USNamesLori

Blocked

Your account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended for publicity and/or promotional purposes. Please read the following carefully.

Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, celebrity or other well-known individual, or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity. The edits may have violated one or more of our rules on spamming, which include: adding inappropriate external links, posting advertisements, and using Wikipedia for promotion. Wikipedia has many articles on companies, groups, and organizations, but such groups are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia to write about themselves. In addition, usernames like yours are disallowed under our username policy.

Am I allowed to make these edits if I change my username?

Probably not. See WP:FAQ/Organizations for a helpful list of frequently asked questions by people in your position. Also, review the conflict of interest guidance to see the kinds of limitations you would have to obey if you did want to continue editing about your company, group, organization, or clients. If this does not fit in with your goals, then you will not be allowed to edit again. Consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead.

What can I do now?

You are still welcome to write about something other than your company, organization, or clients. If you do intend to make useful contributions on some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:

• Add the text {{unblock-spamun|Your proposed new username|Your reason here}} on your user talk page.
• Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with a new username you are willing to use. See Special:Listusers to search for available usernames. Your new username will need to meet our username policy.
• Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:

• Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
• Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.

If you believe this block was made in error, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.

Kuru (talk) 00:44, 10 May 2012 (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.

USNamesLori (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:

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

Request reason:

This is American Domain Names LLC. A legal person formed under the laws of the state of Delaware. We joined the Wikipedia because we want to help make content available online for free. We didn't know it was not ok to write something about oneself on the Wikipedia. We can't find anything in the Wikipedia Terms of Use that prohibits juridical persons to join and help writing articles. We can provide legal documents that prove our identity. This account has been authorized by the members of the named person. The editing is done by one particular individual in the technical team, account information are not shared. If it is not acceptable to write articles promoting oneself, we will refrain from doing so and are also willing to sign an agreement to that end if that is necessary. We would have appreciated a warning message before being blocked. We are not going to write anything about ourself or our competitiors. But we hope we can share our experience with various technology in our data center by submiting neutral and well-sourced content. It is very difficult to find the house rules of Wikipedia because there is no straight-forward link to each of them and you should be able to imagine that people will be very surprised and irritated to discover that something they did in good faith is actually against the rules. Therefore, I would suggest that Wikipedia administrators restructure the page design to make users able to find the rules much easier before they start editing. Then we would not have added our company to this list in the first place. Thank you. American Domain Names LLC. By: Lori Sarah Twilley, DNS Administrator

Decline reason:

As per my comments below. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

The relevant policies in this instance would be our username policy, which prohibits accounts editing on behalf of an organization, and our policy on conflicts of interest, which describes edits about a company made by employees of that company at its behest. We have lots of companies who join Wikipedia just to spam links in articles, or to make sure their article reads the way they want it to read, and so forth - these accounts are blocked immediately, as yours was. The reason the block notice is so long is that we understand how daunting our policies can be - and we attempt to explain what happened and why. Frequently, these accounts are unblocked once they agree to be renamed (as you have, to your credit) and when they agree that they cannot write about their employer. If American Domain Names had an article, you would be welcome to post on that article's talk page with information, in the form of "The article says X, but it should actually say Y, and here's the source that says so: (link)". Then other editors judge the information on the merits. If your intent is to help build the encyclopedia, your efforts are welcome and there are millions of articles that both need work and do not involve domain name companies. To proceed in that case, re-request unblocking and so affirm. If, on the other hand, your intent is to promote American Domain Names LLC, then I'm sorry to tell you that you won't be able to do that. Best, UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

This user's request to be unblocked to request a change in username has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

USNamesLori (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:

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

Request reason:

UltraExactZZ, this is exactly what I meant to say. I am not going to promote my employer in any way. The primary purpose of this account is to write about the technical aspects of my work and that of my co workers. While I am specifically authorized by my employer to share technical knowledge and to put emphasis on what we and other companies in the United States do to bring the Internet to the people at home,this is just about the technical aspects. If any of our customers would ever want to know how we do certain things, they should be able to go on the Wikipedia (as many people nowadays do) and pull up "IP network" or "Domain Name Space," for example, and get an easy to understand explanation, or we would be able to point them to this article instead of explaining it to each of them over and over. But to make this happen we actively need to help ensure that content is non-ambigous, well-sourced and error-free. In the past I have seen many history articles on the Wikipedia that were sourced but contained either ambigous or misleading information which I only learned in a chilly way later. So it looks like the Wikipedia is open to people who are actually working with the technology involved because we have more insight and can judge better which sources are more trust-worthy. This would make much more sense to me than using Wikipedia as a public relations site, and is more mutually beneficial and in the common interest. Agreed. By: Lori, DNS Administrator

Accept reason:

It seems clear you are willing to abide by Wikipedia policies, so I am unblocking you for the purpose of changing your username. Please go to WP:CHU/Simple and do that as soon as you can. From my point of view, a username is OK if it includes a company name as well as a personal name that clearly designates the account belonging to one person representing the company, and not belonging to the company itself. Bear in mind that there is disagreement among the Wikipedia administrator community on this point, although there have been precedents. Furthermore, I recommend that (a) you disclose your association and conflict of interest clearly on your user page, and (b) do not make non-trivial edits to any article in which you have a conflict of interest, but rather propose your changes on the article talk page. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:56, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Hello Lori. Regarding your request to have your username changed it's been suggested that the best thing would be for you to choose a username that doesn't reflect your employer at all. As Amatulić mentioned above, this is a point of disagreement in the community, so perhaps you could choose a simpler, personal name, in the interest of having this matter over with. Let me know here or on my talk page of your answer, or you may just go ahead and update your request with a new name. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any doubts. Best regards — Frankie (talk) 12:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but this is the name I want to use. Usnames (talk) 15:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that that name still appears as promoting your employer, which is why the request you placed has not been completed. You've stated that your main concern is that content on Wikipedia is factual and well sourced, but for that it should make little to no difference whether the handle "Usnames" is present or not in your username, while to the community it is a main concern that Wikipedia is not used as a means of advertising — Frankie (talk) 16:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

What do the precedents say? I am sure there are other people promoting certain brands and companies while not being employed by these companies and I am sure you are fine with them. So why discriminate? Usnames (talk) 17:23, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of those precedents, but they were mentioned above so I'll check and give you my opinion after a review. In the meantime I just wanted to note that this is not about discrimination, but about finding out what is the best outcome for the project. As it stands, the username you chose is problematic, and using it without a very good reason is simply bound to create further unnecessary friction in the future, so choosing a neutral name seems like the sensible thing to do so to put this issue aside — Frankie (talk) 19:06, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I've reviewed several discussions, the most relevant and recent being these three [1], [2], [3]. Decisions in Wikipedia are normally made by consensus, so they are not actual precedents in the usual sense of the word. Now, in this case I do see a slight consensus in them for focusing in the quality of contributions rather than the username, given the case that the name does not represent a group account. Personally I can't think of a good reason for insisting in having the company's name included, and as such I'd like to invite you again to choose a neutral username. I'll make a post on the bureaucrats' noticeboard with the information above for their consideration. Best regards — Frankie (talk) 23:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)