ACAeditor

Welcome!

Hello, ACAeditor, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was United States Bicycle Route System, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Best practices for editors with close associations
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Contributing to Wikipedia
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Imzadi 1979 → 01:06, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Your username

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "ACAeditor", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, service, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Foobar Museum of Art". However, you are permitted to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you individually (not your role), such as "Sara Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87", but not "SEO Manager at XYZ Company".

Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, service, or website, regardless of your username. Please also read our paid editing policy and our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please request a change of username by completing the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, choosing a username that complies with our username policy. Alternatively, you can just create a new account and use that for editing. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Thank you. Imzadi 1979 → 01:08, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Specifically, it appears that you have a connection to the Adventure Cycling Association. We welcome contributions from non-profit organizations, but typically we request that editors from such groups not edit articles directly when it directly impacts their group or its work. You could be very helpful though in providing source materials to other editors so that they could cite information in articles. Imzadi 1979 → 01:11, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

I am a volunteer with Adventure Cycling and have been actively involved in the US Bicycle Route project since 2004. The current Wikipedia pages on the USBRS are significantly out of date, contain several errors, and are incomplete. As I read your comments, nobody from Adventure Cycling, even a volunteer, will be allowed to edit these pages to correct and update them. Unless I can find a non-member of Adventure Cycling and have them do all the work of editing the pages, I see no way to get these pages up top date. Please advise a path forward. ACAeditor (talk) 14:36, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:COI provides a path forward. Where an editor has a conflict of interest, he or she can suggest edits on the talk page of the affected article for others to implement. Sources are going to be needed for any suggested edits. That's how members of an organization can partner with others best: providing information and sources and allowing others to implement the specific changes. Imzadi 1979 → 20:47, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

So the organizations that have access to the knowledge about the USBRS (state DOTs, AASHTO, Adventure Cycling) are all considered to have a conflict of interest and therefore cannot contribute to Wikipedia except by passing information to people who do not have that knowledge. Adventure Cycling sees the minutes of the AASHTO meetings, sees the USBR designation and realignment applications submitted by the DOTs, maintains the National Corridor Plan, etc. but cannot edit a Wikipedia page where it has direct (and current, and correct) information, but random and apparently misinformed people can. This makes no sense whatsoever. ACAeditor (talk) 23:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

This is what I posted on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling page:

I am the Adventure Cycling Association US Bicycle Route System Volunteer Coordinator. I am a volunteer with Adventure Cycling, have been working as a volunteer on the USBRS since 2004, and am not paid in any way by them or anyone else associated with the USBRS. I am a retiree and receive no income from any source other than pension, Social Security, and investments. I say this because I have been informed by Imzadi1979 that I have a conflict of interest and therefore am not permitted to edit any pages associated with the USBRS. This despite the fact that I have access to the minutes of AASHTO meetings, the USBR applications submitted by the DOTs, the historical documents associated with the USBRS and benefit in no way from providing this information to Wikipedia. Imzadi1979 informs me that the only way I can help correct, expand, and update the USBR pages is to tell somebody else what the correct information is and have them edit the pages. If someone would like to partner with me in this effort, please advise. ACAeditor (talk) 23:39, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Just to mention, you are a member of an organization with a stake in the subject. The ACA promotes cycling, thus the group has an implicit or explicit bias about the coverage of cycling. That doesn't mean that you intentionally would skew things when editing articles, but to keep things above board, we don't allow most direct editing where there is a conflict. We wouldn't want Walmart's PR department editing the articles about the company, and even though the ACA is non-profit and you are unpaid, you are still a member with some clout in the organization. It might be slow and frustrating that Wikipedia has these rules, but the point to keep things above board in the content of what is one of the top ten websites in the world. Imzadi 1979 → 12:33, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

@ACAeditor: we have access to various AASHTO minutes as well: WP:USRD/AASHTO. That page indexes all of the US Route Numbering Committee decisions since 1927 and links to copies of the minutes on Wikimedia Commons or archived copies from AASHTO's website. (I'm hoping to secure permissions to host the rest of the minutes on Commons.) Many of those files have been transcribed to Wikisource for enhanced readability. {{AASHTO minutes}} can be used to simplify citations to those files.

That said, USRD doesn't have bike routes within its scope, although some of us to follow them a bit. MDOT employees should not be directly editing articles on Michigan's state highways as they have a bright-line conflict of interest. An AASHTO employee would have a similar COI on articles related to Interstate or US Highways or the US Bicycle Routes. Yes, I'm afraid that also means an ACA member would have a COI regarding bike routes too.

But, WP:COI anticipates this. If you go to an article with an error, look at the top of the page. There should be a link for that article's Talk page. (United States Bicycle Route System has Talk:United States Bicycle Route System.) Click on that Talk link to open it. At the top of it, there should be a link for "Add topic". Click that and start a discussion on what needs changing. You can do this many ways, either pointing out details that need changing or even directly suggesting specific wording. Provide a source, and someone else without a COI will implement the edits.

There is another option for larger rewrites. You could make a copy of the article as a draft, say Draft:United States Bicycle Route System, and edit that draft as needed. Then when it's ready, you can post on the article's talk page that you have a draft of an updated article. Someone will review and merge the two together. Imzadi 1979 → 12:23, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

I have posted suggested text on the USBR page, and noted corrections/updates needed on nearly all of the individual USBR route pages. We'll see how long it takes before anyone picks up this information and incorporates it. I see that most of the pages have not seen activity in many years. I suspect it will be a real challenge to get the USBR pages up to date and correct. ACAeditor (talk) 23:36, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

It has been well over a month since I posted suggested changes and identified errors in the TALK pages of each of the USBR pages. Zero response. There doesn't appear to be a way for a knowledgeable contributor who has a defined "conflict" to correct these pages. ACAeditor (talk) 11:59, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I may not get to everything immediately, but I am interested in contributing. What do you see as the priorities? TimberFeller (talk) 00:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Tim, thanks for the offer to work on this. On each of the USBR pages as well as on the overall page, I have put suggested changes/additions in text on the Talk pages. I guess the first priority would be getting the main page up to date, but since that page refers to all the individual pages, I would see just working down through each one. The text I have included can be cut and pasted though I don't know how to add references. ACAeditor (talk) 11:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)