Talk:Highland Springs Resort/Ranch & Inn

September 2020

Hello WisdomNerd. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Highland Springs Resort/Ranch & Inn, 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:WisdomNerd. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=WisdomNerd|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. You made 12 very minor and sometimes wrong edits like [1] on April 6, 2020, to return on 2 September with a fully developed promotional article. It there is a plausible explanation for that that is not "I was paid to create Highland Springs Resort/Ranch & Inn", I'd like to know what it is. Vexations (talk) 12:35, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Re: Vexations COI Concern Vexations (talk)

Greetings Vexations,

I acknowledge your concern that I may be bypassing a process for paid promotion, etc. However, in compliance with Wikimedia Terms of Use, I intend only to contribute educational content to be disseminated effectively. I have absolutely no affiliation with Highland Springs Ranch or any of their partners. I am not being compensated for my contribution in any way by any person, business, or government. I deal with health in California as a massage therapist and am a musician with an interest in California’s history. After attempting to draft my article in the sandbox, it shortly disappeared. I’ve yet to figure out how to create article drafts on this platform. It was more efficient for me to work on this document using Microsoft Word, and then enter it into the ‘create article’ section all at once. I'm happy for others to make corrections and/or add on to it as they see fit, in compliance with Wikipedia’s Terms of Service.

Thank you for keeping an eye out for misuse in the community.WisdomNerd (talk) 23:20, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

–––––––––––––––––––– Re:Re: Vexations COI Concern Vexations (talk)

On September 3rd Vexations posted a concern of me having a conflict of interest, on my personal talk page. I posted my response to Vexations concern on later that same day (September 3rd). I also notified Vexations on their personal page letting them know I responded. Today is September 9th and I've not heard back from Vexations, so I posted our discussion here on the article's talk page. If there is no objection or further discussion, I would like to have the COI tag removed from this article because it's not accurate.WisdomNerd (talk) 17:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

WisdomNerd, I'll remove the CoI tag, but please tone down the promotional language. It's reads like an ad. Vexations (talk) 21:44, 9 September 2020 (UTC)