User talk:Bostonliberty

Welcome!
Hi Bostonliberty! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

As you get started, you may find this short tutorial helpful:

Alternatively, the contributing to Wikipedia page covers the same topics.

If you have any questions, we have a friendly space where experienced editors can help you here:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date.

Happy editing! Kevin ( aka L235 · t · c) 20:10, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Bostonliberty. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page Spike Cohen, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:


 * avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
 * propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the request edit template);
 * disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Conflict of interest);
 * avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:Spam);
 * do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. — Tartan357   ( Talk ) 18:35, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Important Notice
— Tartan357   ( Talk ) 18:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

July 2020
Hello, I'm Deepfriedokra. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Spike Cohen, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. ''Sourcing to candidate messages is not WP:RS. Wikipedia i not a soapbox''  -- Deep fried okra  ( talk ) 18:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello Bostonliberty. The nature of your edits 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 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:Bostonliberty. 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. Kevin ( aka L235 · t · c) 20:10, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Kevin,


 * Thanks for the note. I am a volunteer helping with the Spike Cohen campaign. I have not and will not be receiving any compensation directly or indirectly for any edits. I was trying to update the outdated information and photo on his page. I received word that it was a conflict of interest because I was volunteering for the campaign but I only added factually correct statements from direct quotes on his YouTube page. I am not sure how one would go about updating this outdated information. Would it have to be from just random people instead of directly from the candidate? That seems like it would lead to more, not less mistakes or misleading information. I apologise for my ignorance here. I don't know why this is a COI.


 * Thanks again
 * Bostonliberty Bostonliberty (talk) 20:20, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a conflict of interest because you're a volunteer associated with the campaign, meaning you have an interest in making Spike look good. It does not have to be paid to be a COI. See Wikipedia's policies on COI editing and single-purpose accounts at WP:COI and WP:SPA, respectively. We welcome contributions from "random people". This is just a warning for a first-time offense; you're welcome to edit in other areas if you're here to build an encyclopedia. There are also ways to contribute to topics with which you have a COI; I'd recommend taking a look at our FAQ for organizations. We don't expect newcomers to know the rules, and we try not to give them a hard time when they first make a mistake. If you have further questions, you can ask them at the Teahouse through the link Kevin provided at the top of this page. — Tartan357   ( Talk ) 20:37, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hah! Thought so., it would be best if you do not edit that page directly. You should make suggestions on the talk page. Please bear in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with little interest in what a subject's campaign staff have to say about the subject. Please remember, all content must be cited from reliable sources that are unconnected with the subject and have a reputation for fact checking. -- Deep fried okra  ( talk ) 21:27, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Bostonliberty, I understand that this is probably a bit of a frustrating experience, and I'm sorry about that. Others have also posted some links that are helpful, and you should follow the advice in those links for making edit requests rather than editing the article directly. Please note that our paid-editing policy also applies to volunteers ("Interns, on-loan staff, and unpaid workers, including volunteers, are deemed to be employees" for the purposes of the policy, from Paid-contribution_disclosure). Best, Kevin ( aka L235 · t · c) 01:01, 31 July 2020 (UTC)