Neville at Plusart

Welcome!

Hello, Plusart123, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Julien's Auctions, 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 our use and policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
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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! Dolotta (talk) 17:02, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Editing Juliens Aucttion.com

Hi

I made some edits for our clients Julien's Auctions but after editing received a message referring to a conflict of interest, which I guess is because of my username name conflicting.

Could you please advise on the process in order for us to be able to update the content on their behalf.

(Plusart123 (talk) 10:09, 2 July 2018 (UTC))

Conflict of interest management process

Hi Plusart123. I was asked by User:Dolotta to help you understand our conflict of interest management process. I reckon that this was in response to your inquiry to Dolotta here.

Thanks for disclosing in your inquiry to Dolotta that Julien's Auctions is (in your words) "our client".

I would be happy to walk you through our conflict of interest management process.

There are two steps -- disclosure and a form of peer review.

First things first -- would you please disclose your employer? This is obligatory under our paid editing policy and conflict of interest guideline. Please also refer to yourself as in the first person signular not first person plural (please use "I"/"me"/"my" not "we"/"us"/our") -- in Wikipedia there are no corporate accounts. Only one person may use an account. Please reply just below this post. I will see it, and will reply. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 11:43, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes my employer is PlusArt and Julien's auctions is one of our clients, we produce their auction catalogues, manage their website and recently Darren Julien asked me to update their wikipedia listing which is outdated.

Kind regards Plusart123 (talk) 11:48, 2 July 2018 (UTC))

Thanks for replying! Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting (see WP:THREAD) - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages when you save your edit. That is how we know who said what to whom and when.

Please be aware that threading and signing are fundamental etiquette here, as basic as "please" and "thank you", and continually failing to thread and sign communicates rudeness, and eventually people may start to ignore you (see here).

I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I trimmed the personal information you included in your post. We generally advise people not to include that level of detail. You can restore it if you want but I just wanted to quickly remove it, as you may not have been aware of that :) Jytdog (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for being so forthright in your disclosure! I think the first thing we should do is fix your username, as it is too close to being a "corporate name". (see WP:USERNAME if you want to dig into the details). It would be best if you changed the account name to something like "Nicholas at PlusArt". The easiest way to do this, is using this form. Would you please do that? (the result of that, will be that this page and the associated userpage will be "moved" to the new name by an administrator).

Also, on your userpage User:Plusart123 (a redlink, as you have not written anything there yet) would you please add the disclosure? Something simple like, "I work for PlusArt and am here on behalf of the firm's clients. Julien's Auctions is a client."

If you end up working on other pages in Wikipedia, you should add them. (You can change that to a bulleted list or format it however you like. It should just be clear and simple).

I've added the disclosure at Talk:Julien's Auctions in this diff, so the disclosure is done there. (If you do work on other pages, you should add that disclosure at the talk page yourself).

Once you disclose on your userpage, the disclosure piece of this will be done, and we can move on to the next step. That's enough for the moment! Jytdog (talk) 12:05, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

2nd step

Starting a subsection to save scrolling...

Thanks for adding the disclosure to your userpage.

As I noted above, there are two pieces to COI management in WP. The first is disclosure. The second is a form of peer review. This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voilà there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world. So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article. Conflicted editors also tend to be driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest. If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors.

What we ask editors to do, who have a COI (including those who are are paid to edit), and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is:

a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft through the WP:AFC process, disclose your COI on the Talk page with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, and then submit the draft article for review (the AfC process sets up a nice big button for you to click when it is ready) so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and

b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to

(i) disclose at the Talk page of the article with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, putting it at the bottom of the beige box at the top of the page; and

(ii) propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. Just open a new section, put the proposed content there, and just below the header (at the top of the editing window) please the {{request edit}} tag to flag it for other editors to review. In general it should be relatively short so that it is not too much review at once. Sometimes editors propose complete rewrites, providing a link to their sandbox for example. This is OK to do but please be aware that it is lot more for volunteers to process and will probably take longer.

By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. There are good faith paid editors here, who have signed and follow the Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms, and there are "black hat" paid editors here who lie about what they do and really harm Wikipedia. I am very grateful that you are choosing the "white hat" route!.

But understanding the mission, and the policies and guidelines through which we realize the mission, is very important! There are a whole slew of policies and guidelines that govern content and behavior here in Wikipedia. Please see User:Jytdog/How for an overview of what Wikipedia is and is not (we are not a directory or a place to promote anything), and for an overview of the content and behavior policies and guidelines. Learning and following these is very important, and takes time. Please be aware that you have created a Wikipedia account, and this makes you a Wikipedian - you are obligated to pursue Wikipedia's mission first and foremost when you work here, and you are obligated to edit according to the policies and guidelines. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege that is freely offered to all, but the community restricts or completely takes that privilege away from people who will not edit and behave as Wikipedians.

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content. If you are not sure if something is uncontroversial, please ask at the Talk page.

Will you please agree to learn and follow the content and behavioral policies and guidelines, and to follow the peer review processes going forward when you want to work on any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. (but I am going to bed now -- will respond later!) Best regards Jytdog (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2018 (UTC)