Wikipedia:Stern warning about promotion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You fundamentally misunderstand what Wikipedia is and does.

We're not interested at all in anything you, your company, your client, your band, or your holy men have to say about themselves, we delete spammy/promotional/hagiographical content upon discovery, and you will not be able to dictate the content that is on any article about your company. We are volunteer editors who have barely tolerated disclosed paid editing in the first place and our volunteer administrators are not afraid to block users whose sole purpose is to push a corporate ad campaign or pretty up their/their bosses'/their client's/their band's/their denomination's entry. There is no manager you can speak to; Wikipedia's paid staff only maintain the servers normally and do not interdict editorial policies barring specific and very limited circumstances. We do not kowtow to you or to your requests to have an article or to write it in whatever manner you/your company/your client/your band/your preacher desire.

We are limited to whatever in-depth, non-routine, independent-of-you sources written by identifiable authors and subjected to rigourous fact-checking say about you/your company/your client/your denomination and are not permitted to extrapolate from this at all, especially where living people are a topic. We don't care about whatever routine business news you trot out, whatever meagre resume-padder awards you've won, or whatever business profiles you dredge up. We don't care about whatever prattle your principals say in interviews or news stories. We will not accept low-rent churnalism or dog-bites-man coverage as acceptable sources.

Reading the above, you may feel like you have to call your legal firm. Don't. Threatening to sue volunteer editors will not only get you, anyone you send in your stead, and any agents of your company blocked (partly to make work easier on your lawyers), it's also highly likely to damage your reputation. We are not obligated to have an article about your company in the slightest, and we are not obligated to allow you or your agents to edit Wikipedia, doubly so if there is a (potential) lawsuit involved.

Germaine de Stael once said, "In life, one must choose between boredom and suffering." No article is the boredom. Fighting the community on this and aggressively maintaining this misunderstanding is the suffering.

User:Jéské Couriano Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1160#Wanted to Created a Company Page