User talk:Mattgossofficial

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Mattgossofficial, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I notice that one of the first articles you edited was Matt Goss, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or any other editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One firm rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! You can also just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few other good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Tgeairn (talk) 21:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Managing a conflict of interest[edit]

Hello, Mattgossofficial. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Matt Goss, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam#External link spamming);
do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Longhair\^talk 21:37, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

August 2021[edit]

Hello Mattgossofficial. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to Matt Goss, 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 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 serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

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. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are extremely 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:Mattgossofficial. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=Mattgossofficial|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. Longhair\^talk 07:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because the username, Mattgossofficial, matches the name of a well-known, living person.

If you are the person represented by this username, please note that the practice of blocking such usernames is to protect you from being impersonated, not to discourage you from editing Wikipedia. You may choose to edit under a new username (see information below), but keep in mind that you are welcome to continue to edit under this username.

If you choose to keep your current username, please send an email to info-enwikimedia.org including your real name and your Wikipedia username to receive instructions from our volunteer response team about account verification. Please do not send documentation without being requested to do so.

If you are not the person represented by this username, you are welcome to choose a new username (see below).

A username should not be promotional, related to a "real-world" group or organization, misleading, offensive, or disruptive. Also, usernames may not end in the word "bot" unless the account is an approved bot account.

You are encouraged to choose a new account name that meets our username policy guidelines and create the account yourself. Alternatively, if you wish for your existing contributions to carry over under a new name, then you may request a change in username by:

Adding {{unblock-un|your new username here}} below. You should be able to do this even though you are blocked. If not, you may wish to contact the blocking administrator by clicking on "Email this user" from their talk page.
At an administrator's discretion, you may be unblocked for 24 hours to file a change of name request.
Your requested new username cannot already be in use. Therefore, please check the list here to see if a name is taken prior to requesting a change of name.

Appeals: If, after reading the guide to appealing blocks you believe you were blocked in error, then you may appeal this block by adding {{unblock|Your reason here}} below this notice. Longhair\^talk 08:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: this editor has been linking to a fan site which isn't clearly recognisable as a fansite until you look closer at the finer details, and adding links to the article on Matt Goss as if their website was the official Matt Goss website. Technically, you should be blocked for promotional editing, but I've softblocked you for now in the off chance I am wrong. And if I'm wrong, the instructions in the block notice above will advise you how to proceed from this point onwards. -- Longhair\^talk 08:46, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]