User talk:LPWik97203

Here's wishing you a welcome to Wikipedia, LPWik97203. Thank you for your contributions. Here are some useful links, which have information to help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page, consult Wikipedia:Questions, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there.

Please do take some time to review the information in the links above. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 22:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Considering your account name and your history of contributions here...[edit]

...I need to ask you this direct question:

Are you paid for your editing on Wikipedia by the companies you write about, or any companies associated with them?

If so, you need to be aware of this:

The Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use (which is our Terms of Use, since we've never adopted another one), says:

Paid contributions without disclosure
These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following ways:
a statement on your user page,

a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or

a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.

Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure.

A Wikimedia Project community may adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy. If a Project adopts an alternative disclosure policy, you may comply with that policy instead of the requirements in this section when contributing to that Project. An alternative paid contribution policy will only supersede these requirements if it is approved by the relevant Project community and listed in the alternative disclosure policy page.

For more information, please read our FAQ on disclosure of paid contributions.

We reserve the right to exercise our enforcement discretion with respect to the above terms.

If you are a paid editor, you must comply with these terms, as well as with our English Wikipedia-specific policy on editing with a conflict of interest. This is not a matter for debate, it's part of the contract you agree to by editing here.

So, again, a direct answer please: do you get paid for editing here? BMK (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So I am the new Marketing intern here at Lane Powell. I noticed that our page had little to no information and so I have started putting information down. I am not paid directly to just improve this page, this was something I noticed personally, and would like to fix. (LPWik97203 (talk) 22:30, 7 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

(Just to be clear, I am not an admin, while Drmies is, so if he corrects anything I say here, please follow his directions.) As a employee of Lane Powell, you naturally have a conflict of interest, so it would be best if you would make suggestions on Talk:Lane Powell about changes you want to see made to the article, and allow other non-conflicted editors to make the change. If you want to change your user name, you can do so at WP:CHU, but Drmies has said that you don't need to, so that's up to you. As Drmies points out copyright violations are taken quite seriously here, so if you want to include information from the firm's website, you must show proof that the firm has released that information ina way that's compatible with our licenses. Go to WP:OTRS and follow the instructions there. Thanks for responding so promptly. BMK (talk) 00:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond My Ken is correct--but let me repeat that even if permission is granted, it's not likely that this content would just be accepted. We do encyclopedic writing here, and that's by definition different from a company history on the company website. Drmies (talk) 00:29, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Username[edit]

Following on what BMK wrote above, please do reply above and explictly disclose your relationship with Lane Powell. Also, would you please change your Username so that it is clear that this is being used by a single person? See notice below. Thanks

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "LPWik97203", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Foobar Museum of Art". However, you are invited to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you personally, such as "Jack Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87".

Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people, and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, or website, regardless of your username. Moreover, I recommend that you read our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please request a change of username, by completing this form, that complies with our username policy. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 22:09, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How do I change my username (LPWik97203 (talk) 22:19, 7 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

I disagree with Jytdog: I have no problem with the user name; a number can be considered individual. We're all just numbers anyway. But I did revert your edit and remove it from the history: copying content from the company website and sticking it in Wikipedia without filing the proper paperwork is a copyright violation, and even if the paperwork is in order it will likely be reverted because of its necessarily promotionally or non-neutral language. So please make sure that you are aware of WP:COI (or Jytdog will continue to nip at your heels) and declare your interest, and that your edits are neutral--meaning they follow WP:NPOV. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 23:23, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I yield to to Drmies judgement on the username. But LPWik97203 please do explicitly disclose your relationship to the firm. Yip! Unit403 aka Jytdog (talk) 23:25, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jytdog, go through my logs and see how many username blocks I've made... That doesn't make me right, but I am the one with the block button! Drmies (talk) 23:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I did yield! I already glorify your shiny greatness, you don't have to bop me on the head. Jytdog (talk) 00:24, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

LPWik97203 you have a very clear COI here - would you please work with me on the COI management process? It starts with you disclosing your relationship with the firm. Please reply here and do that, and I can walk you through the rest. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 15:53, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jytdog, sure. Frankly, I am just trying to update the page with information about the history of the company and how it came to be today. I reworded the entire document, but you seem to keep taking it down. I am more than happy to go through this step by step. (LPWik97203 (talk) 15:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Hi - we just had what is called an "edit conflict". You did disclose, just above, right here. OK. So please formalize that by adding the disclosure to your userpage, which is User:LPWik97203. Just something simple like: "I work for Lane Powell and have a conflict of interest on that topic" would be great. I have added the appropriate tag to the talk page of the article, Talk:Lane Powell. There are two steps to the COI management process - once you post on your Userpage I will walk you through the rest of the COI management process. By the way, if you don't know what a "conflict of interest" is, please ask me, or ask someone at your firm - it is a big deal in law, and it is a serious matter here as well. Jytdog (talk) 16:02, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jytdog: Okay I added it to my userpage. What is the next step? (LPWik97203 (talk) 16:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Awesome thanks. OK, so per WP:PAID and the [[WP:COI] guideline, what we ask editor with a COI to do, is to submit edits to a peer review. This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voila there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world. So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article. Conflicted editors are also really driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest. If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft, disclose your COI on the Talk page using the appropriate template, and then submit the draft article through the WP:AFC process so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:Lane Powell - there is a link at "click here" in that section -- if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request.

By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. (which I will say more about, if you want - and i hope you do want, as it will save us all a lot of time and trouble).

I hope that makes sense to you.

Will you please agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the Lane Powell article or any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. And if you want me to quickly go over the content policies so that your work here can be productive, I can do that. Just let me know. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I will agree on doing that. So in simplistic terms, if I want to add something to LP page, I should first go to the LPtalk page and draft up the proposal there, and get approval, before posting. Yes I would like to hear the content policy as well please. (LPWik97203 (talk) 16:59, 8 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Great. I will post that in a new section. Jytdog (talk) 17:34, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How to edit[edit]

OK, I am giving you as brief an overview as I can here. If you go over it once, you will get the gist. There are a bunch of links, and I suggest you at least look at the beginning of each. There is actually a lot to learn about editing here.

The first thing, is that our mission is to produce articles that provide readers with encyclopedic content that summarize accepted knowledge, and to do that as a community that anyone can be a part of. That's the mission. As you can imagine, if this place had no norms, it would be a Mad Max kind of world interpersonally, and content would be a slag heap (the quality is really bad in parts, despite our best efforts). But over the past 15 years the community has developed a whole slew of norms, via lots of discussion. One of the first, is that we decide things by consensus (as we define that). That decision itself, is recorded here: WP:CONSENSUS, which is one of our "policies". And when we decide things by consensus, that is not just local in space and time, but includes important discussions that have happened in the past. The results of those past important discussions are the norms that we follow now. We call them policies and guidelines - and these documents all reside in "Wikipedia space" (There is a whole forest of documents in "Wikipedia space" - pages in Wikipedia that start with "Wikipedia:AAAA" or for short, "WP:AAAA". WP:CONSENSUS is different from Consensus.)

People have tried to define Wikipedia - is it a democracy, an anarchy, secret cabal? In fact it is a clue-ocracy (that link is to a very short and important text).

There are policies and guidelines that govern content, and separate ones that govern behavior. Here is a very quick rundown:

Content policies and guidelines

WP:NOT (what WP is, and is not -- this is where you'll find the "accepted knowledge" thing. You will also find discussion of how WP is not a catalog, not a how-to manual, not a vehicle for promotion, etc)
WP:OR - no original research is allowed here, instead
WP:VERIFY - everything has to be cited to a reliable source (so everything in WP comes down to the sources you bring!)
WP:RS is the guideline defining what a "reliable source" is for general content and WP:MEDRS defines what reliable sourcing is for content about health. Please note that we strongly prefer sources that are independent of the subject of the article.
WP:NPOV and the content that gets written, needs to be "neutral" (as we define that here, which doesn't mean what most folks think -- it doesn't mean "fair and balanced" - it means that the language has to be neutral, and that topics in a given article are given appropriate "weight" (space and emphasis). An article about a drug that was 90% about side effects, would generally give what we call "undue weight" to the side effects. Of course if that drug was important because it killed a lot of people, not having 90% of it be about the side effects would not be neutral) We determine weight by seeing what the independent reliable sources say - we follow them in this too. So again, you can see how everything comes down to references. Really strong, independent sources are essential to our mission to provide the public with accepted knowledge.
WP:BLP - this is a policy specifically covering discussion about living people anywhere in WP. We are very careful about such content (which means enforcing the policies and guidelines above rigorously), since issues of legal liability can arise for WP, and people have very strong feelings about other people, and about public descriptions of themselves.
WP:NOTABILITY - this is a policy that defines whether or not an article about X, should exist. What this comes down to is defined in WP:Golden rule - which is basically, are there enough independent sources about X, with which to build a decent article.
WP:DELETION discusses how we get rid of articles that fail notability.

In terms of behavior, the key norms are:

WP:CONSENSUS - already discussed
WP:CIVIL - basically, be nice. This is not about being nicey nice, it is really about not being a jerk and having that get in the way of getting things done. We want to get things done here - get content written and maintained and not get hung up on interpersonal disputes. So just try to avoid doing things that create unproductive friction.
WP:AGF - assume good faith about other editors. Try to focus on content, not contributor. Don't personalize it when content disputes arise. (the anonymity here can breed all kinds of paranoia)
WP:HARASSMENT - really, don't be a jerk and follow people around, bothering them. And do not try to figure out who people are in the real world. Privacy is strictly protected by the WP:OUTING part of this policy. (notice that I never asked you to personally identify yourself - I only asked about your relatinship with the law firm)
WP:DR - if you get into an content dispute with someone, try to work it out on the talk page. Don't WP:EDITWAR. If you cannot work it out locally, then use one of the methods here to get wider input. There are many - it never has to come down to two people arguing. There are instructions here too, about what to do if someone is behaving badly, in your view. Try to keep content disputes separate from behavior disputes. Many of the big messes that happen in Wikipedia arise from these getting mixed up.
WP:COI and WP:PAID which I discussed way above already. This is about preserving the integrity of WP. A closely related issue is WP:ADVOCACY; COI is just a subset of advocacy. (we get say, vegetarians who come here and are dying to write about how evil meat is, and how great vegetarianism is. They also write promotional, POV content)
WP:TPG - this is about how to talk to other editors on Talk pages, like this one, or say Talk:Lane Powell. At article talk pages, basically be concise, discuss content not contributors, and base discussion on the sources in light of policies and guidelines, not just your opinions or feelings. At user talk pages things are more open, but that is the relevant place to go if you want to discuss someone's behavior or talk about general WP stuff - like this whole post.

If you can get all that (the content and behavior policies and guidelines) under your belt, you will become truly "clueful", as we say. If that is where you want to go, of course. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully it is digestable enough.

If at some point you want to create an article, here is what to do.

look for independent sources that comply with WP:MEDRS for anything related to health, and WP:RS for everything else, that give serious discussion to the topic, not just passing mentions. Start with great sources.
Look at the sources you found, and see if you have enough per WP:Golden rule to even go forward. If you don't, you can stop right there. (You generally need four or five)
Read the sources you found, and identify the main and minor themes to guide you with regard to WP:WEIGHT - be wary of distortions in weight due to WP:RECENTISM
Go look at manual of style guideline created by the relevant WikiProject, to guide the sectioning and other style matters (you can look at articles on similar topics but be ginger b/c WP has lots of bad content) - create an outline. (For example, for biographies, the relevant project is WP:WikiProject Biography) (For example, for companies, the relevant project is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Companies/Guidelines)
Create the blank article following the process described at articles for creation for your first few articles.
Start writing the body, based only on what is in the sources you have (not on what you know already), and provide an inline citation for each sentence as you go.
Make sure you write in neutral language. The most rigorous way to do this is to use no adjectives at your first go-round and add them back only as needed.
When you are done, write the lead and add infobox, external links, categories, etc
Consider adding banners to the Talk page, joining the draft article to relevant Wikiprojects, which will help attract editors who are interested and knowledgeable to help work on the article. If you have a COI for the article, note it there.
The completed work should have nothing unsourced (because the sources drove everything you wrote, not prior knowledge or personal experiences) there is no original research nor WP:PROMO in it.
Submit your article for review by clicking the "submit your draft" button that was set up when you created the article. You will get responses from reviewers, and you can work with them to do whatever is needed to get the article ready to be published.

There you go! Let me know if you have questions about any of that

Again that was a lot, but the goal is to get you somewhat oriented. Jytdog (talk) 17:44, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, thank you Jytdog! I'll make sure to follow these guidelines closely. When I've complied enough resources, I will post my content on the talk:Lane Powell page and go from ther. Thank you for all your help, and I apologize for all the confusion and continued postings. (LPWik97203 (talk) 18:05, 8 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Good luck! See you at the article talk page. OH when you make a proposal there, please provide it all ready to go, with refs and everything. That will make things to more quickly. Good luck! Jytdog (talk) 18:07, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quick question, is a blog an acceptable source? (LPWik97203 (talk) 16:37, 15 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

The quick answer is "no". See self published sources. BMK (talk) 20:26, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

June 2016[edit]

Please do not delete or edit legitimate talk page comments, as you did at User talk:Beyond My Ken. Such edits are disruptive and appear to be vandalism. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. BMK (talk) 22:23, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to delete or edit legitimate talk page comments, as you did at Talk:Lane Powell, you may be blocked from editing. BMK (talk) 22:18, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I did it once and stopped. I'm not sure what was going on, I pressed the back button on my browser and it must have deleted them again. Won't happen again, I apologize for the mix up. Also, for some reason I was not getting notifications of your messages, so sorry about that too. (LPWik97203 (talk) 23:32, 23 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

So...[edit]

this was really unwise. It would be helpful to you, if you understood why it is unwise. I won't explain if you don't want to know, so please let me know if you do want to know. Jytdog (talk) 22:30, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I would like to know please. (LPWik97203 (talk) 23:33, 23 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

OK, so people who volunteer at Wikipedia do it because they believe in the mission of helping build this free resource of knowledge. It is a learning tool; a reference work. That is what we all want to spend time creating.

On top of creating and maintaining content, we also have to deal with each other. Have to - building consensus is the foundation of this place. And well as you know, hell is other people. :) So negotiations take a lot of time, and can get difficult and festery, even with other volunteers. Self control and self-restraint are essential qualities for long-term editors.

When new people come along they have a learning curve. Some times experienced editors are too mean (we even have an essay, WP:BITE, to try to manage that) and some are patient. Some new editors know they have a lot to learn and are very teachable; some are very resistant and get all offended. You can see all the various ways that could possibly go, complicated also by somebody just having a bad day or bad moment.

Now everybody here understands that companies and universities and people etc view Wikipedia as an essential PR vehicle and want articles about their companies or universities or themselves to exist and to say great things about them, and they come here without understanding what WP is for, nor what the policies and guidelines for content and behavior are, and directly add promotional garbage to Wikipedia. This place is full of absolute shit content because of that. Great content too, but it has some really ugly parts. Pretty much everybody who volunteers here spends a good deal of time cleaning up stuff like that, which takes away from the time that we actually could be creating content. (there is a whole list of things about health and medicine that I am dying to get to writing about...)

And there has been all kinds of scandals here in WP when people come here secretly and write or rewrite articles about themselves or their companies. And there is a genre of freelancers, and people who have even built businesses, editing WP for pay. Some instances of both have blown up into scandals that reached the mainstream media; we have an article about some of those - see Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia.

There are a lot of strong feelings in WP about company reps or paid editors who come here to promote themselves or their clients. Some people hate that activity and express hatred against those who do it (these people turn Wikipedia into a useless cesspool and harm the integrity and reputation of Wikipedia, this common good that so many have worked so hard to build, as volunteers). Some don't care about the person, only the content they create (if a paid editor creates really great, well-sourced, encyclopedic content, who cares? if their content is terrible, we'll just delete it). Most of the community falls in the middle. They want it managed. I spend a lot of time on that, like I am doing here with you. I do this not because I give a flying fuck about your law firm -- I don't. But I do want you to understand this place and what we require, so that you can use your time productively, and so that what you propose has a reasonable chance of improving the encyclopedia. Everybody can win.

So what happens when somebody who works for a company - who is paid to be here - and who is new - actually discloses in good faith that they are here for X, and actually tries to follow the COI guideline? Well lots of things can unfold, per the above.

Two things that you really should keep in mind. You are new and you are going to make a lot of mistakes, and people will point them out. Some nicely, some brusquely. That is true of every new editor. You have your own temperment ( I don't know you) but try to know that you have a lot to learn, and focus on learning - on the message, not the tone. Secondly, as a company rep, most people here will kind of hold their noses while they try to help you learn. There may be some people in WP who really care about law firm content who will be delighted that you are here and can help build content about Lane Powell... but I don't think there a lot of folks like that. We have "WikiProjects" here and if you go to WT:WikiProject Law and ask if anybody will help you there, you might find someone. But my sense is that most folks there are interested in building reference articles about the law and court cases, not so much about individual firms. But maybe. But most editors will be like BMK who just decided to try to help you, purely out of niceness. If you act negatively at all, they will just say "gee that's the thanks I get" and walk away. And they will probably be reluctant to help the next person in your shoes. They have no obligation at all to help you. No one does. Your proposed content can languish for ever if no volunteer decides to give - to give - his or her time to it. So if you snap at people trying to help you at all they are just going to walk away.

So on both levels, as a new editor and as a paid editor, you will do best if before you sit down to work in Wikipedia, collect yourself, put on your strictest professional hat, and focus on the work. Be ready for some people to be harsh, and be ready for people to be brusque. But focus on learning - What does great WP content look like? How can you learn? How you can make it as easy as possible for volunteers to help you? On that point, the better your content is, in formatting and in the actual content, the less work anyone will have to do in order to help you. BMK did you a huge, huge favor by going through your proposed content and formatting it correctly. You should study what BMK did carefully to learn how to do that yourself. Nobody likes spending time formatting and doing that on behalf of a paid editor is especially... distasteful. And please focus on the mission of this place - the more encyclopedic your content is, the happier folks will be to implement it. What can someone learn about law or about running a law firm from reading an article about Lane Powell? Maybe somebody at WIkiProject law can point you to a really great article about a law firm you could model. That would be a great question to ask there.

There you go. Jytdog (talk) 02:17, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Jytdog. I understand now. I just think frustration got the better of me, and you are right to say I should collect myself before coming on here. I appreciate your time and efforts as well as Beyond My Ken again I apologize for getting on you and not appreciating your work. (LPWik97203 (talk) 15:13, 24 June 2016 (UTC))[reply]

OK, good luck! Jytdog (talk) 17:10, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]