User talk:BrandonUBCO

Welcome!

Hello, BrandonUBCO, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, such as User:BrandonUBCO/sandbox, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's content policies and may not be retained. In short, the topic of an article must be notable and have already been the subject of publication by reliable and independent sources.

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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 ask me on my talk page or you can just type {{help me}} on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Kpg jhp jm 05:30, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of User:BrandonUBCO/sandbox

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.
You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on User:BrandonUBCO/sandbox, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly-defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

It seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. (See section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.
It appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free Web hosting service. (See section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion.)

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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Kpg jhp jm 05:30, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

January 2021

Hello, BrandonUBCO. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page User:BrandonUBCO/sandbox, 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 WP:Spam);
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. Kpg jhp jm 05:30, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.

~ ToBeFree (talk) 05:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

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

Request reason:

We're doing a project (as students) for our university UBCO and it has nothing to do with promotions/personal gain. Our wiki page was made for the sole purpose of information use, it is unbiased, and we believe we have not violated any rules on that basis. Thanks for your help! BrandonUBCO (talk) 06:30, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Accept reason:

Your created article has been unsuitable for Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is not a travel guide nor a platform for self-promotion (see WP:NOTGUIDE, WP:Notability and WP:Conflict of interest). You have published original research and directly addressed the reader with your promotion (see also MOS:YOU). Please stop creating similar articles in the future.
You are unblocked because there is no paid editing involved, but further promotional editing will lead to a re-block. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:02, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I saw your duplicate request on UTRS. Is your university assignment to write a Wikipedia article? That would be extremely unfair to you as students as most of the process is outside your control. Is your university using the materials from the Wikipedia Education Program? 331dot (talk) 08:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Thank you for unblocking my account. I'm not sure if this is where I'm supposed to respond, or on your talk page. First of all, I think I understand why our article was deleted after reviewing what you said, so sorry for my ignorance of Wikipedia policies. Secondly, yes, my university assignment is to write a Wikipedia article for an introductory computer science class. To my defense, I've never edited or used Wikipedia besides just browsing it, and our professor said nothing about the Wikipedia Educational Program you mentioned. The assignment's objectives were basically to first edit Wikipedia pages and monitoring the changes, as well as creating a new article through sandbox mode on a topic that doesn't already exist on Wikipedia (he actually recommended writing an article about UBCO since there weren't many on it, but maybe he failed to see how it would come off to administrators when they see someone like me with a UBCO name). He also said we needed to publish the page before taking a screenshot of it to upload. I have a question as well: why are the rules so strict in sandbox mode? I was lead to believe it was a completely experimental section where we could freely write an article on our personal account that nobody else would see. I kind of thought that it wouldn't be harmful because if we made it into an actual article (that the public could see), wouldn't that go under a separate review process before it's accepted? I'm going to bring what you said to my professor's attention, because quite frankly, I don't want to spend more time making an article just for it to be deleted again. I also might have come off as rude in my appeals, but I meant no judgement upon you or others, I was simply stressed by the situation and loss of work. Thanks for reading! BrandonUBCO (talk) 09:57, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did not see your appeal as rude, so you can be at ease there. Sandboxes are for experimentation and drafting articles, but they are not immune from review or deleting processes in blatant cases, including with what might seem to be promotional. All edits to every possible page on Wikipedia (articles, drafts, sandboxes, policy pages, etc.) appear in the Recent Changes feed, which is probably how your edits were detected. Sandboxes are not searchable by search engines, but are visible to the public if they know where to find it(usually by the recent changes feed). You are correct that drafts can be run through Articles for Creation.

I would suggest that your professor review the Education Program materials; feel free to show them this conversation. As I said(and unless I am misunderstanding the assingment) it is very unfair to ask students to write a Wikipedia article as an assingment. Students are usually unfamiliar with how Wikipedia operates and experience grief and frustration as their work is edited and deleted by others, combined with the pressure of needing to get a grade. Draft reviews can take many months and are not usually done quickly enough to meet class deadlines. And if students are encouraged to directly place their draft in the encyclopedia, bypassing the review process, it usually does not end well if the student was unfamiliar with Wikipedia. 331dot (talk) 11:53, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi BrandonUBCO, thank you very much for the detailed explanation and sorry for the unnecessary block. Both locations are fine. Regarding the sandbox mode, as articles can not be directly created by new editors, promotional editing almost always happens in sandboxes and is later pushed into live articles, either by moving the page or by copying its content, by users who intend to promote their business. The community has created "Unambiguous advertising or promotion" as a criterion for speedy deletion of any page on Wikipedia in response to overwhelming amounts of self-promotion. Regarding the assignment, thank you very much for forwarding 331dot's very helpful advice to the professor. One of the main concerns about paid editing is that a paid editor isn't entirely free nor neutral in their actions. They are required to achieve certain goals on Wikipedia, and these goals are often incompatible with Wikipedia's policies. In this regard, a problematic assignment has the same negative effects as paid editing; it creates a conflict of interest. Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:17, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]