User talk:CafeHellion

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, CafeHellion. 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.

Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 17:59, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! CafeHellion (talk) 20:33, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ANI notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Denis.g.rancourt (talk) 13:58, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi CafeHellion. Along with my regular editing, I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia. Your edits to date are mostly focused on civil rights issues and OCLA in particular, and you seem to know a lot about them per your remark here. This makes your account, what we call a single purpose account. (please read that link, to see the community's experience with SPA editors) I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, CafeHellion. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, please:

avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

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

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you.

Comments and requests

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

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with Denis Rancourt or OCLA or any litigation in which it has taken a part? (including for example being a member of group that is directly in, or directly affected by litigation) You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, with please disclose it. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here - I am watching this page. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 18:38, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A fair request under the circumstances. No, I have no association, positive or negative, with either the OCLA nor Denis Rancourt. I have not been a party - in person, on paper, whatever, individually or as the member of an organization - in any conflict of any sort with either Rancourt, OCLA, or anyone defended via filing or press release by OCLA. I sincerely doubt either Rancourt or OCLA has heard of me. I am not a public figure of sufficiently high profile to have a Wikipedia entry. Although I'll decline the opportunity to identify myself fully, I am a software developer, a political progressive, and a civil libertarian who finds himself in increasing doubt about the OCLA's actual mission. CafeHellion (talk) 20:24, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

An additional note on Kopyto, just for clarification: I found that entry while looking for other entries on Wikipedia that also mentioned the OCLA. Kopyto and I have never met, corresponded, or been as far as I know within a hundred kilometers of each other; everything I know of him I learned from Wikipedia. I have looked at the OCLA site and seen quite a few filings that seem to be produced by, if not a lawyer, at least a paralegal, and nobody involved with OCLA apparently has a legal background, which produced, I think, a natural question. CafeHellion (talk) 20:32, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your gracious reply. That's all I have to say on the matter of COI; you have said that you have none, and that is what we go with. I hope you will bear with me on this but I would like to make sure you are aware of advocacy in WP.. I will open a new subsection on that to save us scrolling. :) Jytdog (talk) 21:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Advocacy in Wikipedia

Based on what you have wrote above, I want to make sure are aware of issues with advocacy in Wikipedia.

There are a lot of things that Wikipedia is not (see What Wikipedia is not) and one of the things WP is not, is a platform for advocacy. Please especially see the section, WP:NOTADVOCACY. "What Wikipedia is Not" is both a policy and a "pillar" - something very essential to the very guts of this place. People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead people to abuse Wikipedia - to hijack it from its mission of providing the world with free access to "accepted knowledge." Some people come here and try to create promotional content about their companies (classic "COI"), some come to tell everybody how bad it is to eat meat, some come to grind various political axes... we get all kinds of advocacy (COI is just a subset of it) It all comes down to violations of NOTADVOCACY. A lot of times, people don't even understand this is not OK. I try to talk with folks, to make sure they are aware of these issues.

For non-COI advocacy issues, we have three very good essays offering advice - one is WP:ADVOCACY another is WP:SPA that I already pointed you to, and see also WP:TENDENTIOUS which describes how advocacy editors tend to behave.

So, while I hear you that you are suspicious of OCLA in the real world, but please do try to check that suspicion at the login page. And while you are free to edit about whatever the heck you want, please do consider broadening the scope of your editing. (I do realize that you are just getting started here, and everybody starts somewhere! Who knows where you will end up)

Finally, please note that you really shouldn't remove content because of an editor's COI. Changes to content (adding or deleting) need to be governed by the content policies and guidelines - namely WP:VERIFY, WP:OR, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOT and the sourcing guidelines WP:RS and WP:MEDRS. Your removal of the content added by Denis was correct as the content he added did violate the content policies and guidelines, but your reasoning was not correct. (Managing COI is complicated here, and I can explain that, if you want)

In terms of behavior, the really key behavioral policies are WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL, WP:HARASSMENT, and WP:DR, and the key guideline is WP:TPG. 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.

If you have questions about working in WP at any time going forward, or about anything I wrote above, please ask me. I am happy to talk. Thanks again for your patience with me. Jytdog (talk) 21:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay; with this in mind I reverted a recent comment that was a little too pointed. CafeHellion (talk) 23:39, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

:) Jytdog (talk) 00:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]