Pfrasconi

February 2010

You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved. This applies to articles about you, your achievements, your band, your business, your publications, your website, your relatives, and any other possible conflict of interest.

Creating an article about yourself is strongly discouraged. If you create such an article, it might be listed on articles for deletion. Deletion is not certain, but many feel strongly that you should not start articles about yourself. This is because independent creation encourages independent validation of both significance and verifiability. All edits to articles must conform to Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Verifiability.

If you are not "notable" under Wikipedia guidelines, creating an article about yourself may violate the policy that Wikipedia is not a personal webspace provider and would thus qualify for speedy deletion. If your achievements, etc., are verifiable and genuinely notable, and thus suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later. (See Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles.) Thank you. —Largo Plazo (talk) 06:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Editing with a conflict of interest

Hello, Pfrasconi. 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.

Last but not least: All contributors must not contribute content that violates conflict of interest laws (just as all contributors must respect copyright). The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive is valid throughout the European Union. In a German court decision in 2012 (that also relied on the directive) regarding Wikipedia: "The court held that when a company edits a Wikipedia article, the resulting text falsely creates the impression that the edit has no business-related purpose. By implication, the judges found that the average reader of Wikipedia articles expects to find objective and neutral information." That is a very very important condition, comparable to the FTC Guide" that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser”. This expectation by consumers of neutral information on Wikipedia, requires that companies not write "their" WP articles for PR/marketing purposes.

Editors who are compensated for their contributions should make the disclosure by placing the {{connected contributor (paid)}} template at the top of the talk page of affected articles and filling in the parameters. They should also supply this information as part of a list on their user page of all their paid contributions.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. Thank you. —Largo Plazo (talk) 10:40, 24 October 2015 (UTC)