Frigmous

May 2019

Hello Frigmous. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, 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 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:Frigmous. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Frigmous|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. The article here is not the property of nor under the control of the school. Please do not directly edit the article again. Encyclopedia articles are made up of information paraphrased from secondary sources. We have style guidelines amongst which is we do not use titles like "Dr". If you haven't got a source other than the school its likely the information does not belong in the article. Again, as an employee of the school, you are required to properly disclose that, both on your userpage and on the article talk page. Other than very very minor edits such as spelling corrections or reverting WP:VANDALISM, you are not allowed to edit the article. This is an encyclopedia. Information here needs to be both verifiable and neutral. It is difficult to impossible for someone in the employ of the subject of the article to do. The school has its website to disseminate information the way they want it disseminated. This is not it. John from Idegon (talk) 04:00, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

When I look at the page for, say, the Ohio State University, it mentions that the president is Michael V. Drake, M.D. - so Wikipedia would seem to use titles from time to time. It also lists the school colors, which I expect were supplied by the Ohio State University. I don't think listing the school colors for the Indiana Academy is anything but neutral, and is quite verifiable. Again, using OSU's page as a comparison, there's an entire section about student life. I don't think having this information on the Academy's page is promoting the school unnecessarily, merely providing information about what the living conditions are for students who attend. I am an employee of the school, and have edited my user page to reflect this, but I am not being compensated for making these edits. I was merely trying to put back some of the information that was inexplicably removed earlier this evening, though it had been on the page without incident for quite a while.

I do see that some other schools do not list "Dr." in front of their presidents' names, so I won't argue on that point, but I would wonder why you feel the school colors are improper to list on the page, when every other school does so, or why information about student life should be omitted when other schools include it. Frigmous (talk) 04:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Reply

When I look at the page for, say, the Ohio State University, it mentions that the president is Michael V. Drake, M.D. - so Wikipedia would seem to use titles from time to time. It also lists the school colors, which I expect were supplied by the Ohio State University. I don't think listing the school colors for the Indiana Academy is anything but neutral, and is quite verifiable. Again, using OSU's page as a comparison, there's an entire section about student life. I don't think having this information on the Academy's page is promoting the school unnecessarily, merely providing information about what the living conditions are for students who attend. I am an employee of the school, and have edited my user page to reflect this, but I am not being compensated for making these edits. I was merely trying to put back some of the information that was inexplicably removed earlier this evening, though it had been on the page without incident for quite a while.

I do see that some other schools do not list "Dr." in front of their presidents' names, so I won't argue on that point, but I would wonder why you feel the school colors are improper to list on the page, when every other school does so, or why information about student life should be omitted when other schools include it.

May 2019

Please stop assuming ownership of articles as you did at Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. Behavior such as this is regarded as disruptive, and is a violation of Wikipedia policy. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This article is NOT under the control of the school. Why would you think otherwise. John from Idegon (talk) 04:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Reply

I'm not assuming ownership of the page, I was just adding information to the page like anyone may who knows information about the subject. Most of the content that is there wasn't put there by me. I added the school colors because a) it's part of the school template and b) I know what they are. The other information I was putting back because there was no justifiable reason for it to have been removed. If the information I provided/reinstated isn't supposed to be part of the page about this school, why is it a part of Wikipedia's school template?

Are you saying that the rule of Wikipedia is that anyone may edit a page about a school except people who work there?

I'll happily stop editing the page if that's the rule, but since you don't work at the Academy, might I ask that you add information regarding the school's colors (which I have on good authority are Burgundy - #862633, Buff - #e0ab76, and Oxford Blue - #002147), the enrollment (roughly 320 students), the teaching faculty (30 members), the ratio of students to teachers (roughly 11:1, based on 320/30), and the link to the course offerings (https://academy.bsu.edu/catalog - a more reliable source of course offerings than the page at https://academy.bsu.edu/academics/syllabi)? I'm sure it would be appreciated by people who might be curious about the Indiana Academy.

Frigmous (talk) 05:02, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

May 2019

As previously advised, your edits give the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. You were asked to cease editing until you responded by either stating that you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits, or by complying with the mandatory requirements under the Wikimedia Terms of Use that you disclose your employer, client and affiliation. Again, you can post such a disclosure on your user page at User:Frigmous, and the template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Frigmous|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. Please respond before making any other edits to Wikipedia. John from Idegon (talk) 15:31, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not getting paid to edit the page. I'm adding information I know to be correct about something I know something about. I'm removing information I know to be incorrect about something I know something about. I'll quit editing the page, and since you know so much about the school I'll leave you to add whatever information you see fit. I have no financial stake in promoting the topic; I just like Wikipedia entries to have as much information as they can and this is one I happen to be able to provide information for. I would wonder what your stake is in keeping the information I had added off of the page. Do the school's colors offend you in some way?

So, were you lying here where you stated you were employed by the school to "maintain their websites", or are you lying now? Unambiguously one or the other is a lie. John from Idegon (talk) 17:00, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not one of the Indiana Academy's websites. I am paid to maintain the Indiana Academy's websites. Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia foundation. The Indiana Academy is not owned by the Wikimedia foundation. Again, what's your stake in all of this? As I said, I'll no longer edit the page if it offends you for me to do so. I'll propose changes on the talk page and leave the actual editing to my betters.

This is not a matter of 'offending' another editor. It is very much an issue of conflict of interest. Please read the encyclopedia's guidelines, and take them to heart. 2601:188:180:1481:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 17:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, which is why I said I'd stop editing the page and just make requests on the talk page. I don't think it's really a conflict of interest to state that the school has colors and what they are, any more than it's a conflict of interest for a U.S. citizen to mention on the article about the U.S. flag that it has the colors red, white, and blue. If someone wants to make the argument that the Indiana Academy's colors aren't what I said they were, and that I'm only trying to add them to the entry to line my own pockets, I would ask what the logic behind that argument is. It's a school, it's got colors, I know what they are, I added them to the page. No one paid me to do it, no one is docking my pay because John from Idegon took them off. I'm just baffled as to why he felt it necessary to do so. I appreciate that he went and found outdated sources for enrollment information from three years ago - I put a link to 2019 enrollment information on the talk page, if someone wants to update the numbers - but I'm done. Frigmous (talk) 17:37, 3 May 2019 (UTC)