MDA2022

April 2022

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; however, please remember the essential rule of respecting copyrights. Edits to Wikipedia, such as your edit to the page Draft:Nadira Azzouz, may not contain material from copyrighted sources unless used with permission. It is almost never okay to copy extensive text out of a book or website and paste it into a Wikipedia article with little or no alteration, though you can clearly and briefly quote copyrighted text in the right circumstances. Content that does not comply with this legal rule must be removed. For more information on this, see:

• Copying text from other sources
• Policy on copyright
• Frequently asked questions on Wikipedia's copyright policy
• Policy and guideline on non-free content

If you still have questions, there is the Teahouse, or you can and someone will be along to answer it shortly. As you get started, you may find the pages below to be helpful.

• Introduction
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I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of my talk page if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! — Diannaa (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Shared accounts and conflict of interest editing

Hi MDA2022. Some of the comments you posted over at c:Commons:Help desk#use of privately owned photographs are giving the impression that multiple individuals may be using or sharing this account to edit. Please understand that this type of thing isn't allowed per relevant Wikipedia policy as explained here. If you weren't aware of this, then that's OK; just make sure that this account is no longer shared. If the other person using the account wants to continue editing Wikipedia, then all they need to do is create their own account and use that instead.

Another issue is that you've posted that you're related to Draft:Nadira Azzouz and are trying to create an article about her. You should be aware that Wikipedia is going to consider you to have a conflict of interest with respect to Azzouz and anything written about her on Wikipedia. Although conflict of interest editing isn't expressly prohibited by Wikipedia, and it's highly discouraged because it often leads to misunderstandings and serious problems not only from a content-standpoint but also from a collaborative-editing standpoint. You can continue working on your draft if you like, but you should familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policies and guidelines related to COI editing because doing so may help you avoid problems.

Finally, you might want to seek assistance from Wikipedia:WikiProject Women artists with your draft because the members of that WikiProject can probably help you develop it and point out any problems with it that you might not be aware of. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Dear MarchJuly - Thank you for your message. We have noted your comments and have some understanding of your concerns; I can assure you that there would not have been any intention to co-share the editing of the proposed page. The subject of the page was to be the deceased mother of my husband who is the sole remaining member of her immediate family and so we are not entirely certain, given that he is familiar with her life and work, how any Conflict of Interest would have occurred.

The whole process of attempting to get this page written has been incredibly frustrating: we have asked for specific help and even telephone calls (contact numbers were provided on separate email) but each response has been with links to articles that prove as unhelpful as having different people respond every time. Where is the consistency in Customer Service? It seems unnecessarily complicated.

This whole episode with Wikipedia has been a lot more complicated than we thought it would be. We do recognise and completely agree that you have to be incredibly careful with certain issues.

The result of all this to-ing and fro-ing, obstacles being put in the way and the lack of consistent contact is that we now feel unable to proceed with the creation the page.

We are decent and respectful people and have been thoroughly transparent so we do feel very sad that is has come to this.

Yours respectfully.

Mr David Azzouz & Mr Mazen Azzouz MDA2022 (talk) 09:35, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi MDA2O22. It sounds like you’re misunderstanding some very important things about Wikipedia and things might be a little clearer if you take a look at WP:ABOUT. Wikipedia is a collaborative editing project and all users (even administrators) are WP:VOLUNTEERs; so, there is no customer service or full-time staff who respond to queries. Primarily because of this, there is no official telephone or email support per se when in comes to Wikipedia editing and pretty much all questions are expected to be asked and answered on talk pages such as this. There is a Wikipedia Interlay Relay Chat (IRC) feature that you can use to seek “real-time” assistance, but once again all the participants are volunteers. The users helping out at IRC tend to be very experienced users or Wikipedia administrators and thus are capable of answering most any question, but they still are volunteers.

As for who is using your account, co-editing a page is OK (as long as its done in accordance with relevant policies and guideline) using separate accounts, but co-editing using the same account is not allowed. Every time you sign a post with both of your names or post something that implies that an account us being shared in some way, a proverbially “red flag” is going to be raised and other users are going to be suspicious of your intentions. The best thing for you to do would be for each of you to have own separate accounts and to restrict your editing to that account only. Accounts that are suspected of being shared or compromised for some reason can be indefinitely blocked by a Wikipedia administrator without warning.

I think it’s very important for you to take a close look at this, this and this for reference. I know you don’t like when people just tell you to look at this page or that page, but those pages contain important information that I think you’ll find helpful because they’re can be some disadvantages to trying to create an article about someone closely connected to you that aren’t always easy to understand when you’re just starting out. Basically, neither of you will have any real editorial control over any article you might create about your mother, and it will be there for anyone anywhere in the world to edit at anytime. As long as edits made by others aren’t serious and clear violations of some relevant Wikipedia policy or guideline, disagreements over them will be expected to resolved discussion. You won’t be able to control the direction of any article written about your mother or prevent others from editing it, but instead you will be mostly expected to seek assistance from others when you feel changes need to be made.

I’m happy to try and answer any specific questions you may have, but I won’t do so via emails or phone calls. Most users will probably tell you the same thing. So, if that’s the kind of support you’re looking for, the closest thing you’re going to probably find to that will be the IRC feature mentioned above. You can also try the Wikipedia:Teahouse, but again all the users answering questions there are also volunteers whose experiences and knowledge may vary. — Marchjuly (talk) 11:11, 3 April 2022 (UTC)