User talk:JustJoking47

February 2023

Your account has been blocked indefinitely for advertising or promotion and violating the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use. This is because you have been making promotional edits to topics in which you have a financial stake, yet you have failed to adhere to the mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a form of conflict of interest (COI) editing which involves being compensated by a person, group, company or organization to use Wikipedia to promote their interests. Undisclosed paid advocacy is strictly prohibited. Using this site for advertising or promotion is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia.

If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, please read our guide to appealing blocks to understand more about unblock requests, and then add the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} at the end of your user talk page. For that request to be considered, you must:

Confirm that you have read and understand the Terms of Use and paid editing disclosure requirements.
State clearly how you are being compensated for your edits, and describe any affiliation or conflict of interest you might have with the subjects you have written about.
Describe how you intend to edit such topics in the future.

Bbb23 (talk) 16:18, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, I will go through the steps outlined above. My defense is ignorance. There was no malice or deceit intended. Thank you. JustJoking47 (talk) 15:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Appealing block

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

JustJoking47 (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

I am writing to appeal the indefinite block placed on my account due to attempted edits on the page for Northern Illinois University. I attribute both my failure to disclose my affiliation with the university, and the promotional tone of my post to ignorance.

Having now closely read the paid editing requirements and the terms of use regarding advertising and promotion, I will take all of the appropriate steps to ensure that future edits to the page conform to community standards. I will also closely review all future efforts to ensure that all appropriate footnotes and attributions have been made.

I am currently employed in the Office of Institutional Communications at the NIU and I am eager to update the page in ways that reflect the current state of the university, within the confines of the terms of use, obviously. I am not attempting to deceive or mislead anyone, but rather to to provide a more comprehensive, up to date and informative picture of the university. I have looked at the pages of many other universities and what I am hoping to accomplish is in line with what I see on those pages. I realize that what I am attempting would be a rather comprehensive reworking of the page, and I am open to any advice on how to achieve such a thing within community guidelines. JustJoking47 (talk) 20:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Decline reason:

It is preferred to refer to the content of the encyclopedia as articles, not pages. The text you added to the article about your university read as if it was from a brochure for prospective students. Wikipedia is not interested in what any article subject wants to say about itself- our articles are primarily intended to summarize what independent reliable sources say about a topic. Please read WP:COI and WP:PAID and tell us in a new request what you will do differently going forward, as well as any other topics you might edit about as a general contributor. 331dot (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

I will add outside of the context of your block, that you should beware in using other articles about universities as examples or models- those articles could be problematic and you wouldn't be aware of this as a new user. As this is a volunteer project, it is possible for inappropriate articles to exist in many ways, sometimes for years. We can only address what we know about. If you want to use other articles as a model, use those classified as good articles, which have been vetted by the community. Standards for articles about universities have changed over time- up until a few years ago, existence was sufficient, but that is no longer the case. It takes time, though, to work through the thousands of articles and address them when volunteers do the work. 331dot (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]