User talk:Frbsttoms

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

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was St. Thomas Aquinas Purdue, 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
 * Plain and simple conflict of interest guide
 * 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! 10mmsocket (talk) 07:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

October 2021
Hello Frbsttoms. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to St. Thomas Aquinas Purdue, 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:Frbsttoms. 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. ''As a paid employee you should not be editing this page at all. Please discuss any proposed changes on the article's talk page.'' 10mmsocket (talk) 07:16, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello. Thanks for making me aware of this. I updated my user page to indicate that I work for the Church, but that I do not receive any personal financial benefit or compensation for my work (I am in a public, perpetual vow of poverty in the Catholic Church). I hope this will help with any concerns about being paid for my contributions to the aforementioned article. I would like to work with an editor on vetting the additions that I recently made to the article. I understand the conflict of interest policy and I'm happy to have another person work with me on crafting content that enhances the article while still abiding by Wikipedia's policies. -- Frbsttoms (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I find it hard to believe that you do not receive a single penny from the church. Are you housed, clothed, supported, fed, given medical care, etc. by the church? Then you're receiving personal financial benefit even if no actual money changes hands. Seems like clear COI to me. 10mmsocket (talk) 20:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So you are at least partially correct. I actually do not receive any salary for my work at the Church. My religious community (the Dominican Friars) provides for my housing, clothing, medical care, retirement, etc. St. Toms church does cover my food expenses. All of this is pretty common for Catholic priests who belong to religious orders. I do want to clarify my reason for disclosing this: I want to abide by the COI policy and work with someone (an editor?) on the talk page to craft something that contributes substantively to the page. Admittedly I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, and my intention is to be transparent. That's why I posted it on my user page so as to abide by the policy. May I ask what is the best way to make that disclosure in this case? Frbsttoms (talk) 01:29, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

COI Declaration
Thank you for your COI declaration. However please do be aware that although you do not receive any financial reward, you could still be classed as having a conflict of interest and should refrain from posting on related articles. I would suggest you open a discussion on the article’s talk page and suggest edits there with reliable sources for your edits. Thank you for wanting to contribute. Equine-man (talk) 17:53, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Understood. Thanks for the help.Frbsttoms (talk) 17:57, 25 October 2021 (UTC)