Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard

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This Conflict of interest/Noticeboard (COIN) page is for determining whether a specific editor has a conflict of interest (COI) for a specific article and whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Conflict of Interest guideline. A conflict of interest may occur when an editor has a close personal or business connection with article topics. Post here if you are concerned that an editor has a COI, and is using Wikipedia to promote their own interests at the expense of neutrality. For content disputes, try proposing changes at the article talk page first and otherwise follow the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution procedural policy.

When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page.
You may use {{subst:COIN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.

Additional notes:
  • This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue, such as when an editor has repeatedly added problematic material over an extended period.
  • Do not post personal information about other editors here without their permission. Non-public evidence of a conflict of interest can be emailed to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org for review by a functionary. If in doubt, you can contact an individual functionary or the Arbitration Committee privately for advice.
  • The COI guideline does not absolutely prohibit people with a connection to a subject from editing articles on that subject. Editors who have such a connection can still comply with the COI guideline by discussing proposed article changes first, or by making uncontroversial edits. COI allegations should not be used as a "trump card" in disputes over article content. However, paid editing without disclosure is prohibited. Consider using the template series {{Uw-paid1}} through {{Uw-paid4}}.
  • Your report or advice request regarding COI incidents should include diff links and focus on one or more items in the COI guideline. In response, COIN may determine whether a specific editor has a COI for a specific article. There are three possible outcomes to your COIN request:
1. COIN consensus determines that an editor has a COI for a specific article. In response, the relevant article talk pages may be tagged with {{Connected contributor}}, the article page may be tagged with {{COI}} (with an explanation on the article's talk page), and/or the user may be warned via {{subst:uw-coi|Article}}, if not already done.
2. COIN consensus determines that an editor does not have a COI for a specific article. In response, editors should refrain from further accusing that editor of having a conflict of interest. Feel free to repost at COIN if additional COI evidence comes to light that was not previously addressed.
3. There is no COIN consensus. Here, Lowercase sigmabot III will automatically archive the thread when it is older than 14 days.
  • Once COIN declares that an editor has a COI for a specific article, COIN (or a variety of other noticeboards) may be used to determine whether an edit by a COIN-declared COI editor meets a requirement of the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guideline.
To begin a new discussion, enter the name of the relevant article below:

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Help answer requested edits
Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests is where COI editors have placed the {{edit COI}} template:
Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests

Katarzyna Nowak

All of editor's contributions are to this single article. Continued addition of less-than-neutral material which suggests a potential conflict of interest, including addition of information without sourcing: , , ,

Addition of material after removal due to neutrality and lack of sourcing: ,

No response on user's talk page when asked twice about potential conflict of interest. I added COI template to user talk page on 1:13 27Feb2026, editor made 5 more edits to the Nowak page between 14:51-15:13 later that day. I asked another question about COI on user talk page 22:03 27Feb2026, and then editor made 4 more edits to the Nowak page between 7:17-7:23 01Mar2026. Not sure where to go from here, as the editor seems unwilling to engage in talk page conversation. Jiltedsquirrel 🌰 (talk || contribs) 18:42, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Similar content added by ~2026-13988-12 (talk · contribs). I have requested page protection. Tacyarg (talk) 10:37, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

William Peace University

PopeWikiEditsP has repeatedly made blatantly promotional edits to William Peace University. They have been warned on their Talk page by two different editors. They likely have a paid relationship with the college; I will not say exactly why I make that assertion but I am confident that anyone else can come to the same conclusion. It may also be helpful to note that they began editing four days after User:WPeaceEdu1857 was blocked. ElKevbo (talk) 05:17, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Suggested COIREQ on talk Czarking0 (talk) 15:31, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
User:WPeaceEdu1857 was soft-blocked for their username alone, so socking is not a concern. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:08, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Jethro Sheeran

This editor is a WP:SPA for Jethro Sheeran. I asked them in March last year not to edit the article again before replying to the question about whether they have a conflict of interest. They have recently edited the article again, adding some unsourced information which I wonder how they know if they are not connected to Sheeran. Tacyarg (talk) 11:22, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I reverted back to the last version prior to all the recent edits. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 14:07, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Tim Dawson

At BLP/N the editor BLPcorrection9274739 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) identified himself as Tim Dawson and asked for specific changes to his Wikipedia bio page. While some of these changes were appropriate, one of them was the removal of material from the article lead that associated him with Brexit. This was problematic because it would be a violation of WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY - Mr. Dawson is well-known for his pro-Brexit activism and, even if he would prefer that be less emphasized, it does support material which was present in the article. I said as much and watch-listed the article making a single edit here in the process. Shortly thereafter a temporary account ~2026-13786-81 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) began editing the Tim Dawson article with their first edit being the removal of the information from the lead with the edit summary Removing abuse and updating credentials in line with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. I restored it, providing the justification that it was adhering to Leadfollowsbody and then, the same temporary account manually reverted it with the misleading edit summary Addition of Dawson's additional work . This temporary account went on to make several other changes to the Dawson article that had a non-neutral tone and introduced a lot of relatively personal but inconsequential biographical information such as Mr. Dawson's love of dogs. . I suspect WP:LOUT. I have notified both accounts. Simonm223 (talk) 20:07, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

I trimmed a bunch of the non-consequential stuff, and added back the Guardian article and discussion. I also edited the intro, referring to pro-Brexit advocacy, which seems a good balance. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
We must, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, assume that these are not the same person.
BLPcorrection9274739 has not breached our policy; and indeed has acted exactly as we ask article subjects to act. The TA has been reported here with no prior attempt to discuss the matter and with no notification of our CoI policy (as indeed has BLPcorrection9274739; I have now left a notice on each of their talk pages). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:01, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
The complaint at the BLP noticeboard started by BLPcorrection9274739 ended on March 3. The thread is now archived but can be seen at this link. In my personal opinion the Dawson article is now reasonably neutral and does not suffer from any BLP violations or unresolved COI. EdJohnston (talk) 21:19, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Richie Sanders -- undisclosed COI with GoFlightMedicine.com (commercial HIMS AME medical practice)

User:Richie Sanders has 26 total edits since account creation in July 2014. The account's editing pattern consists almost entirely of adding citations and content linking to goflightmedicine.com, a commercial aviation medical practice operated by Dr. Rocky Jedick that offers HIMS Aviation Medical Examiner services.

A LinkSearch for goflightmedicine.com returns 18 results across Wikipedia. The following articles edited by this account currently contain or previously contained goflightmedicine.com citations: G-force, G-LOC, Tarnak Farm incident, Flight surgeon, Patient safety, Tenerife airport disaster, Aviation medicine, Airborne collision avoidance system, Spatial disorientation, Sensory illusions in aviation, 1999 Martha's Vineyard plane crash, and Aviation medical examiner.

On 27 February 2026, the account edited Human Intervention Motivation Study (diff) to add a goflightmedicine.com citation and content not supported by the cited page. The account also added goflightmedicine.com citations to Aviation medical examiner in 2021 (diff). I reverted the HIMS edit and removed the AME citations as well, replacing one with an FAA.gov source. I left a detailed explanation on their talk page on 6 March 2026. No response as of 8 March 2026.

The editor also received a copyright notice in July 2014 related to their edit to G-force -- the same article where a goflightmedicine.com citation appears. LumenStoneEditor (talk) 07:28, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Pretty clear WP:REFSPAM, I removed two other uses. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 13:25, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Following the initial report and BubbaJoe123456's removal of two links, a systematic cleanup has been completed. All 14 remaining article-space links to goflightmedicine.com have been removed from the following articles:

G-LOC – replaced with Burton 1988 (PMID 3281645)

G-force – replaced with existing Burton ref

Tarnak Farm incident – removed (dead link)

Tenerife airport disaster – removed (dead link)

Pilot error – removed (dead link)

List of terrorist incidents in 1977 – removed (dead link)

Hypoxia (medicine) – replaced with Burton 1988

Sensory illusions in aviation – replaced with NTSB report NYC99MA178

1999 Martha's Vineyard plane crash – replaced with existing NTSB ref

Spatial disorientation – replaced with FAA brochure and existing NTSB ref

Flight surgeon – removed (dead link, unsourced claim)

Aviation medicine – replaced with existing Dehart textbook ref

Airborne collision avoidance system – removed (dead link)

The LinkSearch for goflightmedicine.com now returns only 2 results: a Reference Desk archive and a user sandbox, both of which are non-article spaces and can be left in place.

All removals were made with edit summaries referencing WP:REFSPAM and the COIN discussion. LumenStoneEditor (talk) 21:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, good work. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:06, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

New editor asking if they can pay someone

You can just talk to this obviously new editor and ask them about their COI instead of dragging them to a noticeboard. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:30, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clover92 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Not entirely sure if this is the right noticeboard for this, but I was just asked the following by a new editor:

is there anyone I can pay to verify my public testimony /contributions to laws
— Diff/1342597346

This came after I reverted an LLM-generated edit, and subsequently gave them a level 1 warning for LLM use and left a welcome message on their talk page. --Gurkubondinn (talk) 21:28, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fotoguru / Aptera (solar electric vehicle)

Previous discussions:

Aptera has been getting a lot of press lately because they went public in October 2025 (Nasdaq: SEV) and completed production vehicle #1 on March 3 2026 (7 days ago).

Fotoguru edits mostly on the topic of the Aptera solar electric vehicle, which they are an investor in. Pretty much all of the edits that are not about Aptera are about solar vehicle technologies and other solar vehicles. Their edits are often fine, but sometimes are promotional.. The COI notice that they put an their user page does not reveal the investment and basically claims that they have no COI.

In my opinion, Fotoguru should be required to disclose their investment and COI. I am undecided as to whether they should be allowed to make direct edits on the topic of Aptera. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

As you point out and reference, I've already disclosed my interest and small investment in Aptera Motors, as I'm a strong believer in clean energy and efficient use of it. At your request I've also now repeated that information it on my user page. Good enough? Fotoguru (talk) 20:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
That's certainly good enough for me. I think a sincere promise to avoid being overly promotional regarding Aptera will most likely satisfy everyone here. There are actually a lot of positive things to say -- getting useful range from solar cells is quite a technical achievement -- but those sources that talk about them spending years attracting investments and not actually selling vehicles are also an important part of the story. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:04, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Langley Blaze

COI user pblocked from the article. Cabayi (talk) 10:29, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User confirmed as an employee of Langley Blaze on their talk page. Despite numerous warnings for both COI and edit contents, continues directly making COI edits to Langley Blaze, many of them are improperly sourced and don't follow WP guidelines. I suggest blocking them from directly editing the Langley Blaze page, since warnings clearly don't work and they should submit edit requests instead of editing directly. 🍅 fx (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

This is untrue. I very much wish I could speak to someone. At the end of the day, over the past few days we have had people adding information that while sourced, is untrue. The last couple of posts that I have done, I have properly sourced the information. For example, from Baseball Reference, MLB.com, etc. The information that I have added today is 100$ correct. LangleyBlazeSP (talk) 21:35, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

It seems this issue has been resolved through positive engagement and a proper declaration. signed, Willondon (talk) 00:17, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Am I allowed to delete the following from the page?
An editor has nominated this article for deletion.
You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion, which will decide whether to keep it.
Feel free to improve the article, but do not remove this notice before the discussion is closed. For more information, see the guide to deletion. LangleyBlazeSP (talk) 00:20, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
No. It clearly states do not remove this notice before the discussion is closed. The discussion is still ongoing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Langley Blaze. You are welcome to participate. -- Pemilligan (talk) 00:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
As I understand it, the protocol is that an uninvolved editor that hasn't participated in edits or the discussions will officially close it. Then the notices are removed. signed, Willondon (talk) 00:44, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

PredMarkWik

PredMarkWik (talk · contribs) has been repeatedly adding links to various Prediction Market wikis on several articles. Their only other changes have been some miscellaneous "cleanups" (eg. converting double spaces to single spaces) that weren't meaningful contributions. The initial links were being added to External Links sections, and now are being included as dubious citations. There has been some discussion on Talk:Polymarket#Proposed_external_link:_Polyguana and their talk page, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in conversation, and it's spread across enough articles that discussing it on each talk page seems difficult.

Based on the account's name and the singular focus of their edits, I am strongly suspicious that this account has a conflict of interest with the linked prediction market wikis.

For whatever it's worth, I also have some suspicions that the user is an AI. Their contributions have been highly repetitive and have sometimes involved adding duplicates of the same text repeatedly across multiple changes, for example .

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, I wasn't entirely sure but it seemed like the correct place.

Gbear605 (talk) 03:16, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Good place to bring it to start, thanks for posting. I share your concerns. I reverted the remaining wiki additions this article has made, and left a warning on the user's talk page, we'll see how things progress. If the behavior continues, best approach would probably to start a thread at WP:ANI, best way to get an admin to block this account if necessary. I'll keep an eye on them. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 12:37, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Took a further look at the account's edit history, and it looks like they made a dozen or so single character edits (removing double spaces and the like) to get over the ten edit requirement to become autoconfirmed and be able to directly publish the Hyperliquid article without going through AFC. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Definitely looks like a bot programmed to spam these .wiki links. Looks like COI to me. --FeldBum (talk) 16:18, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I want to AGF, but my Spidey Sense is definitely tingling. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I agree with "looks like a bot programmed to spam these .wiki links. Looks like COI to me" ---Avatar317(talk) 00:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

CommunicationsExpert1992

Blocked for UPE. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The user CommunicationsExpert1992 has only edited one article, Onex Corporation, mainly updating the company's financials. They have not declared any conflict of interest or disclsed paid editing. They were notified with {{uw-coi}} after their first edits in July 2022, and then {{uw-paid1}} on March 13 2026 immediately after which they continued editing; not responding to either notification. -Consigned (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

COI, UPE or block evasion

Per the instructions above: "This page should only be used when ordinary talk page discussion has been attempted and failed to resolve the issue, such as when an editor has repeatedly added problematic material over an extended period." You didn't discuss this with the editor before coming here. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:14, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The pages Satish Kandlikar, Grover Swartzlander, Jie Qiao, Draft:David Messinger have all been created by the same IP in the last few days. The are all associated with Rochester Institute of Technology. Other edits by the same IP are also connected to the same university. This appears to be a strong indicator of COI, possible UPE or even block evasion. I will put a notice on the IPs page, I do not see how that can do anything, but I might be wrong. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:48, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I used to attend RIT, and knew another student that worked with Satish Kandlikar. I don't know Dr. K personally though at all. I just read that if an academic is a fellow in an important area, they are notable, so I wanted to create some articles. ~2026-14941-00 (talk) 20:01, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edits by Prime Media Group, a PR firm

The user appears to work for or run the PR firm Prime Media Group. The pianist Aleph is a client of Prime Media Group. So is SCOA, the trucking company owned by Massad Boulos. Thenightaway (talk) 22:26, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

How do you know this? 331dot (talk) 22:48, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
I don't know how specific I can be without outing the user's real identity. Thenightaway (talk) 23:22, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
Please send it to the email address described at WP:REPORTPAID. 331dot (talk) 23:24, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

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