User talk:RFLipscomb

Connection with Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington?
Do you have a connection with the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington? ElKevbo (talk) 00:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I am a freelancer for the School of Public Health. 99.67.81.55 (talk) 14:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

March 2022
Hello RFLipscomb. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but 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 serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

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. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely strongly discouraged 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:RFLipscomb. 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, do not edit further until you answer this message. ElKevbo (talk) 00:41, 12 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Oh my goodness -- I had no idea. Thank you for this information. I have known David Allison for many years and am helping him with his page as a personal favor. I am not being compensated for these edits. I absolutely don't want to do anything in conflict with Wikipedia's rules. Is it okay to make updates for him if I'm not being compensated? RFLipscomb (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick and helpful reply! It sounds like you have a conflict of interest with respect to that person and perhaps the institution, too, although it doesn't sound like you're editing because you're being paid to edit. So it's still a good idea to read our guidelines about working with conflicts-of-interest. In general, I suggest not making edits to that article(s) if it's not clearly uncontroversial (e.g., updating information already in the article, correcting obvious errors) but instead making requests and suggestions in the article's Talk page. ElKevbo (talk) 21:47, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! I really had no idea. I greatly appreciate your help and will absolutely do that. : ) RFLipscomb (talk) 21:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)