User talk:Alcoa

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Hi, this is Alcoa's Corporate user account. It's managed by

Brad Fisher Alcoa Corporate Communications 412-553-2769

editor@alcoa.com

[edit] COI

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia!

I hope not to seem unfriendly or make you feel unwelcome, but I noticed your username, and I am concerned that it might not meet Wikipedia's username policy. After you look over that policy, could we discuss that concern here?

I'd appreciate learning your own views, for instance your reasons for wanting this particular name, and what alternative username you might accept that avoids raising this concern.

You have several options freely available to you:

Thank you. --Ronz 18:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

  1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,
  2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors,
  3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);
    and you must always:
  4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you. --Ronz 18:11, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


My choice of the name 'Alcoa' is an attempt to be as transparent as possible. Alcoa has an interest in the accuracy of the Alcoa article, and I chose this account as way of offering data sources that the other editors may not be aware of to keep things as accurate as possible -- the capacities of our smelters for example, or where the company started, or the status of our offer for Alcan.

Our (my) policy is generally not to edit the article directly, but to offer inputs in the discussion section and let other editors decide what to do. This has worked pretty well most of the time. I've found that by sticking to data and facts, and leaving the editorial decisions up to the community, usually the facts see the light of day and that's great.

To me the name Alcoa is appropriate for this process -- sort of a 'caveat editor' message. But if you think it violates the name policy (as a 'promotional' name, I suppose), feel free to suggest something else that fits the guidelines. I have no problem changing it.

Brad

Alcoa 18:01, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'll add here that I just reviewed the COI policy and understand a little more where your concern comes from. To reassure you, we don't intend to monitor or participate in any Wikipedia entries other than the Alcoa main article and any others that may be about one of Alcoa's businesses or plants. We're not, in other words, out to make 'expert' edits to other Wikipedia articles and plaster the Alcoa name all over the site.

As I've already said, we don't intend to do any direct editing to Alcoa content, except in an extreme case such as obvious vandalism (that's happened once recently.) Our contributions will be fact-based, and made to the discussion section.

We also understand that the notion of contributing facts to an editorial discussion can sometimes stray into the area of promoting a point of view. We expect to be challenged if and when that happens in discussions about Alcoa, and we expect the community to be the final judge. Again, that's where the choice of the name 'Alcoa' came from. It's a way of saying, this is the corporation talking, judge what we're saying by that yardstick.

Alcoa 17:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)