GameMaven

January 2020

Hello, I'm Toddst1. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added to Alone in the Dark 3 have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. Toddst1 (talk) 05:17, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, GameMaven. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:Spam);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. As the author of numerous strategy guides to games as you say here, adding mentions of the book to related articles is running well afoul of our WP:COI guidelines. Toddst1 (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Are the Body mentions also inappropriate then? I don’t mean to question the guidelines, but it seems a little silly that some stranger could mention these official guides but I can’t. As I said, my intent was to contribute relevant information that was missing from these pages that I assume readers would like to know. But if the citations conflict with the guidelines, feel free to remove them. GameMaven (talk) 06:35, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

As a related matter, you should probably also consider removing all the Moby Games external links on video game pages. Each of their website pages (see their external link for “Alone in the Dark 3”, for example) includes an Amazon link that appears to be an affiliate link; that is, they earn money whenever anyone clicks the Amazon link and then buys the game. That would strike me as a more direct conflict. GameMaven (talk) 06:51, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Battletoads

Todd, can the following be added to the end of the first section for Battletoads (video game)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battletoads_(video_game))?

The official guide to Battletoads, Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, and Battletoads/Double Dragon was written by Steve Schwartz (Battletoads: The Official Battlebook, Prima Publishing, 1994).

Mega Man

Can the following be added somewhere to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Man ?

While I believe that it was the FIRST official strategy guide for any game(s) in trade paperback form, I can’t say that with 100% certainty.

FYI: The model for paying authors for writing official guides was the beginning of the end for game book authors. Instead of pitching an “official” book to game companies as a great way to publicize their game and get some free publicity, the game companies wanted (or were offered) a cut of the book’s proceeds based on the assumption of greater book sales than for an unofficial title. It was traditional in such deals to cut the author’s royalty and advance in order to pay the game companies. As a result, such books often weren’t profitable for the authors when compared to unofficial ones. In addition, some of the game companies provided no help other than a prerelease copy of the game.

ENTRY BELOW=>

The official guide to the first three Mega Man games and Mega Man in Dr. Wiley’s Revenge for Game Boy (The Official Guide to Mega Man, COMPUTE Books, 1991) was written by Steven Schwartz and was one of the earliest official game strategy guides. GameMaven (talk) 17:42, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

February 2020

It appears that you have been canvassing—leaving messages on a biased choice of users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. Thank you. Toddst1 (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you use Wikipedia for promotion or advertising. Please stop trying to add links to the strategy guides you have authored to these video game articles. It appears that you are WP:NOTHERE to do anything except promote your books. Toddst1 (talk) 19:43, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I was specifically told by another editor (Spintendo) to ask other editors to make decisions for me and to ping each of them. I also asked for assistance in choosing such editors and was told to contact anyone who looked like a frequent poster on the articles in question. I have absolutely no idea what their opinions are and no reason to expect they’d be “friendly to me.” In fact, I asked in the Talk pages for any interested editors to weigh in. No one did.

I haven’t added ANY links since the originals (over a month ago), made it clear that *I* was the author, and made my requests via the article Talk pages, as I was instructed to do. At this point, you have made your decision (and bias—by accusing me of doing nefarious things), so I won’t ask for your assistance going forward. However, if *you* want to select some additional editors to review this issue, feel free to do so. GameMaven (talk) 00:42, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

ANI

Unfortunately, I can't see that you're here to do anything other than promote your books, so I've taken this to the administrator's notice board for resolution. See the discussion here. Toddst1 (talk) 03:53, 14 February 2020 (UTC)