User talk:Online Service Team

August 2012
Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username (Online Service Team) may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because it seems to indicate that the account is used by a group of people. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username, or you may simply create a new account for editing. Thank you. CtP (t • c) 17:15, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello Chris

Thank you for contacting me. I represent a team at Education Scotland who will be responsible for maintaining the Education Scotland wikipedia page. As such we have a general email address that the team uses collectively. This is preferable to an individual email address because we all have access to it and so the Wikipedia account details do not need to be amended if one person is absent or leaves the organisation. I hope this is ok?

Kind regards, Lucy Janes
 * Unfortunately, the username policy does not allow usernames that are simply names of groups. It would be strongly preferable if you each member of your team had an individual account. CtP  (t • c) 17:31, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd also advise you to read Conflict of interest. CtP  (t • c) 17:35, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Because we have a policy against usernames that give the impression that the account represents a group, organization or website, I have blocked this account; please take a moment to create a new account with a username that represents only yourself as an individual. You should also read our conflict of interest guideline and be aware that promotional editing is not acceptable regardless of the username you choose. If your username doesn't represent a group, organization or website, you may appeal this username block by adding the text below this notice. Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 18:48, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but we do not allow accounts whose names are those of groups or organizations; Wikipedia accounts must be for individuals only, who are personally responsible for them. One reason for that is that group or organization accounts are invariably here for promotional purposes, even though they protest that their only wish is to "tell the world."

You say that your team will be "responsible for maintaining the Education Scotland wikipedia page." I'm afraid that shows that you do not understand what Wikipedia is - that is not your fault, because we are so keen to encourage people to edit that we do not do a very good job of explaining, in advance, what Wikipedia is not. It is not a "notice-board" site like Myspace or Facebook where people and organizations write about themselves; it is not for advertising or promotion of any kind, no matter how well-intentioned; it is a project to build a neutral, impartial encyclopedia. Nobody "owns" a Wikipedia article, not its first author, and least of all its subject. From Wikipedia's point of view, you and anyone working for Education Scotland have, in regard to its article, a conflict of interest and should not edit it directly.

See User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard, which I wrote because I have this conversation so often, and for more information:
 * Conflict of interest - note particularly Wikipedia's Law of Unintended Consequences
 * Best practices for editors with conflicts of interest
 * Notability - a requirement to have an article, which is not a matter of opinion but has to be demonstrated by showing "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."
 * FAQ/Organizations

Hello John

Thank you for the information. I shall consider how to proceed. May I just say that I do wonder if a more fruitful approach might be to allow organisational accounts, thus enabling the wikipedia community to monitor their contributions and edits more effectively? I understand the concern about marketing copy however organisations do have collective identities and as their contributions are as subject to editing as any indivdual's it seems a little unfair that personal contributions and edits are thus accorded a greater credibility than organisational contributions and edits. I can imagine that those organisations unscrupulous enough to attempt to use Wikipedia as a promotional arena would not balk at creating a multitude of 'individual' accounts to try to further its aim 'under the radar'! Whilst I'm sure Wikipedia has ways of spotting 'suspicious' patterns of activity around particular articles I do wonder if a semantic analysis of text, and building relationships with trusted organisations which have demonstrated that they can supply independently verifiable text might be a more fruitful approach in accessing expertise and accurate data? My original impetus to create the page was prompted by the fact that a year after the creation of the organisation the Wikipedia information and links still referenced the two defunct predecessor organisations, so I really did intend to ensure that Wikipedia had up-to-date and accurate information, and hoped that I wasn't breaching the Conflict of Interest guidelines. (I have now also updated these other references - hopefully again in a neutral fashion (all I have done is insert two links to the new page whilst retaining the links to the historic information in the old pages). I hope that I have applied the attributes of verifiability and notability to the new page and I worked hard to try and ensure the information was written in a neutral and factual style. I can however see how a few phrases or selection of specific words could be considered to be non-neutral and in fact I'm slightly disappointed that no-one has yet edited these! When I spoke of 'maintaining' I meant that as its own existence is a subject in which my organisation has some expertise, it would naturally be interested in any edits made to the page and to see how it developed. Specifically I was thinking of an occasion with the Scottish Arts Council page where all references to the Arts Council were changed to Scottish Farts Council - which while hilarious - would be the sort of edit where we might wish to take action in response!

Kind regards, Lucy Janes

JohnCD (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2012 (UTC)