GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor

January 2022

Hello GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Games Done Quick ‎, 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 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 serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

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. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely 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:GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor|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. – NJD-DE (talk) 19:09, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Your account has been indefinitely blocked from editing because of the following problems: the account has been used for advertising or promotion, which is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia, and your username indicates that the account represents a business, organisation, group, or web site, which is against the username policy.

You may request a change of username and unblock if you intend to make useful contributions instead of promoting your business or organization. To do this, first search Special:CentralAuth for available usernames that comply with the username policy. Once you have found an acceptable username, post the text {{unblock-spamun|Your proposed new username|Your reason here}} at the bottom of your talk page. Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with your new username and replace the text "Your reason here" with your reasons to be unblocked. In your reasons, you must:

• Disclose any compensation you may receive for your contributions in accordance with the Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure requirement.
• Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the kind of edits for which you were blocked.
• Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

Appeals: If, after reviewing the guide to appealing blocks, you believe this block was made in error, you may appeal it by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} at the bottom of your talk page. Replace the text "Your reason here" with the reasons you believe the block was an error, and publish the page. Bbb23 (talk) 19:52, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

This user's request to be unblocked to request a change in username has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without a good reason (see the blocking policy). Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor (block log • active blocks • global blocks • autoblocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Requested username:

EventAndStatsAdvisor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Request reason:

I've been told to remove the part of the name (had GDQ at the start) due to it apparently promoting /Disclose any compensation you may receive for your contributions in accordance with the Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure requirement. ----- There wasn't any./ Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the kind of edits for which you were blocked. ----- GDQ part of the name was apparently promoting the org. Have requested (above) rename to remove that part of it so I can continue :). / Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked. ----- Continue to edit and fix up the correct amounts/info regarding the events (without the event part in my name as I'm not intending to promote in a way by name. As a staff member I was just correcting wrong info. :)!

Decline reason:

You have a conflict of interest, and that new username would still be inappropriate (it's a "role" account, see WP:USERNAME). Yamla (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Think everything should be correct now... D: :)

Unfortunately not. As an employee, you are compensated for your contributions, even if not directly. You would always have an insurmountable conflict of interest.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm afraid this isn't true actually.

As the org is from the US, and I'm from the UK, they're unable to by their law to pay me. Hence making me not an employee. Furthermore to this, I am a voluntary member, as such, we get no mention, listed anywhere or again - paid in any form.

So I'm curious to know how it this breaks the guidelines going through them all :)— Preceding unsigned comment added by GDQEvent&StatsAdvisor (talk • contribs) 22:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

You might've missed the part in WP:PAID where it says Payment or compensation: includes, but is not limited to, money, goods or services. And honestly I find it quite weird that someone would call themselves "staff" w/o a compensation. Never seen any of our Wikipedia volunteers referring to themselves as such. In any case, paid or not paid, you still have a conflict of interest.– NJD-DE (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

So, I can't speak to this person specifically but I saw this conversation and just wanted to point out that GDQ is a charity event that is run twice a year to raise money for various causes. AFAIK, the folks who work on it are all (or nearly all) volunteers. So it wouldn't be surprising to me that this person is not compensated yet still calls themselves "staff" as there are loads of people that work on this thing and I don't think any (or any significant number) are compensated. Agreed that this person still has COI problems, but this isn't a typical paid editor situation AFAIK. DocFreeman24 (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

It's quite a common thing over here lol.

And I did read that. As I do not receive money, goods or services I'm asking again what the apparent conflict of interest is? Otherwise it's fine to just create a new account without the GDQ name bit right?

The conflict of interest is your association with GDQ. You should not create other accounts; this account will be renamed. 331dot (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@331dot: You should not create other accounts. I don't understand what that means. Beyond that, (1) I don't think the name the user has picked is acceptable; it implies some sort of official role. (2) Even if we find a suitable name, the user must disclose their relationship on their userpage and not edit the article directly, but instead use the Talk page to propose changes.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

The user seemed to be saying that they would go and create another account. 331dot (talk) 00:11, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

So, I can't speak to this person specifically but I saw this conversation and just wanted to point out that GDQ is a charity event that is run twice a year to raise money for various causes. AFAIK, the folks who work on it are all (or nearly all) volunteers. So it wouldn't be surprising to me that this person is not compensated yet still calls themselves "staff" as there are loads of people that work on this thing and I don't think any (or any significant number) are compensated. Agreed that this person still has COI problems, but this isn't a typical paid editor situation AFAIK. DocFreeman24 (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

--- Basically this give or take mostly. Also, I read through the entirety of both CoI guideline meaning and Wiki's CoI guidelines and what I was doing (edits) or my role in the org, does not break any of the guidelines this site uses in the terms the original person has stated. Furthermore, as I said, regarding the name, I'm happy to change it as someone above said it would be, and yet still hasn't had the request denied or accepted. My role with the org, is being one of the few event stat analysers. And that is exactly what I was editing because the wiki was wrong. :) So... currently it's going round in circles.