BerrienHistoryLover

February 2022

Welcome to Wikipedia. I noticed that your username, "BCHAMuseum", may not meet Wikipedia's username policy because it is the name of an organization. If you believe that your username does not violate our policy, please leave a note here explaining why. As an alternative, you may ask for a change of username by completing the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, or you may simply create a new account for editing. Thank you. GA-RT-22 (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, BCHAMuseum. 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 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 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. GA-RT-22 (talk) 01:37, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Re: Name and other baseless accusaions

The BCHA is a non-profit museum dedicated to the preservation of the history of Berrien County as accurately and thoroughly as our archives and connections allow us to. We are well within our right to correct and update any page related to our organization to ensure the most accurate and modern information possible. This includes, but is not limited to updating changes to the organization, adding additional history as it has been discovered, updating cited sources, etc. Surely the idea that a museum would not have the best interest of its readers in mind is absurd. We are not a celebrity trying to hide scandalous information and instead seek to expand on stubbed entries and ones clearly written by individuals who have no comprehensive understanding of the subjects we excel in telling. We certainly have less of a conflict of interest with the entries we've edited than your average K-Pop stan does.

We have edited the Old Berrien Springs Courthouse Complex entry as that is our museum. It was missing entire sections about our buildings, lacked additional picture, had out of date information about its existence, and was missing addition citation for the new and old information. We also cleaned up the layout to be more reader friendly and professional looking as befits not just a historical site, but as a museum.

We have edited the Berrien Springs Courthouse entry to better reflect its long and storied history, include new citations, updates about its recognition and awards, and expansion on some areas that were missing.

We have edited the Berrien Springs, MI entry to run concurrent with the Courthouse information and updated the Christmas Pickle subentry to include the modern incarnation that returned in 2021.

Our own organization's page was a stub and we have chosen to expand the history, clarify our organization's partnership with Berrien County, emphasize our Clark Equipment Company collection (which is inline with the subsection on the CEC's page), add a list of honors, our publications, and of course ensuring citations were included where available.

While I understand this knee-jerk reaction by Wikipedia and its enviable army of volunteers based on previous experiences, please understand that as a museum, our mission is to ensure that history is accessible, available, and as accurate as we can provide to our audiences, no matter where those audiences are looking. And as more information comes available or if new items needed to be updated, we will do so.

If the issues is with our name, fine, we're happy to change it, but at no point should museums be considered an enemy and instead another partner in the sharing of knowledge.

BCHAMuseum (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)BCHAMuseum

You may want to re-read the username and COI policies. I don't think you understood them. I went ahead and added a Connected contributor template at Talk:Berrien County Historical Association. See WP:DISCLOSE. GA-RT-22 (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

February 2022

Welcome to Wikipedia. Because we have a policy against usernames which give the impression that the account represents a group, club, organization, company, or website - I have blocked this account. Please take a moment to either create a new account, or request a change of username of your current account here. The new username must represent only yourself as an individual and comply with Wikipedia's username policy.

You should also read our conflict of interest guideline and be aware that promotional editing is not acceptable regardless of the username you choose. Additionally, if your contributions to Wikipedia form all or part of work for which you are, or expect to be, paid, you must disclose who is paying you to edit.

Please also note that you are permitted to use a username that contains the name of a company or organization if it identifies you individually, such as "Sara Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87".

If your username does not represent a group, organization or website, you may appeal this username block by adding the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}} at the bottom of your talk page.

You may simply create a new account, but you may prefer to change your username to one that complies with our username policy, so that your past contributions are associated with your new username. If you would prefer to change your username, you may appeal this username block by adding the text

{{unblock-un|new username|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}

at the bottom of your talk page. Please note that you may only request a name that is not already in use, so please check here for a listing of already taken names.

 Thank you. Primefac (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Unblock

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

BerrienHistoryLover (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

We just established this account yesterday (2.7.22), no one has given us any time to anything that apparently we're required to do. Additionally, no one seems interested in providing assistance and like many long-timers, believe they've made themselves clear when to new eyes it seems like an attack or just useless commentary. Obviously, I disagree vehemently that we're in conflict of interest with any of the edits we've made because it's our job to interpret this history and a wiki entry is no different than say an interpretation panel inside the museum itself. And all of these entries, with the exception of Berrien Springs, MI, were not up to the standards of either Wikipedia nor the BCHA. And I was always taught never to wait for others to decide to do something if you can do yourself. I believe we should be unblocked so the BCHA may continue to provide updates for entries related to Berrien County history as our mission dictates. BCHAMuseum (talk) 20:10, 7 February 2022 (UTC)BCHAMuseum

Decline reason:

Please follow the instructions in the block notice to propose a new username, or you may visit Special:GlobalRenameRequest to request a username change yourself. You may also simply create a new account if you are not concerned with transferring your edit history to a new username. Please review WP:COI and WP:PAID before editing. 331dot (talk) 07:35, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Your account is named after an organization, which is a violation of Wikipedia's username policy. Wikipedia accounts are for individual use only and cannot be shared with other people. As such, the name must also reflect individual use, so you will not be allowed to edit with your current username. You are permitted to combine your organization's name with an individual's name (e.g. John at BCHAMuseum), or something completely different. Whatever the case, you will have to propose a new username as part of your unblock request - we're sorry, but this is non-negotiable.

Editing articles about your organization and closely affiliated topics is a conflict of interest (COI) as Wikipedia defines it. While COI editing is not prohibited outright, it is highly discouraged because of the inherent difficulty writing from the required neutral point of view, relying on third-party sources and avoiding original research. Even a well-intentioned editor with a COI may have unconscious bias which impairs their objectivity.

Please realize that while these are articles about your organization and community, they are not your articles. No single editor has any right of ownership or editorial control over the content of articles. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and consensus is its fundamental editorial model. While your expertise is welcome, you have no special rights with these articles - you are one among equals.

If unblocked, we highly recommend that you make edit requests on the article talk pages instead of editing them directly. This will give other uninvolved editors the opportunity to review your proposed changes and either publish them, or suggest revisions. I assure you that your chances of success will be greatly improved if you pursue this path. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 21:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

As blocking admin, I will agree with everything Drm310 says above, and will note that your username was the only reason the block was placed. Should you request a name change I see no issue with having the account unblocked. Primefac (talk) 22:09, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Then how does do that? While you may be familiar with the wiki layout, these pages designed to help are very confusing to new eyes and I can't find half the information I need and don't what do with the information I got. BCHAMuseum (talk) 22:25, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

More details are in the blue block notice you received from me in the section above this one, but if you're not keen on using that unblock request template, you can go to Special:GlobalRenameRequest to request a name change, which to be honest might be dealt with faster than this one anyway. More information about renames is at WP:CHU. Primefac (talk) 22:37, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

The name change was approved, is there anything special I would need to do to remove the block? BerrienHistoryLover (talk) 16:31, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Nope. Primefac (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@BerrienHistoryLover: Now that your account has been renamed and the block lifted, there is one last thing to clarify. Are you in a paid position with the Berrien County Historical Association? If so, then you are considered to be a paid editor, regardless of whether you are paid specifically to edit Wikipedia or not. That in itself is not a problem, it just needs to be disclosed in accordance with Wikipedia's mandatory policy on disclosure of paid editing. Thanks. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 14:19, 17 March 2023 (UTC)