User talk:GDJ Advertising: Difference between revisions

Hello GDJ Advertising. The nature of your edits, such as the one you made to St Leonard’s College (Melbourne), 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 employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a “black hat” practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are strongly discouraged from direct article editing and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are strongly discouraged 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:GDJ Advertising. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=GDJ Advertising|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. You should also read WP:ISU and ensure your username is aligned with policy. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 19:58, 9 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

St Leonard’s College is a client of GDJ Advertising. GDJ Advertising was tasked with updating the St Leonard’s College (Melbourne) Wikipedia page with the most recent VCE results, sporting team achievements, and musical performances. GDJ Advertising (talk) 21:53, 9 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That’s great, thank you for disclosing. I know the message I left you is kind of overwhelming with info and links, but the most relevant link is here: WP:UPE. Per that page, you need to disclose your paid relationship(s) either on your user page (located at User:GDJ Advertising), on the talk page of the article you’re wanting to edit (in this particular case, located at Talk:St Leonard’s College (Melbourne)), or in your edit summaries (which is generally discouraged because you shouldn’t be editing the article directly, but rather proposing changes in edit requests on the article talk page). Editors who may be checking your contributions are unlikely to read this section on your talk page, so the declaration here isn’t quite sufficient.

Also, you may have missed the additional message I tacked on to the end of my original one: per WP:ISU, which states that usernames cannot imply shared use, you’re also going to need to request a rename. Something like “John at GDJ” is fine because it indicates only one person is using the account, whereas “GDJ Advertising” could potentially be used by anyone at the company.

Again, I know this is a lot of info and the rules for paid editors can be confusing, but they do exist for a reason and following them will make sure you don’t (temporarily or permanently) lose your editing privileges. Feel free to ping me if you have any other questions. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for posting your disclosure on your user page. Based on the markup language, it appears as if you may have used AI assistance, which made the template improperly formatted. I took the liberty of fixing it for you, but keep in mind that you will find AI and LLMs are not looked upon fondly on this site (for very good reason) and will backfire on you more often than they help. And again, I strongly recommend requesting a rename for your account before you do any more mainspace editing. Ping me if you have questions. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 17:21, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

AI or an LLM was not used for these changes. Completely agree that for Wikipedia, the use of AI is not a good idea.

The changes made were at the request of our client St Leonard’s College (Melbourne) to simply update the page with the most recent details of the school’s results and performances.

I have submitted a rename request.

Thanks for your assistance. GDJ Advertising (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for submitting the rename request. In mentioning possible AI usage I was referring to the placement of your disclosure on your user page, not your edits to the article, but if I was mistaken then I apologize. Just make sure you don’t use <nowiki> tags in the future if you want edits to display correctly. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 22:02, 11 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]