User talk:ASCAPedia

July 2009
If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about, 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 or creating 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; and
 * 3) linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Nja 247 19:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Your account has been blocked from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended or used for promotional purposes. Please read the following carefully.

Because Wikipedia does not allow any form of spam or other promotion of people, products, companies or other groups (even non-commercial or charitable ones). Using Wikipedia for such purposes will result in the blocking of the account involved. Please read FAQ/Organization and Conflict of interest for our policies about this.
 * Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

In addition, user accounts are for individuals only, not for companies or groups or other collective editing. Your username should reflect this. Usernames that appear to be promotional (such as those that make reference to a company or product) violate our username policy and are typically blocked to enforce that policy.


 * What can I do now?

If you have no interest in writing about some other topic than your organization, group, company, or product, you will not be allowed to edit Wikipedia again. Consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead.

If you do intend to make useful contributions about some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:


 * Add the text below this message box.
 * Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:
 * Tell us what new username you want to use. Please make sure that your new username does not violate our username policy and check that it has not already been taken (click here to search).
 * Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
 * Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

If instead you believe that you have been blocked by mistake (i.e., you have not in fact been using Wikipedia for promotional purposes), please write below this message box and replace the text "Your reason here" with the reason why. See also Appealing a block for more information. Nja 247 19:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to request that my editing ability be re-instated. While I admit that I am an employee of ASCAP, my recent entries were not intended for promotional purposes. They were made to provide a more balanced and comprehensive Wikipedia entry.

Previously, the ASCAP page was subject to a good deal of POV problems. Criticisms were made in a biased tone and without balance. Statements quoted known anti-copyright advocates as legitimate, "neutral" sources. Note that in no case did I delete a criticism outright. Rather, I refreshed outdated facts and figures where possible, and fleshed out the history section to provide greater clarity and context. See | this diff for an example. Previously, there were decades-long gaps in time between events, which I filled in with important changes in ASCAP's history.

Perhaps the "Member Benefits" section is what raised the red flag. As you can see in | this diff, there was previously a flagrantly self-promoting paragraph written by a partner company called Nimbit in the history section. I moved it from the history section into a section that addressed ASCAP's member benefits as a whole, with the intention of keeping the relevant information but stripping away the self-promotion.

I thought that the Wikipedia community wouldn't be suspicious of my changes if I was A) transparent about my relationship to ASCAP in my username and B) careful not to use the page as a PR tool. Now I understand that the username thing is against Wikipedia's username rules, so if reinstated, I'd be happy to have my name changed to "Narfman," and I will declare my affiliation with ASCAP in talk pages, as per the COI guidelines. Some of my edits will still pertain to ASCAP in the future, though I do intend on making factual updates to the pages for various heavy metal bands as well. I maintain that my ASCAP edits were not promotional in nature. I will exercise caution in any future edits to the ASCAP page, and only make them if a bias emerges or if an event occurs in ASCAP's history that seems important to someone looking for a general background on the company.

Thank you for your consideration.

~Etan Rosenbloom
 * That won't work. None of us get to write about our own businesses, organizations, or whatever. It's far too difficult to achieve a neutral point of view when you have a conflict of interest. --jpgordon:==( o ) 00:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)