User talk:Benstevepete

Welcome!
Hello, Benstevepete, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Simplified Manual of Style
 * Your first article
 * Discover what's going on in the Wikimedia community
 * Feel free to make test edits in the sandbox
 * and check out the Task Center, for ideas about what to work on.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place  on this page and someone will drop by to help. Again, welcome! wizzito &#124; say hello!  00:13, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

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

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Crumbl Cookies, 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.&#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:
 * Best practices for editors with close associations
 * 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! Valereee (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

September 2022
Hello Benstevepete. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Crumbl Cookies, 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 serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

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:Benstevepete. 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. Uhai (talk &middot; contribs) 22:57, 27 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello.
 * I do not have any financial stake or promotional obligation to Crumbl Cookies or any related company. I do not represent them in any manner. I made this edit casually and without the intent of marketing or personal profit and was unaware that I was in violation of the Terms of Use of Wikipedia. I will make an effort to disclose my obligations in the future if any.
 * Thank you,
 * -Ben P. Benstevepete (talk) 01:27, 20 October 2022 (UTC)