User talk:Gkessler3301

January 2024
Please stop. If you continue to remove maintenance templates without resolving the problem that the template refers to, you may be blocked from editing. Do not remove a COI box from Tom Huck again.  RetroCosmos  t •  c 06:55, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello Gkessler3301. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Tom Huck, 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 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 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:Gkessler3301. 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. Netherzone (talk) 23:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I am not being paid by Tom Huck and have never been employed by anyone affiliated with Tom Huck. I wrote a book about him and have been trying to bring the page up to date with information that I thought was relevant. Since I have done so much research on Tom Huck I thought I was qualified to edit the page and make sure that it is accurate. I am continuing to add citations and fix my own sometimes shoddy writing and spelling.  This is the first time that I have edited on Wikipedia.  Can I ask what edits I made that are causing a problem?  I want to make sure I am doing this correctly. Gkessler3301 (talk) 00:16, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Gkessler3301, Thanks for you response. You are adding large quantities of unsourced content to a biography of a living person. This is not permitted and can be removed at any time. If this is content from your book or your own original research, please use the edit request feature instead. Please read WP:COI behavioral guideline for more information which is also linked above. Netherzone (talk) 00:42, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I just fixed some things that had gotten lost the last time. I don't understand how this is a conflict of interest. If the article is going to be accurate I am the most knowledgeable person in the world to write about the work of this artist and I am not employed by him and I have purposely not added a section about the book, which I do understand is a COI issue. Gkessler3301 (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Citing your own work is a conflict of interest. Good day—  RetroCosmos  talk 03:41, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Gkessler3301, you should not be citing your own book, please see WP:SELFCITE. And please read WP's behavioral guidelines on conflict of interest editing: WP:COI. Also no original research is permitted on WP, please read WP:NOR for more information on this WP  policy . COI editors, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article's content. You also need to disclose your COI on your user page, along with the articles you have edited with which you have a COI. If you have received funding or payment to write the book, or if you receive royalties from the publisher, you also have a financial COI.
 * Editors with a COI should follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously:
 * you should disclose your COI when involved with affected articles;
 * you are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly;
 * you may propose changes on talk pages (by using the template), or by posting a note at the COI noticeboard, so that they can be peer reviewed;
 * you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly;
 * you should not act as a reviewer of affected article(s) at AfC, new pages patrol or elsewhere;
 * you should respect other editors by keeping discussions concise.
 * Thank you, Netherzone (talk) 12:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Netherzone (talk) 12:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)