SolaSands
June 2023 edit
Hello SolaSands. 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:SolaSands. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=SolaSands|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. 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. David Gerard (talk) 09:03, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- Hello David. I am an activist and follow the work of Ms. Lovins and am a fan of hers. I do not receive any money from her for anything. I just wanted to update what I know is true about her. Please let me know if you have any questions. SolaSands (talk) 15:01, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- I already answered this message and still don't see my edits up. I am not currently employed. My husband is a musician. I am an activist and receive rental income only on my house. Can you please post my edits? Thank you. You are welcome to call me if you have any questions. (Redacted) SolaSands (talk) 15:05, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- Hello, I have replied several times to these emails and have exclaimed that I am NOT paid by anyone to make these changes. I am a follower of Hunter Lovins work and have called her office to verify the changes I proposed and they agreed on the changes. Please update my changed for her page. You are welcome to call me (redacted) to verify that I am not paid by anyone to do these edits which I made a couple of weeks ago. Thank you. SolaSands (talk) 21:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- It is extremely unwise to post personal contact information on this very public forum. Communication is generally handled on wiki. 331dot (talk) 22:40, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- If you aren't paid, okay, but you still have a conflict of interest if you are communicating with her or her representatives, which needs to be disclosed. Articles (the preferred term, not "page") are typically written by independent editors without any involvement from the subject. 331dot (talk) 22:46, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- I only communicated with her office to verify the correctness of my edits and they agreed that they were correct. I'm glad to disclose that, but that would only be a statement on the page itself, not on the disclosure page right? SolaSands (talk) 00:23, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't believe it's a conflict of interest to contact the party you are writing about to verify the validity of your writing. SolaSands (talk) 00:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's a conflict of interest in a way but not an egregious one. However, you should still keep the COI guidelines in mind when you edit. More importantly, Wikipedia is not the news in the sense that article content needs to be verified by the subjects of articles. The subjects of articles are in many cases more interested in controlling what's being written about them than perhaps anything else. The purpose of a Wikipedia article isn't to promote the subject or its activities, and Wikipedia basically isn't interested in what subjects have to say about themselves. Subjects of articles have no final editorial control over article content as explained in WP:OWN and any changes they might want to make need to be in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Even when their intentions are the best, the subjects of articles are going to be considered WP:PRIMARY sources and there are going to be lots or restrictions placed on how such information can be used. Anything considered as possibly being contentious or about some other third-party is most likely going to require WP:SECONDARY and WP:INDEPENDENT sourcing instead. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- How do you want me to proceed with the edits then? I'm not really sure what you want. There's no conflict of interest here. SolaSands (talk) 02:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- The edits you tried to make were reverted by another Wikipedia user named David Gerard for the reasons given here. When this happens, typically the best thing to do is to follow the guidance given in Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and try to resolve things by discussing them on the article's corresponding talk page. Perhaps through discussion, you, David and anyone else who wants to join in can rephrase the content you tried to add so that it's more in accordance with WP:Neutral point of view and other relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The content you tried to add included lots of "words to watch" and other promotional type of writing that is simply not appropriate for Wikipedia. Moreover, you were embedding links to Amazon pages where Lovins books can be bought as part of a "Publications" section which is also not really appropriate for Wikipedia per WP:External links. Perhaps some of the content you tried to add just needs some rewriting, better sourcing or a combination of the two; however, it's just not suitable for Wikipedia as is even if it's true. What you need to try and understand is the the article is not for promoting Lovins in any way and it's not a CV where everything she's ever done needs to be listed as explained in WP:NOTEVERYTHING. Major achievements or events in Lovins' life that would be considered encyclopedically relevant to Wikipedia readers most likely can be covered in some way, but such content will need to be in accordance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, even if that means it's not done exactly the way Lovins may want, Finally, COI editing isn't highly discouraged by Wikipedia simply because someone has a connection to whatever subject they're trying to edit or create content about; it's highly discouraged because, in more cases than not, that connection leads to subpar edits being made that aren't suitable for Wikipedia; in other words, the goals of the editor and the subject they're editing on behalf of don't mesh with Wikipedia's goals as an encyclopedia. Since you say there's you have no COI, that's good enough for me (others may still feel differently). However, regardless of whether you have a COI, your edits are going to be assessed in terms of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and they will likely be reverted if they stray to far from those Wikipedia policies or guidelines; that's exactly what seems to have happened in this particular case. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:47, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- How do you want me to proceed with the edits then? I'm not really sure what you want. There's no conflict of interest here. SolaSands (talk) 02:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's a conflict of interest in a way but not an egregious one. However, you should still keep the COI guidelines in mind when you edit. More importantly, Wikipedia is not the news in the sense that article content needs to be verified by the subjects of articles. The subjects of articles are in many cases more interested in controlling what's being written about them than perhaps anything else. The purpose of a Wikipedia article isn't to promote the subject or its activities, and Wikipedia basically isn't interested in what subjects have to say about themselves. Subjects of articles have no final editorial control over article content as explained in WP:OWN and any changes they might want to make need to be in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Even when their intentions are the best, the subjects of articles are going to be considered WP:PRIMARY sources and there are going to be lots or restrictions placed on how such information can be used. Anything considered as possibly being contentious or about some other third-party is most likely going to require WP:SECONDARY and WP:INDEPENDENT sourcing instead. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't believe it's a conflict of interest to contact the party you are writing about to verify the validity of your writing. SolaSands (talk) 00:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- I only communicated with her office to verify the correctness of my edits and they agreed that they were correct. I'm glad to disclose that, but that would only be a statement on the page itself, not on the disclosure page right? SolaSands (talk) 00:23, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
CS1 error on Hunter Lovins edit
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Hunter Lovins, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
- A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion edit
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard regarding a possible conflict of interest incident with which you may be involved. The thread is Hunter Lovins. Thank you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:28, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Embedding external links into Hunter Lovins edit
Hello, I'm Marchjuly. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added to the main body of Hunter Lovins. Generally, any relevant external links should be listed in an "External links" section at the end of the article and meet the external links guidelines. Links within the body of an article should be internal Wikilinks. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:34, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
August 2023 edit
Your account has been blocked indefinitely for advertising or promotion and violating the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use. This is because you have been making promotional edits to topics in which you have a financial stake, yet you have failed to adhere to the mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a form of conflict of interest (COI) editing which involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is strictly prohibited. Using this site for advertising or promotion is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia.
If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, please read our guide to appealing blocks to understand more about unblock requests, and then add the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} at the end of your user talk page. For that request to be considered, you must:
- Confirm that you have read and understand the Terms of Use and paid editing disclosure requirements.
- State clearly how you are being compensated for your edits, and describe any affiliation or conflict of interest you might have with the subjects you have written about.
- Describe how you intend to edit such topics in the future.
is closed. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)