SOMarketing

Conflict of interest and "marketing"

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article User talk:Astronaut, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

1. editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and,
4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for businesses. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia, because it has been identified as an account used for promotion of a company or group, with a username that implies that this has been done by that company or group. See Wikipedia:Business' FAQ and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

This kind of activity is considered spamming and is forbidden by Wikipedia policies. In addition, the use of a username like yours violates our username policy.

You may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} below or emailing the administrator who blocked you.

Your reason should include your response to this issue and a new username you wish to adopt that does not violate our username policy (specifically, understand that accounts are for individuals, not companies or groups, and that your username should reflect this). Usernames that have already been taken are listed here.

--Orange Mike | Talk 16:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Adrian Smith

I've moved your comment from my talk page to Talk:Burj Dubai and I have replied there. Astronaut (talk) 16:16, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible that the owners of this account simply needed to be educated about protocol, and not banned permanently? What is unfortunate is that unlike many people who have a specific agenda, SOMmarketing was transparent about their goals, and banning them will likely only result in them creating a less-obvious account and being less-transparent about their agenda. We should applaud and support people who are being transparent, even if we educate them about the NPOV and kindly explain why this encyclopedia would not be valid if we allowed people to do what they were doing Deproduction (talk) 17:45, 13 June 2009 (UTC)