User talk:Joefhall

December 2018

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "Civilsocietyfutures", may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because it appears to be the name of an organization. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username by completing this form, or you may simply create a new account for editing. Thank you. shoy (reactions) 18:44, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Draft:Civil Society Futures

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A tag has been placed on Draft:Civil Society Futures requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/civil-society-futures-inquiry-into-the-charity-sector-launches.html. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. The same holds if you are not the owner but have their permission. If you are not the owner and do not have permission, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for how you may obtain it. You might want to look at Wikipedia's copyright policy for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. ^{[Username Needed]} 11:32, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosure of employment

Hello Joefhall. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, such as the edit you made to Draft:Civil Society Futures, 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 egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to Black hat SEO.

Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists, and if it does not, 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:Joefhall. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Joefhall|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. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 15:32, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Drm310. I previously worked for Civil Society Futures (and declared a conflict of interest on my user page), but was never paid specifically to write the Wikipedia article. I assumed it was legitimate to write the article, as we wanted there to be a permanent record of the inquiry that anyone could access and Wikipedia felt like an important place to do that. I would love that someone else outside of the project itself would write this, but that felt unrealistic. I hope that didn't violate Wikipedia's policies, I certainly didn't mean to do anything wrong and it didn't feel unethical. I'm not being paid by them any longer, I'd just like to get the article published if possible. Hope that helps to explain it. I'm finding Wikipedia a pretty full-on/confusing place as a newbie. Thanks. Joefhall (talk) 16:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Joe. Writing on Wikipedia can be a daunting task, I will agree. It appears that your draft was deleted.

The thing to keep in mind, to quote WP:COI, is that "as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia's mission is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, written neutrally and sourced reliably. Readers expect to find neutral articles written independently of their subject, not corporate or personal webpages, or platforms for advertising and self-promotion. Articles should contain only material that complies with Wikipedia's content policies and best practices, and Wikipedians must place the interests of the encyclopedia and its readers above personal concerns."

Writing about your own organization can be difficult, because you are incapable of being an objective judge of its notability. Wikipedia is not interested in what an organization wants to say about itself; we care only about the writings of multiple third parties who thought that the organization was interesting enough to write about in-depth. As with any organization or body, a public inquiry needs to have significant, non-trivial coverage in mainstream journalistic or academic sources to show that it is of enduring notability to merit inclusion. Primary sources can be used to verify basic facts and figures, but anything beyond that is problematic. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 19:00, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Drm310. Thanks for replying. Wow - I'm sad, and a bit shocked, to hear someone has just gone ahead and deleted the article, even though I'd been quick to respond about the issues, and I think I had reasonable grounds to dispute the claim of copyright infringement.

Wikipedia feels like a bit of a harsh place to be honest. I do hear what you're saying about Wikipedia's desire for neutral, objective, relevant content and I respect that. I was trying my best to achieve that - but it feels like a lot to wade through, a very disempowering experience, and a very confusing interface, for someone's who's not an insider.

(My sense also is that the editorial standards can be quite mixed in practice? For example, I clicked the 'random article' link and the first one that came up was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athos_Faccincani which has loads of issues flagged but has still been allowed up. I feel like I've seen many articles that are questionable or of only niche interest.)

Anyhow, I'm going to leave it there for now I think, and not try to push to get the article published. Thanks anyway for your replies. Joefhall (talk) 20:44, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]