User talk:LaurenceM23

Hi LaurenceM23! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like AmaryllisGardener (talk). Visit the Teahouse We hope to see you there! Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts 16:04, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Hello LaurenceM23. 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 egregious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat SEO.

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, and if it does not, 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:LaurenceM23. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=LaurenceM23|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. GSS (talk|c|em) 10:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GSS, with regards to your message, I do not have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting any topic on Wikipedia. I suppose your message is with regards to my edits on the Varonis Systems page? I do have an interest in this subject, but I'm not paid to edit this or any other page on Wikipedia. I thought I was doing a good thing by adding detailed information to the page. Thanks for clarifying. LaurenceM23 (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The reason you are being asked this - and the reason your recent edits look deeply suspicious - is that Varonis have recently been openly advertising on freelancing sites to have the article about them reworded in order to get the {{advert}} tag removed. Since you appear to have done exactly what they were hiring people to do, the most plausible explanation is that you are editing at their behest. Such paid editing on Wikipedia is permitted (albeit discouraged), but the Terms of Use require that you disclose this relationship. I am not exactly keen to block your account - your edits have been positive improvements to the encyclopedia - but absent a decent explanation as to why you chose to make those edits at this time ("I have an interest in this subject" is a bit too nebulous) or a disclosure of your paid status, there are not a lot of other options. Please explain what prompted you to make these changes to the Varonis page. Yunshui ^雲_水 07:24, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]