User talk:M Robinson

This account has been blocked indefinitely from editing, because it has been used to evade blocks on one or more other accounts, and because your only purpose here is to use Wikipedia as a free advertising service. You can save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort if you just accept that your advertisements for "Applus" are not going to be accepted as Wikipedia articles, no matter how many new accounts you create to get round blocks on existing accounts, no matter how many attempts you make to post your spam here (I have counted seven) and no matter what changes to the title of the article you make to try to get round article protection. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

To: JamesBWatson"

Hello,

The thing is that I do not understand what I do wrong. I do not want to promote or do advertising, I just want to post an article here, where people can read about Applus. Could you please, then, give me some guidelines about how to write an article here? I tried to insert good references but it seems that does not work either.

Thank you. —  Preceding unsigned comment added by M Robinson (talk • contribs) 15:27, 28 September 2015‎

No doubt you came to Wikipedia in good faith, sincerely thinking that posting an article telling the world how great your company is was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Many people think that "anyone can edit Wikipedia" means that anyone can use Wikipedia to publish anything they like, but it doesn't: it means "anyone is free to help build the encyclopaedia in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines". Unfortunately, your editing has fallen foul of some of those policies and guidelines. I will mention a few of the problems, in the hope it may help you to better understand the situation.

1. Saying that you just want your company to have an article here, where people can read it, is pretty close to saying that you just want to use Wikipedia to publicise your company, which is absolutely not what Wikipedia is for. However, a bigger issue is that every version of the article you have posted has been written in terms which read exactly like a promotional brochure produced by your company's marketing department. If you intended it that way, then you have seriously misunderstood the nature of Wikipedia. If you didn't mean it that way, then that is an excellent illustration of why Wikipedia's guidelines on conflict of interest strongly discourage editors from creating articles about subjects they have a close connection to, such as their own companies; people who are closely involved in a subject often find it difficult or impossible to stand back and see how their writing will look from the detached perspective of an uninvolved outsider, with the result that their editing often reads as promotional even when it is sincerely not intended to do so. This problem is particularly acute in the case of people who work in marketing/PR/advertising/etc, as such people tend to be so much in the habit of writing and reading marketing-speak all day long that they become desensitised to it, and sincerely do not see their writing as promotional when it looks glaringly promotional to other people. Wikipedia is not "Social Media", and it does not exist as a medium for businesses to publicise themselves.
2. I have searched for information about Applus, and I have not found anything that indicates to me that the company satisfies Wikipedia's guidelines on notability. If it doesn't, then any time and effort spent creating an article about it is likely to be wasted, because even if it is done in neutral, non-promotional way, that article is likely to be deleted. Unfortunately, the notability guidelines are, in my opinion, far too extensive, and they can be confusing for a new editor: my view is that Wikipedia would be much better if we got rid of about 90% of our guidelines and policies. However, the guidelines which are most relevant here are the general notability guideline and the guideline onnotability of organisations and companies. Possibly a more helpful place to start, though, is Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations, which, while not an official policy or guideline, is an attempt to collect together a summary of a number of the issues that relate to creating articles about businesses, including the question of notability.
3. If you are blocked from editing, you are normally free to request an unblock of your original account. Such a request will be assessed by an administrator, and if he or she thinks that you have provided good reasons for unblocking you, you may be unblocked. Simply ignoring the block and creating a new account to get round it is not the way to do it. Also, "I want to use Wikipedia to publish an article publicising my company" is not likely to be regarded as a good reason for unblocking. That is what your company's own web site is for. Sometimes there is a good reason for requesting a block on an account other than the original one, but usually the request should relate to the first account.

One more piece of information which may be helpful to you. Luckily, I chose to come back to this page to see if you had posted here since I blocked you, so I saw your message, but there is no guarantee that an editor will come back to a page. There are ways of drawing an editor's attention to the fact that you have posted a message for them, and one of those ways is as follows. In your message, include a note saying "ping" with the user name of the editor you want to notify, like this: {{ping|JamesBWatson}}. Also, at the end of the same edit, add four tildes, i.e. ~~~~. The tildes will be converted to a signature, together with the date, and the editor will be notified of your edit. (Note this does not work if the "ping" and the ~~~~ are in different edits.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)