PaulaHawkins

Welcome!

Hello, PaulaHawkins, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to St Mark's School, Bath. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing 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 to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! — Rod ^talk 08:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Articles re Saint Gregory's Catholic College and St Mark's School, Bath

I have noticed that you recently edited the articles for Saint Gregory's Catholic College and St Mark's School, Bath removing the referenced content which was previously included and replacing it with "advertisments" for the schools. Are you connected with the schools in some way? If so you should be aware of wikipedia's conflict of interest policies.— Rod ^talk 08:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello, PaulaHawkins. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. People with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, see the conflict of interest guideline and frequently asked questions for organizations. In particular, please:

• avoid editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, its competitors, or projects and products you or they are involved with;
• instead, propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
• 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, the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Last but not least: All contributors must not contribute content that violates conflict of interest laws (just as all contributors must respect copyright). The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive is valid throughout the European Union. In a German court decision in 2012 (that also relied on the directive) regarding Wikipedia: "The court held that when a company edits a Wikipedia article, the resulting text falsely creates the impression that the edit has no business-related purpose. By implication, the judges found that the average reader of Wikipedia articles expects to find objective and neutral information." That is a very very important condition, comparable to the FTC Guide" that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser”. This expectation by consumers of neutral information on Wikipedia, requires that companies not write "their" WP articles for PR/marketing purposes.

Editors who are compensated for their contributions should make the disclosure by placing the {{connected contributor (paid)}} template at the top of the talk page of affected articles and filling in the parameters. They should also supply this information as part of a list on their user page of all their paid contributions.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. Thank you.— Rod ^talk 08:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Advertising

Thank you for responding to my message. As I said in the message above anyone who has "update the pages on behalf of the schools" needs to be extremely careful about potential Conflict of interest. Any information needs to be from a Neutral point of view and be supported by reliable sources. Your edits removed formatted and cited information and replaced it with uncited information which gave an unbalanced article.

To look at some of your edits to St Mark's School, Bath in particular (ignoring formatting issues):

• You removed valid information supported by references from the article without explanation
• Phrases such as: "personalised, dynamic curriculum," sound as if they are advertising and can be considered Puffery
• "strong partnerships" is a matter of opinion - you need to find reliable secondary sources which say that the schools links are "strong" and edit with a neutral point of view]
• "aspiration programmes and extensive enrichment opportunities" again opinion and puffery

These are just a few examples. I would strongly advise you to read some of the policies above and suggest changes you think should be made on the talk page of the articles concerned rather than doing this yourself, as it could reflect badly on the organisation if it becomes known that the schools concerned have attempted to embellish the information available.— Rod ^talk 09:28, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest attempting a rewrite (hopefully keeping the formating etc and complying with wikipedia's policies and guidelines) and post it on the talk page of the article as a "proposed revision". I (or other editors) can then review it and put it into the article if appropriate.— Rod ^talk 10:22, 20 October 2015 (UTC)