User talk:DesertDingoRacing

July 2025

Hello DesertDingoRacing. 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 employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. 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 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 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:DesertDingoRacing. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=DesertDingoRacing|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. ElKevbo (talk) 21:55, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ElKevbo,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I sincerely apologize for the oversight regarding Wikipedia’s disclosure requirements. I was not aware of the policy related to paid editing, and I take full responsibility for not making the proper disclosure sooner. I’ve since updated my user page to reflect my affiliation with Daytona State College and my role as Communications Manager.

As noted on the article’s Talk page, my intention was to add factual, publicly available information to the Daytona State College article – similar to content found on pages for other institutions such as Valencia College, Full Sail University, and Stanford University. I aimed to follow Wikipedia’s sourcing guidelines and provided third-party citations wherever possible. There was no intent to promote the college, only to improve the article's completeness and accuracy.

Again, I appreciate your guidance and apologize for the lapse in disclosure. I’ll continue to engage in good faith and in compliance with Wikipedia’s standards moving forward.

Best regards, Jim (User: [DesertDingoRacing]) DesertDingoRacing (talk) 15:52, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! This is a really complex and strange place with its own culture and expectations and rules that are often opaque to new editors.

We welcome your suggestions, questions, and comments in the article's Talk page. ElKevbo (talk) 22:23, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ElKevbo,

The only other thing I'm thinking we would like to add to the Daytona State College entry is images of each of the campuses to accompany the campus listings. If I propose this on the Daytona State College talk page, I want to make sure I do it appropriately. My questions are:

Is this appropriate (I don't want it to come across as promotion).
If it is appropriate, and I raise the issue on the Talk page, should I include the photos, or just ask the question "We would like to add images of each of the campuses, and, FYI, I am the Communications Manager for the college and have registered my compensation disclosure on my user page."
Sorry for the newb questions and thank you for your advice. - Jim

DesertDingoRacing (talk) 14:09, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We would welcome images, especially if they can be provided under a free license. I think it would be most appropriate if you could either upload them or place them on a website and then drop a note in the Talk page pointing other editors to them so they can look at the images before adding them to the article.

In my experience, there are two things that sometimes trip up new editors uploading images. First, if you don't own the copyright to the images then please be careful about the license you choose when you upload them - don't claim to be able to release an image under a license if you're not legally permitted to do so. Second, if don't own the copyright and are going to claim that we can use the images under fair use then be sure to upload the images to English Wikipedia, not Wikimedia Commons. English Wikipedia allows copyrighted images that are being used under an appropriate fair use argument but Wikimedia Commons does not so the images will be deleted if they're uploaded to Commons with a fair use argument.

Here is one of our guides to uploading files, including images. If you need help, drop me a line. Or ask at the Teahouse which exists explicitly to help new editors. ElKevbo (talk) 23:55, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ElKevbo, thanks again for all your help. We've decided to use the CC BY-SA 4.0 license and low res versions of the images. I will begin uploading them and then go to the Daytona State College Talk page and make requests that they be added. I do appreciate all your help. - Jim DesertDingoRacing (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Paid editing

Hi, thanks for making a paid editing disclosure with regard to Daytona State College.

However, please note that per WP:PAY, you should not be editing that article (or any other to which your conflict of interest relates) directly yourself, with the exception of minor grammar etc. corrections or to revert obvious vandalism, but should instead make edit requests via the article talk page or by using the wizard at WP:ERW (choose the middle option 'conflict of interest').

Best, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:38, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DoubleGrazing, I do apologize for the oversight and take complete responsibility for not disclosing my relationship with the college prior to making edits to the Daytona State College page. I was unaware of the requirement and immediately added the disclosure to my User page. My only intent was to improve the article's completeness and accuracy. I modeled the edits I made using examples from other colleges.

I am now in the process of learning what license designation is most commonly used by colleges for uploading imagery. We have seven campuses and have one image for each. @ElKevbo pointed me toward the Tea House where I am currently seeking advice on the best option for moving forward. Once that is done, I will make edit requests via the article talk page to have those images added - much like other colleges have done.

Again, my apologies for the oversight. I am not in any way trying to promote the college - only make the article as informative as other college articles. DesertDingoRacing (talk) 15:47, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]