AnnaatWebcertain

Welcome!

Hello, AnnaatWebcertain, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 14:36, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Paid editing

Hello Wcn.content. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic. 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.
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, 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:Wcn.content. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Wcn.content|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. If you are being compensated, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, please do not edit further until you answer this message. Jytdog (talk) 14:56, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks again for making the disclosure on your Userpage. I hope you don't mind but I corrected it in this diff. Jytdog (talk) 14:21, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Replies to the above

Dear Jytdog,

Lab Tests Online is a non-profit organisation and we are working on different projects with them. I wanted to update the content on Wikipedia as a favour for them to have the updated numbers and include the award section. Unfortunately, I have done it the first time and should have read the rules in more detail. I am very sorry that the content wasn’t written according to the Wikipedia rules and it obviously was too promotional which I can tell from your reaction. Again my apologies for that!

I really believe in those guys and they do a fantastic job and I do think that it would be good to update the content to have the full picture available on Wikipedia if this is still possible.

I will try to rewrite and restructure the content to make it sound neutral and suitable for Wikipedia. As this is not my usual type of work would you mind giving me advice on what to leave out or include. Also I have now understood that I need to propose updates/changes through the article for creation process.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thank you for your help.

Kind regards Wcn.content— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wcn.content (talk • contribs) 09:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and for starting to make the required disclosure. Would you please clarify who is "we" (for example, when you wrote "we are working on different projects with them"?) The PAID policy obligates you to disclose your employer and client -- in this case the client appears to be ACC/Labtestsonline and it appears that your employer is a PR agency or something. Once the disclosure is complete there is more foundational stuff we'll need to go over before we can turn to content. Please do reply here.Jytdog (talk) 16:24, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The fact that the article is about a non-profit organization has nothing to do with the necessity of disclosing paid or unpaid conflict of interest. Ditto government organization. It's not who they are, it's who you are. David notMD (talk) 13:13, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Its OK David. Many conversations with paid editors start this way. I generally find that PR professionals become responsive when the whole "COI management" paradigm is presented to them, and they handle themselves like professionsls should, and things go well. (Not always, but usually). It is generally freelancers who become combative and things get ugly. So far this person is going down the "professional path" and my sense is this is going to continue to unfold smoothly. But thanks for helping... Jytdog (talk) 14:18, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Username

OK. thanks for disclosing that you work for the Webcertain group. The account name reflects the company, and not an individual, and this needs to be fixed before we move forward (another fundamental thing). Please see the notice below which instructions on how to do that.

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "Wcn.content", 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, 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 personally, such as "Sara Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87".

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, 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 this form, choosing a username that complies with our username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 13:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

The main thing in all that soup above, is that you click here and pick a name that complies - something like WebcertainPat would be fine (a lot of paid editors do that sort of thing - their company name+their first name - but that is not required. It could be nonsense like mine. It just should not be a "company account"; it needs to be yours. Jytdog (talk) 14:24, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

PR agencies and Wikipedia

We can start going over some of the basic things about paid editing in Wikipedia while we are waiting for you to apply for a new username and for that to go through.

Paid editing is a controversial activity in Wikipedia, and some people have very strong feelings about it. Some hate that activity, some don't care about it (and don't want anyone else to care about it!), and it makes most of the community ... queasy at best. So it is something that is tolerated, not loved.

In my view, it is something that the community needs to manage (like COI is managed in academic publishing), and COI management starts with teaching folks about the issues.

To help you get oriented to Wikipedia generally, and to help you understand this "paid editing" field in which you are operating, would you please have a read of

• User:Jytdog/How
• Conflict-of-interest editing of Wikipedia (you can just skim this - it is a regular Wikipedia article recounting paid editing scandals.. you might want to spend time on the ones involving PR companies)
• Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms
• User:Jytdog#NPOV_part_2:_COI_and_advocacy_in_Wikipedia

Happy to discuss when you are through all that. (It is a lot, but orientation always is....) Jytdog (talk) 13:49, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you so much for you help. I'll go through all of the documents carefully and let you know in case of any questions.--Wcn.content (talk) 13:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

P.S>: I think now I get the reply system as well.--Wcn.content (talk) 13:57, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Yep so the way we discuss things on talk pages, is like this. In a "threaded" conversation. We thread by indenting -- if you type a colon at the front of your comment, the Wikipedia software renders that as one indentation; if you type two colons, it renders that as two indentations, etc. When that gets ridiculous, we use {{od}} to "outdent" back to the page edge. You generally indent one time more than the person you are replying to. And you have figured out how to sign your posts, which is great. Talk page discussions depend on threading and signing...

And yes it is best to keep conversations in one place to avoid hopping around. You can just reply here as we work through this stuff - this page is on my watchlist now, and I will see it. No need to duplicate on my talk page. Jytdog (talk) 14:02, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I have now requested the change of username to AnnaatWebcertain and will read through all the material over the weekend. Thank you :) --Wcn.content (talk) 14:26, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Wonderful. It would be great if we could check in when you are done - we can quickly go over how to present proposed content for peer review to make sure you don't misfire. Jytdog (talk) 14:34, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I managed to go through most of the material and would say that I have a basic understanding now of policies and guidelines, five pillars, tone of articles, usage of sources, rules regarding consensus, paid contribution. Phew...a lot to go through and still learning more. I've also created a sandbox to try out before suggesting things. I'm currently rewriting the article to a neutral tone and including reliable sources. Would you mind to quickly go over presenting proposed content for peer review with me please? And could you point me in the right direction if it comes to suggesting content in different languages please? I couldn't find an article about it but maybe you have a useful link for me where I can read more. That would be great. Thank you! AnnaatWebcertain (talk) 16:13, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Quite a slog! I have no idea about working in other languages. One thing you should be aware of is that each language of WP is its own editing community and has their own versions of the policies and guidelines and their own cultures as well. I am pretty ignorant of the differences but my sense is that this Wikipedia is the oldest and biggest and has the most ... elaborated set of policies and guidelines. So you will need to explore a bit. But the oblgiation to disclose is everywhere, and I am sure that folks every where will appreciate it if you don't edit directly but instead use the peer review process... but you will need to explore that.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI or who are paid, 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.

Does that make sense? Jytdog (talk) 19:30, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for all the material and explanations. As a start I suggested a few edits on the page of Lab Tests Online. I'm not sure if this is the correct way. I've used the form for disclosing that I'm a paid contributor on the top of the page but it says "paid by unknown". Is this correct? Thank you again for your help! AnnaatWebcertain (talk) 15:13, 17 October 2017 (UTC)