thing, if each person made the same disclosure on their userpage, and each person included a link to all the other members of the Raremark group. I can help with that if you like.

This brings up another thing... I don't know how many of you there are, but it will not be OK for you to each have your own account and then work as a group to argue against people who disagree with what you are doing. You all will need to be careful to avoid that. It will be fine to collaborate to generate content, but if there is ever a dispute with people who are not part of your group, you need to become very self aware, and avoid acting as a "gang". We have a policy against this, described at WP:MEAT, and an "essay" advising against this, at WP:GANG. So please please avoid that kind of behavior. I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't please let me know! Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 04:26, 7 November 2017 (UTC)