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Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lipgon

Not entirely sure if this noticeboard is the right place for this. If not, feel free to remove and advise.

I'm not posting the links in the usual format since only the provided diffs are relevant.

25 accounts were blocked as a result of a recent sockpuppet investigation.

Each of them made exactly one significant edit. Every edit involved inserting about three references.

I linked this edit to a job posting on Upwork — the link to scottishkiltshop is a commissioned spam with no value as a reference.

It would be foolish to assume that any of the other edits was made in good faith, as you can verify by checking a few. For example the links to legionellacontrol.com are spammy.

Fixing this mess will require lots of work, since not in all cases the bad link can be identified easily — and reverting all of the edits would cause uproar. Not fixing this makes the SPI investigation completely and utterly meaningless, as I'm sure the person behind the accounts is already working from a new IP (or even the same IP, from what I understand another account would not be automatically detected). The hourly rates for this kind of work are not bad. In all cases, the links, once identified, should be run through the link search tool to identify additions in other articles by accounts not included here.

-- Rentier (talk) 21:29, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rentier: The usernames in particular remind me a lot of Highstakes00's latest socks. They also made a talk page and userpage, in their case just before moving a draft. jcc (tea and biscuits) 21:45, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Wow, he put in a lot of URLs, that one. Likely a different person, though. There is a whole industry made out of adding spam to Wikipedia. I am convinced that only the least competent ones get caught. Rentier (talk) 21:52, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Imagine if he was minimally tech-savvy so as to avoid the CheckUser checks. It would be virtually impossible to collect all the malicious edits. Rentier (talk) 21:56, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
It's helpful to list the links. Just fixed Grapefruit knife, which had spam for a book titled "Narrative, Philosophy and Life", as well as "knife.best". John Nagle (talk) 22:11, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
I reverted all the outstanding edits. They all contained at least one spam link. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:57, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Pomeroy Studio

I've just redirected a puff-piece on Pomeroy Studio to another on Jason Pomeroy, on the grounds that we don't need two articles on essentially the same topic. I note that a Singapore public relations company, Ellerton & Co, lists Pomeroy Studio among its clients and has a page dedicated to Pomeroy. I believe the similarity of name of the creator of these articles to that of the PR firm merits investigation. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Yup, obvious undisclosed paid editing by their PR firm. I guess the question is what should we do about this?
Have started by blocking the account in question until disclosure occurs. The subject appears notable so people will just need to make sure it is balanced. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:34, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, Doc James, that and deleting UiPath as G4 are two good steps towards resolving this. I've redirected Skycourts and skygardens to Roof garden, as a content fork. I agree that Pomeroy is probably notable, but I don't see that anyone should have to clean up that page. I propose moving it to draft space, and will probably do so soon unless anyone here objects (in which case I'll look forward to seeing alternative suggestions)? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:35, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
On the assumption that all were undisclosed paid editing, I've now moved Jason Pomeroy, Pomeroy Studio, Idea House and Asia Spelling Cup to draft space, where anyone who's interested can work on them. I've also undone a few clearly promotional edits. I think this is done. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Fractal Analytics

Two articles about non-notable executives of Fractal Analytics created by new accounts in the space of a week. The rights to both photos were granted via an OTRS ticket. Rentier (talk) 11:19, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Omar Amanat

This editor has made disruptive edits to pages relating to Omar Amanat since December 2005. It seems that recently he has made it his mission to undo productive edits to the page. To use one specific example of unproductive edits, I'm not sure why this editor feels the need to make the out-of-date claim that Amanat is still the Chairman of Aman Resorts, when this has not been the case since 2014 [26]. Aman's Leadership page at https://www.aman.com/leadership will confirm that Vladislav Doronin is now the Chairman.

A look at his contributions shows him to be a clear SPA. In addition, he admitted a relationship to Amanat's MarketXT company in his edit here.

I addressed both of these issues on the Talk page with no response. Instead, the editor continues to edit the page in an unproductive fashion. This certainly deserves the attention of administrators for a ban discussion. Jeremy Harrison (talk) 07:11, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Copernic Desktop Search Enterprise

A Google search for "Vince douville" copernic shows that this editor is an employee of the company that produces the software that the article is about. The editor has also contributed to Copernic and Copernic Desktop Search. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 17:47, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Reverted the former, redirected the latter. I don't think we should mention here if a username happens to be similar to that of a real-life person, because of the risk of WP:OUTING. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:34, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Greg Mike

[27] Rentier (talk) 22:03, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

While I am a strong proponent of the virtues of conciseness, some additional explanation may be helpful. A request was posted at an offsite venue to hire someone to create an article on Greg Mike in October 2016. A fully-formed, appropriately laudatory article appeared four days later, authored by brand-new editor Usamuralist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). A few changes were then made by brand-new editor Wikiaddikt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Neither Usamuralist nor Wikiaddikt have made any other edits since. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 23:33, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
For starters, the article is way too long, so have trimmed it somewhat. Edwardx (talk) 23:59, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Dan Wagner

The user Techtrek has repeatedly over the years edited the Dan Wagner page to shine him in a positive light. He has been called out upon this many times and continues to pretend he is not affiliated with Dan Wagner. Please see old edits of his talk page before he whitewashed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Techtrek&oldid=708996381

He continues to act in a self-serving way to promote Dan Wagner, particularly in light of recent events that Mr Wagner is associated with. http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan-business/2017/06/21/498936/uk-entrepreneur.htm

The user has a long history of this, and has even been cited in the media for his activity http://www.businessinsider.com/techtreks-wikipedia-edits-on-powa-founder-dan-wagner-2016-3?r=UK&IR=T — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.5.22.54 (talk • contribs) 13:42, June 25, 2017 (UTC)

Can you please support your assertion that "Techtrek has repeatedly over the years edited the Dan Wagner page to shine him in a positive light" with several diffs that show that? So far, we just know that they are a WP:SPA, which strongly suggests a COI, but doesn't mean that they have violated policy.- MrX 13:53, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Apologies for butting in but could you steer me to the "policy" in this area. I started the section above on Heather Mills and would like to know whether I should continue pursuing it, or just give up,. Thanks. David T Tokyo (talk) 18:21, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
@David T Tokyo: In response to your question the user in question hadn't been warned and told about COI etc. so they may not have known that they were doing something wrong (assuming good faith). Now they've been given the warning, if they continue to edit promotionally, which from what I can see they haven't, then they can be re-reported (maybe at AIV which has more admins watching) and blocked. Hope that helps. jcc (tea and biscuits) 20:22, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi MrX, here are some links to relevant diffs. Please also note that there is an edit war currently ongoing on the Dan Wagner page, which I suspect the aforementioned user is involved in under an anonymous account.
Also worth noting the upload of this image as "own work" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dan_Wagner_-_UK_Serial_Tech_Entrepreneur.jpg The image is taken from the subjects blog. https://www.dan-wagner.com/ A look at his edit history since 2009 is also quite informative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Techtrek — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.5.22.54 (talk) 20:00, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
The same image has been added to the article by Techtrek who claims ownership, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dan---November-13-2007.gif. Here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Orangemike/Archive_27#Dan_Wagner_page, Techtrek states "OrangeMike, firstly I can confirm that I do not work for Mr Wagner nor am I retained by him or advise him. I am simply an admirer." - an admirer who owns the copyright to the image which appears on the Mr Wagner's personal blog. 5.226.137.179 (talk) 07:43, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

James F. Jones (educator)

Since January 2016 this SPA editor has been attempting to massively re-write this article, removing all negative material. Basically a slow-motion edit-war, which he continues to ramp up. Softlavender (talk) 06:42, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hey listen, I'm not removing "all" or even "any" negative material. I'm adding facts. This article is terrible written and poorly cited. If softlavendar prefers I'll go cite by site and softlavendar can talk about each point by point. The ramp up here is not mine, its softlavendar's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:32EB:5D30:F4B4:4048:F152:53E6 (talk) 06:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
The article is definitely not one of our best. Perhaps WP:BLPN might be a better place to post this. On the other hand Bimdieke is definitely an SPA. If the references all check out, then that's the type of material that needs to be included. I'm wondering where all the good stuff is about the guy? Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, the article has some attack piece overtones. I scraped off a little OR and some unsourced and undersourced claims, but this could use a thorough going over. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:12, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you both. I am an SPA, but only b/c I'm new to the community. I don't have any other accounts on WP. I went to Kalamazoo College when this guy was president and I know of him (ok, that's my bias) and thought he was being treated unfairly here so I attempted to make some changes. I'd like to more involved with the community here, but my experience so far here has been really harsh and unhelpful. I really tried to remove unsubstantiated claims and add substantiated facts. I would love the chance to write a more balanced article but my edits keep getting rejected. I apologize to anyone, including Softlavendar, if I'm doing something wrong here. But I am trying to improve the article and just don't know how apparently. Help my understand the rules and I'll follow them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bimdieke (talk • contribs) 04:29, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Since you are an SPA and have a conflict of interest, you should not be editing the article directly. If you have requested edits, post a request on the talk page of the article and include links to substantiating citations. Softlavender (talk) 05:00, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Being an SPA is not a death sentence for WP editors - everybody starts somewhere. If the only conflict of interest is being a student at a college where the guy was president, I'm not sure that is covered by WP:COI, but of course if there is another external relationship, e.g. "and then I married the guy" then there could be a covered COI. Our guideline starts off "Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. Any external relationship can trigger a conflict of interest." Being a student where the guy was president isn't specifically named as a COI, and "external relationship" is defined later using "common sense".
For the time being, I'll ask Bimdieke to clarify if there are other external relationships that might be perceived as causing COI, and to add balancing material on the talk page. Please ping me and I'll look at it. We can deal with this in a civilized manner. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:37, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
For one thing, you are taking the SPA's word for it that that is why he is editing -- making massive POV re-writes of (including three edits that exceeded 5,000 bytes of change in a single edit) -- that article. For another thing, in terms of "everyone starts somewhere", this editor has been editing solely on that article since his very first edit in January 2016. After 1.5 years, it is no longer a matter of "everyone starts somewhere". Softlavender (talk) 07:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

User:HeatherMPinchbeck

Off-wiki evidence proves that this editor is paid for her edits. In light of this, the lengthy talk page and Teahouse discussions she has engaged in were a big waste of everybody's time. The evidence also hints that this is not her only account. Rentier (talk) 03:11, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

OMG, I can't believe you guys. I have made myself very clear about COI and I expressed if I had any connection of being paid I'll declare. I don't know why after a few days, a new person Harras me WP:HARASS. It's taking hype since I sought help on teahouse. Instead of respecting good faith I think editors are chasing me. I already quit using Wikipedia because of continuous harassment. I thought this knowledge base is a place where people volunteer and update info, but if updating info to the articles and fixing them is a sin in Wikipedia I am speechless. The whole world relies on Wikipedia and if I am updating knowledge I am being chased. You can see my issues and see the pages of guys who place tags blindly. I edited articles after a huge discussion with editors and admins. I am being harassed every day and others have hidden identities and I know Wikipedia is strict in revealing identities but with increasing COI blames people are chasing me and I am feeling insecure and being threat WP:HARASS. This also involve WP:HOUNDING. I was totally unaware that the biggest knowledge base is being controlled by a people who consider them God and self-assume things, blame and accuse others. I am really upset with it and therefore I sought help but it turned against me. I am a traveller and I research a lot and therefore I contribute.
As per waste of time in the teahouse, what is the purpose of teahouse? Why are you here or why it was created? Obviously to help and discuss and your time isn't wasted there what is your concern about it? Or someone asked you to do this to me? See this is how you are assuming about me. I wasted my time on searching for new info and updating articles and if learning wikipedia is a waste of time you shouldn't be here either I, and I don't know how you could have more than one account, I am not that free to get a new name or things, Wikipedia is not a Facebook, I don't know what do you mean here (this is another attempt to accuse me and torture me). You are accusing me of that which already had consensus and since then I didn't edit anything except the old issues, isn't this violates any Wikipedia rules? I was really enjoying my free time on Wikipedia trying to volunteer and help people, but I never knew this dark side of it where a few people are acting as Gods. All that is going on with me here also violates most of the terms here https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_Wikipedia_Works/Chapter_11 I am really upset and I can't sleep that people are against me and chasing me. You guys are giving me mental torture by harassing me for the good I did in Wikipedia. HeatherMPinchbeck (talk) 07:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I also suggest you read this Wikipedia:Casting aspersions I don't allow anyone playing with my identity and harasses me again and again maybe with a mutual consent or any hidden agenda. It's already been discussed and there are no more edits from me and I already quit using Wikipedia. And, I made myself very clear that I will disclose any COI if I had in my future edits, So leave me alone and stop harassment and torture. You completely ignored that we have discussed that got to a conclusion and you appeared from nowhere and accused me again, this is the 4th attempt made for the same issue which has been resolved. HeatherMPinchbeck (talk) 07:41, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@Bilby: I see you have attempt to engage on the editor's talkpage, is there anything you can add here? Bri (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
this isn't about Bilby only, there is another person with a username justlettersandnumbers who accept edits and when everything is fixed deletes and continuously hounding and vandalising my edits despite making them clear again and again. I am tired of being accused, harass and being Hounded at every step. I have no benefit in doing this but what is going on is wrong both for me and Wikipedia HeatherMPinchbeck (talk) 11:49, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
HeatherMPinchbeck has requested that her account be closed [28] and one way or another I think we should comply. If the OP (or Bilby or anybody else) has info that proves undisclosed paid editing, then I believe the minimal necessary info should be sent by e-mail to an admin who might then block the account. Smallbones(smalltalk) 11:58, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes I requested because they are not letting me breathe and wow you are acting fast on blocking thanks. I'll discuss with the admin of high authority myself before leaving. If no one is helping here it's better not to use Wikipedia that's what my concern is. Bilby and I had a very detailed discussion about COI, I don't know why people are launching and tagging me again and again while I am doing nothing. HeatherMPinchbeck (talk) 12:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I emailed the evidence to interested editors (none of whom are administrators). Not sure what else to do. Rentier (talk) 14:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I think this section is getting overly dramatic, from both sides. Please just try to keep everything simple and straightforward.
  • Please don't email evidence that might be considered "outing" to non-admins.
  • But if you have what you think is conclusive evidence such as [29] (combined with the article history), please just post the link on this page in the least dramatic way possible. This is specifically allowed by WP:Outing.
Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I hope this form is undramatic enough for you.
Rentier (talk) 15:37, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
As clear cut as it gets. jcc (tea and biscuits) 15:48, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I'll admit that my reserves of good faith have been severely put to the test by the behaviour of HeatherMPinchbeck, who so strenuously denied any COI while making edits that were so very obviously not those of a bona fide new editor. I'm completely convinced by the evidence provided by Rentier. I don't know whether this can be dealt with here or should be taken to ANI. I believe the editor should be indeffed and her contributions nuked. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
A quick search with the username turns up an upwork profile that is claiming to be an ex-admin and knowing everything about WP and so touting for work. As the user posted this as her username there is no outing here I believe. Domdeparis (talk) 17:17, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: Have indefinitely blocked the user in question for copyright issues. They were copying from documents they were provided by the companies they appear to be working for word for word. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:39, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
If the text was provided by the client to be posted on WP, it would be a bit hard to see that as a copyright violation. This seems like a stretch. - Bilby (talk) 17:44, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Copyright violation is copyright violation and the important word is "seem" to be working for; You can't say that you are not a COI editor in one breath and then say that someone authorised you to use copyrighted material in the next. Either or both is a lie. Domdeparis (talk) 17:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
That's just playing games. The client provided the text to be added to WP. - Bilby (talk) 18:27, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Whenever you hit save "you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License". If they are copying someone else's words that are not under a CC BY SA license they need to say that and then send release via OTRS. That was not done. But it also verifies undisclosed paid editing to a degree that makes it reasonable to block them on that aswell.
They have multiple upworks accounts it appears. So I imagine they have multiple WP accounts aswell :-( Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:57, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Block for sock puppetry. Or block for undisclosed paid editing. But blocking for copyright violations when we know they were acting on behalf of the copyright holder is just playing games. It isn't needed. - Bilby (talk) 18:20, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
We suspect they are acting yes. But we do not know if the employer realize they need to release it under an open license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
"We suspect they are acting yes" - still playing games. I don't care if the editor is blocked. I just don't like inventing overblown reasons to do it, such as "significant copyright problems" for posting text provided by the copyright holder. How about next time around we just stick with blocking for the uncontroversial undisclosed paid editing instead. - Bilby (talk) 23:45, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Is it possible to request CheckUser action when the other WP accounts are not identified? Rentier (talk) 18:38, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Unfortunately not at t his point in time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Other possible accounts:

probably the easiest way of detection would be to watch out for job offers on upwork to create pages. Then when an editor creates the page with no disclosure slap a COI tag on it. There are a few editors out there that are only creating BLP and company pages and all totally diversified with no detectable pattern of common interest. They create actually quite good pages with a ton of links that look quite impressive until you scratch away and most of it is passing mentions blogs forbes of huffpost contributors. And these are the kind of editors that would be eligible for autopatrolled rights so NPP wouldn't come across them. Food for thought. Domdeparis (talk) 21:07, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Most Upwork listings are private, so that won't go very far. There is no winning this without stricter BLP / ORG notability rules. Rentier (talk) 23:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

It is interesting that this article Mark Tedeschi was started by User:Morning277. Could they be a continuation of Morning's family of accounts? I am not convinced anything on upworks by this person is true either. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:54, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

No, that was a separate job. - Bilby (talk) 06:44, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I notice that Allison Kugel was created by User:Charitard, a blocked sock of MusicLover650; but I don't see any similarity of interest or style that would suggest a connection. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

So what's to be done about her remaining articles? Her contributions to Francesco Clemente, Mark Tedeschi, Mike Gentile (author) (now at AfD), Allison Kugel and SurveyGizmo have been removed; Mark Gottlieb (Literary Agent) is at AfD and does not look likely to survive; Burgruine Federaun and Dallas Stewart need some clean-up but I don't see any grossly inappropriate edits there, nor – surprisingly – to Ivan Olita, which already needed serious attention. That leaves Making Headway Foundation, Jasmine Directory and HK URBEX, all of dubious notability in my view. Unless anyone particularly wants to nominate any of those three for deletion (?), I propose moving them to draft space. I certainly won't do so if there's any objection here, or in any case in less than 24 hours. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:13, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Rentier (talk) 00:23, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
OK, done that. I think that sews this up for now. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:31, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Jamila T. Davis

Upwork job, timing matches the article creation by an SPA: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01a6012c4d9a411304

Rentier (talk) 17:45, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Freemen on the land

Nothing here. Jytdog (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

On July 17, 2017, I searched for instances of RationalWiki being used as a source, as it frequently is improperly used as a source. I do this because Rational-Wiki fails WP:RS as a source, and consensus has been established to not include links to it on articles. Freeman on the land has a link to Rational-Wiki, claiming that we are reusing their content. In the past, I have spared the link to Rational-Wiki on the article in question because content has supposedly been copied from their article, but this time I checked the corresponding R-W article for content copied into Wikipedia, and I did not find any sections that appeared to be copied. I also compared to older versions of the article there, and I still did not see anything copied from there. I did not go through the articles word for word, but if there is content copied, it seems it is so insignificant that Rational-Wiki could not claim copyright because I can't see any correlation. I removed the link with a note in the edit comment inviting anyone who may dispute the removal to discuss the matter on the talk page. If there is some portion of the article that is borrowed from Rational-Wiki, it would be useful to specify which portion we are referring to. Again, I did not go through the articles word for word, but I am not seeing the correlation.
Within less than one hour, User:David Gerard reverted my removal of the link, but he did not state why he reverted my edit in his edit comment or on the article talk page. David Gerard identifies as a trustee of the Rational-Media Foundation on his talk page, and that organization owns Rational-Wiki. David Gerard declared involvement in the authorship of the Rational-Wiki article on the talk page of this Wikipedia article in 2015. In his 2015 comments, he loathed about the fact that Rational-Wiki does not meet WP:RS. Rational-Wiki acknowledges incompatibility with Wikipedia's neutral point of view, and it is not an encyclopedia, so I am not sure why we would copy or paraphrase content from their website anyway. I believe David Gerard does not want the link removed because he hopes it will generate traffic to the website he is deeply affiliated with.
As a disclaimer, I am against almost everything Rational-Wiki promotes, including the vandalism of Wikipedia and other wikis. Although the promotion of vandalism is no longer part of their official mission statement, I have confidential information that vandals are still very much active at the site, and as a matter of fact, I first became aware of Rational-Wiki because a respected contributor there engaged in disruption at Wikipedia and was community banned for it, and he is not the only person from that website we have had problems with (I'm deliberately being vague about the users' identities). However, I do not believe I have a conflict of interest in this matter, because my opinion of Rational-Wiki is based on numerous Rational-Wikians' activities at Wikipedia. While I don't think David Gerard is deliberately causing disruption to Wikipedia, I think he needs to be more careful when making edits related to his website. PCHS-NJROTC (Messages)Have a blessed day. 03:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Is there an issue with a specific article? In the first 200 results in an EL search I only see RW cited once at New English Bible and thouh it shouldn't be there according to RSN, it doesn't look super problematic. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:02, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Freeman on the land. It says that content has been used from their article, but I don'the see anything we have taken from there. PCHS-NJROTC (Messages)Have a blessed day. 05:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sorry about that, I mistook the article title for editor. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:10, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
See talk page for the article. It's literally the first thing on the talk page: Talk:Freemen_on_the_land#Source_laundering. You wrote that long accusation without looking at the talk page.
Specifically, what you did was blithely remove a relevant copyright notice by which Wikipedia avoids violating CC by-sa, and I reverted this. Then you went off on a rant accusing me and RW of all manner of things that you specifically don't substantiate in any manner.
Your "consensus not to include RationalWiki" link is actually a statement that it's a user-generated source, and not anything specific to RW. There we see your actual objection: you're a Conservapedia editor.
Thus, what you did was remove a correct copyright notice on ideological grounds, and cry "COI" when your action was reverted.
I am curious as to when RW is supposed to have launched vandal attacks on Wikipedia. I've been editing regularly since 2009 or so and this is news to me, and I'd love details - David Gerard (talk) 07:01, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
If I were to tell you who it was in 2009, it would be a violation of WP:OUTING because he did not disclose his membership there on Wikipedia. There have been numerous others who have caused disruption at Wikipedia, and I'm not going to out them either because, unlike RationalWiki, this is not a dox and gossip site. I saw the copyright discussion from 2015, but its existence does not address my challenge of the copyright notice because it doesn't state what was actually copied or paraphrased. Not one section of their article appears to be similar enough to R-W's to warrant a copyright notice, and had you discussed this matter further on the talk page rather than assume bad faith and use a rollback simulator in a way that would be considered abuse of the actual rollback feature, there wouldn't be a COIN discussion now. As said earlier, I don't think you are deliberately being disruptive, but I think your position in their organization clouds your judgement, and I think you should have discussed this matter civilly or at least addressed my concern in the edit summary, rather than just reverting my action, dismissing it as ideological.
Aside from reflecting the already disclosed opinion of Rational-Wiki, being a member of Conservapedia or any site is irrelevant to the fact that you are the trustee of the Rational-Media Foundation, and you have engaged in conflict of interest editing, but since you bring up that fact, I am a CheckUser at Conservapedia, and I can tell you from CheckUser data that the same vandals we deal with there the we deal with here at Wikipedia, and it is well documented that some Rational-Wikians vandalize Conservapedia. As a matter of fact, I learned about Conservapedia through a Rational-Wikian's disruptive behavior at Wikipedia (which earned him a community ban). PCHS-NJROTC (Messages)Have a blessed day. 12:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
User:PCHS-NJROTC the thing that you are neglecting, is that copyright applies to versions that are preserved in the history of the article. The notice was placed on the article in this diff by User:Moonriddengirl in March 2013; Moonriddengirl is probably the most clueful person about copyright law and our policy, in the entire community.
The notice contains a link to this version of the article, created by User:Emeraude on March 16, 2012 and it does contain content copied from this version of the article at RationalWiki (that is the last-dated version there - March 15, 2012, before the date of the diff here in WP). (It takes all of a few seconds to find it - for example "Freemen believe that the government has to establish what they refer to as joinder to link yourself and your legal person." is copied word for word) The notice is entirely appropriate and actually necessary per the WP:COPYVIO policy. And again, was placed by someone who patrols copyright issues and deals with them on a regular basis and is highly respected for that work.
You were incorrect to remove it, and David Gerard was completely correct to restore it. There is no relevance to COI here and you were doubly incorrect to grind your political ax on this issue. (rationalwiki is not a reliable source per USERGENERATED, David Gerard is involved over there, but neither has anything to do with your removal of the tag and his restoration of it.) Jytdog (talk) 13:48, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Ehsan Sehgal

This venue is not concerned with the topic of this thread.See Drmies' advice.Winged Blades Godric 08:05, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hello everyone! I want to bring it to the community that User:Ehsan Sehgal has edited Wikipedia to self-promote in many articles with many WP:SOCKPUPPETS. There is a discussion going on here. Please participate in settling the issue. You can ask me for any help. Thanks. Greenbörg (talk) 12:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

worldoftrons.com blog

refspam (?)
EL spam (?) to Squarespace blog
editor

This is a little unusual. According to its contact page, worldoftrons.com is a web site operated by an academic. I guess he's cataloging things with the word "tron" in their name? Whether it is a notable expert on anything I can't assess. JGaweda is the only editor who has added links to this site (per EL search). And whether the many links added are relevant, I also can't assess in every case but this one to a highly spam-prone article doesn't inspire. Algatron is also problematic as the ELs consist of the academic's blog noted above, and a link to Amazon.com for the author's book on the subject. - Bri (talk) 03:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/UKranama2

So apparently each time I am reprimanded, a paid editor gets busted. The latest set needs review: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/UKranama2 Rentier (talk) 21:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I know I didn't reprimand you for anything. I undid an edit, informed you about what I did and asked you not to do it again until we get it sorted out. ~ GB fan 23:22, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
I'd like to remind everyone that assume good faith runs both ways. People who bring up problems on this noticeboard make mistakes sometimes (I know I did at least once). It is a minefield and we need not not turn away or "burn" folks who can help here. - Bri (talk) 04:03, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Schar School of Policy and Government

Sppweb has made many edits to Schar School of Policy and Government, and has been indeffed for the inappropriate username. Other contributions have been the creation of Mark J. Rozell, dean of that school, and a number of edits to our page on Hilton Root, who teaches there. That page has also been extensively edited by Hroot and Hroot2. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:05, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

The article on Hilton Root is basically a slightly cleaned-up CV and almost completely unsourced. He's probably notable enough for an article, just not in the form as written. I trimmed it back some but it could use more attention. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 13:51, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Horse and Rider

Could someone please help advise the user about COI? I'm not getting through, and they are making unsourced changes. By his own admission, the user is "the managing director for the consortium that currently owns Leonardo da Vinci Horse and Rider". Before I started work on it, the article was essentially a PR piece. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] --Felcotiya (talk) 20:06, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I followed up on the COIN notice at the editor's talkpage encouraging him to talk here. Bri (talk) 21:52, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Wright & Wright

This popped up on my watch-list because apparently I edited it ages ago. (Can't think why.)

Looking at it, it seems to be just an advertising piece created by a single single-purpose account. User:Wikiarchitects

I don't know enough about the subject matter to know if it's notable, or not. ApLundell (talk) 17:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I nominated it for speedy deletion. It also mostly copy/pasted from their website, so I have tagged it for that as well. Jytdog (talk) 18:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
.... and now deleted. OK. Jytdog (talk) 01:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

JT Foxx

ProhibitOnions started a short attackish article with one very good source DW. I tend to believe the DW story, but the article is undersourced.

GlitterGirl83, PRMediaVision, and a half dozen anons don't like to see DW quoted. With a name like PRMediaVision, do we need more proof of paid editing? If so see [38]

Probably everybody would be happy if the article was deleted. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:24, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Note that PRMediaVision was blocked by Drmies so there's not much point in informing him of this discussion. Perhaps a SPI would help. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:30, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Attackish? At the time the drive-by edits occurred it was a stub exactly two sentences long. I have no dog in this fight, and the semi-protection seems to have solved the problem of the anon deletions, at least for now. As I wrote on the talk page, I started the stub after reading the sentence in the DW article mentioning that no WP article existed for this individual. It seemed he may be notable enough - at least based on his assertions of being a leading motivational speaker and businessman - to merit one. However, he evidently does not like to release any pertinent data about himself that would help back this up - birth date, place of birth, which companies he owns, how much he's worth, and so on. He evidently runs numerous websites about himself, but most of his appearances in print are in promotional magazines, or being mentioned in passing elsewhere. As he admits, the celebrities who appear with him are all paid, so they aren't reliable sources, nor are, due to WP:BLP, the several critical blogs that make a similar point to the DW article. Given his apparent penchant for secrecy, I'd suspect deletion is what his followers are after, too, but that's no argument. - ProhibitOnions (T) 08:17, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, "attackish" is the proper term. I blocked an IP and an account. I do not believe PRMedia is doing any socking. I'll leave it for others to decide whether to delete it--the BLP aspect of it is not strong enough for me to go ahead and delete it, but YMMV. Drmies (talk) 12:51, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Lisa Barnett

Articles are deleted and editors indeffed. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Something smells fishy here. Brand new editor creates perfectly formatted article on first edit. Subject of article is American financial bizperson. Another brand new editor removes COI/paid tags and demands "please use the talk page to discuss [changes] line by line". ☆ Bri (talk) 18:26, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Bri, thanks for your concern. We were all new editors once! My point was merely that others had self-admitted to making very broad deletions instead of analyzing each sentence with the attention it deserves. I'm sure you can agree that a lot of hard work goes into researching and writing these pages, and so I called for line by line editing, as I see you have already started to do. Thanks! Rungwomn (talk) 18:47, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Another article by Bonusplait and another SPA removing tags from it:

Rentier (talk) 19:28, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Hoerle-Guggenheim's claim to be a member of the Guggenheim family didn't quite sound right to me. I couldn't find a ref for it (but have only browsed about 4 of the refs). There is this. I wouldn't trust it as a reliable source, but it certainly raises questions. I've put "citation needed" in the 2 obvious places and removed Solomon G's name, but haven't otherwise done anything. If a very reliable ref doesn't show up soon, it should be speedied. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Getting slightly more reliable a Daily Mail article repeats the same facts in the same style. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:44, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Is it just my eyes, or is Guggenheim not even mentioned in The Independent and The Guardian (sources #8 and #9)? ☆ Bri (talk) 22:42, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Started the SPI[39] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:05, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Checkuser confirmed sockpuppetry, and the accounts are now indeffed. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:36, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I think there's funny business going on. Unfortunately I'm on a mobile device today and can't format everything neatly but see my preliminary notes at User:Bri/COIbox54. Briefly, I think one of the blocked accounts may be related to MMG pr firm listed at an earlier COIN case. But it will require a look at deleted contribs to verify. Or if I got the two cases mixed up, apologies in advance. They're all likely to be operating in New York, per the account names, topics of interest, and the 104.162.107.* IPs. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:58, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Marcomgirl

It's been suggested (e.g., here) that Marcomgirl is a paid editor. (S)he has declared as such in relation to Sheryl Nields, but strenuously denied any other paid work. Several articles have been deleted, some recently. What action, if any, is needed on the others?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sheryl Nields was closed as no consensus. The reasons given by SoWhy raise interesting and perhaps important questions: should articles created by undisclosed paid editors be deleted? Is it time to seek a change in policy that would mandate such deletions (we already have plenty of precedent, of course)? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:33, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

  • As I expressed at the Nields AfD and on SoWhy's talk page: the question of whether or not an article not compliant with the terms of use can and should be deleted is not relevant to the conversation of whether we have the ability to delete promotional pages under WP:NOTSPAM, which I contend both WP:N and the deletion policy allow regardless of the status of the subject meeting GNG (in the latter if not explicitly under DEL4, then under DEL14). Justlettersandnumbers opinion at the end of the AfD is quite possibly one of the best arguments I have heard for doing so: this is one of the most visible websites in the world, and simply having a page here is in fact promotional if it is intended as such and your company is borderline notable, just like taking out an ad in a major newspaper would be. The ultimate issue here is that declared paid editors abiding by the terms of use should not be given exemption from policies that volunteer editors who are also following the terms of use have to follow, and applying existing policy here doesn't require an RfC, just AfD.
    In terms of undeclared paid editing: I would support expanding the G5 criteria to include it. I think it'd be difficult to prove, but no reason not to include it. I consider that a secondary conversation to the NOTSPAM one, however. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I noticed that often when a borderline notable, promotional article is sent to AfD, a number of editors jump in to "fix it" - even though there are many clearly more notable subjects whose articles need to be worked on. The result is WP:BOGOF, a perverse incentive rewarding those who hire paid editors. What's worse, often such articles (if kept) remain less neutral than they would've been if they were started by a good faith editor. So yes, making it as simple as possible to delete promotional articles is essential. Rentier (talk) 17:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose further action with regard to Marcomgirl. When asked, she didn't hesitate to acknowledge her paid editing on one entry; between this openness and her limited experience on the site, it's entirely plausible to me she just didn't know about the requirement, rather than knowingly breaking the rules. Even so her contributions have already been picked over with a finetooth comb by not one but several of the most senior editors on the site (at least three admins incl. an arb); I don't know what more we could do under current policy. If folks are interested in changing policy, I'd recommend the village pump or WT:Conflict_of_interest as a place to start, rather than reporting this editor to the noticeboard when their work has already been exhaustively investigated. Innisfree987 (talk) 21:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Proving that an editor is an undisclosed paid editor is a difficult thing to do and invites the kind of on-wiki behavior that in the past has been found troubling. Of course they shouldn't be given an "exemption", but G5 is G5 for a good reason: it points to articles created by editors who were blocked/banned, never mind that G5 deletion is only granted (or should only be granted) if a good case is made that G5 applies. For now, we will have to go with what we have, which is the article. Drmies (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Drmies, my phrasing re: exemption was related to the idea that simply complying with the terms of use was good enough for an article that was otherwise promotional to be kept. I agree with you re: G5 and on-wiki behavior. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:28, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • This recent discussion about Marcomgirl (Marketing Communication Girl) will offer some useful background. Proving that her other articles have been paid for will be difficult, but she is facing a possible block one of the days for persistently creating articles that take up time in discussions by others, and as we have seen, here too. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:26, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Notaker & Monstercat

User's only edits appear to be towards these two articles. The username also strongly matches the real name of the artist mentioned in the Notaker page. I suspect a very strong COI. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) 20:48, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Not seeing good evidence of notability. Would nominate for deletion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:42, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 Done AfD is here. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) 18:03, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Tried going to Twitter and asking the real Notaker if that was his account. No response, so I'm going to assume it's not him for now. @Doc James: the user has not disclosed any relationship with the subjects of the articles here on Wikipedia, so I'm still curious as to why his only edits lean towards these articles specifically. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 03:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory Article

Hi! This may not be the right board, although I had some luck here the last time I posted. This is a little different from most posts here, because I have a COI, I know I have a COI, and I'm definitely not editing an article because of it. I'm looking for some help.

I'm part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's communications team, and I was asked to help update the National Renewable Energy Laboratory article. The existing, live version of the article has a lot of dubious text (including some that sounds promotional), but I probably shouldn't be the one to edit it down--so I just added and removed content and left everything else alone.

I tried to make sure everything that I changed or edited had sources and that it was as neutral as possible. Here's my draft and here's a comparison to the article that's live right now. I added and moved paragraphs, so it's REALLY messy. I changed less than it looks.

I posted on the NREL talk page (where I explained what I changed and why), but it seems pretty dead.

I'm wondering--could an experienced Wikipedian look at the draft and add some (or all) of the changes to the live article, based on what seems sensible to you? I'm glad to answer any questions. Es2017 (talk) 20:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Es2017, thanks for your message and for following WP policy on COI. Much appreciated. Your topic is rather out of my depth and I haven't the time just now to bring myself up to speed, but in hopes of finding someone else who might be more able to help, I've taken the liberty of adding an "request edit" template to your note on the NREL talk page. You might also consider reaching out to the WikiProjects listed there. The help desk comes to mind as a last resort, but I'd give the other options a bit of time to see if you get a response before cross-posting further--as you know, most of us are volunteers so availability can vary. Thanks for your understanding and hope that helps! Innisfree987 (talk) 23:09, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, Innisfree987! I was trying to figure out my next step, and this helps immensely. I'll give the request edit template some time and see if that turns up someone. If not, I'll look around the Wikiprojects. Thanks! Es2017 (talk) 12:29, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Dash (cryptocurrency)

User is 100% WP:SPA for this article and the WP:APPARENTCOI is clear. They have been edit warring to include promotional content, have never used the article Talk page, and have removed my request & follow ups to disclose any connection with the organization that manages this digital currency. Jytdog (talk) 17:11, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

You are the one that's edit-warring, sir. The piece of content you are referencing is Dash's ranking on coinmarketcap.com, which has been in every previous version of the Dash page for months (possibly years). I was not the person who added that content to the page; I've merely been keeping up with updating it. If updating a coin's ranking on the marketcap charts is promotional content, consider me guilty. Considering that I edit the page to LOWER Dash's ranking when it drops, I don't think that's promotional in nature.
As I stated, Dash's ranking on coinmarketcap has been included in the article for a very long time. You recently decided, on your own, that including a coin's ranking was not "encyclopedic content." I reverted your edit, because to my knowledge, you are not the final arbiter of what's encyclopedic and what is not. If I'm mistaken and you are a high-ranking official at Wikipedia, then I'll demur.
Two questions:
a) I reverted an edit that YOU made (and continued to revert your reversions) based on YOUR opinion of what content was encyclopedic. When YOU are the one that did the initial edit, how is it ME who is responsible for the edit war? It seems like you started it, by reverting content which had been on this page for a very long time.
b) How is including a coin's ranking on coinmarketcap considered "promotional?" If anything, I would think the opposite. Dash was #3 on the charts, but it fell to #7 and I regularly updated the page to note its descent. How is that promotional? I'm telling the world that Dash's price performance has been eclipsed by other currencies. And that's promotional? Ddink7 (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for finally using a talk page! This thread is about your WP:APPARENTCOI, not about the content. Would you please disclose any relationship you have with Dash or development teams? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 18:24, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Bell Pottinger

Have to make this brief, for now. Bell Pottinger has a huge history at COIN. There is some messy, political and possibly BLP violating stuff going on right now if someone can take a look. Bri (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I have been keeping this article under review for some months (it's been on my watchlist since 2012 - disclosure: as well as being a Wikipedian, I am also a UK PR practitioner and have worked with WMUK and CIPR on COI guidance for PR people regarding editing Wikipedia). The article has been subject to numerous Non-nPOV edits as the 'state capture'/'white monopoly capital' controversy has developed. Along with some other editors, I have tried to moderate content, consolidate new additions repeating existing assertions, and to include reliable references (but without South African media expertise, I can't say how reliable all the sources used are). I last reviewed this article after a revision by User:Discott (18:56, 6 July - it seemed relatively OK at that point), but 30-40 further edits have since distorted the article and overly focused it on current and ongoing events (maybe a separate article is needed on 'white monopoly capital'?). Paul W (talk) 08:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
That's pretty much the issue I saw with it. More cu is needed, probably with the article still including stuff like verbatim rebuttals that I just deleted. Also the rambling 10 paragraph lede is a wreck. - Bri (talk) 09:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Bri & Paul W you might be interested in the discussion at #Gupta family below. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:38, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I had a look at this earlier today. Discott and I have also been talking. Paul W (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Pulaski Technical College

Both of these accounts have been editing, with strong POVs, the article on PTC. Both have username blocks on them now, but there are controversies on campus that need a NPOV editor, preferably an Arkansawyer without a dog in these fights. Orange Mike | Talk 23:54, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Don't you mean "Arkansan"? Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:19, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Foundr

A lot of discussion about this problem has also happened at other pages (and I'll try to link to them here), but the Foundr page appears to have been created as part of an odious undisclosed paid editing scam: [40]. Related discussions are at: Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#"The Wiki Fixers" article in Entrepreneur magazine, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foundr, and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Noam Javits. With regard to that SPI case, it would be particularly helpful if editors active at COIN could identify other accounts that may be socks; see also User talk:Bbb23#I think your closure was wrong.. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Please now see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Neptune's Trident. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:09, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Resolved. A different account was the paid editor, and the corresponding sock farm has been blocked. It would be a good idea to look over the pages they created to see if any need to be deleted. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I've made a partial page list at WT:COI. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:01, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: do you think the sockfarm is InfluenceTree operators? - Bri (talk) 22:34, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I haven't heard of InfluenceTree, so I'm afraid I don't know the answer. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I just Googled them and found their website, and on second thought, I recognize that page as one that I also saw the other day, because they were mentioned in the Entrepreneur piece, so I have heard of them but just didn't recognize the name at first. I don't see any similarity between the names of their two proprietors and the sock usernames, but that doesn't mean anything. It's an interesting question. In the article, they claim that they do not take pay for page creation, but that could be a lie. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Continued at #Another sockfarm, below. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Tyagi

Enough instructed and even warned on his talk page.

The said user account is being used only for promotional purposes. The user mostly edits two pages only Tyagi and Chowdhury just for the caste/community promotional purposes only. He does not tolerate anything to be written on the page which is against the said promotion/his POV/his OR and sometimes he even removes the sourced contents from the primary linked article. Also his username contains the word Tyagi which itself indicates that he may be closely associated with the subject of the article as per WP:COI. His disruptive edit behaviour may specifically be seen here, here and here for pushing his Brahmin POV, he even does not bother what the sources actually say in this regard. MahenSingha (Talk) 18:42, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

This falls under discretionary sanctions doesn't it? I'm not sure this is the place to report violations, but some admins do watch this page. jcc (tea and biscuits) 22:43, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Mike Turzai

Following from Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai’s Wikipedia edited by account tied to House Republicans, Pittsburgh City Paper (PghCP), which quote 3 or 4 Wikipedia editors, including William Beutler. The IP checks out to the PA State House GOP Caucus via Geolocate. Turzai, the Speaker of the PA House of Reps can be said to control the IP per PghCP. I've confirmed several recent edits as being from the IP. Some older similar edits from Bnb5017.

User talk:192.216.120.25 has five warnings already 2008-2015. It should just be blocked now and forever (single IP, not a range).

Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Linda Wang (musician)

Admits that subject is a client of his, and that he is her webmaster; but has made no disclosure on his userpage. Orange Mike | Talk 00:43, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

They have not yet edited the page in question? The page by the way has insufficient refs to determine notability. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:00, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
@Orangemike and Doc James:--I have prod-ed the page.Let's see how that turns out!Winged Blades Godric 12:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Gupta family

This must have a very long history. But please excuse my rushed here I don't have time to check much background. Note that the 2 users named above may be the people fighting the COI editors, not the COI editors themselves. Both have a long history on Wikipedia, and their input here is welcomed, without any accusation on my part.

The Times of South Africa published today Bell Pottinger’s wicked Wiki ways claiming that BP is deeply involved in the Gupta family article and the Draft:Oaktree Investments which is the Gupta company. The Times of SA article is part of a series. Our Gf article is obviously flawed, saying of the Guptas in the 2nd sentence "They are controversial for their ownership of South African president Jacob Zuma.[2][3][4][5][6][7]"

The paid editors, if any, may have been recently fired from BellPott. COI editors may be on the other side as well. Sorry to drop this and run, but I've got 5 other things on my plate off-wiki right now. I will inform the 2 editors named above, however, and emphasize that I'm just asking for info, not making accusations.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Brief update: the mentioned "ownership" phrasing about Zuma has been reverted to a previous more neutral version. Appears to have been added by a single-edit IP, not by one of the more regular editors. GermanJoe (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The press report mentioned above is about this single large edit by User:OakbayRep, a declared COI account, in February 2016. Special:Contributions/OakbayRep shows several other edits to the article together with talk page edits and discussions with other editors. The last edit by this user was in December 2016. The article has received quite a bit of attention from experienced WP:WikiProject South Africa members such as myself and User:Discott and others.
I recently started the draft about the company Draft:Oakbay Investments in an attempt to split company-focussed content out of the article about the family. The draft has been discussed at Talk:Gupta family. I'm not sure what the intent of this COI report is, though I guess it's to try to detect possible undeclared COI editing from Bell Pottinger or Gupta family accounts or IPs, hopefully it would also get more attention to the article, which is obviously welcome. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:52, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
See also the discussions at Talk:Gupta family about COI editing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:57, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Smallbones, I am happy to answer any questions people might have on this. I left a message on the Gupta family talk page about my thoughts on the COI editing on that article's main space page a few days ago. I already mentioned there that there was one self declared COI editor on that page who has tried, and in some instances successfully so, to edit that page. I have also put up on that talk page a dialog I had with that editor on my talk page about edits they have tried to get other editors to make on their behalf. I get the feeling/have a vague recollection of (I will need to look up the edit history of that page in detail to be sure) that other, less sophisticated, COI edits and vandalisms have been made on that page in the past but they were, mostly, reverted quite quickly. I do want to state that the self declared Oakbay and, in my belief, Bell Pottinger COI editor OakbayRep handled the editing of the article in a very sophisticated way in comparison to other COI (self declared or not) editors on other pages I have encountered in the past. This indicated a familiarity with with Wikipedia rules that most other COI editors do not have. Their suggested edits seemed to promote WP:NPOV without making any mention or apparent attempt to edit content that presented their client/backer/organisation they support in a negative light. Normally I am not necessarily against COI by other editors if it is done ethically. From what I can tell the whole COI issue seems to be quite contextual and lives in a grey area of sorts. In this case I have, however, increasingly found the whole situation concerning. Particularly because of the involvement of Bell Pottinger and their history of editing articles on Wikipedia. I can say with 100% certainty that Dodger67 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is not a COI editor, he is a well known, very active and highly respected editor on South African topics within the South African editing community.--Discott (talk) 16:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, any suggestion that Discott or I might be Bell Pottinger stooges is quite obviously absurd. Recent problematic edits have mostly been WP:SOAP edits attacking the Guptas. Anti-Gupta (and anti-Bell Pottinger) sentiment is currently very prevalent South Africa. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:16, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
(EC - not trying to be absurd) Thanks to all for the above. It's quite helpful. And I hope you al agree that some extra eyes on the article and draft will also be quite helpful. With Bell Pottinger involved and the South African newspapers writing articles, I'm sure this topic will come up in various places, so we need to take care of it the right way. I'm about halfway thru my off-wiki tasks, so really just checking in. Re:What can be concretely achieved? Perhaps somebody can contact the fired (?) BellPott employees and ask them to state their side of the story here? Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:27, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Smallbones, I agree. More eyes on these articles is definitely a good thing. More experienced editors editing the articles would also be good. As for contacting ex-employees, your ideas on how to contact them are as good as mine. The only way I can think of is to try known Bell Pottinger COI Wiki user names. To the best of my knowledge the identities of the supposedly fired employees have not been released yet.--Discott (talk) 21:05, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Heads up, I'm linking this discussion from the Signpost due to be published on Friday. Input & comments welcome of course via newsroom. Bri (talk) 18:45, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

This gets stranger and stranger the more I look at it. The LA Times has an article How a London PR firm was forced to apologize for sowing racial division in South Africa that lays it out in terms I can understand. It's barely about Wikipedia. More like social media race war via twitter bots. "State capture" apparently meaning mega-regulatory capture. President vs. media in a way that makes Trump vs US media look like 2 lovers walking in the park. Can anybody identify for me who are RS in South Africa? Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:39, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Smallbones I've just looked at all 136 current references in Gupta family. The overwhelming majority of the news references are solidly high quality mainstream press. Do however keep a eye out for references that cite either ANN7 (tv news channel) or The New Age (newspaper) as they are actually owned by the Guptas. BTW, have you noticed the #Bell Pottinger section above? I think, given B-P's rather "interesting" history at WP they might have decided not to go 15 rounds with us again. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:01, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Here is a non-exhaustive list of Reliable Sources in South Africa: The Daily Maverick, The Mail & Guardian, The Rand Daily Mail, Sunday Times, eNCA, News24/Fin24, Polticsweb, Huffington Post SA and Business Day. The SABC can be a very good source at times but it was also hit by controversy in the past year or two, having a powerful COO that was a known Zuma loyalist. I consider Independent Online (IOL) to be a RS however it is important to keep in mind that its owner has also been the source of some controversy and accused of pro-ANC bias.--Discott (talk) 21:09, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Hi Smallbones, yes, this is situation is nothing like I have ever seen before anywhere. It is deep, complex, wide and has recently become rapidly evolving which makes it all the harder to write on. I have found my self not adding content to the Gupta family article or the Jacob Zuma article both in an effort to let things cool down so that a greater level of clarity on this can emerge and be written about; and because I am always hoping that others will write on it as I feel I have written too much of the article already. I have sought to find the most reputable sources I can for the article from the widest possible range of sources that cover as wide a political spectrum as possible in South Africa. Precisely because the accusations are so numerous, serious, wide ranging and at times complex and inter-linked. Also because there have, as yet, been no convictions yet meaning that the accusations have remained accusations. Investigations might lead to big revelations but the organs of state that are responsible for taking these to court are not acting on them. Detractors of the Guptas/president have argued that it is because those organs of state have been colonised by Zuma loyalists. There certainly is evidence to support that accusation. For the past year and more it has literally been the most talked about issue in the South African media. It is certainly the most talked about political topic amongst South Africans these days.
The LA Times article, which is a good one on the topic, covers just one aspect of this subject, namely the Gupta's PR efforts via Bell Pottinger. The Trump vs Media analogy is one I also find myself comparing it to except on massive steroids if Trump had been in power for eight years. It's sort of like Trump++ with the addition of, as you put it, mega-regulatory capture. My biggest editing regret is that I did not get round to editing the Wikipedia page on State Capture earlier using reliable academic references as I recall people, most notably Gupta owned media outlets, at one time trying to set the definition of state capture to only include references to what is now referred to as "white monopoly capital". I like to think that a good Wikipedia article on the topic would help prevent the general public from being mislead. The state capture page still needs work but it is a lot more informative than it used to be. A book on the Gupta family and their relationship has recently been published which I am currently reading called "The Republic of Gupta: A story of State Capture" (2017) by Pieter-Louis Myburgh, Penguin Books, (ISBN-9781776090891) which was largely out of date by the time it left the printing floor due to the rapid movement of events; however it does have lots of interesting background information. --Discott (talk) 20:47, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
The current South African Communist Party congress has quite harshly criticised the Guptas, it's in all the mainstream news yesterday and today. The party had previously banned President Zuma from attending any of their meetings, an unprecedented drastic step as the SACP are a key member of the ANC's "broad church" alliance. The other major alliance member, the Congress of South African Trade Unions have also taken an anti-Zuma/Gupta position. All this is bound to come to a head at the ANC National Conference towards the end of this year when a new national executive (and thus the presumptive next president) are to be elected. I doubt we will see any definitive action about the current multitude of allegations until after that party election and perhaps even not before the 2019 Parliamentary election. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:51, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm really overwhelmed by all this. It does seem quite complicated and please excuse any mistakes I've made above. Thanks for all the help getting a handle on this. My main interest was Bell Pottinger on Wikipedia again (which is a very small part of the whole thing). Focusing on BellPott, it seems that their tactic was to write out all the text changes they wanted and then plop it down on the Oakbay company employee, together with instructions and help on how to post it to Wikipedia. That looks, at best, like a cynical strategy to avoid declaring their paid status. Other companies claim to do this. What they are missing or intentionally ignoring is that the article writers need to be declared as an affiliation. Perhaps we should make that abundantly clear at WP:Paid. We might as well move any remaining discussion over there. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:52, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

National Academy of Sports Medicine

Came across this deleted article National Academy of Sports Medicine, which had incoming links from mainly promo, non-notable articles with some SPA, duck COI editors.

close by articles

Widefox; talk 22:41, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Smartmatic... again, again...

Not sure if I'm over reacting due to the previous edits on this article but I saw the tag on this edit saying "possible conflict of interest". This user writes on Medium promoting Smartmatic and has disseminated Venezuelan government claims of voter fraud (oddly they state that Smartmatic is a "Venezuelan firm" as well). The user originally made minor edits to the article which seemed decent, then began moving large portions of the history that might be deemed "controversial" to a lower part of the page (among other edits). The account was created days after another user of interest went under. This article has been controversial before, with a list of sockpuppets being blocked and a "PR Strategist" with links to the company making edits being notified, eventually ceasing to make edits after the notification. Once again, I am just looking for another eye on this article and a potential block for those who are not confirmed or autoconfirmed users. If I am overreacting, then I apologize.--ZiaLater (talk) 01:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Trimmed back some of the brochure-like text. Not sure what to do about lengthy election problem sections. John Nagle (talk) 17:52, 22 June 2017 (UTC)


As a reporter based in the Philippines, I am aware of the opinions surrounding the elections and the technologies used during the elections. I began investigating said topic and conducting my research through Medium to display the facts and information I was collecting. I believe Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a public encyclopedia. It’s a comprehensive compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge within its five pillars that the public can access and contribute to. In my initial research, I found that many of these company pages did not exist on Wikipedia and the ones that did exist contained very limited or false information. In researching this project, I found it very difficult to differentiate between what was an opinion or what was fact-based. This is because of the way in which material was sourced, organized, or used on the page. My intention was to clean up the page and improve the accuracy of all information written, make it as neutral as possible, and make it more fact-based overall. For example, basic things such as the founding dates of companies were not correct and were sourced to an irrelevant Wikipedia page that is not remotely related to the topic. Controversies were also listed in the history section and based on government documents published on WikiLeaks, some of the information was inaccurate and had a lot of inconsistencies. According to Wikipedia, a controversy “is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view.” While it is right and fair that controversies should be covered in the page, it creates confusion by place those issues in the ‘history’ section. According to the Wikipedia editing policy, when a problem is spotted, instead of removing content from an article the editor should consider the following:

  • Rephrasing or copy-editing to improve grammar or accurately represent the sources
  • Correcting inaccuracies, while keeping the rest of the content intact and neutral
  • Merging, editing or moving the content to a more relevant history or headline or to an existing article, or splitting the content to an entirely new article
  • Adding other points of views to the existing points of view to make the article more balanced and fair
  • Requesting a citation by adding the [citation needed] tag, or adding any other Template:Inline tags as appropriate
  • Doing a quick search for sources and adding a citation yourself
  • Adding appropriate cleanup tags to sections you cannot fix yourself
  • Repair a dead link if a new URL for the page or an archive of the old one can be located
  • Merging the entire article into another article with the original article turned into a redirect as described at performing a merge
  • Fixing errors in wikitext code or formatting

During my editing process, rather than removing Zia Later’s edits, I changed them as outlined and organized them instead. From my point of view, Zia Later has questionable motives behind his aggressive editing. He has removed the edits that I spent time researching, rather than following the steps outlined by Wikipedia.

Based on how aggressive Zia Later has been, his edits look more like an opinion rather than fact-based and neutral research. As a journalist, I am questioning his ethics and motives behind the edits he makes. The edits he makes lead me to believe that he is in fact part of the problem and he is creating controversial and biased material on the page. I believe that neutral and fact-based research should be the priority, especially since everyone is able to access Wikipedia. His opinion-based research is not neutral nor is it correct. I believe his edits should be investigated, as well as the other entries he has created in the past. Carriedelvalle23 (talk) 00:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

First of all, not a male. Now, there have been many from the Philippines such as the "PR Strategist" and other who attempted to whitewash the page multiple times. What I placed in the history is supported by sources and belongs in the history of the company (foundation in Venezuela, founders, funding, etc). When it gets pushed to the bottom into the "Controversy" section when it doesn't even seem to be a controversy (is the Venezuelan background of a company controversial? To who?), it is suspicious. There have also been the users who appear and disappear right when they are brought to the noticeboard, which you can find in their editing history. As soon as one user disappears or stops editing, another is reactivated or created to take its place. Yes, the article can be better, but it shouldn't be whitewashed. I don't have a POV on Smartmatic. Editing the article came up as I was working on other Latin American articles. However, I will not tolerate whitewashing on any article as it only raises more suspicions and is plainly the wrong thing to do. I explained that you had nothing to worry about and only a few of your edits were changed. Some of the filler that was removed in recent edits I originally left there just because it provided a buffer between the controversial and the "supposed" controversial info in the article. I will attempt to find more information to help with this.--ZiaLater (talk) 04:21, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

ZiaLater does not have the right to attack me and question my credibility just because I am based in the Philippines. I am not a PR strategist; I am a journalist and I don’t appreciate he/she comparing me to previous editors. I understand there have been issues of whitewashing in the past. However, I am not one of the previous editors that has caused problems. Can you explain why adding the correct year Smartmatic was formed is whitewashing? The edits I have made are fair and sourced correctly. I have been writing a series on polling technology and the edits made were a direct result of my investigation. ZiaLater does not have the right to proclaim herself/himself owner of the page and attack everyone who edits it. ZiaLater has not provided any supporting information to counter my sources or edits that I made. Instead, he/she is claiming whitewashing and reverting all the edits and blatantly disregarding the point of a collaborative community and the point of Wikipedia.

I have researched the topic of polling technology and voting for some time. I have found that the topic is important and needs to be documented correctly. This page has some of the biggest problems, which makes it even more suspect. ZiaLater’s attempt to control this page is the biggest red flag.

The presentation of information is incorrect, biased and not sourced correctly. Simply put, the page needs editing because its blatantly wrong.

ZiaLater should not be using “filler” or document information and state she/he will attempt to find more information to support it later. It’s unacceptable. Do your homework. Source it when you have the information. Do not edit or add information that cannot be sourced correctly.

Furthermore, Wikipedia is intended to be a collaborative effort. ZiaLater continues to demonstrate disruptive editing and plainly is not following Wikipedia guidelines. As stated by Wikipedia, disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles, and disrupts progress toward improving an article or building the encyclopedia. Also, some of the material ZiaLater continues reverting back to contains no reliable, published sources, which is not allowed.

The background of another company should not be listed in the history section for the subject which the article is written about. I agree, the article most certainly should be free of whitewashing, which is why I took it upon myself to clean it up. While ZiaLater states that only a few edits were made, he/she reverted the article back to the original text. In addition, ZiaLater says he/she has no POV on Smartmatic yet he/she continue reverting the article back to their edits, which is against the edit warring policy.

As a Wikipedia editor, I have worked collaboratively making partial revisions to this article, fixing errors and providing additional published sources that are free from bias.

Not only is this article an issue, but ZiaLater’s lack of regard for other editors is concerning which is why I am escalating this issue to the Arbitration Committee. ZiaLater does not own the page and other editors should be allowed to edit accordingly. Carriedelvalle23 (talk) 08:07, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@ZiaLater:, you seem to be implying that this may be a sockpuppet; if you suspect that, then file a report at WP:SPI. -- Softlavender (talk) 12:14, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Not sure if they are or not, they may know how to work around it. I can only see similarities within the edits and with the dates certain users stop editing and a new one begins. If it is best to check, I will do it. It does't hurt to be too safe.--ZiaLater (talk) 19:57, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@zialater @softlavender Allow me to chip in my two cents in this discussion. As someone who has covered elections in Venezuela for the past 17 years, I think Zia Later should make a better effort to keep this profile as objective and balanced as possible. And by that I mean letting others edit the profile and not pretending to be the sole owner of the truth. Insisting on relating Smartmatic to the Venezuelan government throughout the whole profile has clearly a political and biased objective. For example, the alleged ownership of 28% of Smartmatic by the Venezuelan Government (giving no other proof but an article that talks about another company -Bizta) raises suspicion and hurts ZiaLater credibility as an editor. Elections are controversial everywhere, but more so in a country deeply divided by a political crisis. Zia Later, who has shown a great interest in Venezuelan Politics, should leave the polarization aside and concentrate on facts that can be referenced with reliable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eugenio Martínez puzkas (talk • contribs)

@Eugenio Martínez puzkas: What I have placed into that article are plenty of reliable sources. I have tried to bring discussion to the talk page but that has been ignored so far. What happened to your edits on the article?--ZiaLater (talk) 02:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
@Eugenio Martínez puzkas: All of these discussion belong on the talk page of the article. Not here. Do not copy and paste copyrighted information into the article. Offhand, it seems to me we have two (or more) WP:SPAs contributing to this article, and ZiaLater is trying to keep it under control. That said, it seems the edit-warring has stopped (and the user can be reported at WP:ANEW if they continue to edit-war without WP:CONSENSUS). -- Softlavender (talk) 02:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello, I just noticed I was mentioned in here. A few months back, I had a similar exchange with ZiaLater. However, I stopped editing this article as I just didn’t have the time to engage in an editing war with her. I have not problem at all with anybody investigating my profile as I am not in any way a sockpuppet nor a WP:SPA. The truth is that the last few months I've been really busy and the last thing in my mind has been editing WP. However, I've been researching quite a lot about great things happening on the e-Democracy arena lately, particularly in Europe and Africa, and I'm hopping to get back to editing as soon as I have the time. Regarding this discussion where I am indirectly referred to, looking at other editing that ZiaLater has worked on, one can see how she has a strong political viewpoints and engages in this types of conflicts often. I have to say I agree with other editors who have pointed out that ZiaLater is keen to pushing her own POVs to the extreme of jeopardizing Wikipedia’s neutrality. There seems to be a pattern or agenda in her editing with this article in particular, and this is simply not of my interest. That’s is why I during the time being I refrained from making more edits in this article. But yes, this definitely hurts Wikipedia.E-DemSnoopy (talk) 15:59, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Just for the record, the above user has made exactly 25 article-space edits, all on the subject of e-voting/e-democracy, and 6 of those 25 edits have been on Smartmatic, so this is indeed SPA territory. Softlavender (talk) 05:07, 30 June 2017 (UTC

@Softlavender: as I have explained, I am a journalist who began researching the topic of voting and polling technology. You can see in my previous edits that I have not solely been editing Smartmatic and therefore I am not a single-purpose user.Carriedelvalle23 (talk) 07:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

All of your edits since May 1, 2017 have been on the same subject matter, which makes you an WP:SPA. Prior to that you were blocked for vandalism. These are not judgments; they are just facts. Softlavender (talk) 07:54, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Carriedelvalle23:@E-DemSnoopy: I will probably list both of you on the WP:SPI just to be safe. Thank you for being honest with your opinion E-DemSnoopy, and I just found that the edits being performed were quite the coincidence. If I am trying to push anything, it is not a POV but against the whitewashing of articles. That is the only thing I personally despise in these instances. I will continue to try to and work with each of you and thank you for your involvement.--ZiaLater (talk) 09:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE

Just thought it should be noted that Smartmatic has been using journalists from the Philippines to do PR work, attempting to hire a journalist from the Filipino newspaper Malaya. The source may not be the best, but it at least sheds light on the COI issues with the Smartmatic article since multiple journalists/bloggers from the Philippines have been editing the page. In WP:COIN Archive 111, it was established that one Wikipedia account was a "Digital PR Strategist, Online Reputation Manager" who had met with Smartmatic, writing an article about the encounter. A sockpuppet investigation has since been opened. I would just like to note this for future reference if other issues arise. This will also be placed on the sockpuppet board.--ZiaLater (talk) 00:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE 2

Potential COI edits still occurring. Will someone check this out?--ZiaLater (talk) 09:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

J. C. Maçek / Neptune's Trident

Neptune's Trident has been creating articles loosely related to actor Ron Thompson for a while now. It appeared to me as an attempt to bolster Thompson's status. I prod'ed an article about Buy the Bi and Bye (a play that Thompson appeared in), but Neptune's Trident removed the prod with a false claim that he had added an additional "full length review". That source he used was already in the article and is far from a full length review. When I asked about it on his talk page, he deleted my message with no comment.

This all ties back to Neptune's Trident's promotion of J. C. Macek, whose over 600 citations on Wikipedia bear no relationship to his professional standing. Macek is a producer of the film Cargo. Ron Thompson appears in the film. Neptune's Trident has recently created an article for the film, but was attempting to insert it in articles even before the movie was released (or finished, probably).

I believe it is very likely that Neptune's Trident needs to declare himself a connected contributor on Cargo and any artciles which relate to J. C. Macek. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 23:23, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I've added Corbin Timbrook, an article created in March 2016 by Neptune's Trident. Timbrook is credited on IMDB as appearing in Cargo. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 23:56, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
I'll add just a sampling of User:Neptune's Trident adding J.C. Maçek III to articles:
There are many many more where those came from. In many cases Macek is not just inserted as a reference, but quoted as well. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 03:27, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
@World's Lamest Critic: I saw your comment at the checkuser's talk page in reaction to my post here, thanks. I do not feel comfortable replying there, so I am replying here instead. I agree with you that the edits you have discussed here, made under Neptune's Trident's own user name, are likely not paid but just COI, which is why I did not cite this information at the SPI. I think that he does a lot of editing about popular culture etc., that sometimes gets promotional but is not part of any kind of "scheme". The undisclosed paid editing that was first revealed in the magazine article linked below in #Foundr is, however, another matter. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:53, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
I think you made a good case that there is reason to question some of Neptune's Trident's edits in relation to the paid editor (or editors) and I think that a checkuser could be very helpful in settling the matter but I would like to hear what Neptune's Trident has to say about it first. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:47, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. For procedural reasons that basically have to do with WP:BEANS, we often do the checkuser stuff first and seek a reply second. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Just for fun, I'll add this external link search. One J. C. Macek article is used as a reference on 42 separate Wikipedia articles. It is not a useful reference for at least 40 of those. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 23:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Neptune's Trident has gone through that list and reduced it to 21 articles as of now, which is an overuse of the reference by about 19 articles in my opinion. He has also started changing his name in references from "J.C. Maçek III" to "Maçek III, J.C.", which I assume is to reduce the number of search results for the original phrase. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 14:46, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Georgia Tech Information Security Center

Obvious and direct conflict of interest along with a WP:UPOL violation (despite being declined.) CyberBuzz GA is GA Tech's student information center/college PR. See this and this. I realize that's an old newsletter however it is obvious based on the edits + name that this is intended to be a promotional account for the school and implies shared use. CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 14:37, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Trimmed article to remove brochure-like material. John Nagle (talk) 07:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Steve Nardelli

User:Digbyjohn is an WP:SPA who only edits material related to Steve Nardelli, i.e. mainly that article and The Syn. These edits are usually of a promotional nature with a loose idea of WP:RS. Egregious examples include [41], [42] and [43]. User:Dl2000 has twice warned DigbyJohn on his Talk page. I have long presumed that User:Digbyjohn is Nardelli, so I added a WP:COI tag to the Steve Nardelli article in Jan 2017.

Recently, DigbyJohn added promotional material to the Steve Nardelli article about Nardelli's company, P3, sourced to P3's website: [44]. I removed as not having any secondary sources. DigbyJohn re-added but now citing local government planning paperwork: [45]. This does not seem like sufficient secondary sourcing to me. I removed, DigbyJohn re-added. Rinse and repeat. I raised the issue on the Talk page at Talk:Steve_Nardelli#Himley_Village_edits. There was no response. DigbyJohn subsequently re-added the material. Input from others would be helpful. Bondegezou (talk) 19:26, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: - I added a case-corrected userlinks line at the top for Digbyjohn. Note a further WP:DUCK indicator for WP:COI from this Youtube account. Digbyjohn has a final warning about WP:NPOV. Dl2000 (talk) 21:57, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
@Dl2000: He's back. Bondegezou (talk) 17:54, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Digbyjohn continues to edit-war over this, with no engagement on Talk pages, here or even in edit summaries. Admin input required please. Bondegezou (talk) 08:22, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Dmitry Korobkov

Created as the 10th edit of this editor (if I include 3 deleted edits to an earlier version of this article, deleted after a PROD). I randomly selected a few sources and they either didn't mention Korobkov or were press releases. To be fair, this editor has many more edits on the Russian WP, which explains their mastery of syntax perhaps, but still this looks to good to be true. --Randykitty (talk) 08:10, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

They originally created the RU article[46] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
They did. I'm less familiar with UPE than most regulars here, but the article seems to bear all hallmarks of COI (and possibly paid) editing: created in one big edit, nearly flawless, lots of references (which upon close inspection don't pan out). --Randykitty (talk) 15:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The Speyer Legacy School

Onslaught of promotional edits to a fairly dormant article by an employee, as well as the uploading of fair use files. I've attempted a cleanup to remove some of the blatant promo, but it's still a lot of unnecessary detail and peacockery. – Train2104 (t • c) 22:49, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Bearing in mind that this is not a secondary school and was only established in 2009, I'm struggling to see how it is even notable. It might be named in honour of a more notable school, but that surely cannot be enough. Edwardx (talk) 23:23, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
We did try to create a page for the original school, but I think I did something incorrectly. I will try again. However, the two schools are unaffiliated (the text under history really belongs on a page for the original Speyer School, again, as we are unaffiliated - I will try to sort this out). Speyer Legacy is an established, accredited school and similarly sized schools that go to 8th grade in New York State have entries as well (a good example is Anderson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_School which is similarly aged and serves a similar population and Saint Hilda's and Saint Hughs, which is similarly sized but a bit older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Hilda%27s_%26_St._Hugh%27s_School Jenniever
User:Jenniever, two things. First, who is "we"? Secondly, this is the COI noticeboard, and the first thing we need to hear from you is whether you have some connection with the schools you have edited about - disclosure is the first step in managing conflict of interest. Please also disclose any connection you have, when you reply. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:11, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
user:Jytdog Roger. yes. I'm an employee of the first school (Speyer Legacy School), so this discussion is valid. I'm trying to clean up the initial text posted by another employee to correct the article - which had previously contained a lot of unnecessary information unrelated to the school itself (i.e., history of an unaffiliated institution, extraneous facts about gifted education). I've now read the COI guidelines and understand we were to put this under talk and have an unaffiliated third party add it. I've removed the pictures from the article in question and I did do a lot of the cleanup asked for by User:Train2104. These edits were in good faith but without having previously read the COI guidelines. This is my mistake. I will refrain from editing this page again. User:Jenniever
Wonderful. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:27, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing in the article that indicated any notability and per longstanding tradition and school article guidelines, I redirected it to Manhattan#Education. I have no objection if someone wants to revert me and we can take it to AFD. I was not aware of this discussion when I redirected it. John from Idegon (talk) 03:03, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Added The Speyer School. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:23, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Not really seeing the notability there either, but it isn't as weak as the other and we tend to give more leeway to historic subjects. Article needs expansion, and more sourcing about the school as opposed to its founder. John from Idegon (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

New criteria up for discussion

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:47, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

International Anti-Corruption Academy

Richard has a properly, but only recently, declared (on his user page) CoI, but has not responded to an earlier request on his talk page to discuss his changes to the article on its talk page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

That is somewhat ironic. Hm. Thanks for posting.Jytdog (talk) 12:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
I have cleaned up the article and left a message for the editor. Jytdog (talk) 13:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
The editor is edit-warring to retain badly sourced promotional content and refusing to stop editing directly. More eyes would be useful. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 17:11, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Rothenberg Ventures

I'm unsure whether COI/N is still considered an appropriate venue for discussing COI edit requests, as I've seen some disagreement about this in the recent past. However, this forum was suggested to be by an editor commenting on a COI request I've posted at Talk:Rothenberg Ventures, so here I am for now. That request (see previous link) is about updating the Controversies section to make it easier to follow, and remove extraneous detail. If anyone here is willing to have a look and weigh in, I'd appreciate it. Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:01, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

User:L7starlight

The editor was advised about the COI policy on their talk page in May 2016, but no disclosures were made. The user has edited many other articles in addition to those listed above. Rentier (talk) 11:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Prompted by this review, I tagged the articles with the {{Undisclosed_paid}} template. Rentier (talk) 17:50, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rentier:, the links on the freelancing websites that you’ve shared don’t reflect my editing history. If you check them carefully, you can see that those are random jobs that simply have the word ‘Wikipedia’ in their titles and don’t have anything in common with my contributions. Unless you consider an article to be written not from a NPOV, your tags {{Undisclosed_paid}}, don’t have a reason behind them, except for WP:HA. Based on your posts, anyone who creates or edits an article about a living person, a film or a software has a COI which is not true, as nobody authorizes me or other editors to contribute to Wikipedia with our time and efforts. I hope and suppose it is a good faith care and is not outing, as pointing other users out with allegations of non-disclosed COI that are not based on any fact, looks misleading and not fair.L7starlight (talk) 00:14, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

@L7starlight: How can it be outing if it's not you who responded to those ads? Rentier (talk) 00:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rentier:, among the five “ads” you shared there are only three actual links and only one of them is working… The content of the link only states “Wikipedia page” in its title, yet it doesn’t provide any details, neither it matches any of the articles I've edited/created. Your accusations and thus {{Undisclosed_paid}} tags are merely based on good faith assumptions. But instead of contributing to WP they waste time and energy of editors on proving you wrong (you can’t prove you’re right). It violates policy and should be stopped.--L7starlight (talk) 01:09, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

 Question: The Upwork ads I linked to are now hidden. Can anyone frequenting this noticeboard who has visited the pages earlier confirm or deny the following two facts:

  1. that the Upwork job linked above next to The Hunted (web series) contained an explicit request to expand the Wikipedia page The Hunted (web series) and was posted shortly before L7starlight began to edit it?
  2. that the Upwork job linked above next to Stopping Traffic contained a request to create a Wikipedia page about a documentary about human trafficking and was posted shortly before L7starlight created the article Stopping Traffic about a film documenting human trafficking?

This is what my accusation is based on, in addition to the following observations:

  • the name of Sadhvi Siddhali Shree, the director of Stopping Traffic, was mentioned in a review left for the Upwork job
  • there is an Upwork job ad, now hidden, mentioning the name "Casar" and created just before L7starlight began working on Casar Jacobson
  • there is an Upwork job ad, now hidden, mentioning the name "Liesje" and created just before L7starlight began working on Liesje Sadonius

With regards to the outstanding Upwork ad, https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01123975935102ff4d (backup):

  • the ad says: "I am looking for a talented Wikipedia contributor to create a page for my band complete with descriptive text and photo."
  • It was posted on June 17th. On June 20th, L7starlight created The Sextones, an orphan article, which is currently discussed for deletion.
  • The customer's location is Reno. Reno is the band's home.
  • The review left for the client mentions the name "Alex", which is the name of one of the band's three founders.
  • The file The Sextones.jpg was uploaded to Commons by L7starlight on June 21st, just two days after it was uploaded to Flickr. It was uploaded to Flickr during the three day window between the Upwork posting and the article's creation.

All Upwork jobs I mentioned were done by the same Upwork user.

Some of the evidence is circumstantial, but the pattern is clear, even discounting the now inaccessible ads. L7starlight's edits correlate tightly with ads to recruit paid editors appearing on Upwork. As their talk page shows, I am not the first person to notice L7starlight's apparent conflict of interest. The only conclusion I come up with, and the only conclusion I think it's reasonably possible to come up with, is that L7starlight is an undisclosed paid editor who, by posting here, is attempting to game the system in a way that, frankly, must require a great deal of moral flexibility. Rentier (talk) 03:12, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Additional evidence based on Flickr timestamps. It shows that L7starlight uploaded photos to Commons shortly after they were either uploaded to Flickr or modified on Flickr by the copyright owners (perhaps to change the license?). It's a further corroboration of my claim that the editor has been working on behalf of the articles' subjects. Rentier (talk) 10:51, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

File Uploaded to Commons Uploaded to Flickr Last modified on Flickr Verification Backup
File:The Sextones.jpg June 21st June 19th - https://www.flickr.com/photos/149691098@N02/35409787315/ [47]
File:The Hunted film poster.jpg June 20th June 20th - [48] Put in the photo_id 35266022772, and check the dateuploaded timestamp. [49]
File:Casar Jacobson Miss Canada.jpg June 20th June 20th - [50] Put in the photo_id 35033325750, and check the dateuploaded timestamp. [51]
File:Casar Jacobson UN2.jpg June 20th June 20th - [52] Put in the photo_id 35380976246, and check the dateuploaded timestamp. [53]
File:Casar Jacobson UN.jpg June 20th June 20th - https://www.flickr.com/photos/caesarjacobson/35290965821 [54]
File:Casar Jacobson.jpg June 20th May 14th June 20th [55] Put in the photo_id 34277070930, and check the dateuploaded and lastupdate timestamps. [56]

Hopefully the Flickr pages won't all get hidden now. Rentier (talk) 10:51, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

  • User:L7starlight you don't say clearly whether or not you are editing for pay or not. Would you please make a clear statement. Please be aware of two things:
  1. Disclosing paid edits and putting new drafts through AfC (with disclosure) and proposing new edits on Talk, is not against policy, and you can be a member of the community if you follow that and the rest of the guidance in WP:PAID as well as the other policies and guidelines (see Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms)
  2. Undisclosed paid editing is not OK, and the community has taken action to indefinitely ban people who do that, with evidence similar to what is presented above. Jytdog (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Indef was the most likely outcome either way, but perhaps it would have been better to give them more than an hour to respond? - Bilby (talk) 15:21, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
One might say that 14 months was enough time to make a disclosure. Rentier (talk) 15:33, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
One might. But personally, I'd rather have given them time to respond to what Jytdog wrote. Just blocking paid editors who might agree to disclose in future is not a way of solving the problem. - Bilby (talk) 15:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

L7starlight is appealing the block stating that I put incorrect Flickr upload dates. It would be advisable for someone to verify and confirm the dates (which is trivial but not obvious) because if the photos are taken down, like the Upwork jobs were, there will be no objective evidence left beyond my word and L7starlight's pattern of edits. Rentier (talk) 17:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I managed to get the Flickr data archived, so it should be safe now. The single remaining Upwork ad is also archived. Rentier (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Rentier (talk · contribs) a quick and dirty way to archive is to just use a screen capture utility (e.g. "grab" on a Mac) You can't post most of these on Wiki, but you can email them to admins if necessary. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:23, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
The issue with screenshots is that they are easily fabricated. I want my evidence to be as close to bullet-proof as possible, so third-party archivers are preferable. I usually make screenshots as a secondary backup, but I made a mistake of not describing or even archiving the evidence when reporting this case. It won't happen again. Rentier (talk) 19:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Canada 150 Atlantic to Pacific Celebration

Based on a Google search of "Canada 150" together with the editor's name, this appears to be an undeclared paid editor. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 21:15, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

The thing to do in this case is to notify the user of the disclosure requirements. You also need to notify them that they've been named here, e.g. with the template in red at the top of this page. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:55, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 Done - thanks for the clarification. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 07:43, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
I've also seen third-party editors add {{Undisclosed paid}} on the AfC draft in clear-cut cases. It may be considered controversial by some? ☆ Bri (talk) 13:29, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Cleveland Clinic

An anonymous user is adding promotionally-worded content to several articles related to the Cleveland Clinic. This seems to have been an issue in the past (see Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard/Archive_93#Cleveland_Clinic). I have left a COI notice on the IP talk page, but haven't gotten a response. Deli nk (talk) 14:44, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry involved; see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Atroye12. @Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: you worked on the older COIN case, do you recommend new action here? I see that Berean Hunter has protected the article, so maybe we're done for now? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:47, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
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