User talk:Culver King

Welcome!

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

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited 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
Tutorial
How to edit a page and How to develop articles
How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
Simplified Manual of Style
The Teahouse, our help forum for new editors

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, visit the Teahouse, 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! Theroadislong (talk) 16:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

paid editing

Hello Culver King. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but 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 employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are strongly discouraged 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:Culver King. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Culver King|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, do not edit further until you answer this message. Theroadislong (talk) 16:23, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't necessarily have to be the one to edit, and have not edited the page. Though I did create an account purposely to do so. However, I understand completely that being paid to edit could create issues widely on the site.

Does requesting the change by the community still constitute a COI? Culver King (talk) 16:30, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can request edits with the template {{edit COI}} on the article talk page, but you do need to disclose your paid editing status on your user page first. Theroadislong (talk) 16:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Theroadislong: The requirement is "Editors receiving payment must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation, on their user page, [article] talk page, or in edit summaries." Given that Culver King's only edit was to The Teahouse, and that they made such a declaration there, the claim "you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements" is false. Furthermore, making a declaration at the point of requesting a change on an article talk page would satisfy the requirement. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:16, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be changing the guidelines somewhat. Theroadislong (talk) 18:29, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My question remains, if I don't edit, and only request the page does that mean I have to disclose that the request I'm making is for a paying client?

Secondly, does being a paid editor restrict me from editing other pages? Or is it specific to the page that I'd like changed and thus caused the purported COI? Culver King (talk) 18:56, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]