User talk:Carefuleye7

Welcome!

Hello, Akerman1234, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited 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 another 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 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
• Contributing to 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! WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 16:13, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

ANI notification

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Ricky81682 (talk) 20:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. When you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:

1. Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment; or
2. With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button ( or ) located above the edit window.

This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.

Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 21:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Your username

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "Akerman1234", may not comply with our username policy. Please note that you may not use a username that represents the name of a company, group, organization, product, or website. Examples of usernames that are not allowed include "XYZ Company", "MyWidgetsUSA.com", and "Trammel Museum of Art". However, you are invited to use a username that contains such a name if it identifies you personally, such as "Mark at WidgetsUSA", "Jack Smith at the XY Foundation", and "WidgetFan87".

Please also note that Wikipedia does not allow accounts to be shared by multiple people, and that you may not advocate for or promote any company, group, organization, product, or website, regardless of your username. Moreover, I recommend that you read our conflict of interest guideline. If you are a single individual and are willing to contribute to Wikipedia in an unbiased manner, please create a new account or request a change of username, by completing this form, that complies with our username policy. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. Username represents an organization, not an individual, that has an article editor is editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:50, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Edit warring at Akerman LLP

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. EdJohnston (talk) 22:19, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Diversity and U.S. News

Hello. Just to explain some of what has been said.

First, Wikipedia works under very different rules to U.S. News. These rules are intended to make Wikipedia's content widely and freely available, in a way that other content is not. The rules can seem quite strange. So it's best to accept advice from more experienced editors on what is acceptable and what is not.

Second, as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia reports what is noteworthy about topics, not what is everyday. A company having a commitment to diversity, and a company being involved in charitable activities, are both everyday. That is because almost all Western companies now have a commitment to diversity, and most of them are involved in charitable activities. A company being criticised for failures in its diversity policy, would be a more noteworthy item.

A company's charitable activities might be worth noting in its Wikipedia article if they were widely reported on by independent reliable sources.

Many Wikipedia articles exist which contradict the above advice. Finding them does not render the advice wrong. MPS1992 (talk) 22:43, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello Carefuleye7, and welcome to Wikipedia. While we appreciate your contributing to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from your sources to avoid copyright or plagiarism issues here.

• You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and a cited source. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
• Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
• Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
• If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. However, there are steps that must be taken to verify that license before you do. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are public domain or compatibly licensed), it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at the help desk before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
• Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you can, but please follow the steps in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. This is not a warning, just some links to copyright policies and guidelines that do not seem to have appeared on your talk page yet. Thank you. MPS1992 (talk) 22:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you MPS1992. Very helpful. The old lead is back up, and the new one is now in the trash. The only thing I am going to do is take out old data, i.e., the firm is not longer headquartered at that address. I will try to update some of the stats from 2012 - that's all. I appreciate you educating me on this issue. Carefuleye7 (talk) 22:48, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest in Wikipedia

Hi Carefuleye7 I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia. Your edits to date are all about Akerman LLP. This makes your account what we call a single purpose account (please read that, to see the community's experience with editors like you). In addition, your edits have been promotional, and based on your former username, it is pretty clear that you work for the the firm. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and requests for you below.

Hello, Carefuleye7. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a COI may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. In particular, please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you and your circle, your organization, its competitors, projects or products;
• instead propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• when discussing affected articles, disclose your COI (see WP:DISCLOSE);
• avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
• exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing and autobiographies. Thank you.

Comments and requests

Wikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you want to be involved in articles where you have a conflict of interest;; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid by or work for the firm, some things you need to do).

Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by our WP:OUTING policy) would you please actually disclose your connection to Akerman LLP? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection please disclose it - something like, "I work for Akerman LLP", or "I work for a PR firm that Akerman LLP hired" would be fine. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Please reply here - I am watching this page. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 19:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the note Jytdog. I'm all about the full disclosure detail: I work for Akerman LLP, as a writer (not a lawyer). When I started editing the Akerman page, I did a ton of research on what to- and what-not-to do when updating the Akerman page. I looked at and took notes about 25 law firm articles on Wikipedia to form a sort of standard so as not to upset anyone when I refreshed the page. I am sensitive to "no promo copy." and any changes no matter how minor those may be MUST be posted for comment before actually putting those on the page. I want to respect protocol, and now feel that I am educated on the Wikipedia protocol.Carefuleye7 (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Quickly, I would like to add that there is no compensation or extra compensation involved in editing the Akerman page. No one told me to do it. I took the initiative because the original content was grossly outdated and awkward in spots. I still need to purge some things on the page that just aren't true, i.e., the firm is no longer headquartered in Miami - Akerman no longer has a headquarters. Rather, it is a U.S.-based law firm. Miami never really was the headquarters, although it is assumed by many. Thanks again for furthering my Wikipedia education. Much appreciated.Carefuleye7 (talk) 19:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for making the disclosure and for explaining that you were not instructed to create the article nor work on it. The main thing is that you have declared a COI in Wikipedia. That is what we needed. The stuff about whether you were instructed to do this or not (and whether any reasonable professional in your position would consider it part of their job) is not something that we need to go into, necessarily. It just goes to whether, within the kinds of COI that exist, you are a "paid editor" or not, and I don't care about that as long as the rest of this goes well, which based on your response, I think will.

OK so to finish the disclosure piece, would you please add the disclosure to your user page which is User:Carefuleye7 (a redlink, because you haven't written anything there yet). Just somehing simple like: "I am a writer for Akerman LLP and have a conflict of interest with regard to that topic" would be fine. If you want to add anything else there that is relevant to what you want to do in WP feel free to add it. (see WP:USERPAGE for guidance if you like).

I added a tag to the Akerman article's talk page, so the disclosure is done there. Once you disclose on your user page, the disclosure piece of this will be done.

As I noted above, there are two pieces to COI management in WP. The first is disclosure. The second is what I call "peer review". This piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and viola there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary - no publisher, no editors.

What we ask editors to do who have a COI and want to work on articles where their COI is relevant, is a) if you create an article relevant to your COI, submit it through the WP:AFC process so it can be reviewed before it publishes, and disclose your COI on the draft article's Talk page. b) And if you want to change content in any existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:Akerman LLP - there is a link at "click here" in that section -- if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request.

By following those "peer review" processes, editors with a COI can contribute where they have a COI, and the integrity of WP can be protected. I hope that makes sense to you.

Will you please make the COI disclosure on your user page, and agree to follow the peer review processes going forward, when you want to work on the Akerman article or any article where your COI is relevant? Do let me know, and if anything above doesn't make sense I would be happy to discuss. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I want to add here that per the WP:COI guideline, if you want to directly update simple, uncontroversial facts (for example, correcting the facts about where the law firm has offices) you can do that directly. Just be sure to always cite a reliable source for the information you change, and make sure it is simple, factual, uncontroversial content. Jytdog (talk) 21:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again!Carefuleye7 (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

You are welcome. Thanks for responding so graciously. Jytdog (talk) 21:23, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

And I want to add, that you are completely free to edit anywhere else in WP. (there are topics where I have a COI, and I just avoid them) This place is big and in need of good writers who are "clueful" as we call it. It will take some learning about the relevant policies and guidelines for content and behavior, but there are lots of people willing to help, if you are willing to learn and put in the time it take to become savvy. I know your initial interest is professionally driven, but this place lives on volunteers. So just wanted to make the pitch! Best regards Jytdog (talk) 21:26, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Good call. Believe me when I say that I have the utmost respect for this platform. I am more than willing donate time to improve WP on non-COI pages, once I shed my rookie status - which should be soon.Carefuleye7 (talk) 21:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Indenting/threading on Talk pages

Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. You already have this down, it seems, but at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages.

That is how we know who said what, and also what people are replying to. Jytdog (talk) 21:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Jytdog. I appreciate the education, and forever am indebted to you.

it was a pleasure. Jytdog (talk) 21:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikiprojects

Just a note - there are lots of "Wikiprojects" here, where editors with similar interest and expertise discuss articles in their subject matter and ways to approach them. Outside of my COI work I work mostly on articles about health and medicine and biology, and am a member of Wikiproject Medicine WP:MED. There is a wikiproject law at WP:LAW if you want to check that out. Lots of other projects too, listed at WP:Wikiprojects, if you are a "joiner" at all. Lots of editors don't join any project. Jytdog (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Excellent. I'll go shopping for projects in due time. Thanks.Carefuleye7 (talk) 21:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

{{unblock reason=Caught by a web host block but this host is not a web host or IP is not a web host. I need insert facts on the Akerman LLP page, along with citations. For example, the firm is no longer in Miami or has headquarters there. What steps do I need to take to unblock my "editorship?"Carefuleye7 (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Blocked? Not a web host.

When attempting to make the Akerman LLP article factually accurate and cite sources where indicated, I've been alerted that I have been blocked. Reason=caught by a web host block but this host is not a web host or IP is not a web host. Please help in getting this lifted. I plan no new sections in the article, just insertion of facts. For example, the firm is not based or headquartered in Miami.Carefuleye7 (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

"Block" is a technical term here - your account is not blocked. Maybe the link you wanted to add is on the spam blacklist? Jytdog (talk) 16:53, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Jytdog. Helpful. Your education of a rookie editor continues, and for that I am eternally grateful.Carefuleye7 (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

no problem. Jytdog (talk) 19:37, 10 March 2016 (UTC)