User talk:Entrepreneur Consultant

Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Entrepreneur Consultant. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, 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, clients, 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 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. MrOllie (talk) 02:06, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

August 2022
Hello Entrepreneur Consultant. 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:Entrepreneur Consultant. 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) 10:46, 16 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello. What seems to be the problem? I do not have an undisclosed financial stake with this subject. I found a volunteer who said they could help me with Wikipedia, but she no longer wants to help me because she said you were being unreasonable with her. Entrepreneur Consultant (talk) 12:14, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:NPOV and WP:NOTPROMO - Wikipedia must not be used to promote businesses. MrOllie (talk) 12:33, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you. However, I am already very familiar with Wikipedia's terms and conditions. I am not trying to promote any particular business. I can discuss many other businesses that grow Périgord truffles and other varieties of truffles and mushrooms. Garland Truffles just seemed like a logical starting point to me because of all of their media attention that they have gained over the years. I intended to provide details concerning several other businesses once the Garland Truffles information was updated properly. I am perfectly willing to include uncomplimentary and/or controversial information concerning Garland Truffles as well, but I will have to check the legality of some of those matters first. Please help me work on a separate page for Garland Truffles so that it will be easier to validate its historical significance for the truffle page. For example, should I make it about Truffle cultivation in North Carolina and the surrounding states in particular so that it does not give the impression that I am promoting their business? I can contact Garland Truffles and see if they are willing to go through the needed procedures for a paid Wiki business page too. However, I am currently doing this research project entirely free of charge and it has already cost me a good deal of money. I have some connections to Garland Truffles and consulted them recently, which is why I sought out a volunteer to help me construct their page and to avoid any conflict of interest. However, it will be incredibly difficult for me to find a replacement for her. Many of the sources regarding the company are very old and hard to retrieve. Many articles were never archived on the internet or are no longer available online. Some of the misinformation on the current Wikipedia Truffle page is a conflict of interest for Wikipedia because it is promoting competitive businesses and hurting Garland Truffles' credibility, customer relations, marketing, public relations, and user acquisitions, and it is affecting education, historical accuracy, scientific development, and public opinion concerning truffles. Garland Truffles' management team told me that the current Truffles page is constantly misleading their active customers and hurting their business. Conversely, would it be possible to ask my mentor or you to do the research and composition instead for a new discussion topic, such as North Carolinian truffle cultivation? Entrepreneur Consultant (talk) 14:20, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The text you added (and that your associate was working on) is plainly promotional and not appropriate for an encyclopedia. That you have some connections to Garland Tuffles is exactly why the anti-COI guidelines discourage such editing. Recruiting someone to edit on your behalf as a proxy does not address the COI issue. You may ask questions at WP:ANI or WP:TEAHOUSE. As I told your associate (who I'm not sure is really a separate person) I am not willing to be your personal guide to Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 15:20, 16 August 2022 (UTC)