User talk:Ukwikiedit
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[edit]Hello, Ukwikiedit, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.
I noticed that one of the first articles you edited appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.
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before the question. Again, welcome! Girth Summit (blether) 11:19, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
- User:Girth Summit, please see their recent edits. I think the COI is pretty clear. Drmies (talk) 18:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Drmiesnad Girth Summit. We have updated the business numbers for 2023 as we have them available on an official press release, we have made only minor edits to the page to reflect the latest organisation updates yet it is reverted back to a previous state from 2020. Could you please explain why to helps us understand why a 2020 version with outdated information is preferable - we are happy to abide by Wikipedia rules but need some help on what is wrong here - we are really careful to not add promotional content and keep it factual and up to date - thank you for your guidance. Ukwikiedit (talk) 18:25, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- Have you read the guidance I provided back in 2021? If not, start here: WP:COI. Your next step is to explain why you are using plurals to talk about yourself, and explaining what your relationship with the subject of that article is. Once you have made those disclosures, we can talk about next steps. Don't edit the article again until you have done so. Girth Summit (blether) 22:43, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- There is no "we" here--you are clearly speaking for the company. Information in an article with which you have a COI should NEVER be cited just by press releases. No, you are NOT abiding by Wikipedia's rules, or you would have addressed the conflict of interest. In addition, what you should not do is simply revert an editor, especially not when I explained just about every single edit I made--and you explained nothing. Drmies (talk) 03:31, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Girth Summit, I don't know if you hang around at AN, but Uncle G posted this diff there--and I have children older than that diff. It's very applicable here. Drmies (talk) 03:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello @Drmies and @Girth Summit, firstly and most importantly I would like to apologise for any offence to either of you, and for any mistakes we have made on these updates. When I refer to 'we', I mean me and another user @Alex Bock 76 - and yes, we are employees from the company BearingPoint. Again, sorry if we got things wrong in our attempt to update the page details.
- We have not tried to hide our input onto this page, so have always made changes while logged in and kept all updates to specific factual content such as business numbers, turnover, leadership members, historic acquisitions assuming these details are OK. The user @Alex Bock 76 has always attempted to put reasons for changes in as well, to be transparent - but I did not in my 'undos', sorry.
- We always saw our updates to be a simple maintenance of the page and our contribution to wikipedia, but seeing we have some details wrong such as using our own press releases we will only complete updates now when we have third party sources or our own - The Uncle G article is very good, thank you.
- We had read the COI page before, but I must admit we didn't get the details right - and thought limited use of PR articles was OK for details only we have but in reflection of the Uncle G article I can see it is not - thanks @Girth Summit (also what is AN?). Is our Annual Report seen in the same way? I assume so but would like to check? In addition we will note on our user pages our COI towards this page so we are further transparent and abiding by the rules - I hope that is correct?
- Finally, can we revert back to the version of this page from 3 days ago, before we made these edits and we will take the wikipedia training course before we make any future updates. Would that be OK, and would you be OK to revert it - I dont want to do this and cause any more problems?
- The version of the page now has quite a lot of incorrect information, so again, we hope you can help us get it to a better state for wikipedia, and thank you for your time on this.
- A big thank you for all your help, and the guiding articles, it really helps!
- Chris & Alex from BearingPoint. Ukwikiedit (talk) 09:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello @Drmies and @Girth Summit, I just want to connect with you as I am the main updater for facts and figures from BearingPoint. I've added the COI statement to my profile as suggested by you. I also would like to point out that I always used my real name and also my Bearingpoint email adress when updateing on Wikipedia, so I never tried to mask that I'm not a BearingPoint employee. I (incorrectly) thought using my real name and BearingPoint email adress is sufficient. I also would like to underline that my edits are simply to keep the Wikipedia page up-to-date and correct. I also stated where my sources come from. I did not know that it is not allowed to refer to official press releases. However, there are also third party articles about our business that can be used. My concern now is that the page is in-accurate as it was reverted back to some years ago. So if you could help us in getting this updated again it would be really appreciated. Thank you very much, Alex Alex Bock 76 (talk) 12:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- As both of you are employees of the company you are writing about, the paid editing policy (which forms part of the terms of use of this website) applies to both of you. You can read more about that at WP:PAID. Please ensure that you adhere to the guidance in that policy very closely.
- One of the problems with writing about a subject that you are connected to is that it is difficult for you to be objective; this is particularly true when you are accustomed to writing in a style different from encyclopaedic tone we strive for. Having had a quick glance at the version that Drmies reverted back from, I would say that in my view (as someone who has never heard of this company and has no interest in it) it was excessively promotional. Frankly, I think it still is, even in its reverted state. I see marketing-style jargon like 'strategic alliances', and puffy PR-speak like 'providing leadership stability and continuity'. That is just not how encyclopaedias are written. The article would probably benefit from a substantial amount of pruning, but for now I'll suggest this: going forward, don't edit the article directly, use edit requests instead so that an uninvolved party can vet your changes. Don't try to add anything that isn't supported by a reliable source. If it hasn't been mentioned by a reliable independent, secondary source, it's probably not worth including in the article. Thank you. Girth Summit (blether) 14:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you @Girth Summit, and I understand your comments. Could I ask if there are any reliable editors, partners or contacts that we could work on our page with, in exactly this encyclopaedia style?
- The reason we would be interested in this is that it is very 2002-2009 heavy and almost no content from 2009-2024 which is not reflective of the business for a large section of its history.
- I just ask because we would be happy to see a correct, and balanced page, but I think we need an independent third party to do this in a proper way - so we dont make the mistakes you mention - is that possible and an OK thing to do?
- Again, thank you for your guidance, it is appreciated. Ukwikiedit (talk) 14:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello @Drmies and @Girth Summit, I just want to connect with you as I am the main updater for facts and figures from BearingPoint. I've added the COI statement to my profile as suggested by you. I also would like to point out that I always used my real name and also my Bearingpoint email adress when updateing on Wikipedia, so I never tried to mask that I'm not a BearingPoint employee. I (incorrectly) thought using my real name and BearingPoint email adress is sufficient. I also would like to underline that my edits are simply to keep the Wikipedia page up-to-date and correct. I also stated where my sources come from. I did not know that it is not allowed to refer to official press releases. However, there are also third party articles about our business that can be used. My concern now is that the page is in-accurate as it was reverted back to some years ago. So if you could help us in getting this updated again it would be really appreciated. Thank you very much, Alex Alex Bock 76 (talk) 12:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Drmiesnad Girth Summit. We have updated the business numbers for 2023 as we have them available on an official press release, we have made only minor edits to the page to reflect the latest organisation updates yet it is reverted back to a previous state from 2020. Could you please explain why to helps us understand why a 2020 version with outdated information is preferable - we are happy to abide by Wikipedia rules but need some help on what is wrong here - we are really careful to not add promotional content and keep it factual and up to date - thank you for your guidance. Ukwikiedit (talk) 18:25, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Well, "We have not tried to hide..."--neither of you followed through on the COI guidelines and provided a "disclaimer" until the issue was brought to a point, here. I think both of you thought of Wikipedia as just another website and didn't take the "encyclopedia" part too seriously; it wouldn't be the first time, and Girth Summit and I deal with such issues every day. Just to reiterate: we are here to provide properly verified and relevant information on all kinds of things; we are not an outlet or a database or a Rolodex for companies to advertise themselves on. Asking for "reliable editors" etc--I'm not quite sure how to take that. If you want to pay someone to do it, you could ask User:CorporateM (Corp, do I get a cut?). Better yet, you could look at the articles they have worked on (look at their user page) to see how things should be done, in terms of language and sourcing. Drmies (talk) 15:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Drmies I've no doubt you come across many bad actors on a daily basis and it must be very frustrating, but I want to appeal to you that we've simply got this wrong over a period of time, are trying to make amends, and have good intentions (even if we executed those intentions poorly). For every bad actor, there can also be well intentioned people that get things wrong - to you Wikipedia is probably really simple, but for us we find it quite difficult and have made mistakes, which we can see.
- In our interactions we have asked what to do, implemented changes, sometimes been slower to realise 100% what should have happened, apologised where we made mis-steps and are focussed on making our page better, not just for ourselves (but acknowledge our COI and now also our paid conflict) but also for other people on Wikipedia who would like to know more about BearingPoint. We do intend on making this and our efforts on Wikipedia better.
- I'm also happy to explain the intention of our query around third party help, as it has many aspects -
- 1) we would really like a better BearingPoint page - but we are now extremely cautious not to make more mistakes
- 2) we always thought you could not pay someone to edit a Wikipedia page, but the article on Paid services from @Girth Summit made me think, so I thought why not ask?
- 3) We've had approaches for years from dodgy seeming Wikipedia editing companies and wanted to make sure if we did use someone to help us - and it seems we need some help - then we better get this right
- 4) we see this as perhaps going some way to correcting some of our mistakes on the page in a more professional way. In terms of payment, yes, we would be OK to pay and have always been happy to spend effort on Wikipedia - we really like the platform and are users of Wikipedia as well.
- Perhaps we should not have asked, but wanted to check your professional advice while we were talking, and didn't mean anything in a 'wrong way'.
- I hope that you and @Girth Summit can accept our apologies, even though we got things wrong.
- We'd be happy to speak with @CorporateM and see if this is something we could work towards... and start to become better users of Wikipedia.
- Thanks again,
- Chris and Alex. Ukwikiedit (talk) 17:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
- Sure, and of course you can ask me. One thing, though, first of all--sign as yourself, not as two people: accounts are for one individual. Thanks. Also, if you really want this to work, go have a look at the articles that CorpM got promoted to GA status: the best first step in learning this is seeing what good articles (or Good Articles) look like. Drmies (talk) 17:16, 27 February 2024 (UTC)