User talk:Stephenosmond

Welcome!
Hello, Stephenosmond, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
 * Introduction and Getting started
 * Contributing to Wikipedia
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page and How to develop articles
 * How to create your first article
 * Simplified Manual of Style

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! --- Possibly (talk) 19:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Links
Hi. You cannot add links to outside sites the way you did on List of Canadian Artists. Were you doing this as promotional work for a client?--- Possibly (talk) 19:55, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems like you were promoting your client, as the link you added (https://ayoungstudios.com/) says "involve media" at the bottom, which is the company you mention on your user page. You need to declare as a paid editor, so I will leave you instriuctions on how to do that next. --- Possibly (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

March 2021
Hello Stephenosmond. 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:Stephenosmond. 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. --- Possibly (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2021 (UTC)