User talk:Awesomeusername222

Welcome!
Hello, Awesomeusername222, and welcome to Wikipedia!&#32;Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited 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.&#32;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:
 * The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * Tutorial
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
 * Simplified Manual of Style

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 Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! Ian.thomson (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Disclose your employment
Hello Awesomeusername222. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Compass Coffee, gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, 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. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely strongly discouraged 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:Awesomeusername222. The template Paid can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form:. 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. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Response
Hi Ian! I'm not paid to edit by any entity for which I've edited pages! What aspects seemed biased or unfair? I will be sure to remove them at once.
 * Well, for starters, you turned the entire page into an advertisement, instead of just summarizing what independent sources have to say about the company. This includes unsourced achievements (such as the hand sanitizer) as well as listing all of their locations.  You also use a lot of writing language that PR firms tend to use.
 * There's also the fact that you did all that immediately after registering your account and then immediately asked for page protection -- that's a move a PR firm employee would make.
 * You also uploaded material copyrighted by Compass Coffee and a presskit picture of the founders, as if you had permission to do so, claiming it as your own work. Under what conditions did you receive permission from them?
 * To be clear, paid editing is more than being directly receiving a check labelled "for editing Wikipedia" every time you make an edit. Having any financial ties to Compass Coffee, even if it's not direct pay, counts as paid editing.  Being a "small business advisor" who happens to work with them would count as paid editing.  Working for a credit union that Compass Coffee does business with would count as paid editing.  Being the web developer for Compass Coffee would count as paid editing, even if they didn't say "hey, edit our article."  Failure to disclose paid editing is a violation of our terms of use. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:03, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi Ian, I'm a student at Georgetown University who lives by compass coffee and likes their products, so when I googled them and saw they didn't have a wikipedia page detailing them, i started adding some stuff in. Happy to remove whatever you think is "PR firm"-y but everything I pulled directly from their website or off google. Let me know what I can do to be a better contributor - I was essentially copying down the information I saw on similar pages as it applied to Compass, such as those of Starbucks, blue bottle, La Colombe, etc.

You should have disclosed your employment
You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for undisclosed paid editing and refusal to disclose paid editing, in violation of our terms of use. If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page:. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:29, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Evidence has been emailed to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org . Ian.thomson (talk) 23:29, 8 May 2020 (UTC)


 * As I already said, evidence has been emailed to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org . Ian.thomson (talk) 02:12, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi : Completely uninvolved non-admin editor, but is your block based on non-public evidence emailed to that address? If so, I'm concerned that this block is contrary to the policy at WP:BLOCKEVIDENCE. Best, Mdaniels5757 (talk) 18:35, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Past emails to paid-en-wp have not received any negative response. Previously, I'd email ArbCom and receive positive responses.  Forwarding the email to them, too.  Ian.thomson (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. Mdaniels5757 (talk) 17:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Ian.thomson what evidence would that be? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Awesomeusername222 (talk • contribs) 01:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Unless you give me permission to post your personal information, I can't post the evidence here. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I am much inclined to decline this unblock request, because, even without seeing the emailed information, I see your editing as being promotional, which is not permitted by Wikipedia policy. However, rather than decline your request immediately, I will invite you to answer the following questions, to help clarify things.
 * 1) Since you are not personally connected to Compass Coffee, and just happen to like their product, would you be happy to be unblocked on the condition that you do no editing related in any way to that business?
 * 2) What other editing would you like to do?
 * 3) Since you "pulled" everything you posted "directly from their website or off google", why did you claim that the photograph you uploaded was your own work?
 * 4) Will you go to Wikimedia Commons and ask for the photograph to be deleted, since your claim about the copyright was false?
 * 5) Why would someone who has no personal connection to a business, but just happens to like their product, ask to have their version of the article edit-protected? I understand why people employed to spam on behalf of businesses sometimes do that, because they mistakenly think that they can use Wikipedia to host their advertisement, and in effect become owners of the article, but it is beyond me to understand why someone who has no connection to a business should think that they have any more right to control the content of such an article than anyone else who happens to have created a Wikipedia account. In fact, in my 10 years of experience as a Wikipedia administrator I have fairly frequently come across such attempts to take ownership of articles by people editing on behalf of businesses, but not by independent editors who just happen to like a product. I shall therefore be very interested to read your explanation of why you did it. JBW (talk) 22:38, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * ...and one more question. At the time when you edited about Georgetown University Alumni & Student Federal Credit Union, did you have any connection to that organisation, such as working for it? JBW (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2020 (UTC)