User talk:Renamed user 157yagz567ef11

Welcome
Thanks for creating two needed articles, but next time, you can use Template:Infobox named horse, which is designed for use on biographies of horses. Also please note that pictures aren't allowed unless they are freely licensed. White Arabian Filly Neigh 20:23, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Clean up your work
Hi, saw your edits and I would like to ask that you please disclose who you work for, because you appear to have a Conflict of interest. This does not mean you can't edit, but it means you have to disclose who is paying you to edit - even if you are just an intern and not precisely being paid, you are still working on articles under an employer's supervision. Say do on your user page here and on the talk page of any articles you are working on. Also, please learn how to use the citation templates (see WP:CITE for help) as your formatting is non-standard and creating a cleanup mess for other editors. (If you use just raw links, there is a program, ReFill that automatically does a lot of the formatting for you) We write with a neutral point of view here, and not with the promotional tone used in a magazine, so please also done down the flowery, promotional tone. We don't use phrases like "prestigious horse show" and so on. I did some cleanup work on a few articles you worked on. Please also be careful not to create articles about marginally-notable athletes and animals. We have some guidelines here that will help. I don't want to discourage you, but I did spend about an hour of cleanup work that I would prefer not to have to do. Thanks  Montanabw (talk)  05:24, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest
Hello Chpuckett17. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic. 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. 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, 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:. 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. If you are being compensated, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, please do not edit further until you answer this message.

Reply: I am not being compensated. Thank you.


 * It is fine to edit as long as you're not making money from it. Please try to use neutral language and cite your sources--you can see this article I wrote, McKinlaigh, as an example of how we try to write articles about horses. I think your contributions are helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on my talk/neigh page. White Arabian Filly  Neigh 01:45, 27 July 2016 (UTC)


 * You are an intern with a magazine who oversees and directs your work. The work you do will enhance your career and future employment prospects. So you are in something of a gray area and I am going to look into this a bit more. Folks who do paid editing (and that is a long discussion, highly debated on wikipedia) are generally discouraged from doing so, but if they do anyway, they MUST disclose their employer and their status.  Otherwise they get banned from editing wikipedia.  Given that you and your colleague kind of charged in here blind, promptly uploaded at least a half-dozen copyrighted images, started a number of highly promotional, commercially-toned articles complete with "breathless sportswriter prose", and generally created an enormous mess because you are beginners at Wikipedia editing, it would be very wise for you to follow the COI rules whether you are pulling a paycheck or not. I realize that I probably sound pretty mean to you, but I actually would like to see good editors develop. So does {[u|White Arabian Filly}}, who is a lot nicer person than I am.  Montanabw (talk)  20:58, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

The guidelines
OK. Did some double-checking of WP's policies and guidelines and here is the scoop. WP:FCOI addresses paid editing and strongly discourages it, as we have said (but doesn't totally prohibit it if people are very open about it and disclose their interest, but it is a real touchy subject here). WP:COI includes: "...contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial or other relationships." So here, it is not simply a question of being paid. "Any external relationship ... can trigger a COI. How close the relationship needs to be before it becomes a concern on Wikipedia is governed by common sense." Probably in your case, it's more of a connected contributor situation if you know these people and horses directly or have been asked to write about them, and if you don't, but you are writing for Wikipedia on "company time," then the issue is if your edits are being evaluated by your employer or written at their direction. I've run across some "editing interns" before, some do stuff the boss didn't know about that drives their employer nuts because they made a mess, others are writing at the direction of their employer. Presumably you aren't the former (and if you are, that's not our problem). If you are editing wikipedia because your internship supervisor/employer asked you to, then you should say so on your user page here and on any articles you edit during your internship. (People who edit for school projects are also supposed to do this). We have an obligation to disclose the kinds of COI that could seriously interfere with our objectivity. For example, I don't have to disclose a COI on anything related to the Thoroughbred horse racing world, I'm just an aficionado, but, for example, nowdays I tend to only do vandal patrol on several articles about living Montana political figures. I've never worked for them, but I know some of them personally and have donated to their campaigns. They haven't paid me, but in the past I did a little work on their articles and realized that I'm not objective at all, so I have to stay in the background. Montanabw (talk) 22:06, 28 July 2016 (UTC)