Corecontent

Mandatory paid editing disclosure

Hello Corecontent. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to draft:Martin Shanahan, and that you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. 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. Undisclosed 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 akin to Black hat SEO.
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, broadly construed, 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:Corecontent. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Corecontent|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. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, please do not edit further until you answer this message. KDS4444 ^(talk) 12:49, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Martin Shanahan has been accepted

Martin Shanahan, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

• If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
• If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .

Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Galobtter (talk) 07:18, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Martin Shanahan

Articles created by undisclosed paid editors may risk being deleted. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:33, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Martin Shanahan

{{Connected contributor (paid) | User1 = corecontent | U1-employer = IDA | U1-client = IDA | U1-EH = yes

This user, in accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, discloses that he has been paid by {{{IDA}}} for his contributions to Wikipedia.

$ Corecontent, in accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, discloses that he has been paid by IDA for his contributions to Wikipedia.

Martin Shanahan

It is apparent that you have a WP:COI issue with this article. Please do not remove content or arbitrataly edit this article. There is strong historical evidence that this article suffered from WP:PROM (and other WP issues). Britishfinance (talk) 10:36, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Paid editing in Wikipedia

Thanks for disclosing that you work for IDA.

This account needs to be used by one and only one, person, and that person needs to use the pronoun "I". It is fine to say things like "IDA would prefer X" or the like, but this cannot be treated as a "corporate account". The person using this account will be held responsible as an individual for his or her behavior here. If IDA wants to have other people edit WP, each person must have his or her own account, and must also disclose that he or she works for IDA.

Further - here is what paid editors should do:

There are two pieces to conflict of interest management in Wikipedia.

The first is disclosure, which you have done. That should be done at the userpage (as is done now) and also in local discussions at Talk pages (don't make people guess - instead just state the conflict, simply).

The second is a form of peer review. This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and voilà there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no "editors" as that term is used in the real world. So the bias that conflicted editors tend to have, can go right into the article. Conflicted editors are also really driven to try to make the article fit with their external interest. If they edit directly, this often leads to big battles with other editors.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI or who are paid, and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is:

a) if you want to create an article relevant to a COI you have, create the article as a draft through the WP:AFC process, disclose your COI on the Talk page with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, and then submit the draft article for review (the AfC process sets up a nice big button for you to click when it is ready) so it can be reviewed before it publishes; and

b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to

(i) disclose at the Talk page of the article with the Template:Connected contributor (paid) tag, putting it at the bottom of the beige box at the top of the page; and

(ii) propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. Just open a new section, put the proposed content there, and just below the header (at the top of the editing window) please the {{request edit}} tag to flag it for other editors to review. In general it should be relatively short so that it is not too much review at once. Sometimes editors propose complete rewrites, providing a link to their sandbox for example. This is OK to do but please be aware that it is lot more for volunteers to process and will probably take longer.

By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. We get some great contributions that way, when conflicted editors take the time to understand what kinds of proposals are OK under the content policies. (There are good faith paid editors here, who have signed and follow the Wikipedia:Statement on Wikipedia from participating communications firms, and there are "black hat" paid editors here who lie about what they do and really harm Wikipedia).

But understanding the mission, and the policies and guidelines through which we realize the mission, is very important! There are a whole slew of policies and guidelines that govern content and behavior here in Wikipedia. Please see User:Jytdog/How for an overview of what Wikipedia is and is not (we are not a directory or a place to promote anything), and for an overview of the content and behavior policies and guidelines. Learning and following these is very important, and takes time. Please be aware that you have created a Wikipedia account, and this makes you a Wikipedian - you are obligated to pursue Wikipedia's mission first and foremost when you work here, and you are obligated to edit according to the policies and guidelines. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege that is freely offered to all, but the community restricts or completely takes that privilege away from people who will not edit and behave as Wikipedians.

I hope that makes sense to you.

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the company has offices) you can do that directly in the article, without making an edit request on the Talk page. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content. If you are not sure if something is uncontroversial, please ask at the Talk page.

Will you please agree to learn and follow the content and behavioral policies and guidelines, and to follow the peer review processes going forward when you want to work on any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. Best regards Jytdog (talk) 14:26, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog,

Corecontent agrees to follow the guidelines as set-out above.

During the page set-up process last year, we did disclose that we were a paid contributor for the IDA. We have not tried to hide that and be malicious in any form.

Thanks for your time in editing.

Corecontent (talk) 14:31, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting (see WP:THREAD) - when you reply to someone, you put a colon in front of your comment, which the Wikipedia software will render into an indent when you save your edit; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons in front of your comment, which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages when you save your edit. That is how we know who said what to whom and when.

Please be aware that threading and signing are fundamental etiquette here, as basic as "please" and "thank you", and continually failing to thread and sign communicates rudeness, and eventually people may start to ignore you (see here). Jytdog (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

In Wikipedia you are a person not an office; you are not "we". If you continue writing like "an office" people are going to ignore you at best and will start looking for ways to just get rid of you. The editing community does not tolerate corporate accounts here. You are a single human being, just like me. It is kind of OK that you represent IDA but you are a person, doing that. That person needs to be here first and foremost to improve Wikipedia, not only to do PR for IDA. If all you do is PR for IDA, that means you are not here to build an encyclopedia. See WP:NOTHERE. Jytdog (talk) 14:36, 20 June 2018 (UTC)