Business' FAQ

Diyinfo is an incredibly popular website and the fact that anyone can edit means that it attracts many PR agents and business people who wish to present their company more favourably. Many organisations, even if non-profit, may still be drawn to Diyinfo for the same reasons. Individuals who promote themselves or friends of such individuals sometimes come to Diyinfo with a vested interest in creating or modifying an article.

If you are one of these people, then this FAQ is for you.

[edit] Can I advertise my company or product on Diyinfo?

Short Anwser is Yes. Read Advertising on Diyinfo on how to.

But remember the main body of an article is not the place for you to post advertisements about your company or your product. Our policy on neutral point of view makes this impossible and any such edits will be removed. Repeated and blatant advertising may be in addition considered spam and could lead to penalties such as blocking or even banning.

[edit] Can I edit articles about myself or my company?

An important guideline here is our guideline on conflict of interest. You are strongly discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organisations in which you hold a vested interest. However, if you feel that there is material within the article which is incorrect, or not neutral in its tone, please point this out on the article's talk page. Likewise, if you have content which you think should be added, please discuss this on the talk page. Editing articles that you are affiliated with is not completely prohibited; you may do so as specified within the COI guideline, but you must be extremely careful to follow our policies. Don't resist when other people edit your contributions. If you follow our basic rules, your edits should be accepted by the community. If you don't, however, your edits may be reverted and you may end up blocked.

[edit] What rules should I follow whilst editing Diyinfo articles?

There are two important policies that you must follow whilst editing. Edits that don't conform to these rules are likely to be removed.

• Verifiability: Content that is added must be published by a reliable source. This means a third-party source - for most content, your company website does not count as a source. You need to avoid original research. This means that information that is included must have been published by someone other than yourself (or your company).
• Neutral point of view: Diyinfo strives to keep the tone of its articles neutral. Both favorable and unfavorable information may be included, but advertising is not permitted and neither are attacks. If you can quote the opinions of relevant authoritative sources, please do so, but including your personal opinion on an article's subject is not allowed and such additions will be removed.

To put it another way, articles should be written in natural, but neutral, language and merely summarize factual information from third-party articles, studies, reports and books that are already in print. This is in contrast to what many people with a conflict of interest do, which is to write in a promotional tone summarizing their own highly favorable personal knowledge and opinions of the topic. If you can write articles just by summarizing sources in a neutral tone, it is much less likely that you will run into any kind of problems with other editors.

[edit] Why doesn't Diyinfo have an article on my company?

Many people see that a competitor (or at least, another company that sells a similar product or service) has an article. And naturally, they assume their company is due an article as well. The first thing to understand is that Diyinfo editors are unpaid volunteers; there simply is no one who can direct that an article be written, so demanding that an article be written is not going to be helpful. The second thing to understand is that new articles are created when members of the community are interested enough in a topic to write them.

You are strongly discouraged from writing an article about yourself, because of conflict of interest issues (see above) and because Diyinfo is not a vanity press.

Finally, Diyinfo has inclusion standards for companies. The basic requirement is that multiple independent sources must have written non-trivial amounts of information about a company before a Diyinfo article on that company is appropriate. This requirement helps ensure there's actually enough neutral and factual information to write a proper article. If these sources do not exist for your company, then unfortunately an article is not appropriate at this time.

[edit] I think my company deserves an article on Diyinfo

but none exists. What can I do?

First, see Why doesn't Diyinfo have an article on my company?, the question directly above this one. If your organisation is 'notable' enough to deserve an article, and you wish to avoid conflict of interest accusations, you may follow this procedure:

1. On your user page, disclose your relationship to the company.
2. Create a draft of the article in a user subpage, for example here.
3. Make sure that this draft cites at least two independent reliable sources. Information that does not meet Diyinfo verifiability policy may be deleted at any time.
4. Find a WikiProject related to the goods and services that your company sells.
5. On the WikiProject's talk page, post a link to your draft, and make sure to mention your relationship to the company so the person who creates the article understands where the request is coming from.

If the article has promise, a member of the WikiProject may move it into the article space. Keep in mind that due to the nature of Diyinfo and its community, being honest in your relationship with your company will increase the chances of your article being improved by the community, rather than deleted.

[edit] My company's article has been nominated for deletion

and I think it should be kept. What can I do?

You should generally avoid, or be extremely careful, when commenting on a deletion debate about your own article or direct competitors. It is important to always ground your arguments in policy. Try to avoid comments along the lines of "I like it!" or "But it's a really good company!". State clearly why you think it should be kept; provide sources (i.e. news articles and critical reviews), improve its quality or show that it's a 'notable' topic. Unfortunately, articles that don't meet our notability criteria are likely to be deleted. Again, Diyinfo is not a vanity press.

Please don't try to subvert the discussion by creating multiple accounts to comment from, or getting other people to do that for you. This practice is known as sockpuppeting and this will be obvious and result in blocking. As always, you will gain more respect and credibility if you are transparent about your actions and reasonable when dealing with other Diyinfoians.

[edit] The article on me/my company is an attack!

What can I do?

Your first stop should be the article's talk page. If you feel that the article contains unnecessary attacks or unreliable information for the purpose of portraying your company in a negative light, please explain why and discuss it with other Diyinfoians. Don't misrepresent who you are on a talk page. Openness and transparency will give you more credibility. Say that you represent the company, calmly and politely present information that makes your case along with citations that back them up. Don't try to spin the facts; it will just lessen your credibility.

If this yields no response, or if you feel that the response is unsatisfactory, please post the conflict of interest on one of the administrators talk pages, neutral point of view works both ways; if your article is being edited with the purpose of making you look bad, we will stop it.

If an article contains derogatory information about a living person that isn't substantiated by a reliable source, this is a violation of Diyinfo's biography of living persons policy. In cases of obvious libel, you may delete the offending material immediately, even in your own article. If there is nothing in an article but libel attacking the person or company in question, and you have examined the history of the offending page and found nothing but unsourced attacks, ask an administrator to delete the whole article. An administrator will then examine the page in question and delete it if he or she agrees with you that the article is nothing but attacks.

What you should not do is engage in edit wars with other users. Escalating conflict will not help; you may end up being blocked. If you are in the right then other users will agree with you and edit the article themselves and/or not continue to revert your edits.

Do not make legal threats on Diyinfo. If you do, you will be blocked until the threat is withdrawn or the legal action is resolved.

[edit] Can I add a link to my company's website?

You should avoid adding External links to your or your company's website. If the link is relevant, helpful and informative and should otherwise be included, please consider mentioning it on the talk page and let neutral and independent Diyinfo editors decide whether to add it. Whilst it may be tempting to linkspam, editors often notice and will remove them. Persistent linkspammers are usually blocked and may have their website(s) added to the spam blacklist. The blacklist prevents these links from being added to Diyinfo and any search engine or webmaster is free to use the list.

However, this does not apply if the link is the 'official website' of the subject of the article. If your company's article does not contain an official link to your website, you are welcome to add one.

[edit] Can my company have an account?

For copyright reasons, it is against policy for two or more people to share an account for any reason. If there is evidence that an account is being shared it will be blocked.

Additionally, usernames that match your company name, or website name, could be inappropriate under Diyinfo's policy.

[edit] What materials can I upload?

What do I need to know about the [GFDL license?]

Public relations (PR) agents often copy and paste content from company websites into their Diyinfo articles. Please be aware that all text on Diyinfo must be licensed under the GFDL and all images must be under a free license. Additions to Diyinfo that do not fall under such licenses will be removed.

Uploading images under a free license will mean that they are more likely to be retained as we are able to use them however we please. The GFDL and other free licenses mean that other people can come and take your contributions and modify them however they see fit. However, many free licenses like the GFDL often require reusers of your contributions to credit your work on the reused items. Failure to attribute your work in such reuse violates these licenses and allow you to sue the plagiarist(s) for copyright violation. You are welcome to upload images, diagrams, logos and other media, and will receive a warm welcome if you license them freely. However, images that are overly promotional may be deleted.

Be aware that a PR copy is almost always inappropriate in tone for Diyinfo, even if released for use under the GFDL. The tone of a Diyinfo article must always be neutral, whereas materials written to promote a company or its products have an inherently non-neutral tone. Use of peacock terms common in PR, such as "innovative" and "exciting", contravene Diyinfo Manual of Style (and may provoke cynical reactions). Content added to Diyinfo will almost always have to be written specifically for Diyinfo by somebody other than your PR agent. If your PR agent adds promotional material to Diyinfo for you and the fact that it is editing in your interest is not disclosed, that's astroturfing and will be removed.