User talk:Adolfo at MIFF

January 2024

Hello MIFF Publications. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but 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 serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are strongly discouraged 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:MIFF Publications. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=MIFF Publications|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, do not edit further until you answer this message. Tollens (talk) 07:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Tollens,

Many thanks for explaining the situation and apologies for the oversights on my part. I have now included a COI disclosure in my profile and my username has now also been changed (so as to individually identify me).

While I am making changes to the Melbourne International Film Festival entry as a paid staff member, please note that I am also an independent writer and editor outside of the company; to the best of my professional abilities, I have ensured that all my changes to the page are not just impartial in tone and content but also well-cited.

If the suggestion is that I not make further changes directly, is there a better protocol for how to add/update/correct the entry's contents? The fact that the page has effectively remained unchanged since 2013 suggests, to me, that it is not being regularly maintained. Would appreciate your guidance in this regard.

Kind regards,

Adolfo Adolfo at MIFF (talk) 07:42, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Adolfo! No worries about not having it all right before you even started, nobody's expected to have read all the rules before they make any edits. I really appreciate that you've worked with these policies; in many cases people try to hide their marketing activities. I did see that your edits to the article were well-written, appropriately-sourced, and neutral, which is especially rare – I sincerely thank you for helping build Wikipedia rather than trying to simply take advantage of it like many do when writing for an organization. Apologies for the stern boilerplate messages that suggest there was something wrong with your edit.

Generally, we ask editors with conflicts of interest to propose changes using edit requests made at the talk page of an article rather than directly change its text – another editor can then review the change and implement it on your behalf, or work with you if there are any issues before implementing it. You can use the edit request wizard for this, or you can create a new section on the talk page, then put {{edit COI}} at the top of the request. You'll want to be as specific as possible to have it accepted more quickly. Generally it is a good idea to provide the exact text in the article you want to change and the exact text you think should replace it, along with all the sources that support the change – ideally it would be a simple copy-paste to implement the change. In cases where the change is so simple that nobody could possibly object (like fixing a typo or a citation error), go ahead and make the edit yourself without submitting a request.

If you need any help with anything, please don't hesitate to ask – you can contact me directly at my talk page, or you can ask at the help desk or Teahouse. Thank you again for being here to build an encyclopedia. Tollens (talk) 11:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your understanding, Tollens, and for your kind and supportive words.

All understood now – I'll be sure to adhere to protocol moving forward, especially as there definitely are further additions/changes I'm hoping to make to the MIFF entry (e.g. more granular information about the film program's regular sections). Adolfo at MIFF (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Your username

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "MIFF Publications", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, service, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Foobar Museum of Art". However, you are permitted to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you individually (not your role), such as "Sara Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87", but not "SEO Manager at XYZ Company".

Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, service, or website, regardless of your username. Please also read our paid editing policy and our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please request a change of username by completing the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, choosing a username that complies with our username policy. Alternatively, you can just create a new account and use that for editing. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Thank you. Tollens (talk) 07:24, 19 January 2024 (UTC)