User talk:ChrisN at The Student Room

October 2024

Hello ChrisN at The Student Room. 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 employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. 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:ChrisN at The Student Room. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=ChrisN at The Student Room|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. 331dot (talk) 07:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for replying to me. Sorry, I spent several hours researching the best approach for this and set myself up a username with what I believed to be the best practice approach. I then requested edits, rather than made them to ensure I adhered to Wikipedia policies.

I hadn't appreciated that I needed to make that disclosure on my user profile too - but can do that too. Thanks for pointing that out. I am the main shareholder and CEO of The Student Room, and would just like to see a really helpful and informative, and objective, description of us. I am happy to put the work in on this and ensure that I adhere to all guidelines. The Student Room is a well-respected large UK education community website with lots of government and education sector support, and public interest, so it seems a shame to have an outdated description of it, which has been noted as needing more work.

I am also happy to make broader contributions to editing Wikipedia. It is a great resource.

If I make that declaration, am I able to make edits to this page? or should I request changes in the Talk?

Thank you for your patience in helping me get this right. ChrisN at The Student Room (talk) 08:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You should almost always request changes on the talk page as edit requests(which you have already). Times where you are permitted to make direct edits are listed here- basically anything completely uncontroversial, where no reasonable person could possibly object. The paid disclosure is required by the Terms of Use and does not permit you to begin making COI edits directly as you see fit.

One thing you can do yourself is work towards providing an updated logo- you won't be able to upload it yourself yet(your account must be four days old with at least 10 edits to do that) but you can go to Files for Upload to work with others to get an updated logo here. Do not upload it to Commons. 331dot (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's great. Thank you so much. Will do! ChrisN at The Student Room (talk) 08:15, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for disclosing. 331dot (talk) 08:13, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your Files for Upload request: The Student Room logo 2024.png

Hello, and thank you for your request at Files for upload! The file has been uploaded. Regards, NotAGenious (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderful. Thank you! ChrisN at The Student Room (talk) 12:50, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation: The Student Room (December 17)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reasons left by SafariScribe were:

This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources are required so that information can be verified. If you need help with referencing, please see Referencing for beginners and Citing sources.

This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject (see the guidelines on the notability of web content). Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added (see technical help and learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue). If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia.

The comment the reviewer left was:

Doesn't meet WP:NWEBSITE; Blogs aren't WP:RS.

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:The Student Room and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you do not edit your draft in the next 6 months, it will be considered abandoned and may be deleted.
If you need any assistance, or have experienced any untoward behavior associated with this submission, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, on the reviewer's talk page or use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 13:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, ChrisN at The Student Room! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 13:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]