Hello, I'm
Eyer. I wanted to let you know that one or more of
your recent contributions to
Midwest University have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the
sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the
help desk. Thanks.
Eyer
contact
01:14, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Tbum777. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to Midwest University, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat SEO.
Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists, and if it does not, from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.
Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the
Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at
User:Tbum777. The template {{
Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Tbum777|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}
. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message.
Grey Wanderer (
talk)
21:33, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Hey, based on your user name and edit history I'm thinking you might be ___________. We don't want incorrect information on Wikipedia and I'm happy to help you fix any problems you see, but obviously our Conflict of Interest Policy would prefer you not edit the article directly, either though this account or anonymously. Is Midwest really no longer a Christian institution? You may want to make use of the page Talk:Midwest University, to discuss any changes. Grey Wanderer ( talk) 23:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you make any further edits without responding to the inquiry you received regarding undisclosed paid editing. Eyer contact 01:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
You may be
blocked from editing without further warning the next time you remove or blank page content or templates from Wikipedia, as you did at
Midwest University. You are removing content without giving a reason.
Eyer
contact
02:56, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
{{
unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}
. —
JJMC89 (
T·
C)
04:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)Moved the rest of this discussion to Talk:Midwest University. Please follow the conversation there. (If I moved too much, feel free to revert and re-move.) Eyer contact 17:36, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
On your User page, you wrote that you are not being paid to edit Wikipedia. The second part of the question is whether you are being paid or otherwise compensated by the school you are writing about. Even if not being paid to edit - even if your employers do not know that you are editing - that would be considered a paid relationship and must be declared on your User page. David notMD ( talk) 03:06, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
It occurred to me that in all this hubbub you never got a welcome message. They contain a lot of good information about policy and etiquette. Below is our standard welcome for users with a Conflict of Interest. Feel free to ignore it, but you may find it useful. Grey Wanderer ( talk) 05:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello, Tbum777, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.
I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Midwest University, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.
To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.
One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)
In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.
Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a
Wikipedian! Please
sign your messages on
talk pages using four
tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on
my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}}
before the question. Again, welcome!
Grey Wanderer (
talk)
05:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello, I'm
Eyer. I wanted to let you know that one or more of
your recent contributions to
Midwest University have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the
sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the
help desk. Thanks.
Eyer
contact
01:14, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Tbum777. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to Midwest University, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat SEO.
Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists, and if it does not, from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.
Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the
Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at
User:Tbum777. The template {{
Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Tbum777|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}
. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message.
Grey Wanderer (
talk)
21:33, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Hey, based on your user name and edit history I'm thinking you might be ___________. We don't want incorrect information on Wikipedia and I'm happy to help you fix any problems you see, but obviously our Conflict of Interest Policy would prefer you not edit the article directly, either though this account or anonymously. Is Midwest really no longer a Christian institution? You may want to make use of the page Talk:Midwest University, to discuss any changes. Grey Wanderer ( talk) 23:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
You may be blocked from editing without further warning if you make any further edits without responding to the inquiry you received regarding undisclosed paid editing. Eyer contact 01:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
You may be
blocked from editing without further warning the next time you remove or blank page content or templates from Wikipedia, as you did at
Midwest University. You are removing content without giving a reason.
Eyer
contact
02:56, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
{{
unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}
. —
JJMC89 (
T·
C)
04:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)Moved the rest of this discussion to Talk:Midwest University. Please follow the conversation there. (If I moved too much, feel free to revert and re-move.) Eyer contact 17:36, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
On your User page, you wrote that you are not being paid to edit Wikipedia. The second part of the question is whether you are being paid or otherwise compensated by the school you are writing about. Even if not being paid to edit - even if your employers do not know that you are editing - that would be considered a paid relationship and must be declared on your User page. David notMD ( talk) 03:06, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
It occurred to me that in all this hubbub you never got a welcome message. They contain a lot of good information about policy and etiquette. Below is our standard welcome for users with a Conflict of Interest. Feel free to ignore it, but you may find it useful. Grey Wanderer ( talk) 05:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello, Tbum777, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.
I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Midwest University, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.
To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.
One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)
In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.
Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a
Wikipedian! Please
sign your messages on
talk pages using four
tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on
my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}}
before the question. Again, welcome!
Grey Wanderer (
talk)
05:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)