User talk:NorthHillsCommunicationsDept

This account is run by the North Hills School District Communications Department. It is an official account of the district. If you have any questions about the information on the North Hills School District wikipedia page, please email hartlea@nhsd.net for clarification and correct information.

Currently, the North Hills School District Wikipedia page has been extensively vandalized with false and, in many cases, wild claims about the ranking, graduation rate and testing scores of the district.

We are seeking to rectify the information, but please bear with us as we make the changes convey the most factual data.

As a district, we ask that you check the citation information before believing anything written on our pages. During our efforts, we will attempt to cite, to the best of our ability, any information we update.

Explanation
In response to your e-mail -- although I'm certainly willing to accept your statement that you're the district's communications director, that you have no intention of posting PR-type "puff pieces", and that your only goal here is to correct vandalism and ensure that accurate information is presented, there's another issue.

This account is identified as belonging to the school district's communications department. A Wikipedia account is not to be used by more than one person. Although I'm willing to accept your statement that you're the only person using the account, your username and userpage indicate that you're not necessarily expecting this to remain the case -- if some day you and the district part ways for whatever reason, will you take the account with you? Or will you give the password to your replacement?

By describing yourself as the department -- by stating that this is the official account of the communications director -- you imply that you're expecting to eventually share the account. There are two reasons that "shared" accounts and "official group" accounts are not allowed: the first pertains to esoteric licensing details, but the second pertains to user behavior and misbehavior. If an account is shared between multiple people, and one of those people chooses to behave so badly as to earn disciplinary measures (typically, the account being blocked), should the innocent be punished along with the guilty? Or should the guilty escape punishment so as to not be unfair to the innocent? And to approach the problem from the other side, what if someone massively vandalizes articles but then claims "oh, that wasn't me, it was one of the other people who has access to this account password" ?

In order to avoid such situations, all shared accounts are blocked; this also applies to accounts whose usernames and/or userpages indicate that they are intended for use by multiple people.

Saying that you're editing on behalf of the school district -- fine. Saying that you're employed by the school district -- fine. Naming yourself after the district, or after a department within the district -- not fine.

At this point, you've got two choices. You can start a new account, more clearly indicating that it belongs to, and is intended for use by, only one person. This is quicker, as you can do it right away, but it will break your connection to the previous edits made by this account. Or, you can file a request to have your username changed; this will take a little longer, but will ensure that the edits are still counted as yours.

If you choose to get the username changed, the first step is posting here on your talk page, along with the statement "please unblock me so that I can request a username change"; if you do that, another admin will be along soon to deal with your situation. The next step is, going to the New Username board (which I linked in the previous paragraph) and follow the instructions there.

Sorry for the inconvenience. DS (talk) 20:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

"πlease unblock me so that I can request a username change." NorthHillsCommunicationsDept (talk) 18:52, 11 October 2013 (UTC) NorthHillsCommunicationsDept

I'm sorry for the delay, but you hid the unblock request in  tags; thus it was not displayed properly, did not add you to the category of users requesting an unblock, and was overlooked. Again, sorry; please request the username change via WP:Changing username/Simple. Huon (talk) 23:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi there Ms Hartle. I had my attention drawn to this issue a little while ago and I've just made a very large edit to the North Hills article in an attempt to clean out the misinformation. I removed a lot of content, since some of it was copied from other places or (as you said!) falsified, so I probably caught up some good stuff in the dragnet too. Please feel free to add or restore correct information to the article after you have your username changed, and you can always ask me if you need any further help figuring out how to edit the article. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:14, 7 December 2013 (UTC)