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WWB Too (talk·contribs) has been paid by Beutler Ink on behalf of Glover Park Group.
A fact from The Glover Park Group appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 February 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that a distilled beverage – Smirnoff vodka – was featured in an American television commercial for the first time in decades in a spot produced by The Glover Park Group?
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Skirting controversy is a very unwise editing practice. No mention of these and (potentially) other controversial aspects? No research into the key employees etc., looking for potential problems? Tsk tsk. This is editing 101. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 02:01, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ling.Nut3, I'm the COI writer primarily responsible for this entry. Since you ask, there actually was more information about key employees in my original draft, however it was removed by the editor who moved it, who felt it was "excessive" information. As the moving editor commented, "while not perfect, it's plenty good enough for mainspace and future iterative editing". If you have any reliably-supported information to add, I'd welcome it. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 12:54, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In general, controversies should be noted. This is simply standard editing. the case here is even more concentrated on this issue, due to its apparent creation by wikiproject coop or whomever... If you're a COI editor then you should should make it standard operating procedure to proactively and aggressively hunt for controversy via in-depth research every time you create an article. You should hold yourself to a stricter standard than usually obtains, since the soul of COI violations is the elision or downplay of controversy. [Perhaps I should say something like this on the WPs talk page.] Ling.Nut3 (talk) 13:33, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as the "editor who moved it", Ling.Nut3, you're wrong. WP:BURDENalways falls on the person wanting to add information. No one is obligated to do any searching for "controversies." This applies whether they have a COI, whether personally "like" something and want to leave it untarnished, whether they don't have access to certain sources, or whether they just don't care enough to research the info. The only possible claim you could have against WWB Too is if the information is easily and readily available, and WWB Too regularly ignores such information, then we might be concerned. I just did a quick news search (as someone who couldn't care less about whether the Group makes a trillion dollars or goes bankrupt), and didn't find anything on Colombia particularly worthy of inclusion in a WP article, other than to note that Colombia is one of their clients. So if you've got some sourced info that you think belongs in the article and it meets WP:UNDUE, bring it up here. Heck, add it directly to the article per WP:BRD. But if all you want to do is disparage a good editor, well...your comment on User Talk:WWB Too already says that you know where that path leads. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:17, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
[The controversial fact about their work for Colombia is that... people published opinions against it... ditto ethanol...there may be more; I only spent a few minutes looking]... But.. Perhaps I have misunderstood the case... I am under the impression that this article presents a special case. I am under the impression that a company, or someone paid by a company, wanted info about that company added to Wikipedia. Somehow or other wp coop got involved, and either added the relevant info or guided its addition. Here's what I am saying about that case: if editors from wp coop take it upon themselves to serve as intermediaries between Wikipedia and some company by adding info or guiding its addition, then those editors are bound by WP:BURDEN and by best practice to work for the best interest of Wikipedia rather than the company (or themselves). In particular, they are bound by best practice to aggressively and proactively search for controversial aspects, and to ensure that those are included, if the facts rise to the (extremely low!) standards for inclusion on Wikipedia. If editors do not follow this practice then they are merely functioning as enablers (in the negative sense). In short, they should work for the best interests of the encyclopedia rather than the company (of course!)... Mildly off-topic, I strongly doubt that many (if any) paid editors would agressively search for controversy. That is why their COI-ness is so deeply troubling to me.... That is speaking generally. As for this article, I have mentioned Colombia and ethanol. If you don't want to add them (or if you can argue persuasively that they do not rise to the levels of inclusion, as you have suggested above), then don't add them. I will not add them. I am completely burned out on edit wars. Cheers. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 08:43, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as you can infer from my comments above, I fundamentally disagree with your position on COI editors and the Wikiproject. I don't think any editor ever should specifically go out looking controversial information on a subject; our job is not to dig up dirt, but to create encyclopedic overviews of subject. Should that include controversy, then it should go in; but if you're specifically searching out controversy, then you're liking violating NPOV. In any event, this is probably a discussion better suited to another page (such as one of the several venues currently debating paid editing on WP). Qwyrxian (talk) 14:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.
Hello there; small request here from somebody advising the firm on Wikipedia issues—the company's URL has changed from www.gloverparkgroup.com to simply gpg.com (with no www necessary). There are three places in the current article where this should be updated: two in the infobox, one in External links. Since I make a point of avoiding direct edits to pages where I have a financial COI, would someone be willing to make these simple updates? Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 14:07, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Glover Park Group is a media company, and so, it is sensitive to public perception. It's logical that Glover Park Group would possibly edit out any criticism of their company on Wikipedia. They is a lot of criticism of them on the internet, being a lobbying group, serving special interests, and their anti-ethanol campaign, as portrayed in the movie Pump (film) (2014). Most Wikipedia pages contain criticism articles under titles like "Criticism", "Controversy", or "Scandals", but not this page. It's easy for anyone to delete parts of Wikipedia articles. Please add a criticism article for this page too. No business or person is perfect, and certainly not lobbyists and ad men. If you Google search "Glover Park Group ethanol", you get 9,280 results. Many of these results are news articles from the biggest newspapers.
I have removed the conflict of interest tag as the connection has been declared by the COI editor since 2012 on both article talk page and user page. The concerns behind adding this maintenance tag was presumably about possible cleanup of the article, which makes this tag redundant with the neutrality tag.
Going through the article, the lede and operations looks fine to me, although I am concerned about excessive mention of names throughout the article. I have removed the firm’s marketing practice focuses on corporate reputation and branding for companies and non-profits. in the following section, as it was quoted directly from GPG, misrepresenting the source.
There are many potential overlaps between Operations and Areas of Business. I would prefer to see these two sections merged, and extraneous information deleted as it is unnecessary to list every single business operations the firm have taken.
I have removed the Awards and recognition section as it is not justified. I fail to see how any of these awards are notable.
The Criticism section is unreferenced and needs expansion. Alex Shih (talk) 19:09, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's all from me now. Pinging WWB Too, the connected contributor to this article. Alex Shih (talk) 19:11, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
