User talk:ChelseaFLForestService

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello FLForestService, and welcome to Wikipedia. Your addition to Goethe State Forest has had to be removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied without attribution. If you want to copy from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Theroadislong (talk) 17:23, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Please stop adding the copyrighted material to the various articles until you have followed the instructions at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials on how to grant Wikipedia permission to use the material. Meters (talk) 17:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Your addition to Big Shoals State Forest has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text, or images borrowed from other websites, or printed material without a verifiable license; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Turgan ^Talk 17:53, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Your addition to Four Creeks State Forest has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text, or images borrowed from other websites, or printed material without a verifiable license; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Turgan ^Talk 18:03, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Your addition to Cary State Forest has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text, or images borrowed from other websites, or printed material without a verifiable license; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Turgan ^Talk 18:03, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Your addition to Etoniah Creek State Forest has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text, or images borrowed from other websites, or printed material without a verifiable license; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Turgan ^Talk 18:03, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

- Thank you all for your patience as I am learning the ropes. I apologize for any violations I have made thus far. ChelseaFLForestService (talk)

Username

Thanks for starting the OTRS system permissions for your edits. We're not trying to chase you away, but your name is a violation of the username policy. It's not a big deal, but you cannot use the name of a company/group as your username as it is considered promotional. You also cannot use a role account such as PublicRelationsFLForestService since that may indicate a shared account or a role account that may be assigned to a different person at a different time. You may use any name (it does not have to be your real name) that indicates a particular individual at FLForestryService, such as BobFLForestService. I suggest that you read WP:USERNAME and apply for a change of username at WP:Changing username. Meters (talk) 18:44, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Ok, we're running amok of a multitude of issues here. I'll leave aside the copyright issues (which are very serious) as others have commented above. But, regardless of the copyright issues, the copy you are placing in articles is not neutral. For an example;

“ The Bear-N-Oak Trail is a shady 1.4-mile walk through beautiful mossy live oaks down to the placid waters of Indian Lake. ”

This is not neutral. Beautiful is completely subjective, as is placid. This reads like (and is) advertising copy. With respect, I'm quite sorry but the advertising copy you've been adding to articles must go.

Further, you've been adding refs to all this copy pointing to your website. This is effectively link spam, though you certainly may not have intended it as such. At Wikipedia, we can use primary sources (which your website is), but great care must be taken and we depend far more heavily upon secondary sources (say, for example, a newspaper article about one of your parks). Please see Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources.

Understand that we do welcome your contributions, but writing about a subject with which you are closely affiliated is difficult. It is possible, but great care must be taken as it is very easy to run in abeyance of our conflict of interest guideline. I welcome your contributions, but we need to work to develop them into usable content for the project. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 15:19, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Are you being paid to edit?Amanda Smalls 15:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• We know from this diff that she is the Communications and Public Relations Coordinator for the Florida Forest Service. Not sure if that answers the question though. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:48, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello, ChelseaFLForestService. You have new messages at Hammersoft's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thank you for responding to AmandaSmalls, Hammersoft. As stated, I am the Communications and Public Relations Coordinator for the Florida Forest Service. I am brand new to editing on Wikipedia and my only intention was to get the information about Florida's State Forests out there. I appreciate everyone's willingness to assist my efforts and making sure the rules are not violated. ChelseaFLForestService (talk)

You can call me Amanda. I'm pretty sure your name's Chelsea. Is there any way I could help you Chelsea?Amanda Smalls 17:42, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• I created User:ChelseaFLForestService/Indian Lake State Forest for Chelsea to work on, and to gain experience with editing here with my (and anyone else's) input while working to develop that stub into a decent article. Amanda, could you watchlist that please? Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 18:49, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

 Done Is there anything I can help you with Hammer?Amanda Smalls 18:53, 17 October 2014 (UTC)