User talk:Paul Kahan

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, Paul Kahan. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page American Helicopter Museum, 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, clients, 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. — Trey Maturin™ 15:48, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Trey:

Thank you for reaching out. Is "updating outdated information about programs that no longer exist" and "replacing dead web links with live ones" a conflict of interest? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Kahan (talk • contribs) 15:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's frowned upon, because the vast majority of people who do so take the opportunity to insert a bit of marketing language ("the best rollercoaster in the world!") or delete a bit of criticism at the same time. I'm sorry that you've been swept up with them in our policy on conflicts of interest, but, honestly, your edits were one of the very very few that were indeed neutral.

Our policy also serves to protect organisations, not just Wikipedia. Social media users and political enemies of organisations can, and have, seized upon organisations making edits to articles about them and made something out of it (often, when the edits are promotional, about how the organisation uses a site run by volunteers and financed by donations to promote itself, accusing them of stealing from a charity). By prohibiting it, we also protect those organisations from the well-meaning but misguided edits of their employees.

Because of this, it's best if further changes you want to make are proposed on the article's talk page. Here's a handy thing to copy and paste and then overwrite:

{{edit COI}}
* Specific text to be added or removed: ADD TEXT HERE
* Reason for the change: ADD TEXT HERE
* References supporting change: ADD URL AT LEAST
~~~~

(Copy and paste the text you see on this page, not the more convoluted code you'll see if you click 'edit')

That way, everybody is protected from ~~the swamp that is modern capitalism~~ these issues. Hope this helps! — Trey Maturin™ 16:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you found him - the last honest guy on the internet.