User talk:Consciouscandle

May 2023
Hello Consciouscandle. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to User:Consciouscandle/sandbox, 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:Consciouscandle. 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. Fancy Refrigerator (talk) 11:48, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

As previously advised, your edits give the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. You were asked to cease editing until you responded by either stating that you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits, or by complying with the mandatory requirements under the Wikimedia Terms of Use that you disclose your employer, client and affiliation. Again, you can post such a disclosure on your user page at User:Consciouscandle, and the template Paid can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form:. Please respond before making any other edits to Wikipedia. Fancy Refrigerator (talk) 11:51, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

You still have not adequately responded or taken action to the inquiry regarding your appearance as an undisclosed paid editor. If you make any additional edits without complying, you may be blocked from editing. Fancy Refrigerator (talk) 15:06, 20 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow, I just made some edits as I'd like to practice and learn how to create a page from scratch and experiment with article editing. Hence why I was doing it in the SANDBOX. It was 10 minutes from sending your first message and another few hours for the next one. I don't constantly have wikipedia open to see messages to be able to answer so quickly. Consciouscandle (talk) 22:17, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * If you "don't constantly have wikipedia open to see messages to be able to answer so quickly" then why did you make this edit to the sandbox hours after the original notice was given? You were asked to cease editing and respond to these inquiries. Paid-contributions disclosures are mandatory, or else it is a violation of Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use. Fancy Refrigerator (talk) 23:25, 21 May 2023 (UTC)