User talk:COEurope
September 2010[edit]
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, 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 it is considered inappropriate for such groups to use 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/Organization 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, or organization. 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 or organization. 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.
- I base this on your query left on the Help Desk: A while ago, I updated extensively the Wikipedia page for the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, as I am their Marketing and PR manager (cf. www.coeurope.org, which is in violation of our user name policy which states "Unambiguous use of a name or URL of a company, group or product as a username is not permitted. A username that is the name of a company or group implies the intent to promote this group. Accordingly, such usernames may be indefinitely blocked. Even if the name is ambiguous, accounts with a company or group name as a username may be indefinitely blocked if their editing behavior appears to be promotional."
- We strongly discourage individuals with a vested interest in a subject from editing (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest). For future reference, the way in which any changes to the article should have been made is by discussing the changes (with reliable independent sources which verify the information) on the article's talk page. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 14:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Dear Phantomsteve,
The issue is that what is on this page is now wrong. For instance, we haven't got 50 musicians but 57. If there are any links that are blocked by Wikipedia on the page that I had edited, then please do remove them. I was only trying to rectify mistakes, not to promote the COE. I'm afraid I had not realised that you blocked links to social networking websites, especially as Wikipedia automatically creates Facebook pages for each entry. I found the Chamber Orchestra of Europe page on Facebook before I created another page of the orchestra that actually had accurate information about us. So please can you revert to the text (minus any links that you consider inappropriate) that I uploaded on 6th august?
Thank you.
Coralia Galtier
- What you are saying now is advertisement, especially the "we haven't got 50 musicians but 57" part of your above reply. Wikipedia is not a site for spamming or advertisement, see WP:SPAM. /HeyMid (contributions) 14:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
- Coralia: I do not agree with Heymid that correcting the number of musicians is advertising, but other parts of your edit were certainly inappropriate (see WP:PEACOCK). I don't think many editors would object to changing the number of musicians (provided you have a published source for it: otherwise it is WP:Original research); but you should still request the change on the talk page, rather than applying it yourself. --ColinFine (talk) 19:20, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Editing tips, your user name, and Conflict of Interest[edit]
Hi COEurope, it seems you have run up against a few Wikipedia policies, and your editing ability has been disabled as a result. A lot of the jargon, rules, policies, etc., can be confusing and intimidating to a new user, and people can come across as harsh when trying to explain them, which can unfortunately discourage and frustrate a new user. If I may, I'd like to go into some detail about how your account ended up blocked. Please click on the various terms I link for more details on the specific policies.
- The primary reason that your account is blocked is due to your user name "COEurope" not meeting our Username Policy. Specifically, that name comes across as promotional (being the name of a group), and also gives the impression that it could be used by multiple people. Before we can go any further, you will need to change the name. This is fortunately easy to do. First, pick a name that is not promotional, and otherwise meets our Username Policy. Then check that it is available by searching This Link. Once you find one that you want to use, simply edit this page (you are still allowed to do that) and add the text {{unblock-spamun|Your proposed new username|Your reason here}} (replacing Your proposed new username with the new name you want to use). That should get you un-blocked and able to edit. Then:
- Please review our Guidelines for editing when you have a potential Conflict Of Interest). In a nutshell, if you have a close connection to a topic (which you do in the case of COE), you are strongly discouraged from making direct edits to the article. I realize this seems counter-intuitive, as you would naturally assume to have the most knowledge of the topic. While this is often true, over time we have found that many such editors have a tendency, even unconsciously, to not maintain a Neutral Point of View in their edits. This doesn't mean we don't want the benefits of your knowledge (quote the contrary, we welcome it!), but just that you need to take special steps to ensure it gets added according to our policy. The best way to do this is to make edits to the article's Talk Page (the "discussion" tab that every article has), and describe the nature of the edits you want to make. Discussion then happens, and the agreed-upon text gets added to the article by an uninvolved editor, which keeps everything nice and neutral.
- Lastly, we need to ensure that the edits you make include information that is Verifiable through Reliable Sources that are unrelated to the topic itself. The rule of thumb for this bit is: We don't write about things we know, we write about things that others have already written about. Wikipedia is a "tertiary source" in that regards. So while the change from 50 to 57 musicians, for example, may be 100% true, it would have to be cited to a reliable source that is unrelated to the topic. So the COE web page would not be a good source, but a newspaper article would be.
I hope this all helps, and that you aren't discouraged from contributing. Feel free to ask me any questions, either here or on my talk page. ArakunemTalk 16:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)