OzarkLiving

Are you a paid editor with a conflict of interest?

Hello OzarkLiving. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, and that 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 egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to Black hat SEO.

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, and if it does not, 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:OzarkLiving. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=OzarkLiving|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, please do not edit further until you answer this message.

@Cwmhiraeth: Hi Cwmhiraeth! I'm new to the Wikipedia community, so please forgive me if I'm not responding to your message correctly. Thank you so much for sharing your concerns, and taking the time to educate me on certain conventions. I am employed by Field Agent (the subject of the company page I created), but I am not being directly or indirectly compensated for my contributions. It's not part of my job to create such content, nor was I asked to do so by a member of the organization. I simply felt the company needed a Wikipedia page, considering millions of individuals use its app and have questions about the company. Furthermore, I attempted to write the entry in a non-promotional way, limiting the copy only to what third-party references had stated about the company. I'll be happy to comply with any additional conventions Wikipedia has established to mitigate bias in its entries, and I'd truly appreciate any direction you could provide about reducing the promotional tone of the entry. Truly, thank you! OzarkLiving (talk) 19:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Even if you have written the article in a voluntary capacity and do not expect to receive compensation for doing so, your relationship with the company is such that you have a conflict of interest. I have added some information below which may be of use to you. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello, OzarkLiving. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your COI when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.

@Cwmhiraeth: Thank you Cwmhiraeth! I will certainly comply. OzarkLiving (talk) 21:11, 3 July 2018 (UTC)