User talk:JohnHornerAtBingLee

Welcome
Hello, BingLeeWebTeam, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Here are a few good links for newcomers: We hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  23:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
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I totally understand if I have violated the name rules. I will happily delete the account or change its name.

However, I shouldn't be banned for making edits incompatible with policy, because I haven't made any edits at all to the company page. (I did make a couple of edits to the random "needs fixes" page Wikipedia showed me when I signed up.)

Rather than "mainly intended for publicity and/or promotional purposes" I hoped to show that it was the opposite. The information on Wikipedia's page is out of date and I am in a good position to correct it, while being very conscious of the policies against doing so in the wrong way. I have pursued this agenda openly: I posted a question to the Talk page. I posted a question to the Community Portal page. I never touched the page itself, specifically because I knew that doing it in the wrong way would be frowned upon.

Please inform me of the best way to have the company's page updated with purely factual data without violating Wikipedia's policies. I would be happy for some neutral Wikipedian to do this. I would be happy to do it myself and have someone approve my changes. Surely there must be some way to achieve both ends: to have the page be up to date and to stay within Wikipedia's policies?

Username
Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "BingLeeWebTeam", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Trammel Museum of Art". However, you are invited to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you personally, such as "Mark at WidgetsUSA", "Jack Smith at the XY Foundation", and "WidgetFan87". Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people, and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, or website, regardless of your username. Moreover, I recommend that you read our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please create a new account or request a username change that complies with our username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Thank you. ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 23:55, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm very happy to change the username. What would you suggest? How about WebDev at Bing Lee?

--BingLeeWebTeam (talk) 23:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You don't seem to understand: we don't permit accounts representing companies, AND we don't permit accounts representing more than one individual human being: Team, Group, Dept., Corp., Club, etc. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  00:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Your account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended for publicity and/or promotional purposes. If you intend to edit constructively in other topic areas, you may be granted the right to continue under a change of username. Please read the following carefully.

Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, website or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity. The edits may have violated one or more of our rules on spamming, which include: adding inappropriate external links, posting advertisements and using Wikipedia for promotion. Wikipedia has many articles on companies, groups, and organizations, but such groups are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia to write about themselves. In addition, usernames like yours are disallowed under our username policy.
 * Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

Probably not, although if you can demonstrate a pattern of future editing in strict accordance with our neutral point of view policy, you may be granted this right. See Wikipedia's FAQ for Organizations for a helpful list of frequently asked questions by people in your position. Also, review the conflict of interest guidance to see the kinds of limitations you would have to obey if you did want to continue editing about your company, group, organization, or clients. If this does not fit in with your goals, then you will not be allowed to edit Wikipedia again.
 * Am I allowed to make these edits if I change my username?


 * What can I do now?

If you have no interest in writing about some other topic than your organization, group, company, or product, you may consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead. If you do intend to make useful contributions here about some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:


 * Add the text on your user talk page.
 * Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with a new username you are willing to use. See Special:Listusers to search for available usernames. Your new username will need to meet our username policy.
 * Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:
 * Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
 * Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

If you believe this block was made in error, you may appeal this block by adding the text below, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. -- Orange Mike |  Talk  00:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi John. I've unblocked your account to allow you to change your username; please make a username change request before doing any other editing. As I believe you've already discovered, users with a conflict of interest are strongly discouraged from editing articles about their own companies, but you appear to be following the correct course of action (placing requests for edits on the Bing Lee talkpage rather than editing the article directly) and so I see no reason not to allow you to continue editing here. For future reference, you can get a faster response to your edit requests by placing the code  on the talkpage above your suggested changes; this will list the page at Category:Requested edits so that more users will see it. Yunshui 雲 水 07:04, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Can't make the change request
Hi, I have tried but I get a message "You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia." when I go to the Changing username/Simple page. It appears I'm still blocked.
 * My bad; I missed a fairly important step in the unblocking procedure (the bit where I'm supposed to actually unblock your account...). Fixed now; you should be able to edit. Yunshui 雲 水 07:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Have made name change request.
 * I'm still deeply concerned by the message on your userpage, "Account created to represent the Bing Lee organisation on Wikipedia". This account by definition is not permitted to "represent" anybody but John Horner, human being. "the Bing Lee organisation" has no place here. I would really like to see some evidence that you are here for any purpose but to improve the image of that company. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  12:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with the policies you state and the userpage message is a bit unnerving, but with all due respect I believe the previous block was premature and that it'd be better to wait for evidence that JohnHorner is here to promote his company, instead of waiting for evidence that he isn't. JohnHorner has made clear both at the help desk and above that he doesn't wish to promote the company, and only wishes to provide non-controversial fact updates. The fact that he's declaring his COI and going about the right path by asking questions before making edits isn't something to block for; if anything, praise, as opposed to the multitude of people who slyly try to promote their companies with no declaration whatsoever. No need for admin action until promotional edits are made, which I doubt will be. ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 15:23, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You're watching, Yunshui's watching, I'm not worrying. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  17:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I totally understand your concern Mike. I understand that I can't represent an organisation on Wikipedia. I have changed that. But this raises some interesting questions. Wikipedia has an incentive, to have accurate and up-to-date information in general. My organisation has the same incentive, to have up-to-date and accurate information in the specific case of our page. Some organisations even have a Wikipedian in residence. But there is no way for an organisation to work on its own page openly and directly. Shouldn't there be?

Also, where's the place to have this discussion outside my personal page?

--BingLeeWebTeam (talk) 23:21, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Hey again - if you didn't notice this, another editor responded to your question at the help desk this morning here, which offers some more good advice. If you're simply updating information given in the source, that's fine. If you're starting to add prose or sources, however, it's advised to avoid editing directly and instead request changes on the talk page. As long as you use the edit request template, someone should look at it in due time. It adds a middleman into the editing process, which I know can be a pain, but that's the accepted way to help keep bias out of articles.
 * As for discussing this elsewhere, the help desk (which you already used) and the Teahouse are the best places to receive quick responses to questions like this. But in this particular case, you'll probably hear the same response ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 23:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. You also seem to be logged into the wrong account - remember to switch ;) ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 23:45, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Can that old account now be deleted?

Hi, thanks, I did notice the instructions and I intend to follow that procedure. But even here it's a bit ambiguous. I can change a simple thing like a number … but I really should avoid editing the page altogether. I got banned once for making edits incompatible with the policy when the number of edits I had made was precisely zero.

The ironic thing here is that I'm a big advocate for Wikipedia and a firm believer in open source etc. Having the information on the company be incorrect and out of date makes Wikipedia look bad to the general public, not to mention to the company staff, and a policy which stops companies from directly engaging with it seems somewhat perverse to people less familiar with the principles embodied here. I will treat this as an experiment in a commercial organisation engaging with Wikipedia, that's the best way to look at it.

Perhaps there should be a way of nominating a guaranteed unbiased editor who would act as a guide and advocate for organisations in this situation?

--JohnHornerAtBingLee (talk) 23:51, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately old accounts cannot be deleted, only abandoned.
 * I agree that the rules are a bit ambiguous, as the line between biased and unbiased editing can be a bit gray. But as long as everyone can agree that the edit is wholly uncontroversial, then it's fine; this is why the simple changes we discussed can be allowed, but anything more should be reviewed.
 * You do make interesting points, but there is the fact that the strong majority of editors from companies do come here to promote, which is why we have such strong policies. It can be difficult for genuine editors, but that is a very small minority. Beyond that, our conflict of interest policy is not only to prevent purposeful promotion, but also accidental. The idea is that by being associated with a company (or another entity), you are prone to inject a bias when doing any substantial editing, purposeful or not. This is more apparent in larger edits, such as someone writing an entire article on their company. They can tend to focus on the better parts of the company, place little focus on negative aspects (e.g. lawsuits, environmental record, etc.), use poor sourcing standards, etc. I have seen countless cases where a representative from a company swears that his article was written neutrally, but to anyone else reading it, is is obviously written in a promotional tone, as unintentional as it may have been. As a result, it's a nice thought to have a sort of "ambassador" program, but it would not catch on for the reasons I stated, and it could certainly be abused.
 * It may not be convenient for you, but use good judgement, stick to talk pages for anything more than a simple fact correction, and everything should be fine :) ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 00:22, 20 May 2014 (UTC)