Welcome!

Hello, Pennedinthemargins, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Corvus cornixtalk 00:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Tom Chivers, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

  1. editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
  2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
  3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and,
  4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for businesses. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. Corvus cornixtalk 00:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Please do not write an article about yourself. Creating an autobiography is strongly discouraged – see our guideline on writing autobiographies. If you create such an article, it may be deleted. If what you have done in life is genuinely notable and can be verified according to our policy for articles about living people, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later (see Wikipedians with articles). Please understand that this is an encyclopedia and not a personal web space or social networking site. If your article has already been deleted, please see: Why was my page deleted?, and if you feel the deletion was an error, please discuss it with the deleting administrator. Thank you. --Orangemike (talk) 20:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Your account has been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia because it appears to be mainly intended or used for publicity and/or promotional purposes. Please read the following carefully.

Why can't I edit Wikipedia?

Your account's edits and/or username indicate that it is being used on behalf of a company, group, celebrity or other well-known individual, or organization for purposes of promotion and/or publicity. The edits may have violated one or more of our rules on spamming, which include: adding inappropriate external links, posting advertisements, and using Wikipedia for promotion. Wikipedia has many articles on companies, groups, and organizations, but such groups are generally discouraged from using Wikipedia to write about themselves. In addition, usernames like yours are disallowed under our username policy.

Am I allowed to make these edits if I change my username?

Probably not. See WP:FAQ/Organizations for a helpful list of frequently asked questions by people in your position. Also, review the conflict of interest guidance to see the kinds of limitations you would have to obey if you did want to continue editing about your company, group, organization, or clients. If this does not fit in with your goals, then you will not be allowed to edit again. Consider using one of the many websites that allow this instead.

What can I do now?

You are still welcome to write about something other than your company, organization, or clients. If you do intend to make useful contributions on some other topic, you must convince a Wikipedia administrator that you mean it. To that end, please do the following:

  • Add the text {{unblock-spamun|Your proposed new username|Your reason here}} on your user talk page.
  • Replace the text "Your proposed new username" with a new username you are willing to use. See Special:Listusers to search for available usernames. Your new username will need to meet our username policy.
  • Replace the text "Your reason here" with your reason to be unblocked. In this reason, you must:
  • Convince us that you understand the reason for your block and that you will not repeat the edits for which you were blocked.
  • Describe in general terms the contributions that you intend to make if you are unblocked.
If you believe this block was made in error, please see how to appeal a block.

--Orangemike (talk) 20:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)Reply


Dear Orangemike,

I hope this is an appropriate place to contact you. I have tried other routes, but to no avail.

I understand my account has been blocked due to conflict of interest, which I understand. Unfortunately I had no idea that you were not allowed to write your own entry (I know lots of people who have, and do it in order that an accurate representation of themselves or their company are presented). I have to say that I have not contributed pieces to Wikipedia in order to self-promote - I did them in order to present accurate information. In particular, my personal Wikipedia page is important to me because I often get confused with someone else of the same name (a journalist here in the UK).

If you can give any help or advice, I'd really appreciate it! I have tried to familiarise myself with how to contribute properly to Wikipedia, but I find it very confusing. I've not intended to be malicious in my use of Wikipedia, and apologise for any inconvenience to you or any other administrators.

Best wishes,

Tom Chivers

Unblock edit

Hi, I'm not an admin but have been trying to address your blocking. The way to request an unblocking is to paste the unblock template on your user page, as it says above. That will formally register your request. Your username User:Pennedinthemargins takes its name from a magazine/company. User names taken from organisations, companies, groups, products etc are taken as promotional spam. As you also edited on pages with a conflict of interest, it was taken that this was a spam/COI only account. I am taking it that you were acting in good faith and were not aware of the guidelines, as you say. As you have only ever made a handful of edits and were blocked without immediate warning, it is best to ask advice on how to proceed, if you wish to edit on Wikipedia within the guidelines. I am happy to support you in learning some of the basics. Best wishes Span (talk) 13:46, 31 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hi. I am an admin, and want to point out to you that in the What can I do now section of the buff box above, it tells you how to appeal. This will flag your page up on a list looked at by admins, and sooner or later (usually sooner) someone will respond. Put your appeal at the bottom of the page, and when you post on talkpages would you please sign with ~~~~ which will put your name and a datestamp up. Thanks. (I'm not dealing with it right now be4cause you haven't done it yet, and I'm not really here - should have been out the door ten minutes ago...) Peridon (talk) 14:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)Reply