User talk:Samvancook

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The Wikipedia tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome! — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:30, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

March 2022
Hello Samvancook. 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:Samvancook. 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. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I am definitely not being compensated for these edits in any fashion. Whether directly or indirectly. Samvancook (talk) 17:35, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * MHawk10 Is it possible to get clarity on the best practice here? I am more than happy to declare myself as getting paid for this, even though I am not. I am employed by and own the company that I was updating ISBNs and author info for.
 * After doing that I admittedly got carried away and made an autobiography page. I was definitely not trying to be sneaky and thought I was following the rules. I am also happy to just not do this at all. I'm just not clear on exactly what ran me afoul of the rules because I made a number of changes in one sitting.
 * Samvancook (talk) 19:48, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Samvancook (talk) 15:45, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hey again, I went in added the disclosure to my talk page. I genuinely apologize for getting carried away with this. I would love any help getting my account unblocked. Samvancook (talk) 17:23, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

March 2022
 You have been blocked indefinitely from editing because your account is being used only for advertising or promotion. If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page:. Cullen328 (talk) 19:06, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I want to apologize! Im home on parental leave and was just tooling around while the baby napped.

I founded Button Poetry and so I know a lot about it. Definitely wasn't trying to promote or advertise. Figured it made sense to start with something I'm a well versed in.

Definitely not tryna be sneaky. Not getting paid. No plan to benefit. My big plan was to add some ISBNs and other publications. Got a little Carried away.

Happy to stop doing anything. Not tryna spam.

Definitely just messing around with the autobio one as I started to get comfier. I read a bit before I did it and I thought the documentation said to post a 'talk'. Which I did. Ie not tryna be sneaky.

Again no financial motive. Just a big fan of wikipedia and figured this was a safe way to learn the ropes and complete existing articles.

Let me know what I should do next!

Samvancook (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * If you wish to be unblocked, then you must read the instructions above and follow them precisely. Cullen328 (talk) 22:07, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Great! I figured as much but I wanted to y'know, respond like a human first.sorry if that is out of order. Samvancook (talk) 22:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Is it possible to get clarity on why I was banned? Based on this article appealing a block the first step I am supposed to take is to reach out to you for more info.

I reviewed the 'spam'/advertising or promotion link you provided and I do not believe it is correct for the majority of the edits I did. Based on the link provided I assume I was banned explicitly for the page I started for myself. I read the autobiography article before posting and again before writing this out. I also followed the instructions that popped up when I posted the autobiography article and included a talk sam van cook as instructed. I am more than happy to refrain from creating any articles about myself in the future but the written documentation suggested I would get a response to my talk not a ban. Samvancook (talk) 19:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Samvancook (talk) 15:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Samvancook (talk) 17:20, 5 May 2023 (UTC)