User:Smallbones/Proposed commercial editing policy/sandbox

This policy describes who is a commercial editor, and what actions they are allowed to perform on English Wikipedia. As with any other editor, commercial editors have the responsibility of learning and following all Wikipedia policies and guidelines. In particular, commercial editors must disclose that they are paid editors, in accordance with Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use.

Who is a commercial editor?
All editors required to make a paid-contribution disclosure are commercial editors, with the following exceptions:
 * Wikipedians-in-residence who work for a cultural institution that shares the values of the Wikipedia movement
 * Employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, or chapters or other affiliates of the Wikimedia Foundation, who are contributing as part of their tasks with the organization

Registering an account
Commercial editors must choose an account name with " (commercial)" as a suffix, such as Example (commercial). They may have an alternate account to be used only for edits unrelated to their commercial editing, which are not subject to the restrictions of commercial edits. The editor must not edit any pages related to the topics of the editor's commercial editing. The user pages for both accounts must disclose the relationship between the two.

The alternate account may not receive any manually-assigned user permissions. The editor must not close any discussions or determine any article quality ratings, unless the editor's role was approved in a consensus discussion during which the editor's commercial editing was disclosed.

Permissible actions
Commercial editors may do the following actions with their commercial account:
 * Edit article talk pages to link to press releases or company webpages, with an accompanying explanation for the relevance of the link.
 * If an article has content that violates the policy for biographies of living persons, either edit the talk page with a request for correction along with links to appropriate sources, or edit the article to remove any violating text and edit the talk page to explain the removal. Commercial editors may not add text to an article.
 * Edit the confict of interest noticeboard, the biographies of living persons noticeboard, and the administrators' noticeboard.
 * Edit their user page and user talk page.

No other actions are permissible.

Persistent violations
If editors associated with a given company persist in violating English Wikipedia policies or guidelines, the Wikipedia community may pre-emptively ban all editors associated with the company.