User talk:Dietrich Kuhlgatz

May 2021
Hello Dietrich Kuhlgatz. 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 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:Dietrich Kuhlgatz. 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. MrOllie (talk) 11:46, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Dear MrOllie, I am surely not a paid author, but a historian and philospher from Germany who is been working at Bosch - see my page here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dietrich_Kuhlgatz I have no idea why my identity was not visible for you. I have logged in with my account that I have created on the Wikipedia site in Germany

The article was unbalanced, in many parts just fact after fact without explaining contexts. Reliable references were missing at many points, important parts of the company history were just missing. All these points I have explained in my comments before publishing.

The changes I have made, are translations of texts in the German version, and all of them were edited and approved by the Wikipedia editors. Please find the the revised Robert Bosch GmbH article on Wikipedia in German here (in case you would like to compare both articles, the official German and my Changes in English): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH

In order to make the article not too I didn't write the changed parts as detailed as in the German version.

May I ask you to approve the changes that I have made so they can be published? That would be great!

Dietrich Kuhlgatz (talk) 14:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC) Kind regards, Dietrich Kuhlgatz


 * If you work at Bosch, you are considered a paid editor when you are writing about Bosch. The English Wikipedia is separate from the German one, you will have to abide by the local policies around conflict of interest editing including making separate disclosures and suggesting edits on article talk pages rather than adding material yourself. - MrOllie (talk) 14:42, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Dear MrOllie, Thanks for your suggestions. This is a good idea. My intention is to build up that article to a good one, leaving behind the unbalanced, uncomplete and to some extent context-free appearance. I do not know if you have noticed that before the bot made my work undone: The content I have contributed is carefully chosen and well considered with reference to standard books of three independent German University Professors (Johannes Bähr, Paul Erker and Joachim Scholtyseck), not to company-related sources. If I was a paid author I would have done it in a different way, believe me. But you are the editor, and I will present my proposals in the talk pages as you suggested.

Paid editing again
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:Dietrich Kuhlgatz, and the template Paid can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form:. Please respond before making any other edits to Wikipedia. Theroadislong (talk) 08:15, 20 September 2022 (UTC)


 * You are right, I am working for Bosch but my intention for my post yesterday (2 additional passages for the early history) was to make the article better not to make it "Bosch-positive". I am a historian with more than 20 years of experience in research of the company's history and can share my knowledge for enhancing this article.
 * But being paid by Bosch for my Job (not for this article changes!), I have added to my editing that I state it to be paid editing. You can see it in my comment to my editing work. My question: What can I do more to make my activity transparent. I thought that a commitment to be a paid author was enough? Dietrich--Dietrich Kuhlgatz (talk) 12:28, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Just a question in addition: Does adding this to my editing work at Bosch-related articles meet the Wikipedia rules?
 * Thank you!
 * --Dietrich Kuhlgatz Dietrich Kuhlgatz (talk) 12:48, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * You need to follow the instructions and place the disclosure on your user page. You will not be able to edit the article page directly but you can use the "request edit" template on the article's talk page. Theroadislong (talk) 13:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you!
 * --Dietrich Kuhlgatz Dietrich Kuhlgatz (talk) 13:37, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * --Dietrich Kuhlgatz Dietrich Kuhlgatz (talk) 13:37, 20 September 2022 (UTC)