User talk:ProfSharonMarcus

Sharon Marcus article
Hello, ProfSharonMarcus, and welcome to Wikipedia!&#32;Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Sharon Marcus, which 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 of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * Best practices for editors with close associations
 * 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
 * The Teahouse, our help forum for new editors

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, visit the Teahouse, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi ProfSharonMarcus. I've added to above general information template to your user talk page after seeing your question about changing the article's infobox image at the Wikipedia Teahouse. The pages linked to above in blue provide some information about Wikipedia that you may perhaps find helpful. Please understand that although Wikipedia doesn't expressly prohibit users from editing article for which they may have a conflict of interest, it does highly discourage such a thing because it can quickly lead to some serious problems. FWIW, I'm not saying you've done anything wrong at this point; I'm only try to point out to you certain things about Wikipedia that you might not be aware of. In addition to the pages mentioned above, you might also want to take a look at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons because it also applies to your situation. There are processes in place to help the subjects of articles such as yourself who feel (for whatever reason) that what's written about them anywhere on Wikipedia needs to be updated, corrected or whatever. Things will go much more smoothly for you if you try and use these processes and get others to help you sort out problems than if you just jump in and try and do things yourself or have an aquaintence (someone else connected to you personally or professionally) do things on your behalf.Another thing that you should be aware of is Wikipedia's username policy as it pertains to the use of one's WP:REALNAME as their user account name. Once again, there's nothing that prohibits individual users from using their real names as their user names; however, such accounts often are soft blocked as a precaution against dmaging impersonation in cases where the name is the same as that of a well-known public person (e.g. someone who has a Wikipedia article written about them or is otherwise mentioned in a Wikipedia article). There are couple of things you can do to try and stop this from happening to you: (1) never directly edit any Wikipedia content about you on any page and use edit requests instead; (2) follow the guidance given in WP:DECLARECOI and post something on your user page stating clearly who you are; and (3) email the Wikimedia Volunteer Response Team and asking for information on how you can have your identity verified. Generally just doing (1) and (2) is more than sufficient in most cases, but sometimes (3) is asked for as a way of really verifying who someone is. Try and remember "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" in that most experienced users will probably give you the benefit of the doubt but there's really no way to know for sure that you're not just screwing around and pretending to be someone you aren't, Such a thing is more common than one might think because there's really no formal verification process involved in creating a Wikipedia account. So, if, for example, your account starts to be associated with problem edits or otherwise suspicious activity, others might start questioning who is actually using the account, which could lead to the account being blocked in some cases.Anyway, if you've got any questions about any of the above, feel free to ask them below (you can use the template Help), at the Wikipedia:Help desk or the Wikipedia Teahouse and someone will try and answer them. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:55, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for this detailed and helpful reply. I kept my edits very simple and factual but you are correct that I was unaware of the general policies, and I will keep those in mind moving forward. ProfSharonMarcus (talk) 13:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Photo question
Hi Sharon. You can, if you like, provide an alternative photo that can be used instead of the one currently being used in the article. Of course, there's not a 100% guarantee that it will be used just because you're providing it, but it shouldn't be any problems using it unless the photo itself is seen to be problematic for some reason. As was pointed out in one of the responses to your Teahouse question, try taking a look at Wikipedia:A picture of you because it covers all of the basics. You should also take a look at c:Commons:Licensing for some basic information about the kind of licensing Wikipedia accepts. The most important thing to remember is that it's generally the person taking a photo who is considered to be the copyright holder of the photo (not the subject of photo), and only that person can release their photo under a copyright license that is acceptable for Wikipedia. Once you've got the picture uploaded, just post an edit request at Talk:Sharon Marcus (include the file name of the photo in your request) and ask that it be used to replace the one in the infobox. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)