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User:Britishfinance

This user helped get "Ailladie" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 11 April 2020.
This user helped get "Ben Lugmore" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 10 May 2020.
This user helped get "BorderIrish" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 24 January 2020.
This user helped get "Carrauntoohil" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 18 May 2020.
This user helped get "Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 31 March 2020.
This user helped get "Disease X" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 7 April 2020.
This user helped get "Emily Hale" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 20 January 2020.
This user helped get "FIFA Champions Badge" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 21 January 2020.
This user helped get "Luggala" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 21 May 2020.
This user helped get "MacGillycuddy's Reeks" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 14 May 2020.
This user helped get "Megxit" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 31 January 2020.
This user helped get "Mount Brandon" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 2 May 2020.
This user helped get "Philip Treacy" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 8 June 2020.
This user helped get "Twelve Bens" listed at Did You Know on the main page on 27 March 2020.
This user helped "Ailladie" become a good article on 24 March 2020.
This user helped "Ben Lugmore" become a good article on 6 April 2020.
This user helped "Carrauntoohil" become a good article on 14 April 2020.
This user helped "Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations" become a good article on 20 June 2020.
This user helped "Disease X" become a good article on 20 April 2020.
This user helped "Emily Hale" become a good article on 2 May 2020.
This user helped "FIFA Champions Badge" become a good article on 4 April 2020.
This user helped "Galtymore" become a good article on 16 April 2020.
This user helped "Lists of mountains and hills in the British Isles" become a good article on 29 April 2020.
This user helped "Luggala" become a good article on 11 April 2020.
This user helped "MacGillycuddy's Reeks" become a good article on 10 April 2020.
This user helped "Mangerton Mountain" become a good article on 12 April 2020.
This user helped "Mount Brandon" become a good article on 24 March 2020.
This user helped "Philip Treacy" become a good article on 18 April 2020.
This user helped "Twelve Bens" become a good article on 6 March 2020.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

about me

I am Britishfinance. I came to WP in early 2018 because I was sick of reading misleading taxation articles and had the time to see if I could fix them. Only after about 6 months did I finally grasp how to write in a WP-way (e.g. summarizing verifiable high quality independent secondary sources), and had to re-write most of my earlier stuff. I caught the bug and started doing WP articles on a wide range of subjects, and getting WP rights and tools. In June 2018, I came across the WP:BLP of Martin Shanahan, the CEO of IDA Ireland, which had been tagged by a senior WP admin, Kudpung, as being a WP:COI. As I tried to fix it and remove the WP:PROMO elements (it read like a brochure), I met some aggressive editors, who it would be subsequently revealed worked for IDA Ireland, and who made some nasty allegations about me on the Martin Shanahan Talk Page. They got banned, and I left the article. However, in April 2019 an Irish technology entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, tweeted that the IDA had been caught manipulating the BLP of their CEO [1] [2], and it was picked up by the Irish and UK media. The IDA "spun" the story to journalists that they had to hire editors to combat my "negative" edits and that I was a "paid agent", however, the reality was that they had been using hired editors (probably for some time), to edit WP articles relating to Irish tax (and their CEO). The IDA's misinformation inspired vandalism of Irish tax-related articles E.g. [3] [4] [5][6], and a WP ANI case (which cleared me of WP:PAID), and some nasty reddit threads (showing some used WP:SOCK accounts to vandalise these WP articles). Cosgrave then set up a fake-Facebook campaign highlighting issues with Ireland's tax system that linked to some of my articles (e.g. QIAIF, and Section 110 SPV). Cosgrave's campaign was exposed and led to further articles on me [7] [8] [9]; some included tax experts who seemed to have no issues with the WP articles (E.g. Mark Gorman, Partner Anderson Tax Dublin). Eventually, the Washington Post reported on the affair: "Politicians, policymakers, and the legal-finance profession responded vigorously and tried to discredit the Wikipedia articles. But none of these critiques have challenged their substantive truth". One of these articles (which I overhauled, not created), Leprechaun economics, was cited by Paul Krugman (major high), while another of these articles (I also overhauled, not created), Double Irish arrangement, was cited by the Council on Foreign Relations as the "best source" for the topic.
While stressful, it showed WP works; where the fact-base supports (e.g. quality independent secondary sources), so does the community. However, the IDA/reddit trolling on Irish tax-related articles will carry on. (POSTSCRIPTi: Even more surreal, the above appeared in the Irish Sunday Business Post; albeit with "IDA editing") (POSTSCRIPTii: The affair made it to The Signpost here)

my articles
Articles I have created, substantially re-written, or saved:
  • BLPs

Britishfinance (talk · contribs · logs · block log · page moves · count · edit summaries · non-automated edits · articles created · BLP edits · AfD votes · XfD votes · admin score (beta) · CSD log · no prior RfA)

Things I found valuable/insightful on WP: