User talk:Seanerenstoft

User page
We're glad you've registered on Wikipedia and hope to see constructive edits by you. We do need to point out that your user page violates Wikipedia prohibition against personal web pages.

The policy specifies: "Wikipedians have their own user pages, but they should be used primarily to present information relevant to working on the encyclopedia. Limited biographical information is allowed, but user pages should not function as personal webpages or be repositories for large amounts of material that is irrelevant to collaborating on Wikipedia. If you are looking to make a personal webpage or blog or to post your résumé, please make use of one of the many free providers on the Internet or any hosting included with your Internet account."

Please see other editors' User pages for examples. Note that any editor may notify Wikipedia admins of policy vios. Regardless, we look forward to your contributions! --Tenebrae (talk) 15:14, 11 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Your user page is clearly violative. Since you disagree, this will need to go to an admin to examine. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:10, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

ANI notice
This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Contributing to Wikipedia
Wikipedia is always glad to have sincere volunteers. If you are planning to contribute to pages regarding your clients, it's very important you be aware of Wikipedia conflict-of-interest guidelines, which, certainly, as an attorney, you would understand and appreciate. The very first sentence reads: "Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial or other relationships." Thank you for your understanding. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:37, 16 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm sure your heart is in the right place, but writing for encyclopedic tone is different from advocacy writing, writing a brief, or writing a press release. Your edits to CinemaNow did, in fact, read like a press release and did not follow the guideline at WP:LEAD or the MOS in general. I would ask that you not edit-war but rather read the Five Pillars of Wikipedia and Manual of Style, and examine other companies' Wikipedia articles in order to emulate the style and tone. For example, two business-related articles that reached official "Good Article" status are Nestlé Purina PetCare and Dean Witter Reynolds.


 * If I can help, please leave a message at the CinemaNow talk page or my talk page, and I'll be glad to do what I can. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:10, 16 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Sean, please read the edit notice at the top of Talk:CinemaNow and my comments there. From an ethical point of view, you should list on your user page the names of your clients with wikilinks to their articles. However, if you have been asked by your employer or client to make edits to articles connected to them, these are considered "paid editing", and in those cases, you must disclose your connection and name the employer or client for whom you work. Paid-contribution disclosure has more guidance on this. I would also strongly advise you to avoid making statements to another editor such as "Your actions created legal jeopardy for the company." and to read the guidance at this page, especially this section. Leaving aside the compliance issues, one of the reasons why editing with a conflict of interest is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia is that it is virtually impossible for such editors to write in a neutral, non-advertorial way or to even recognize the PR-speak that is blindingly obvious to unconnected editors. Removing its pervasive presence in company articles and biographies here takes up hundreds of hours of our volunteer time each week. Voceditenore (talk) 08:03, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I am copying your comment on my talk page here. Please keep the discussion in one place:

I had actually updated the article after another editor had reverted you 1, and rightly so—the material was blatantly promotional and poorly referenced. A second editor had previously removed this beauty. I have removed all mention of the company's "major licensors", including Disney, as it was promotional, unencylopedic, and unreferenced. Incidentally, if you think it is "libelous" to list Disney as a licensor, I suggest you take that up with Variety who currently list it. I also updated the information that the company had been bought by FilmOn and added a reference from an independent source. I strongly suggest that you familiarise yourself with how to use an article's edit history to see who made what edits and exactly what the edits were, before continuing to make comments like the above. Secondly, I did not "take your credentials down". That was done by an administrator, and it was explained to you why it violated the guidelines for user pages. As to whether you are technically paid to edit by your client, it's a judgement call. What remains is that you have a clear conflict of interest in editing articles about your clients, and should behave accordingly, especially when your refer to yourself and your client as "us". If you have any doubts about that, I suggest you post to the Conflict of interest Noticeboard. I see no evidence whatsoever of you attempting to use the article talk page to suggest edits rather than making the edits yourself, as strongly recommended by the COI guidelines. You also have the option to email any concerns you have with an article. See Contact us - Subjects for the address. Finally, please read WP:TALK for how to use talk pages properly. You placed your comment at the top of my talk page instead of the bottom, did not add a heading, and did not sign you comment. I have remedied that. Voceditenore (talk) 14:59, 17 May 2016 (UTC)


 * In response to Seanerenstoft's note on my talk page: Voceditenore laid out and very articulately explained all the various issues and vios involved in your Wikipedia actions thus far. And on a personal note, statements on Wikipedia by anonymous contributors with no connection to the article subject in no way create "legal jeopardy for the company", as any intelligent layperson would know. Your comment to me was a bullying and wholly inappropriate attempt at intimidation, and runs afoul of WIkipedia policy on legal threats.


 * Your actions on Wikipedia so far are not those of someone seeking to improve this altruistic effort at providing a free encyclopedia, and if your goal is something other than that, I ask that you please think about whether you truly wish to be a part of this.--Tenebrae (talk) 15:32, 17 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I note also from your website (and the California Bar Association) that you are no longer a practicing attorney and haven't been since 2010. You now run a consultancy business. The "ethical tenets" of the legal profession do not prevent you from disclosing the clients of your consulting business. If you do not wish to do so, that is of course, your right. However, in that case, you should not edit articles connected in any way to those clients and use the article talk pages or the channel at Contact us - Subjects instead. Voceditenore (talk) 16:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)