User talk:LB at FatFace

March 2022

Hello, I'm 331dot. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Fat Face have been undone because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted; Wikipedia articles should be written objectively, using independent sources, and from a neutral perspective. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. 331dot (talk) 15:38, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello FFDCE. The nature of your edits 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:FFDCE. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=FFDCE|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. 331dot (talk) 15:39, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi 331dot. Thank you for your messages.

The company which is the subject of the article, FatFace, is my employer, and I was asked to bring the page up to date with supplied content. I can only apologise for not complying with Wikipedia's policy around these kind of edits; I am usually only responsible for content on our own websites and I am not familiar with Wikipedia. Per your advice above, I assume the disclosure on my user page should therefore state 'FatFace' as both employer and client?

The edits I was asked to make are predominantly objective (regarding change of ownership, Chief Executive, & Non-Executive Chairman), with a few changes to remove or update references accordingly, and ideally to replace the image in the article with another, supplied by the company (as the pictured store is now closed). I assume that it was the more brand-focused messaging supplied for the introduction that was deemed non-compliant, and I am happy to re-write this to be purely objective - although it would be helpful to know if any of the other changes were deemed promotional and should be avoided. Is this discussion that could/should take place on the Talk page for the article?

If I propose changes via the Talk page for the article, and they are considered acceptable, will I then be allowed to make the agreed changes, or will this still have to be carried out by another editor?

Many thanks (and apologies again!) FFDCE (talk) 16:15, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, though just putting the company as your employer is sufficient. If you propose edits in the form of a formal edit request(click for instructions) an independent editor will review your proposal and if they accept it, will make the change themselves. 331dot (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Username concern

Hello. Since you have disclosed that you are an employee of Fat Face, I have to inquire about your account name, "FFDCE". That the "FF" portion stands for Fat Face. What does "DCE" signify?

Please be aware that Wikipedia has a username policy which states that an account must be named in such a way that it represents an individual. That means that accounts cannot be named after companies or organizations, or positions/departments within them, since positions can be held by different people over time. It also means that accounts can never be shared - the person who creates it must be the only person who ever uses it.

An acceptable variation is combining an individual name with the company (e.g. "John at Fat Face"), as this clearly designates an individual. Real names can be used, but this is not necessary.

Therefore, if "DCE" represents a position or business unit, you will have to submit a request to change your username to something that conforms to Wikipedia's policy. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 15:14, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Drm310, apologies for the delay in response - thank you for letting me know that my username was also an issue.

As you will see I have taken your advice and had it changed. I have also disclosed my employer on my user page. LB at FatFace (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

FatFace edit rquests

You made edit requests in the Teahouse for the Fat Face article. What exactly are those? -Kilaseell - Say something - 15:18, 20 April 2022 (UTC)