This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 15 |
On Tuesday, BP announced its Quarter 4 and full year 2012 results, which provide new figures for a few of the details in the article's infobox. Not all of the financial information in the infobox is included in these results, however I intend to provide updates for the remaining figures when the company's 2012 Annual Report is released.
For the infobox a couple of financial figures can be updated with information from the 4th Quarter and full year results announced. I have provided new figures and citations below:
References
Would someone be able to make these updates?
I've also noticed that the Financial data section in the article has not been kept up to date, if others think that this should be retained and updated, I can look at filling in the information for the missing years. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 16:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for making these changes, Drm310. It would also be helpful to get your feedback on a suggested restructure of the "Environmental record" and "Accidents" sections, if you have time to take a look. You can read the discussion so far, here and see the proposed structure in draft form here. The discussion has come to a stop right now, so I would really appreciate your thoughts and see if we can come to a resolution. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 18:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph about the Caspian incident added recently without any discussion. Reasons for this are:
Beagel ( talk) 06:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
I saw a request about BP at COIN. [1] This article and the proposed draft has way too many subsections. The trouble with creating a significant number of subsections is that is severs the information from context so as to give more importance to the subsection information than the collective of reliable source information would suggest. It also diminishes the importance to other issues given by the collective of reliable source information. It further creates a situation where Wikipedia editors do not have to make the hard choices of what to include in the article to present a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature such that the article grows in size almost without bounds. To me, the accidents are part of BPs history and should be intertwined at least with its history. There is no actual 2013 "record" specifying BPs environmental record so it does not make sense to have a main subsection dedicated to environmental record in the same way you might create a corporate affairs main subsection to describe BPs present corporate affairs. BPs environmental record is part of its history just like other information that takes place over time. BPs present environmental policies intertwined with criticisms of those policies could be its own subsection. In general, criticism should be intertwined with what actually is being criticized to provide context, which this articles seems to do. To move this article forward, I think you need to first come to an agreement on the subsections. Once you have a good article structure, you then can determine what of the existing text and other text should be included in those subsections and what should be put in a spinout article/summary style so that the article stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail. Rather than relying on the above opinion, a good way to figure out what subsection to create is to look over all the articles in Category:FA-Class company articles and Category:GA-Class company articles and try to create a heading structure for the BP article that follows a survey those articles subsections as tailored to the BP topic itself. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 15:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
The Environmental record section currently begins with a handful of facts, from various dates, that do not give a full overview of the company's environmental record over its recent history. In particular, there is no comparison of BP's performance against that of other oil companies, which may be helpful to readers. I have written a new draft for this section, which I would like to propose here and ask for other editors to review. The draft aims to provide more information on BP's overall environmental record over the last few decades, including mention of major incidents, in order to provide an introduction to the Environmental record section as a whole.
While my draft adds much detail, there are two pieces of information I have removed: the 1991 EPA mention and the Multinational Monitor listing among the worst companies in 2001 and 2005. The exclusion of these is due to my reliance on third-party sources to identify what information is important to include about BP's record. I did not find secondary sources discussing either. It is possible such a source exists, but I was unable to find one for either.
The draft is in my user pages here: User:Arturo at BP/Environmental record
Please can editors review the draft and make any changes to it in my user pages. As I have suggested before, keeping all discussion of the draft here would be best so that it is easy for everyone to follow. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 23:51, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Is this is new WP method of dealing with corporate articles--have a paid editor write it up and ask a paid editor advocate to post it? Silverseren says, " If there is something wrong with the information that is being presented, then feel free to point it out...Otherwise, there shouldn't be an issue with implementing it". Isn't it supposed to be the other way around where we write the articles and the corporate interests and their advocates point the issues out to us, the non-paid Wikipedia workers? Aren't we the ones that are thought to be more likely to be unbiased than the paid editors? I am quite serious when I say that if this is where the 'pedia is at I'll just turn in my badge. Gandydancer ( talk) 22:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Silverseren wrote on Arturo's talk page: I would suggest you just focus on answering my questions and ignore them. I'll also make sure to get some outside editors to review the sections before implementation so there isn't a problem. SilverserenC 07:25, 17 March 2013 (UTC). So you see, this is what we have come to. When I think how many hours I have put into this article it is heartbreaking to think that editors that have not put anything at all into it can come and push through anything they want. In just a few years we shall have the very best Wikipedia that money can buy. Gandydancer ( talk) 13:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, could you please provide concrete examples where the text suggested by Arturo here at the talk page and after review inserted by other editors violates NPOV? If there are that kind of things, lets discuss and fix them. All these proposals have been notified here at the talk page and been open for all editors to propose/make their changes before making changes in the article. Unfortunately the interest to contribute is not very high, so definitely all constructive contributions are more than welcome. Concerning Arturo's contributions, they are in line with our COI policy. This is not only my opinion but was also said by another editor at the COI notice board [2]. Of course, policies could be changed if there is a consensus for this but that needs more centralized venue for discussion than just this talk page. Beagel ( talk) 14:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have read through all the comments above and would like to answer the questions raised about the draft.
What I have tried to do here is to give an account of the overall record for the company, something that is missing in the article right now, since the Environmental record section is just a collection of individual incidents and criticisms. As ever, I am open to changes in wording and addition of sources, and invite other editors to review and make such changes they feel are necessary. Arturo at BP ( talk) 21:41, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I have closed an old RfC; see Talk:BP/Archive_8#Request_for_comment. Or not--neither my close nor the discussion are very deep or exciting. Drmies ( talk) 17:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#BP_and_large_company_editing_in_general
Note that this should be about the issues raised here - not the behavior of any individual editor. Smallbones( smalltalk) 02:18, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm at a disadvantage here as I know very little about BP. But I know how to construct a Wikipedia article, and what strikes me here is the imbalance that's apparent in the weight given to certain issues.
An article like this has to be presented summary-style, because the subject matter is too large for one page. So you have separate articles for each issue over a certain length, or for each issue of particular significance, and you summarize the key points on those pages (or the key points that should be on them) in summary-style sections on this page.
This has been done here only in certain areas. The history section is 25 paragraphs and 2276 words long, and should definitely be split off. There are a few subjects where it's important to keep the history in the main article, because sometimes understanding the history is needed to understand anything that follows it. But that's not the case here, so that section needs to be moved to its own article.
Compare the history section with the two-paragraph 336-word section on the Deepwater Horizon spill (which has been presented summary-style), the largest environmental disaster to have occurred in the United States. That short section is summarizing four articles. Compare it with the six-paragraph 309-word section about BP's environmental initiatives, the first section in the environmental record section. Or the section on corporate affairs, with the list of officers in the middle of the article (against the advice of the MoS), and the four paragraph 509-word section on stock.
It's clear from this glance that the balance of the article needs to be improved. As a start, I'd suggested moving the history, moving the list of corporate officers to the end, or removing it entirely (actually I see Beagel has just done the latter, so that's a good start), then providing a detailed summary of each summary-style sub-article. Doing just those few things should introduce more balance. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:04, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
One thing we should do is to look at all oil supermajors articles so that we can achieve some level of consistency. One thing we should not do is to try to make points by volume of text. If an editor thinks BP is 'the worst company in the world', the way to deal with that is to find a good quality independent reliable source which says that, then we can say that in the article. If there is no source saying that then we cannot say it here and we should not try to imply it by bulking out the bad points in the article. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 23:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
An article alleges that some irresponsible editors are allowing BP to greenwash its own page. Who is in charge and what is being done to prevent this abstraction of the truth? — Preceding unsigned comment added by T2bp ( talk • contribs) 05:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
I understand the concern that has been expressed about allowing a BP representative to propose wording for the article but we should be more concerned about the way in which anti-BP editors are adding details to the article in an unencyclopedic manner to promote an anti-BP POV.
Here are some recent examples from the Prudhoe Bay oil spill section.
An editor added, 'The underground pipe leaked for five days before it was discovered', which I toned down to, '...led to a five day leak...'. My question is this. What is the purpose of giving this detail? There must be hundreds of detailed figures that could be given about this incident. From the original wording it was clearly meant to imply that BP had taken far too long to detect the leak. I have no idea whether that is true or not but, if it is, we should find a reliable source which actually says that and then add something like, 'BP was criticised for the excessive time taken to detect the leak' but if there is no quality (not a news article - see above) source which says that, we should say nothing.
In the same section we have, 'According to a Department of Justice report, maintenance devices called "pigs" had not been run through the oil transit lines since 1998, even though standard industry practice is to run such devices as often as monthly'. This statement was produced from a news agency report on the subject. The clear implication is that on the Prudhoe Bay pipeline, by normal industry standards, BP should have run pigs once a month but, in fact, had not run one for 8 years. Even the news report does not actually say that and the true situation regarding the appropriate frequency of pigging in those particular circumstances is not know. Oddly enough the best information on this could probably be had on this subject would be from our BP representative here.
We already have the important factual content, written in an encyclopedic manner as, 'The government's investigation into the spill disclosed that cost cutting measures had resulted in a lapse in monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline'. This is how a reputable encyclopedia would leave things. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 09:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
For some unknown reason the matter of the November guilty pleas by BP and the fines paid was completely misleading in the article. I have corrected it. If you have any questions, just check the sources. The NYTimes article (top of the 2nd page) is especially clear. If anybody is wondering about whether I have a conflict of interest, I've been mentioned in at least 2 recent articles on BP-Wikipedia, but am a completely independent editor. Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
I just put in the facts and removed a clear falsehood, expanding a 4 line paragraph to 5 lines. There are no employees mentioned in that part of the lede. TDA has just reverted the falsehood back into the article. Since nobody disagrees on the facts, I'll put my version back in, and we can let a neutral editor decide if this version is acceptable. The other version is clearly unacceptable - it's not supported by the sources. Smallbones( smalltalk) 02:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm concerned about
this content. It seems to depend on a FERC document - a primary source, couched in awkward bureaucratese. Worse, the document is full of words like "alleged" but the content in our article makes a flat statement without such caveats. I tried digging around to see if the investigation went anywhere, but couldn't find anything else (either on FERC's site or on third party sites) which referenced this FERC document - so it seems the investigation didn't go anywhere. Or maybe it's actually an artefact of the investigation immediately above, which is already wrapped up. Either way, I don't think it belongs in the article as-is. If there are secondary sources out there, bring them...
bobrayner (
talk)
15:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Gandydancer, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you about your question. I hope you understand that, despite being a BP employee, I do not have intimate knowledge about all aspects of the business. In some cases I have to ask, and it takes time to get a response. I have not yet received a reply to the question you asked me, and I have not yet had the time to follow up. I will do that again this week, but I can't promise that I will have an update on any given schedule. The best thing probably is still to go with what is understood based on the existing sources,and then update it later when more information becomes available. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 19:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Arturo, I don't believe that anyone would suggest that you want to present information here that is not accurate. The problem lies in the fact that some of us expect this article to reflect Wikipedia standards that insist that all articles be written with a neutral POV and you don't. As you well know, Petrarchan has done an excellent job of showing that BPs "green" efforts were blown way out of proportion in both the lead and the body of the article and that it took weeks of argument to even get a mention of the largest marine spill in history into the lead. You certainly did not speak out in favor of that information being included in the lead. Nor did you have any problem when the article contained this information on BPs green efforts, which were far from accurate and thanks to Petrarch are no longer in the article:
Renewable energy
Solar panel made by BP Solar
BP Solar is a leading producer of solar panels since its purchase of Lucas Energy Systems in 1980 and Solarex (as part of its acquisition of Amoco) in 2000. BP Solar had a 20% world market share in photovoltaic panels in 2004 when it had a capacity to produce 90 MW/year of panels. It has over 30 years' experience operating in over 160 countries with manufacturing facilities in the US, Spain, India and Australia, and has more than 2000 employees worldwide. BP has closed its US plants in Frederick, Maryland as part of a transition to manufacturing in China. This is due in part to China's upswing in solar use and the protectionist laws that require 85% of the materials to be produced in China.[77] Through a series of acquisitions in the solar power industry BP Solar became the third largest producer of solar panels in the world. It was recently announced that BP has obtained a contract for a pilot project to provide on-site solar power to Wal-Mart stores.[78]
Between 2005 and 2010, BP invested about $5 billion in its renewable energy business, mainly in biofuel and wind power projects. In 2011, BP plans to invest $1 billion in renewables, roughly the same amount it invested last year.[79]
As of 2011, BP is planning to construct a biofuel refinery in the Southeastern US and has also acquired Verenium’s cellulosic biofuels business for $98 million. In Brazil, BP holds a 50 percent stake in Tropical BioEnergia and plans to operate two ethanol refineries. In the US BP has more than 1,200 megawatts (MW) of wind-powered electricity capacity and in July 2010 it began construction of the 250 MW Cedar Creek II Wind Farm in Colorado.[79]
I have a great deal of admiration for Petrarchan who has put so much time into this article. And although we seem to be on the opposite side of the fence, I have no hard feelings for good editors such as Beagle because I realize that good WP articles are the result of editors coming together to hammer out an article that respects several points of view. That said, for you to suggest that you, a paid editor, is sincerely interested in accuracy here is an insult to my intelligence. When I had a question for you asking for information, it took 3 or 4 months for you to get back to me--so long that I could no longer remember what the question was about in the first place. But now when it is advantageous to you to get article changes that you believe will, from your POV, improve the article, timing becomes so important that you must go to Connelly's page and ask him if he's willing to do your edits. Disturbing. Gandydancer ( talk) 15:39, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
It is clearly not appropriate or acceptable for BP to be involved in the writing of this article. That is by definition bias. Arguments stating that it is the quality of the work rather than the source of the material are misleading and asinine at best. The source and its relationship with the subject matter determine bias and neutrality. That criteria is not incidental but absolutely significant.
This nonsense about how Arturo is being treated is also absurdest. There are legitimate concerns which have already placed a near permanent scar on the reputation of Wikipedia with the readers of its content at large.
I cannot trust what is written on this page and I would not recommend this as a source to anyone; Not even a child writing a report for grade school. talk 15:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I find [4] is pretty surprising. Anyone actually able to explain why a political group (like Greenpeace) is different to a campaign contribution? Does Shell do these too (I know Exxon is bound too)? -- BozMo talk 14:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
The recent addition to the above section does not mention this, When asked about its political spending, the energy giant said there is no conflict between its ban on political contributions and its donations to political groups. A BP spokesman said its policy bans contributions only to individual candidates in state and federal races, and does not apply to contributions to political advocacy groups registered with the Internal Revenue Service, political party organizations that give money to individual candidates, arms of political parties or larger political campaigns, which is also in the cited source. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 14:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I see this is the same issue as mentioned above. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 14:50, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
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help)Tom, I changed "In spite of" to "Despite" in the belief that "in spite of" is grammatically incorrect. After doing a little more research, apparently, I was wrong. [6] [7] (The AP Style Guide and Chicago Manual of Style prefers “despite” to “in spite of” because it means the same thing and is shorter). [8] If you want to change it back to "In spite of", that's fine with me. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 16:43, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
New information which I have added to this Prudhoe Bay section was deleted:
The underground pipe leaked for five days before it was discovered. The government's investigation into the spill disclosed that cost cutting measures had resulted in a lapse in monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline. In particular, BP did not use pipeline inspection gauges (smart pigs), devices that clean and monitor oil pipelines for corrosion. According to a Justice Department sentencing memorandum, even though standard industry practice is to run "pigs" through a pipeline as often as monthly, due to cost-cutting BP had not run the devices through the oil transit lines since 1998.
I'd appreciate an explanation that is more informative than "coatrack" or "not a forum". Thanks! Gandydancer ( talk) 17:14, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I followed the link to the diff that Binksternet provided above and commented on what I found. What have I missed? WP:Unsourced says, 'Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed'. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 23:28, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have summarised the added text in a more encyclopedic style, omitting the irrelevant detail about the bacteria. The poor maintenance and cost cutting are still there and the five day leak duration has been added to the start of the section. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 17:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
That's right Martin, what the hell would the United States Department of Justice know anyway? If Wikipedia starts taking the finger pointing and meaningless journalism of the United States Department of Justice statements rather than that of Wikipedia editor Martin Hogbin our credibility will certainly be damaged and that's something we all need to be aware of. Martin, I'm really sick of you deleting everything that I add to the article with summaries such as too detailed, unencyclopedic, soap boxing, too journalistic, etc. You had no problem with this info:
BP's investigation of the leak suggested it may have been caused by sediment collecting in the bottom of the pipe, protecting corrosive bacteria from chemicals sent through the pipeline to fight these bacteria.[260] During the government's investigation into the spill, BP was criticized for cost cutting regarding monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline. In particular, BP did not use pipeline inspection gauges (smart pigs), devices that clean and monitor oil pipelines for corrosion
since March first when it was added for Arturo, but the minute that you thought that I wrote it, it suddenly became too detailed, unencyclopedic, soap boxing, too journalistic, etc., and you have removed it. Gandydancer ( talk) 12:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Beagel. I can only go by what the sources say as here:
Relentless cost-cutting by BP caused the company to avoid running maintenance devices in its Prudhoe Bay transit lines since 1998 -- even though BP was well aware that an increasing amount of sediment-heavy viscous oil was flowing through those lines, and even though standard industry practice is to run such cleaning "pigs" in pipeline as often as monthly, said a memorandum filed Monday by the Justice Department.
Perhaps it would be better to return to Arturo's wording re the bacteria and pigs. As to the option of just leaving all of this information out of the section, I am opposed to that. It must be kept in mind that this is the largest spill on the North Slope and our readers should know why it happened. After initial denials, it was only through investigation that it was discovered BP's failure to properly inspect the pipe that led to the leak. That the "pigging" had not been done in eight years is significant and I have no choice but to take the DOJ at their word. From what I've read there is plenty more damning evidence of willful negligence that the article doesn't even mention. See this update from 2010: [13]
I think that this and this provide a lot of details about this spill. However, I think that these details should be added to Prudhoe Bay oil spill and not here. These documents make clear that the frequency of "pigging" was by BP of these feeder lines was ultimately inadequate. However, it does not says anything about 1 month being a standard (e.g., Trans-Alaska pipeline is pigged as frequently as after 14 days). Therefore, I will remove the mentioning "even though standard industry practice is to run such devices as often as monthly" as incorrect. Second issue is that the Reuters' story and the article is mentioning DoJ report. It is correct that DoJ was acted on behalf of the United States on legal procedures; however, investigation (and reports) was conducted by the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Therefore I remove Department of Justice. Information at the DoJ website: http://www.justice.gov/enrd/5812.htm. Beagel ( talk) 10:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
I know very little about BP and have no particular interest in it. My concern here is that it's a controversial company (fairly or unfairly) that is being allowed to rewrite the article about itself by proxy, without this being signalled to the reader.
In using BP's drafts, editors are using unpublished primary source material, and letting it set the tone entirely by slotting it into the article without quotation marks and without attributing it to BP. These drafts give us BP's views of itself, or BP's summary of the secondary sources BP has chosen to highlight. We wouldn't use these texts word for word (in fact, we hopefully wouldn't use them at all) if they were on BP's website. Yet for some reason some of you see them differently because BP has posted them here:
The BP drafts can be mined for ideas, facts or sources. But they can't be used as sources themselves – inserted, in effect, as blockquotes, but without the markup and without attribution – because we can't allow an unpublished primary source, especially one that might reflect a minority view of BP, to determine the tone of the article. There might not be a single error in them, but there may be omission, and it's obvious that there's a careful choice of sources and words.
Wikipedia articles are meant to be a summary of the body of published literature – mostly high-quality secondary sources – that exists on a subject. We reflect the tone and content of that source material, and present issues in rough proportion to their appearance in that literature. We can use primary sources with caution (e.g. a company's own literature), but we don't let primary sources set the tone. So if the good secondary literature dwells on X, we dwell on X. If it is mostly negative about X, we are mostly negative about X. If it barely mentions X, we barely mention X. That's what "neutrality" means on Wikipedia. See WP:V, WP:NOR/ WP:PSTS, and WP:NPOV/ WP:UNDUE. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:36, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
In the interests of transparency, from the readers' point of view, I suggest that Arturo at BP post these drafts on the BP website. We can then cite them as published primary sources, link to them, and quote them. We would then express this as something like: "BP regards its environmental record as mixed," or "BP writes that reports of its environmental record have been mixed," or "BP has highlighted the report from X." Doing it this way means BP's input will be retained, but it will be visible to the reader that it originates with BP.
Asking article subjects to post their perspective on a company or personal website (or via some other external source) so that we can cite them is quite normal, and means we're able to include their point of view, while making sure the reader can see where it comes from. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Why? I never said anything of the sort. If you'd care to point out what exactly I said that gave you this impression I would be happy to clarify. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/ talk] #_ 22:41, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Hello everyone, I have been following this conversation and would like to respond briefly. As far as I have been aware, I have been following the guidelines regarding conflict of interest and I have purposefully refrained from making any edits to articles, instead presenting information here for editors to review. I have always invited editors to review my drafts, making it clear that they can edit them in any way necessary to ensure they meet with Wikipedia's standards. Beagel, BozMo and others have asked questions about BP proposed edits/changes and made changes to what we have proposed. I see that UseTheCommandLine has added "user page" templates to the drafts in my user pages. This is perfectly fine, and I can do so with any material in my user pages from now on.
I disagree strongly with SlimVirgin's view that BP is rewriting the article itself, or that there is anything "sneaky" about it. In fact, I'm using my real name and joining an open conversation with anyone who wishes to be involved. Volunteer editors are under no obligation to place my drafts wholesale into the article and often they have asked for me to make changes or made edits to the drafts themselves. In some cases, the drafts have simply not been added to the article, such as with the "Allegations of greenwashing" draft I proposed in December. In the case of "Stock history", editors here asked me for help with preparing this material to add to the article. My drafts have provided additional material and new (mainly secondary) sources that were not in the article already, particularly regarding the company's operations, about which there was little to no detail until last year.
When I first started talking with editors on this page, the BP article lacked the most basic information about the company’s operations and some sections were plain inaccurate. It has always been my intention to help this article become a better resource for accurate information about BP, whether "positive" or "negative", and we would like to be part of that discussion. I respect SlimVirgin's concerns, but I also would ask her to consider reading the article and pointing to specific concerns if there are any, rather than trying to argue that my participation in this discussion is not legitimate. Best, Arturo at BP ( talk) 22:06, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
This is a complete and utter misinterpretation of policy that is fundamentally destroying what WP:PRIMARY means. A userspace draft written by an editor is just that, a draft. They are submitted whole to articles all the time. There are plenty of userspace drafts that are moved to mainspace as a full article when there was no article before. They are not primary sources, they are Wikipedia articles. Arturo is the writer of these drafts and he is the editor that made the content. Inserting his drafts into the article is no different than intserting drafts any other Wikipedia editor has made. Silver seren C 00:01, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Specific statements, please. How about you do this on my talk page, rather than here? -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/ talk] #_ 02:33, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 15 |
On Tuesday, BP announced its Quarter 4 and full year 2012 results, which provide new figures for a few of the details in the article's infobox. Not all of the financial information in the infobox is included in these results, however I intend to provide updates for the remaining figures when the company's 2012 Annual Report is released.
For the infobox a couple of financial figures can be updated with information from the 4th Quarter and full year results announced. I have provided new figures and citations below:
References
Would someone be able to make these updates?
I've also noticed that the Financial data section in the article has not been kept up to date, if others think that this should be retained and updated, I can look at filling in the information for the missing years. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 16:23, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for making these changes, Drm310. It would also be helpful to get your feedback on a suggested restructure of the "Environmental record" and "Accidents" sections, if you have time to take a look. You can read the discussion so far, here and see the proposed structure in draft form here. The discussion has come to a stop right now, so I would really appreciate your thoughts and see if we can come to a resolution. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 18:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph about the Caspian incident added recently without any discussion. Reasons for this are:
Beagel ( talk) 06:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
I saw a request about BP at COIN. [1] This article and the proposed draft has way too many subsections. The trouble with creating a significant number of subsections is that is severs the information from context so as to give more importance to the subsection information than the collective of reliable source information would suggest. It also diminishes the importance to other issues given by the collective of reliable source information. It further creates a situation where Wikipedia editors do not have to make the hard choices of what to include in the article to present a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature such that the article grows in size almost without bounds. To me, the accidents are part of BPs history and should be intertwined at least with its history. There is no actual 2013 "record" specifying BPs environmental record so it does not make sense to have a main subsection dedicated to environmental record in the same way you might create a corporate affairs main subsection to describe BPs present corporate affairs. BPs environmental record is part of its history just like other information that takes place over time. BPs present environmental policies intertwined with criticisms of those policies could be its own subsection. In general, criticism should be intertwined with what actually is being criticized to provide context, which this articles seems to do. To move this article forward, I think you need to first come to an agreement on the subsections. Once you have a good article structure, you then can determine what of the existing text and other text should be included in those subsections and what should be put in a spinout article/summary style so that the article stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail. Rather than relying on the above opinion, a good way to figure out what subsection to create is to look over all the articles in Category:FA-Class company articles and Category:GA-Class company articles and try to create a heading structure for the BP article that follows a survey those articles subsections as tailored to the BP topic itself. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 15:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
The Environmental record section currently begins with a handful of facts, from various dates, that do not give a full overview of the company's environmental record over its recent history. In particular, there is no comparison of BP's performance against that of other oil companies, which may be helpful to readers. I have written a new draft for this section, which I would like to propose here and ask for other editors to review. The draft aims to provide more information on BP's overall environmental record over the last few decades, including mention of major incidents, in order to provide an introduction to the Environmental record section as a whole.
While my draft adds much detail, there are two pieces of information I have removed: the 1991 EPA mention and the Multinational Monitor listing among the worst companies in 2001 and 2005. The exclusion of these is due to my reliance on third-party sources to identify what information is important to include about BP's record. I did not find secondary sources discussing either. It is possible such a source exists, but I was unable to find one for either.
The draft is in my user pages here: User:Arturo at BP/Environmental record
Please can editors review the draft and make any changes to it in my user pages. As I have suggested before, keeping all discussion of the draft here would be best so that it is easy for everyone to follow. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 23:51, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Is this is new WP method of dealing with corporate articles--have a paid editor write it up and ask a paid editor advocate to post it? Silverseren says, " If there is something wrong with the information that is being presented, then feel free to point it out...Otherwise, there shouldn't be an issue with implementing it". Isn't it supposed to be the other way around where we write the articles and the corporate interests and their advocates point the issues out to us, the non-paid Wikipedia workers? Aren't we the ones that are thought to be more likely to be unbiased than the paid editors? I am quite serious when I say that if this is where the 'pedia is at I'll just turn in my badge. Gandydancer ( talk) 22:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Silverseren wrote on Arturo's talk page: I would suggest you just focus on answering my questions and ignore them. I'll also make sure to get some outside editors to review the sections before implementation so there isn't a problem. SilverserenC 07:25, 17 March 2013 (UTC). So you see, this is what we have come to. When I think how many hours I have put into this article it is heartbreaking to think that editors that have not put anything at all into it can come and push through anything they want. In just a few years we shall have the very best Wikipedia that money can buy. Gandydancer ( talk) 13:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, could you please provide concrete examples where the text suggested by Arturo here at the talk page and after review inserted by other editors violates NPOV? If there are that kind of things, lets discuss and fix them. All these proposals have been notified here at the talk page and been open for all editors to propose/make their changes before making changes in the article. Unfortunately the interest to contribute is not very high, so definitely all constructive contributions are more than welcome. Concerning Arturo's contributions, they are in line with our COI policy. This is not only my opinion but was also said by another editor at the COI notice board [2]. Of course, policies could be changed if there is a consensus for this but that needs more centralized venue for discussion than just this talk page. Beagel ( talk) 14:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have read through all the comments above and would like to answer the questions raised about the draft.
What I have tried to do here is to give an account of the overall record for the company, something that is missing in the article right now, since the Environmental record section is just a collection of individual incidents and criticisms. As ever, I am open to changes in wording and addition of sources, and invite other editors to review and make such changes they feel are necessary. Arturo at BP ( talk) 21:41, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I have closed an old RfC; see Talk:BP/Archive_8#Request_for_comment. Or not--neither my close nor the discussion are very deep or exciting. Drmies ( talk) 17:55, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#BP_and_large_company_editing_in_general
Note that this should be about the issues raised here - not the behavior of any individual editor. Smallbones( smalltalk) 02:18, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm at a disadvantage here as I know very little about BP. But I know how to construct a Wikipedia article, and what strikes me here is the imbalance that's apparent in the weight given to certain issues.
An article like this has to be presented summary-style, because the subject matter is too large for one page. So you have separate articles for each issue over a certain length, or for each issue of particular significance, and you summarize the key points on those pages (or the key points that should be on them) in summary-style sections on this page.
This has been done here only in certain areas. The history section is 25 paragraphs and 2276 words long, and should definitely be split off. There are a few subjects where it's important to keep the history in the main article, because sometimes understanding the history is needed to understand anything that follows it. But that's not the case here, so that section needs to be moved to its own article.
Compare the history section with the two-paragraph 336-word section on the Deepwater Horizon spill (which has been presented summary-style), the largest environmental disaster to have occurred in the United States. That short section is summarizing four articles. Compare it with the six-paragraph 309-word section about BP's environmental initiatives, the first section in the environmental record section. Or the section on corporate affairs, with the list of officers in the middle of the article (against the advice of the MoS), and the four paragraph 509-word section on stock.
It's clear from this glance that the balance of the article needs to be improved. As a start, I'd suggested moving the history, moving the list of corporate officers to the end, or removing it entirely (actually I see Beagel has just done the latter, so that's a good start), then providing a detailed summary of each summary-style sub-article. Doing just those few things should introduce more balance. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:04, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
One thing we should do is to look at all oil supermajors articles so that we can achieve some level of consistency. One thing we should not do is to try to make points by volume of text. If an editor thinks BP is 'the worst company in the world', the way to deal with that is to find a good quality independent reliable source which says that, then we can say that in the article. If there is no source saying that then we cannot say it here and we should not try to imply it by bulking out the bad points in the article. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 23:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
An article alleges that some irresponsible editors are allowing BP to greenwash its own page. Who is in charge and what is being done to prevent this abstraction of the truth? — Preceding unsigned comment added by T2bp ( talk • contribs) 05:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
I understand the concern that has been expressed about allowing a BP representative to propose wording for the article but we should be more concerned about the way in which anti-BP editors are adding details to the article in an unencyclopedic manner to promote an anti-BP POV.
Here are some recent examples from the Prudhoe Bay oil spill section.
An editor added, 'The underground pipe leaked for five days before it was discovered', which I toned down to, '...led to a five day leak...'. My question is this. What is the purpose of giving this detail? There must be hundreds of detailed figures that could be given about this incident. From the original wording it was clearly meant to imply that BP had taken far too long to detect the leak. I have no idea whether that is true or not but, if it is, we should find a reliable source which actually says that and then add something like, 'BP was criticised for the excessive time taken to detect the leak' but if there is no quality (not a news article - see above) source which says that, we should say nothing.
In the same section we have, 'According to a Department of Justice report, maintenance devices called "pigs" had not been run through the oil transit lines since 1998, even though standard industry practice is to run such devices as often as monthly'. This statement was produced from a news agency report on the subject. The clear implication is that on the Prudhoe Bay pipeline, by normal industry standards, BP should have run pigs once a month but, in fact, had not run one for 8 years. Even the news report does not actually say that and the true situation regarding the appropriate frequency of pigging in those particular circumstances is not know. Oddly enough the best information on this could probably be had on this subject would be from our BP representative here.
We already have the important factual content, written in an encyclopedic manner as, 'The government's investigation into the spill disclosed that cost cutting measures had resulted in a lapse in monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline'. This is how a reputable encyclopedia would leave things. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 09:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
For some unknown reason the matter of the November guilty pleas by BP and the fines paid was completely misleading in the article. I have corrected it. If you have any questions, just check the sources. The NYTimes article (top of the 2nd page) is especially clear. If anybody is wondering about whether I have a conflict of interest, I've been mentioned in at least 2 recent articles on BP-Wikipedia, but am a completely independent editor. Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
I just put in the facts and removed a clear falsehood, expanding a 4 line paragraph to 5 lines. There are no employees mentioned in that part of the lede. TDA has just reverted the falsehood back into the article. Since nobody disagrees on the facts, I'll put my version back in, and we can let a neutral editor decide if this version is acceptable. The other version is clearly unacceptable - it's not supported by the sources. Smallbones( smalltalk) 02:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm concerned about
this content. It seems to depend on a FERC document - a primary source, couched in awkward bureaucratese. Worse, the document is full of words like "alleged" but the content in our article makes a flat statement without such caveats. I tried digging around to see if the investigation went anywhere, but couldn't find anything else (either on FERC's site or on third party sites) which referenced this FERC document - so it seems the investigation didn't go anywhere. Or maybe it's actually an artefact of the investigation immediately above, which is already wrapped up. Either way, I don't think it belongs in the article as-is. If there are secondary sources out there, bring them...
bobrayner (
talk)
15:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Gandydancer, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you about your question. I hope you understand that, despite being a BP employee, I do not have intimate knowledge about all aspects of the business. In some cases I have to ask, and it takes time to get a response. I have not yet received a reply to the question you asked me, and I have not yet had the time to follow up. I will do that again this week, but I can't promise that I will have an update on any given schedule. The best thing probably is still to go with what is understood based on the existing sources,and then update it later when more information becomes available. Thanks. Arturo at BP ( talk) 19:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Arturo, I don't believe that anyone would suggest that you want to present information here that is not accurate. The problem lies in the fact that some of us expect this article to reflect Wikipedia standards that insist that all articles be written with a neutral POV and you don't. As you well know, Petrarchan has done an excellent job of showing that BPs "green" efforts were blown way out of proportion in both the lead and the body of the article and that it took weeks of argument to even get a mention of the largest marine spill in history into the lead. You certainly did not speak out in favor of that information being included in the lead. Nor did you have any problem when the article contained this information on BPs green efforts, which were far from accurate and thanks to Petrarch are no longer in the article:
Renewable energy
Solar panel made by BP Solar
BP Solar is a leading producer of solar panels since its purchase of Lucas Energy Systems in 1980 and Solarex (as part of its acquisition of Amoco) in 2000. BP Solar had a 20% world market share in photovoltaic panels in 2004 when it had a capacity to produce 90 MW/year of panels. It has over 30 years' experience operating in over 160 countries with manufacturing facilities in the US, Spain, India and Australia, and has more than 2000 employees worldwide. BP has closed its US plants in Frederick, Maryland as part of a transition to manufacturing in China. This is due in part to China's upswing in solar use and the protectionist laws that require 85% of the materials to be produced in China.[77] Through a series of acquisitions in the solar power industry BP Solar became the third largest producer of solar panels in the world. It was recently announced that BP has obtained a contract for a pilot project to provide on-site solar power to Wal-Mart stores.[78]
Between 2005 and 2010, BP invested about $5 billion in its renewable energy business, mainly in biofuel and wind power projects. In 2011, BP plans to invest $1 billion in renewables, roughly the same amount it invested last year.[79]
As of 2011, BP is planning to construct a biofuel refinery in the Southeastern US and has also acquired Verenium’s cellulosic biofuels business for $98 million. In Brazil, BP holds a 50 percent stake in Tropical BioEnergia and plans to operate two ethanol refineries. In the US BP has more than 1,200 megawatts (MW) of wind-powered electricity capacity and in July 2010 it began construction of the 250 MW Cedar Creek II Wind Farm in Colorado.[79]
I have a great deal of admiration for Petrarchan who has put so much time into this article. And although we seem to be on the opposite side of the fence, I have no hard feelings for good editors such as Beagle because I realize that good WP articles are the result of editors coming together to hammer out an article that respects several points of view. That said, for you to suggest that you, a paid editor, is sincerely interested in accuracy here is an insult to my intelligence. When I had a question for you asking for information, it took 3 or 4 months for you to get back to me--so long that I could no longer remember what the question was about in the first place. But now when it is advantageous to you to get article changes that you believe will, from your POV, improve the article, timing becomes so important that you must go to Connelly's page and ask him if he's willing to do your edits. Disturbing. Gandydancer ( talk) 15:39, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
It is clearly not appropriate or acceptable for BP to be involved in the writing of this article. That is by definition bias. Arguments stating that it is the quality of the work rather than the source of the material are misleading and asinine at best. The source and its relationship with the subject matter determine bias and neutrality. That criteria is not incidental but absolutely significant.
This nonsense about how Arturo is being treated is also absurdest. There are legitimate concerns which have already placed a near permanent scar on the reputation of Wikipedia with the readers of its content at large.
I cannot trust what is written on this page and I would not recommend this as a source to anyone; Not even a child writing a report for grade school. talk 15:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I find [4] is pretty surprising. Anyone actually able to explain why a political group (like Greenpeace) is different to a campaign contribution? Does Shell do these too (I know Exxon is bound too)? -- BozMo talk 14:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
The recent addition to the above section does not mention this, When asked about its political spending, the energy giant said there is no conflict between its ban on political contributions and its donations to political groups. A BP spokesman said its policy bans contributions only to individual candidates in state and federal races, and does not apply to contributions to political advocacy groups registered with the Internal Revenue Service, political party organizations that give money to individual candidates, arms of political parties or larger political campaigns, which is also in the cited source. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 14:48, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
I see this is the same issue as mentioned above. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 14:50, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
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help)Tom, I changed "In spite of" to "Despite" in the belief that "in spite of" is grammatically incorrect. After doing a little more research, apparently, I was wrong. [6] [7] (The AP Style Guide and Chicago Manual of Style prefers “despite” to “in spite of” because it means the same thing and is shorter). [8] If you want to change it back to "In spite of", that's fine with me. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 16:43, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
New information which I have added to this Prudhoe Bay section was deleted:
The underground pipe leaked for five days before it was discovered. The government's investigation into the spill disclosed that cost cutting measures had resulted in a lapse in monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline. In particular, BP did not use pipeline inspection gauges (smart pigs), devices that clean and monitor oil pipelines for corrosion. According to a Justice Department sentencing memorandum, even though standard industry practice is to run "pigs" through a pipeline as often as monthly, due to cost-cutting BP had not run the devices through the oil transit lines since 1998.
I'd appreciate an explanation that is more informative than "coatrack" or "not a forum". Thanks! Gandydancer ( talk) 17:14, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I followed the link to the diff that Binksternet provided above and commented on what I found. What have I missed? WP:Unsourced says, 'Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed'. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 23:28, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have summarised the added text in a more encyclopedic style, omitting the irrelevant detail about the bacteria. The poor maintenance and cost cutting are still there and the five day leak duration has been added to the start of the section. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 17:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
That's right Martin, what the hell would the United States Department of Justice know anyway? If Wikipedia starts taking the finger pointing and meaningless journalism of the United States Department of Justice statements rather than that of Wikipedia editor Martin Hogbin our credibility will certainly be damaged and that's something we all need to be aware of. Martin, I'm really sick of you deleting everything that I add to the article with summaries such as too detailed, unencyclopedic, soap boxing, too journalistic, etc. You had no problem with this info:
BP's investigation of the leak suggested it may have been caused by sediment collecting in the bottom of the pipe, protecting corrosive bacteria from chemicals sent through the pipeline to fight these bacteria.[260] During the government's investigation into the spill, BP was criticized for cost cutting regarding monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline. In particular, BP did not use pipeline inspection gauges (smart pigs), devices that clean and monitor oil pipelines for corrosion
since March first when it was added for Arturo, but the minute that you thought that I wrote it, it suddenly became too detailed, unencyclopedic, soap boxing, too journalistic, etc., and you have removed it. Gandydancer ( talk) 12:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Beagel. I can only go by what the sources say as here:
Relentless cost-cutting by BP caused the company to avoid running maintenance devices in its Prudhoe Bay transit lines since 1998 -- even though BP was well aware that an increasing amount of sediment-heavy viscous oil was flowing through those lines, and even though standard industry practice is to run such cleaning "pigs" in pipeline as often as monthly, said a memorandum filed Monday by the Justice Department.
Perhaps it would be better to return to Arturo's wording re the bacteria and pigs. As to the option of just leaving all of this information out of the section, I am opposed to that. It must be kept in mind that this is the largest spill on the North Slope and our readers should know why it happened. After initial denials, it was only through investigation that it was discovered BP's failure to properly inspect the pipe that led to the leak. That the "pigging" had not been done in eight years is significant and I have no choice but to take the DOJ at their word. From what I've read there is plenty more damning evidence of willful negligence that the article doesn't even mention. See this update from 2010: [13]
I think that this and this provide a lot of details about this spill. However, I think that these details should be added to Prudhoe Bay oil spill and not here. These documents make clear that the frequency of "pigging" was by BP of these feeder lines was ultimately inadequate. However, it does not says anything about 1 month being a standard (e.g., Trans-Alaska pipeline is pigged as frequently as after 14 days). Therefore, I will remove the mentioning "even though standard industry practice is to run such devices as often as monthly" as incorrect. Second issue is that the Reuters' story and the article is mentioning DoJ report. It is correct that DoJ was acted on behalf of the United States on legal procedures; however, investigation (and reports) was conducted by the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Therefore I remove Department of Justice. Information at the DoJ website: http://www.justice.gov/enrd/5812.htm. Beagel ( talk) 10:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
I know very little about BP and have no particular interest in it. My concern here is that it's a controversial company (fairly or unfairly) that is being allowed to rewrite the article about itself by proxy, without this being signalled to the reader.
In using BP's drafts, editors are using unpublished primary source material, and letting it set the tone entirely by slotting it into the article without quotation marks and without attributing it to BP. These drafts give us BP's views of itself, or BP's summary of the secondary sources BP has chosen to highlight. We wouldn't use these texts word for word (in fact, we hopefully wouldn't use them at all) if they were on BP's website. Yet for some reason some of you see them differently because BP has posted them here:
The BP drafts can be mined for ideas, facts or sources. But they can't be used as sources themselves – inserted, in effect, as blockquotes, but without the markup and without attribution – because we can't allow an unpublished primary source, especially one that might reflect a minority view of BP, to determine the tone of the article. There might not be a single error in them, but there may be omission, and it's obvious that there's a careful choice of sources and words.
Wikipedia articles are meant to be a summary of the body of published literature – mostly high-quality secondary sources – that exists on a subject. We reflect the tone and content of that source material, and present issues in rough proportion to their appearance in that literature. We can use primary sources with caution (e.g. a company's own literature), but we don't let primary sources set the tone. So if the good secondary literature dwells on X, we dwell on X. If it is mostly negative about X, we are mostly negative about X. If it barely mentions X, we barely mention X. That's what "neutrality" means on Wikipedia. See WP:V, WP:NOR/ WP:PSTS, and WP:NPOV/ WP:UNDUE. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:36, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
In the interests of transparency, from the readers' point of view, I suggest that Arturo at BP post these drafts on the BP website. We can then cite them as published primary sources, link to them, and quote them. We would then express this as something like: "BP regards its environmental record as mixed," or "BP writes that reports of its environmental record have been mixed," or "BP has highlighted the report from X." Doing it this way means BP's input will be retained, but it will be visible to the reader that it originates with BP.
Asking article subjects to post their perspective on a company or personal website (or via some other external source) so that we can cite them is quite normal, and means we're able to include their point of view, while making sure the reader can see where it comes from. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Why? I never said anything of the sort. If you'd care to point out what exactly I said that gave you this impression I would be happy to clarify. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/ talk] #_ 22:41, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Hello everyone, I have been following this conversation and would like to respond briefly. As far as I have been aware, I have been following the guidelines regarding conflict of interest and I have purposefully refrained from making any edits to articles, instead presenting information here for editors to review. I have always invited editors to review my drafts, making it clear that they can edit them in any way necessary to ensure they meet with Wikipedia's standards. Beagel, BozMo and others have asked questions about BP proposed edits/changes and made changes to what we have proposed. I see that UseTheCommandLine has added "user page" templates to the drafts in my user pages. This is perfectly fine, and I can do so with any material in my user pages from now on.
I disagree strongly with SlimVirgin's view that BP is rewriting the article itself, or that there is anything "sneaky" about it. In fact, I'm using my real name and joining an open conversation with anyone who wishes to be involved. Volunteer editors are under no obligation to place my drafts wholesale into the article and often they have asked for me to make changes or made edits to the drafts themselves. In some cases, the drafts have simply not been added to the article, such as with the "Allegations of greenwashing" draft I proposed in December. In the case of "Stock history", editors here asked me for help with preparing this material to add to the article. My drafts have provided additional material and new (mainly secondary) sources that were not in the article already, particularly regarding the company's operations, about which there was little to no detail until last year.
When I first started talking with editors on this page, the BP article lacked the most basic information about the company’s operations and some sections were plain inaccurate. It has always been my intention to help this article become a better resource for accurate information about BP, whether "positive" or "negative", and we would like to be part of that discussion. I respect SlimVirgin's concerns, but I also would ask her to consider reading the article and pointing to specific concerns if there are any, rather than trying to argue that my participation in this discussion is not legitimate. Best, Arturo at BP ( talk) 22:06, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
This is a complete and utter misinterpretation of policy that is fundamentally destroying what WP:PRIMARY means. A userspace draft written by an editor is just that, a draft. They are submitted whole to articles all the time. There are plenty of userspace drafts that are moved to mainspace as a full article when there was no article before. They are not primary sources, they are Wikipedia articles. Arturo is the writer of these drafts and he is the editor that made the content. Inserting his drafts into the article is no different than intserting drafts any other Wikipedia editor has made. Silver seren C 00:01, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Specific statements, please. How about you do this on my talk page, rather than here? -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/ talk] #_ 02:33, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
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