User:DoriSmith/onCOI

You're probably here because I reverted an edit of yours, you wanted to know why, and I pointed you here. Thanks for following my link!

Hopefully, one of these might answer your question.

What is a Conflict of Interest anyway?

Wikipedia has a number of policies, guidelines, and essays about Conflict of Interest. Here are some I highly recommend reading:

• Guidelines
  • Conflict of interest
  • FAQ/Organizations
• Essays
  • Suggestions for COI compliance
  • Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
  • Not a noticeboard
  • Writing about subjects close to you (part of a larger essay: On notability)
  • How Wikipedia's COI policy applies (part of a larger essay: An article about yourself is nothing to be proud of)

How did you see my edit?

Certain edits are automatically tagged by the MediaWiki software. Here's the list of current tags and what causes them to be triggered. Anyone can search for particular tags in recently made edits.

Me, I keep an eye on this particular list. If you follow that link, you'll see that all the edits included on that page are tagged "possible conflict of interest." That's because the MediaWiki software saw that, as part of your edit, you included your username somewhere in the article.

That is, if I added a reference to dorismith.com to an article, that edit would be flagged as a "possible conflict of interest." And y'know what? The MediaWiki software would be right—if I did add a link to dorismith.com, it would be a conflict of interest. And anyone who came across it would be right to revert my edit. In fact, they should, because if I did add that to a page, it would mean I'd broken WP's rules on COI.

Chances are that you're here because you made just that kind of edit.

Now what?

Option 1: Don't do it.

Really, that's my #1 recommendation.

If your resource is so amazing that it should be added to Wikipedia, chances are good that someone else—someone unrelated to you/your company/your town/your client—will add it.

Option 2: If you have to do something…

• Post something on the article's talk page saying, "Hey, I'm affiliated with x, but I really think that x should be added to this article. What do y'all think?"
• Wait.
• If someone agrees, they can add it to the article. If no one agrees, they won't. If there are multiple points of view, then a discussion can take place until there's a consensus—but whatever happens, you aren't the one adding it to the article, so there's no COI issue.

Option 3: Take it to COIN

If you think I'm off-base on all the above, well, that's as may be. In that case, what you probably want to do is bring that up at the Conflict of interest/Noticeboard, aka "COIN." Create a new section there, explain the issue, and see what other editors have to say.

But what about…?

This isn't an all-encompassing list, and I may not have answered all your questions (yet!). Please feel free to add them to the talk page, and I'll see what I can come up with.