User talk:Harmonicapedia

Australian Medicines Handbook

You may well have a point in regards to Australian Medicines Handbook being a candidate for deletion. However speedy deletion is a process which I don't believe applies here. I'm going to take a closer look at the article and see if I believe it should be nominated for deletion in the proper way. Also, did you say the article duplicates material on your website? If it is indeed a duplication to the point of copyright infringement, please let me know and point me to those pages. Thanks! --Non-Dropframe _talk 23:50, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. And please excuse me if I have done anything incorrectly as I have not done anything on Wikipedia before. We are not worried about copyright as the information is simply historical. It's more that we do not want to maintain the page ourselves nor check for incorrect entries, possibly by other individuals. As I mentioned this was set up without broad knowledge of AMH in the past. Also I belive the information contained is treated as 'advertisements' by Wikipedia - which is unsurprising. If there is a more appropriate proper way for deletion, then I am more than happy to receive advice. Our web site is http://www.amh.net.au. Please have a look and I am happy to receive any further thoughts from you. Many thanks. Harmonicapedia (talk) 00:06, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

In regards to having to worry about maintaining the article, we actually very strongly discourage individuals with ties to a subject to edit that subject's page as it's a conflict of interest. I do agree that the tone of the article is unacceptable. However, having done some research, the subject matter is clearly notable and is therefore unlikely to be deleted. I'm going to do what's called sutbifying which is a process whereby all the unacceptable material is removed, creating something of a clean slate upon which to build a properly cited neutral article. I hope this is an acceptable resolution. However, should you insist upon bringing the article to the community for a deletion discussion, that is a process I can help you with as well. --Non-Dropframe _talk 00:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess that will be OK. It is difficult to think that anyone - other than an AMH individual (and I note your conflict of interest comment)- would contribute meaningfully. That is to say, I can't see how a properly cited article might emerge in the same way that other Wikipedia articles exist, as AMH is simply a medicines information provider. At the same time, I don't want to make too much out of it. So if you consider stubyfing to be the most appropriate approach, then that's fine - and I will keep an eye on the page. Would it be OK for me to post something like "This is not an Australian Medicines Handbook supported page" just for clarity?. Thank you.Harmonicapedia (talk) 00:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia: WP:PAID

You are obviously affiliated with the people who publish Australian Medicines Handbook and you imply that in your comments above. Your edits to Wikipedia violate almost every content policy we have, and you appear to be violating Wikipedia's Terms of Use and our WP:PAID policy by directly editing that article and doing so without disclosing your affiliation.

Please reply here, just below, and explicitly disclose your relationship with the publishers of the handbook, and then we can talk about next steps. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 20:08, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Reply to conflict of interest

Good morning. Yes, I am affiliated with the Australian Medicines Handbook. I am disappointed to hear that I have violated content policy. This page was set up by another AMH affiliate in the past without proper thought, and over time became inaccurate and out of date. I was in fact hoping to have the page removed so that there would be no issue at all but this was not allowed for speed deletion. It was to be considered for normal deletion but I don't know where this process is. I agree that Wikipedia should not have commercial content and I believe our page should not exist at all. Thank you for your comment. Harmonicapedia (talk) 23:14, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks very much for replying! We can talk about the article in a bit, but let's get you oriented first, OK?

There are two steps to COI management in Wikipedia. The first is disclosure. To finish that, would you please post a disclosure on your Userpage (User:Harmonicapedia, a redlink, since you haven't written anything there yet)? Something simple like "I am affiliated with the Australian Medicines Handbook and have a conflict of interest with regard to that topic" would be fine. (Userpages are for telling other Wikipedians what you are up to here. Pls see WP:Userpage if you want to learn more about how to use your Userpage).

I added a tag at Talk:Australian Medicines Handbook , so the disclosure is done there. Once you disclose on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done.

The second step of the COI mangement process is a form of peer review. This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and viola 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 as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:Australian Medicines Handbook - 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).

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where a company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content.

Will you please agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the Australian Medicines Handbook 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 you know how things work and what kind of proposals will fly, I can do that. Just let me know. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 00:23, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

No worries at all. I am more than happy to get direction on getting this sorted. Clearly, I am not an experienced Wikipedia editor and because I thought I was doing some simple tidy up work, didn't appreciate the issues you have raised. I am more than happy to agree with your recommendations; and want to thank you for your time in both setting up some things for me; and the helpful links, information and background. I will aim to tidy things up as recommended in the next day or so.

And I am also happy to get further advice should you think it helpful. Thanks again. Harmonicapedia (talk) 03:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

OK, how about starting with posting a simple disclosure like "I am affiliated with the Australian Medicines Handbook and have a conflict of interest with regard to that topic" on your userpage User:Harmonicapedia? Part of the "rules" here is that nobody touches that page but you or an administrator. Jytdog (talk) 04:12, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I have added the disclosure as suggested to User:Harmonicapedia. Certainly, if there is any content of substance to be added/deleted in the future I will follow the process as suggested above. Thanks Harmonicapedia (talk) 01:03, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

You are welcome - thanks for making the disclosure. I am in the process of looking at the article and it may be deletable.. it is definitely improvable. In the meantime, I'll post my mini guide to WP below.. Jytdog (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Harmonicapedia (talk) 04:28, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

How this place works

OK, this will get you oriented to how this place works, and to the key policies and guidelines. It is as brief as I can make it...

The first thing, is that our mission is to produce articles that provide readers with encyclopedia 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. 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 meta-discussions that have happened in the past. The results of those past meta-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
• 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 reliable sources say - we follow them in this too. So again, you can see how everything comes down to references.
• 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.
• WP:DR - if you get into an content dispute with someone, try to work it out on the article 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.
• WP:TPG - this is about how to talk to other editors on Talk pages, like this one, or say Talk:Australian Medicines Handbook ‎. 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. Jytdog (talk) 17:45, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, this has been very useful Harmonicapedia (talk) 05:44, 23 June 2016 (UTC)