User talk:TYPO

Welcome!

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

I notice that one of the first articles you edited was WYRD-FM, 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.)

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The plain and simple conflict of interest guide
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Tckma (talk) 18:07, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Conflicts of interest?

You're right, Tckma, I work for Entercom Greenville. We have several stations in the Upstate South Carolina market, and I noticed that one of them has inaccurate or unverified information on it. I was asked by my supervisor to correct the information. To that end, I opted to create a username that clearly indicated my affiliation rather than edit anonymously or use an obscure username; I wanted to be upfront and transparent as to who was making these changes in order to avoid a conflict of interest, not to create one.

So far, I'm the only one who has used this account, but since I can't verify information for all the stations, I have shared the log on information with our Digital Content Manager and our Engineering department, as well as the Program Director for each individual station. I was not aware that this was against Wikipedia's guidelines (I'm new to editing Wikipedia). Again, my intent was not to violate the rules, but to be open about my affiliation while at the same time providing more accurate information.

As near as I can tell, this station's page was written by a listener (probably more than one). As you can imagine, we at the station are likely to have more accurate information regarding our programming than our listeners. I believe it was Wikipedia's own Jimmy Wales that said, "It is better to have no information than bad information." If we who are affiliated with these stations are not allowed to edit the station pages to correct inaccurate information, how should we go about getting a correction made? Should we petition a Wikipedia editor to make the changes? Should we ask for the page to be deleted? I doubt we should (nor would we want to) make a general appeal to listeners over the air to go to Wikipedia and correct the information themselves; while we're certainly able to do that, such an approach would probably do more harm than good. Beyond that, it seems unlikely that our listeners would continue to make changes indefinitely like we could.

I understand that our stations' Wikipedia pages are not to be used for promotional purposes, but at the same time, I know that, as popular as Wikipedia is, many of our listeners may visit those pages to get information about our stations. Having wrong information on them is a detriment not only to us, but to Wikipedia as well. We want to be involved and engaged in order to make sure that Wikipedia is up to date as far as our stations' information is concerned.

I look forward to hearing your solutions. Thanks for your help. EntercomGreenville (talk) 19:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

The best way would probably be to discuss proposed changes on the article talk page (see the tab at the top of the page) and editors will add the correct information.--Gilderien Berate|List of good deeds 19:30, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. What you should do is:

• First, request a change of username by clicking on WP:Changing username, reading to the bottom of that page, clicking on "Simple" and following the instructions. Your new username may be based on your real name, or not, as you choose (see WP:REALNAME for some considerations), but it should not be the name of another living person, or of any group, company or organization. Wikipedia accounts must be for individuals only, who are personally responsible for them, so that usernames which are the names of groups or organizations are not permitted.
• If any colleagues wish to edit, they must register their own accounts.
• Read the Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide which will tell you what you need to know. In brief, don't edit directly any article where you have a conflict of interest, but suggest changes on the article talk page, providing reliable sources and declaring your interest.
• Realise that, while Wikipedia wants to get the article right, it is not here to help promote the company or to be a platform for the company to "tell the world" about itself.
• If you propose a change on the talk page and after a time there has been no response, by all means place a {{helpme}} there to attract uninvolved users.

Regards, JohnCD (talk) 19:53, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not explicitly forbid editors with potential conflicts of interest from editing, rather, those edits are more likely to undergo scrutiny for potential promotional intent. I saw that your edit was in good faith, correcting the accuracy of the information on the page (specifically the broadcast schedule). This is welcomed, and your changes are not likely to be removed -- however, in the future you should first propose your changes on the article's talk page. I was merely acting to inform of the Conflict of Interest policy -- you want to be careful not to make promotional edits. It is also against policy to have a corporate or group username; we want accounts to be held by individuals, therefore corporate usernames are prohibited. The often-cited example is that a username like "ALCOA" is not okay, but "Mark at ALCOA" is fine as it identifies an individual person.

As far as editing related articles is concerned, the best thing to do (as stated above) is to discuss changes beforehand on the article's talk page, and/or have any other editor review proposed edits. --Tckma (talk) 20:00, 5 August 2013 (UTC)