Managing a conflict of interest

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  Hello, Narolsonsd. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. People with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, see the conflict of interest guideline and frequently asked questions for organizations. In particular, please:

  • avoid editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, its competitors, or projects and products you or they are involved with;
  • instead, propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
  • avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
  • exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. Thank you. Godsy(TALKCONT) 18:34, 25 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

  Hello Narolsonsd. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to AWeber,. 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. 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.

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, 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:Narolsonsd. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Narolsonsd|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. If you are being compensated, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, please do not edit further until you answer this message. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:56, 25 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

  Hello Orangemike. Thank you for clarifying the policies for me and providing guidance on the matter. I've added the disclosure to my User:Narolsonsd page. My intention was never to promote AWeber's products or services, but simply to ensure accuracy of information. I will no longer make edits to Wikipedia pages in accordance with the policies; instead I will make suggestions through the talk pages and articles for creation process. Given that AWeber's page has been deleted, what do you recommend as the appropriate course of action to get the page reinstated? Narolsonsd (talk) 16:50, 25 February 2016 (UTC)Reply