FavAssistant
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December 2014
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Please do not remove maintenance templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Terry Reagan Allvord, without resolving the problem that the template refers to, or giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your removal of this template does not appear constructive, and has been reverted. Thank you. Theroadislong (talk) 11:49, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Failure of paid editing disclosure
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{{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. However, you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)Hello FavAssistant. I have blocked your account for failing to provide the mandatory disclosure of paid editing in conformity with the Terms of Use after being told about them, and then making subsequent edits to the article on your client to remove the paid editing notice I placed there.
I or anyone else will unblock your account if you state your willingness to immediately provide disclosure (i.e. a statement on your user page). At the Teahouse thread you started, you advised that you were there seeking assistance with regard to changes for an article on behalf of your client, as part of your employment (and that "We hired someone to do all of this and were able to get the page looking just right.")
Regardless of whether you only made small grammatical changes, as you offered just before removing the Teahouse thread entirely, your edits have been compensated. The issue is not whether you will seek to make edits "about [your] employer"; the current edits are compensated through your employment, since they are being done on behalf of a client that compensates your company/agency. As provided in the TOU: "As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation."
Forget the conflict of interest. Your subsequent post appears to be conflating its strong recommendations, that have no teeth, with the TOU's mandatory disclosure requirements. These are separate issues. Meanwhile, I do not understand the claim in your edit summary upon your removal of the paid editing notice, that "none of the sources for this information had been compensated in any way." This is hard to reconcile with your disclosure at the Teahouse quoted above that you hired someone to make the changes. Regardless, your edits are paid. Again, all you need to do to be unblocked is a statement of intent, and follow-through with disclosure on your user page.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
In response to paid contributions without disclosure
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FavAssistant (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
Request reason:
It's true that I removed the thread entirely. I did that because it was being used as a thread to harass and twist my words into something that I never said. I am a virtual assistant, one of the people I have worked for is the subject of the page in question. I am not currently working for him though. After looking at the wikipedia page about him, he discovered errors with formatting, grammar and some of the military references. Knowing that I have experience with editing in general (I majored in the English language), the subject of the page, Terry Allvord, asked me to help correct the page's errors. I agreed to assist him with the format, grammar and references, pro bono because I support what he stands for. I even had an expert create a 23 page powerpoint with all the directions I would need to make the changes to formatting. After which, a friend and I made the edits. The only thing we couldn't do was the title and url, which is what I asked help for in the tearoom. When you "quoted" what I said in the tearoom you added a part to make yourself look better, "as part of my employment" was NEVER said by me anywhere. I used the word "client" because I didn't know what else to call someone that I used to work for but was now helping pro bono. What should I have called him? I was not paid to do this and I never said that I was being paid. I did say the word client because he was a client at one time. I had no idea that the admins would use that to harass me, if I had known, I would have clarified. The only payments that were made were to the individual who was paid to make a comprehensive "how to" powerpoint on proper editing of a wikipedia page. This individual that was paid NEVER made any edits to the page and in fact was never even given the name of the page in question. I gave him the link of a wikipedia page that had the formatting I was hoping to mimic (the page was for a General Amos) and he in turn created the directions to do it. I didn't explain all of this in my original question because I didn't think I had to. Who would ever assume that someone would be greeted with such false attacks. I have been accused of being a paid contributor, which I'm not. I have been accused of paying someone to contribute, which I didn't. I have been accused of working on a page that lacks notability despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of high quality articles referring to Terry Allvord, including endorsements by President George Bush. If there is an issue with this page's notability then there is an issue with every page's notability because this subject has more quality references than most pages. The issue of notability is just a pathetic attempt at grasping for issues. Not once, did anyone ask for clarification which you clearly needed. Instead, you took three innocent sentences, filled in the blanks with an imaginary tale and then banned me when I tried to defend the honor of this page. Do you always ban people for arguing with you no matter how in the right they are? Why wouldn't I continue to remove the "maintenance" tags when they are incorrect? Why would I put any notation about paid contributions when, to my knowledge, no paid contributions were made? Should I have just done it to avoid being bullied further even though I knew it wasn't true. Are you asking me to lie on this page or else get banned? Are you going to twist this and accuse me of something else? I appealed the ban and I do plan on doing whatever is necessary to make sure that I am not continually accused of false actions and banned for false accusations. If you have a reason for why any of the actions I have done (all listed above) are reason enough to ban me or leave maintenance tags on the page, please provide me the link to where Wikipedia supports your opinion in it's guidelines. You see, I have read the terms of service and also the rules for biographies of a living person and I have not broken any of those rules. I think it is very disrespectful to slander a page that talks about an American veteran, when there are absolutely no facts to support such a wrongful attack.
Decline reason:
You explicitly, repeatedly spoke of "hiring out" work on the article ("We hired someone to do all of this", "would really rather not hire this job out (again)", here). You called the subject your "biggest client", explicitly in the context of your being a "virtual assistant". Even assuming you really meant to say "I got some expensive training on how to help an acquaintance with Wikipedia", it's obvious that you have a strong conflict of interest here that impacts your ability to neutrally assess the page and the quality of the references. Furthermore, I'd say "I really don't have time to continue removing graffiti from the page but I will as long as I need to", referring to the maintenance tags, is an indication that you'd edit war. That is not acceptable. Huon (talk) 02:58, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.
Reconsider block based on facts and Wiki's requirement "Please Don't Bite the Newcomer"
edit FavAssistant (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
Request reason:
The facts: I wanted to make sure that the Wiki page for Terry Allvord included his new middle name "Reagan" in an attempt to make sure that Wiki was accurate. In order to convey urgency and simplify the relationship, I called him a "big client" because that's what he was and that is how I know him originally. I worked as an administrative assistant to Mr. Allvord in 2012. Since then, he has come to me on a few occasions asking for help on various editing projects. After we officially parted ways in a professional capacity, I informed him that should he at anytime need my assistance on small projects that I would help him free of charge. Considering it's not something that happens on a regular basis, it is an easy thing for me to do. I apologize for not giving this full explanation in my original question, I had no idea it was necessary. Also, when I discussed hiring out for formatting help, I was referring to the fact that I had paid to have a comprehensive how to guide created in powerpoint form that laid out in detail how to create a specific layout based on a page belonging to a General Amos. When I said that I didn't want to hire out again, I was referring to the fact that I didn't want to have to pay this same person to re-edit the powerpoint to include a section on title and url if I could just get the same information by asking other Wiki experts. Those are the facts of what has actually happened. Naturally I would be reluctant to add a blurb saying that I was being paid, when I wasn't. Not only has the maintenance tag about paid contributions been placed on the page but also a tag for lack of notability. I have read all of the guidelines for notability requirements and this subject has more than enough proof and that proof is easily accessed. I was in the process of adding even more references when I was unfairly banned. Despite the fact that I don't see the necessity of it, I am more than willing to add something on the talk page about how I was an assistant to Mr. Allvord in 2012 and now occasionally assist him as a volunteer as needed. I can continue adding references in order to have the notoriety tag removed although according to Wiki that shouldn't be necessary. I am extremely offended that the suggestion was made that I have a conflict of interest based on my strong reaction to being banned. My reaction has nothing to do with the subject of the page, it has everything to do with being defamed and verbally abused when I haven't done anything wrong. However as I said, if I need to add something about having worked for the subject in 2012, I will be the bigger person and do that. I do want an explanation for the notability tag though. I am curious as to whether or not the admins are familiar with this guideline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers based on my personal experience I would say not. My experience says that admins punish boldness, they don't accept clarification, three sentences and trying to defend yourself will get you indefinitely banned. I don't think it's fair for newcomers when admins pick and choose which guidelines to follow and the guideline specifically established to protect newcomers is blatantly disregarded. Now you know the facts and I have agreed to do what I can to accommodate you without telling a complete fabrication (if I were to say that I am currently a paid contributor or have any knowledge of any other paid contributions). When someone is banned, especially a new user, the admins are obligated to provide an option to rectify the situation. I am asking for that option without being asked to lie about being a paid contributor but will be honest and say that I did work for him in the past. Will the guideline for "Don't bite the newcomer" be upheld or is this personal?
Decline reason:
You can WP:WIKILAWYER all you want; this is still a clear case of WP:COI. The article already reflects his changed name, so I'm not sure why you're still talking about that. OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.
What is going on here!
edit FavAssistant (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
Request reason:
I am completely blown away! I am a new user who is trying to understand how to be unblocked for a misunderstanding. There is a guideline called "Please Don't Bite the Newcomer" and it is being violated. No one is being helpful or providing proper guidance on how to rectify the situation. Knowing a subject isn't a conflict of interest, almost every editor knows the subject they are writing about in some fashion otherwise they wouldn't be a proper candidate to edit the page. The last rejection of my request to be unblocked was hostile, libelous, aggressive in nature and completely unproductive to the issue at hand. I said that if I needed to add some type of tag about having worked with the subject in 2012, then I would do that. I asked that the notability issue be clarified so that I could correct it. I asked that the guideline for "Biting the Newcomers" be considered and that someone would explain what needs to be done in order to remove the block without asking me to lie. Administrators are supposed to be helpful and provide guidance to newcomers. They are not supposed to be hostile and aggressive without cause. What did I do? I removed the maintenance tags twice after attempting to explain the situation and clarify the obvious misunderstandings. No one is listening. No one is being helpful. The administrators that have decided to view this topic have refused to offer any solutions on how to move forward and correct the situation. It is unbelievable that the newcomer is the only person willing to behave like a civil adult while an administrator behaves like a schoolyard bully. Call me a wikilawyer or whatever because you don't have a valid response to why the guideline on how to treat newcomers is being disregarded. If this isn't a personal attack against me then someone would offer reasonable advice on how to proceed and guidance on what to do using the actual facts of the case. This is a public page and no one has the right to tell another person that they can't use it when the other person (me) is willing to work with the admins to come to an acceptable solution. As a new user, I shouldn't be the one having to set the maturity bar and ask that the admins view this situation from a neutral point of view. All of the guidelines for treating people with respect, consideration, a spirit of helpfulness, giving a new user the benefit of the doubt are all being ignored. Why? Even the general idea of innocent until proven guilty is being ignored. I made broad statements and yes I should have properly introduced the situation upfront but how was I supposed to know that!? Now one sentence in which I should have better explained the situation is resulting in this attack on me and my character. I have seen helpful advice given in the tearoom and I have seen admins who behave in a way that reflects the guidelines of Wikipedia. I know that there are admins out there who would agree that I haven't been given a fair chance and that I haven't been offered guidance on the workings of Wikipedia. Throwing random words at me doesn't explain anything when you just start using Wikipedia but apparently it's enough to justify your conscience that I was properly "warned". I strongly ask that an admin who does uphold the ideology of wikipedia towards new users, read my request and offer real solutions to rectifying the situation. Thank you
Decline reason:
We don't tell people they can't edit an article they have a conflict of interest on, but we expect them to use discretion when it comes to knowing when they might be too close to a subject to be able to work neutrally on an article. Looking at the questions you've been asking at the Teahouse, I get the impression that you are very invested, whether it be financially or friendship-wise - in making this article look/read the way Mr Allvord wants it to look, and that you're not so invested in caring about what Wikipedia's policies or guidelines say it should look/read like. This isn't necessarily a complete dealbreaker, either. A lot of people join Wikipedia because they want to edit a specific article they care about, and then they stick around to become general editors. But it's important that they have - I'm going to use that word again! - discretion. We expect people who do this to have - or to acquire as they go - a sense of discretion about where "Wikipedia policy is X" trumps "but I want to Y". Right now, looking at your edits, I see a lot of "Mr Allvord wants Y, period" and not so much "I wanted to Y, can someone help me figure out how I can make something Y-ish that works with Wikipedia's rules?".
Are the edits you made awful? No, as you've said, they're mostly small stuff. But when we talk about blocks here, we often note that "blocks are preventative". So we're not just concerned with what you've done, but with what our best guess is for what you'll do if you're unblocked. The impression I get from reading these requests is that if you're unblocked, you're going to go back to trying to make Terry Reagan Allvord conform to Mr Allvord's own personal view of what the article should be, and you're going to keep arguing with people who try to tell you that your/his opinion of that is no more authoritative than any other editor's. Now, obviously I'm not psychic (I wish!). I could be wrong about this, quite easily. So what I'm going to ask you to do, so we administrators have some more information to work with, is to use this page to make a list of a) changes you want to/plan to make to Terry Reagan Allvord (so that we can see whether they will all really be tiny stylistic stuff), and b) other topics that you think you might edit in the future, that are unrelated to your clients or your paid work as a personal assistant (so we can tell if you have any interest in working on an encyclopedia, or if you're only here to personalize one thing). Please also let us know if you would be willing to propose all your changes to Terry Reagan Allvord on the article's talk page rather than making them yourself to the article. That way, uninvolved third parties could look them over and verify that they're neutral, appropriate edits.
So the bottom line is this: if you are being paid (or compensated in some other way - favors, barter, having him pass your name on to his friends who need assistants) for this work, you need to conspicuously disclose that. If you're not being paid/compensated for this, you still need to convince us that you are here to make Wikipedia better (in a way that maybe also happens to please your friend), rather than to use Wikipedia as a means to an end (i.e. as a PR venue) - otherwise there's no reason to allow you to return to editing, if it's not going to help Wikipedia. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.
I appreciate your willingness to try and be neutral and helpful
edit FavAssistant (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
Request reason:
First of all, thank you for trying to offer a helpful solution. I would like to say that people are trying to use the fact that I have become irritated as an excuse to claim conflict of interest. The fact is that my irritation stems entirely from the way I have been treated (which goes against how I should be treated and how admins are expected to behave). It has nothing to do with the page I was trying to edit. If everyone would look at this from my point of view and imagine themselves as a new user who was trying to make a simple change as a favor to an old client and instead of going into a lengthy backstory of how you know the subject, you decided to sum it up and call him a client, not knowing the rules against saying the word client and if you had known then you would have taken the time to provide an explanation. What happened next is you were subjected to an avalanche of accusations and when you attempted to thoroughly explain yourself you were only accused further of lying, conflicts of interest, deliberate rule breaking, attempts to start wars and veiled suggestions of inappropriate relationships with the subject. How would you feel about that, knowing none of it was true? Would you get upset that this was your first experience on Wikipedia? Would you be upset at being called a liar when it's not true. Would you be upset that the people given the responsibility of helping new users were instead the people responsible for attacking you? The answer is yes, you would be upset and it would have nothing to do with a Wikipedia page and everything to do with being attacked on a personal level. I would not be a valid candidate to make informational edits to Terry Reagan Allvord's page because (despite accusations) I don't know enough about him. My relationship with the subject is a professional one. I used to work for him and now I speak to him via email on the rare occasions he asks for my expertise involving the English language. He is involved in Republican politics which is a subject I am passionate about and have worked with many Republican's across the country pro bono. Mr. Allvord and I have no personal relationship and have never even met face to face. A conflict of interest is an impossibility. My strong response to this topic is in defense of my character which is repeatedly brought into question by people who do not know me and are basing who I am on a sentence I wrote calling someone a "client" instead of saying "used to be a client". As you mentioned, the changes I said I wanted to make to grammar and format are the only changes I have made. Everything that I have said that can be proven by looking at my actions have proven to be true. I have no idea why then that I am being made out to be a liar when there is nothing but biased assumptions to support that idea. If only the facts are considered then there is no reason why I should be banned. My intentions for this page, Terry Reagan Allvord, are to continue to review and edit any issues with the overall grammar and sentence structure and to add appropriate references that comply with Wikipedia standards. The original changes to title and url have already been made. My future intentions of use for Wikipedia would be to make grammatical corrections when I encounter them during my regular use of Wikipedia. I am not a writer and I have no intentions of generating new content on the Terry Allvord page or any others. I do however have a master's degree in the English language and am more than qualified to make associated editorial updates when I see them. These are my honest intentions. Like I said, I appreciate your willingness to be civil, however I think it is degrading and wrong to make me prove myself to come back when no such proof was required to ban me in the first place. One sentence was all it took and despite my explanations to clarify what I meant, I was treated with the utmost disrespect. However, I will agree to drop the discussion on Wikipedia if the ban is removed and I can continue working on Wikipedia like everyone else. I believe that I do have the guidelines on my side (concerning the treatment of newcomers) which should count for something.
Decline reason:
From my perspective, this comment clearly shows there is an unacceptable conflict of interest. PhilKnight (talk) 02:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.
Well there is nothing left to do then delete my account
editI have attempted to be the bigger person, I have been honest and genuine. I have read the wiki guidelines on how to behave and how others should behave towards me. I know that I have been treated against the set guidelines and I will have to discuss this with a proper wiki professional. It was never wikipedia's intentions for a new user to be permanently banned for making a mistake. This is especially true when the newcomer has offered to work with the admins to rectify the situation. However despite the fact that I am willing to do what it takes, the admins have continued to decline my request based on imaginary conflicts of interest and their personal feelings which have no basis in Wikipedia's guidelines. The last reason for declining my request actually made me laugh! "In my opinion, this comment is a clear issue of conflict of interest" first of all that isn't even the excuse used to ban me and second that is NOT an acceptable reason to ban someone. Everything about this is obviously personal for the admins. I am done asking that the Wiki rules be followed so how about you all do what you really want to do and delete my account or be a dear and tell me how to delete it. Thanks.
- We don't delete accounts. Please see WP:DISAPPEAR. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
- Well Jamie, according to Wikipedia you also don't permanently ban new users for not understanding the rules and when that new user offers to do whatever is necessary to fix the issue the admins are not supposed to ignore the new user so they can continue to ban them. When I started editing on Wiki I hadn't read all of the rules and fortunately Wiki understands that and therefore made a specific guideline which requires admins to have mercy on new users. I have had the opportunity to read wiki guidelines during my unfair permanent ban and what I have seen clearly shows that I wasn't the only one not following the rules. At least I am willing to correct the issue but based on the fact that I, as newcomer, am still being banned it's obvious that the other party is not. One admin even asked that I provide a list of my intentions for using Wiki and what I wanted to accomplish and on what pages. The purpose being that if I had good intentions, the ban could be removed (in accordance to Wiki guidelines). I complied and wrote my intentions all of which were valid and didn't interfere with any guidelines but before I heard back from that admin, another admin came in and declined my request because of conflicts of interest which wasn't even the reason why I was banned in the first place. All of this has made it very obvious that I have come under a personal attack and no matter how in the right I am, it won't make a difference. I am the moderator for 6 popular G+ communities. We have over 725,000 members combined. I am well aware of how a good page administrator behaves and that's why multiple community owners have sought me out to moderate their pages. If a new member joined one of my communities and broke a rule but after being spoken to had a valid reason for why that rule was broken and agreed to work with me to come to some sort of understanding I would NEVER reward them with a permanent ban. I could give you the contact information for the owners of those G+ communities so that they could verify what I have said and also so you could realize the fact that I do volunteer work on a regular basis including work for the republican party such as in this case. If I had been familiar with the hundreds of random wiki rules, I would have explained all of this instead of saying "for a big client" but at the time I thought it was easier. For that mistake, I have been permanently banned. I broke one "rule" by not being specific about how I knew the subject of a page, after that many rules were broken but not by me. Deleting an account isn't possible because it shouldn't be necessary considering no one should ever be permanently banned for breaking a rule they didn't know existed. However that is exactly what is happening to me. Thank you for providing me with the link. FavAssistant (talk) 15:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)