SCCTRWA
SCCTRWA, you are invited to the Teahouse!
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Hi SCCTRWA! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. We hope to see you there!
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Managing a conflict of interest
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Hello, SCCTRWA. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority, 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. Danski454 (talk) 19:42, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
In addition to the issues mentioned above by Danski454, your user name, "SCCTRWA", may not comply with our user name policy. You may not use a user name that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, or website, and also that an account must be for a single person, and may not be shared by more than one person. Examples of user names that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Foobar Museum of Art". However, you are permitted to use a user name that contains such a name if it identifies you individually, such as "Sara Smith at XYZ Company" or "Mark Jenkinson at SCCTRWA". In fact my opinion is that it is best to use a user name of that kind if you are connected to a subject you write about, as it has the advantage of making your connection transparent, as well as making it clear that the account is for a particular person. It is possible to request a change of user name to one which satisfies the requirements of Wikipedia's policy, as you can read at Wikipedia:Changing username.
Sorry to contribute to what may seem like piling a load of warnings onto you shortly after you have started editing, when Wikipedia may still feel puzzling and perhaps intimidating, but actually I think it is likely to be more helpful to you to let you know from the start what problems there may be, so that you are aware of the situation and can deal with it. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:57, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you to both of you. I'm new to having a Wikipedia account (as you know) and am not familiar with the rules or procedures. I chose the username with the purpose of being clear that any edits I made to the Regional Water Authority page were by someone affiliated with the organization. I was not asked by my employer to make these changes, I just noticed that the page was pretty empty and wanted to add to it, particularly enough times so that I could have this account confirmed and upload an identifying logo. That said, I've tried to keep the information unbiased, and will be more careful in the future. I wanted to contribute without breaking any rules, despite not knowing quite what the rules were, so thank you both for the guidance. SCCTRWA (talk) 20:04, 6 July 2018 (UTC)SCCTRWA
Welcome!
editHello SCCTRWA! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need any help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement.
Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking 
or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Happy editing!
A few points in answer to your comments above.
- I totally agree that it is a good idea to use a user name which makes it "clear that any edits [you] made to the Regional Water Authority page were by someone affiliated with the organization", and that is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the sentence above beginning "In fact my opinion is that it is best..."
- I do agree that the information you have posted is unbiased. Unfortunately far more often people in your situation post material which is biased, even if they honestly don't intend to, as it can be difficult to stand back from a subject with which one has a close connection and see it objectively. That is one half of the reason for Wikipedia's "conflict of interest" guideline. The other half is that we also get a large number of editors who don't even intend to be unbiased, and are here with the intention of posting spam; it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish the one from the other, with the result that unfortunately frequently good-faith editors with an involvement it the subjects they write about often get treated as though they are spammers.
- You say that you "wanted to contribute without breaking any rules, despite not knowing quite what the rules were". I went through exactly that experience when I started editing. I was quite anxious at first that I might inadvertently do something completely wrong. I made mistakes, of course, because everyone does, but I managed to get by without any major problems, and I hope you will too.
- A further remark relating to your comment about "not knowing quite what the rules were". In my opinion by far the worst thing that has ever happened to Wikipedia is a gradual increase over the years in the volume of policies and guidelines that we have. Wikipedia has slowly moved from having a single short page of loose guidelines about how to edit to having countless long and complex policy pages, guideline pages, and other pages, which are far too extensive and complex for any new editor to learn before starting editing. My advice is not to worry about it. Obviously, try to work within the accepted set of principles, but there will be times when you inadvertently step over the lines, and as long as you acting in good faith and are willing to learn and adjust, you should be OK. I have been an editor for 12 years, and an administrator for 8 years, and I still occasionally realise I have accidentally done something that policy doesn't allow.
- To deal with the user name policy issue you can ask to have your user name changed, or create a new account with a new user name, or just stop editing. My personal view is that the best choice would be the first of those three, as it makes it clear which edits are yours, and the worst would be the third, as so far your edits have, in my opinion, been helpful, and I hope we don't lose you.
- I am also giving you, above, a "welcome" notice which includes links to various policies, guidelines, and information pages. Don't try to read and learn them all before you do any more editing, as there is far too much there, but do look and see if there is anything that looks helpful to you, and of course you can come back to it if and when other things become relevant to you. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
This is great JamesBWatson, thank you. I'll work on changing my username over the next couple days. I'm a big fan of Wikipedia and a compulsive editor, so I'd like to contribute more. I may change the name to something not identifying me by my place of work, as I'm getting familiar with this, would like to be able to edit where I see the need, and like the idea of having my own personal account. I'll think on it a bit. As you said, there's a lot to learn, and it's a little intimidating, but I really do appreciate your guidance. SCCTRWA (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I'm RonBot, a script that checks new non-free file uploads. I have found that the subject image that you recently uploaded was more than 5% in excess of the Non-free content guideline size of 100,000 pixels. I have tagged the image for a standard reduction, which (for jpg/gif/png/svg files) normally happens within a day. Please check the reduced image, and make sure that the image is not excessively corrupted. Other files will be added to Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing. There is a full seven-day period before the original oversized image will be hidden; during that time you might want to consider editing the original image yourself (perhaps an initial crop to allow a smaller reduction or none at all). A formula for calculation the desired size can be found at WP:Image resolution, along with instructions on how to tag the image in the rare cases that it requires an oversized image (typically about 0.2% of non-free uploads are tagged as necessarily oversized). Please contact the bot owner if you have any questions, or you can ask them at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content. RonBot (talk) 17:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
