User talk:Mikeblucreative

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

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited 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 our use and policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * The 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! Ian.thomson (talk) 20:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

You must disclose your employment on your user page
Hello Mikeblucreative. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, and that 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 egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to Black hat SEO.

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, and if it does not, 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:Mikeblucreative. 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, please do not edit further until you answer this message. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Hello User:Ian.thomson, I'm trying to create a page for a close friend, and it is not paid. Should I still provide a disclosure or some sort of verification from him directly? (Sorry if this is not the proper place to respond, I'm incredible lost!) Mikeblucreative (talk) 20:33, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You still need to disclose your employment with Blu Creative on your user page, and your conflict of interest with regard to your friend. Failure to do so would be a violation of our terms of use. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:51, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Ya know, it's interesting that your "close friend" clearly hired your company to create the website you linked to in the article about him. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:24, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey User:Ian.thomson, Both the website and Wikipedia were purely done as a favor for a friend, no monetary exchange, which is why I didn't think it qualified as paid/sponsored. I'll look into the articles above outlining the paid templates, and apply those accordingly when setting up the page in the future, or I'll refer him to an agency who has more experience doing this type of stuff.
 * Suurrreee.... You managed to convince your boss to use company time and resources to create a website for someone as if they were a paid client, and to use the company name on the account you registered to try and push a PR article here.  Uh-huh.  Riiight...
 * Even if we're going to play along that you're just doing this for a friend, the fact remains that you registered your account as a Blu Creative employee, and they are a business, and that business created the website for the person who you tried to write an article about. We have no way of knowing if you're on the clock or not, either (and no, we don't trust you to tell us when you are or not).
 * Final warning: If you take any other action (including arguing about this) besides disclosing your employment on your user page, using the template, you will be blocked. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:39, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * And if you are sincere, you need to let your friend know: Wikipedia is not a webhost nor a directory -- people are not entitled to have articles about themselves. Wikipedia is not the place to promote one's career. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Hey User:Ian.thomson, Fair enough, I've added the disclosure to my user page. Also, not that it matters, but I'm the co-founder of the agency (Blu), not an employee. Would it be possible to let me know if I applied the template correctly to my user page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikeblucreative (talk • contribs)
 * Yes, you have, thank you for your cooperation. If you follow the guide I left in the section below, you should have no trouble with creating a new article (it's more or less the process I use, though I skip the AFC part but you must use that one since you're editing with a COI).  It's part of a larger guide I've written that explains most of the issues new users come across.
 * And you shouldn't have any issues (COI related ones at any rate) editing articles that Blu Creative wouldn't have any reason to edit (like Sumer or Abraham Lincoln or something). You're more than welcome to work in those areas as well.  Ian.thomson (talk) 23:58, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

How to write articles
If you're going to write an article about anyone or anything that is not you or something you are connected to, here are the steps you should follow:
 * 1) Choose a topic whose notability is attested by discussions of it in several reliable independent sources.
 * 2) Gather as many professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources you can find. Google Books is a good resource for this.  Also, while search engine resutls are tnot sources, they are where you can find sources.  Just remember that they need to be professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources.
 * 3) Focus on just the ones that are not dependent upon or affiliated with the subject, but still specifically about the subject and providing in-depth coverage (not passing mentions). If you do not have at least three such sources, the subject is not yet notable and trying to write an article at this point will only fail.
 * 4) Summarize those sources left after step 3, adding citations at the end of them. You'll want to do this in a program with little/no formatting, like Microsoft Notepad or Notepad++, and not in something like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer.  Make sure this summary is just bare statement of facts, phrased in a way that even someone who hates the subject can agree with.
 * 5) Combine overlapping summaries (without arriving at new statements that no individual source supports) where possible, repeating citations as needed.
 * 6) Paraphrase the whole thing just to be extra sure you've avoided any copyright violations or plagiarism.
 * 7) Use the Article wizard to post this draft and wait for approval.
 * 8) Expand the article using sources you put aside in step 3 (but make sure they don't make up more than half the sources for the article, and make sure that affiliated sources don't make up more than half of that).

Doing something besides those steps typically results in the article not being approved, or even in its deletion.

If you are writing about yourself, or someone or something you are connected with (such as a friend, family member, or your business), the following steps are different:
 * 1) If the subject really was notable, you wouldn't need to write the article. Remember that articles are owned by the Wikipedia community as a whole, not the article subject or the article author.  If you do not want other people to write about you, then starting an article about yourself is a bad idea.
 * 8a) If the article is accepted, never edit it again. Instead, make edit requests on the article's talk page.
 * 8b) If the article is rejected, there will be a reason given. Read it carefully and closely.  If there are links in the reason, open them and read those pages.

Ian.thomson (talk) 20:15, 20 December 2018 (UTC)