User talk:Coastal247

December 2024

Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia, as you did to Mississippi Export Railroad. While objective prose about beliefs, organisations, people, products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not a vehicle for soapboxing, advertising or promotion. Thank you. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:07, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! MSE has requested that we update their page and, while we tried to remove all material that could come across as too promotional, it's clear there's still some work that needs to be done. We'll go through everything again to hopefully better comply with Wikipedia's standards. If there are any specifics we could implement that you noticed in your review, we'd be very appreciative. Thank you so much again! TFG01 (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Who is we? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:17, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I work for an advertising agency and MSE is one of our clients! We're just always looking to improve their online presence, so I'm going back through and making edits to the original submission that will hopefully fall more in-line with Wikipedia's guidelines. Just let me know if there's anything specific I can do. Thank you! TFG01 (talk) 15:01, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are therefore a paid editor and must use the formal disclosure method dictated by Wikipedia's mandatory and non-negotiable paid editing disclosure policy. Please do this before making any other edits to Wikipedia.

You must also realize that the subject of an article has no right of ownership or control over its content. Article content is formed as neutral, paraphrased summaries of material previously published by reliable, third-party sources. We have no interest in what a company wishes to say about itself or how it wants to be portrayed.

After making the required disclosure, please limit your involvement with this article to making edit requests on the article's talk page (Talk:Mississippi Export Railroad). All of these points above apply to any other of your clients. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 16:19, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Understood. Thank you for the breakdown. I'll get with my company and let you know if we have any more questions or concerns. Thanks again! TFG01 (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosure of paid editing

Hello TFG01. 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:TFG01. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=TFG01|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. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 15:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Rsjaffe! Thank you so much for the clarification, all of us here are still figuring out this process, so I appreciate your help. I've updated the TFG01 user page to disclose our employer, client, and affiliation with MSE. If possible, we would still like to directly update the MSE Wikipedia page, again acknowledging that I have gone back through our original source document to edit or remove any content that I believe could come across as too promotional. I hope to make these edits at some point today and, as I mentioned to Trainsandotherthings, I'd be more than receptive to any specific feedback outside of reviewing the standard Wikipedia guidelines. We just want to improve MSE's Wikipedia page without coming across as promotional, even though we are being paid by them, our goal is to improve the information about them available on here. Just let us know if there's anything else I can do, and again, thank you so much for all of your help! TFG01 (talk) 16:11, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately your disclosure has revealed another violation, this time of Wikipedia's username policy. Your account cannot be named after a business. Wikipedia accounts are meant for individual editors - not companies, organizations or groups of people. Only one individual may ever use this account, and may never share access at any time, for any reason. Please complete a change of username request or your account will be blocked. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 16:23, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll get this sorted out too, thank you! TFG01 (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Attention needed at username change request

Hello. A renamer or clerk has responded to your username change request, but requires clarification before moving forward. Please follow up at your username change request entry as soon as possible. Thank you. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:34, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]