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Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning

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WARNING!

to all AfC participants.

You may be the target of paid editing scams

Please see for example Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia

Can somebody fix the above, put it in a box, etc. to make it stand out?

The scam has been reported to work as follows:

  • A paid editing ring will delete an article or reject an article proposed at Articles for Creation
  • A paid editor will contact the author of the article and propose that they can recreate the article for a one-time fee and protect it from deletion for a monthly fee.
  • If the article is again deleted, as is often the case, the original author will not be able to get a refund.
  • Some of the scammers falsely claimed to be Wikipedia administrators or employees of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF)

Bona fide reviewers at Articles for Creation will never contact or solicit anyone for payment to get a draft into article space, improve a draft, or restore a deleted article. If someone contacts you with such an offer, please send a copy of the email, including headers, to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org

What you can expect

  • If you pay somebody to edit an article you only receive the one-time editing service. The edit may be reverted anytime and the article may be deleted at anytime.
  • Paid editors are not employed by the Wikimedia Foundation or by the Wikimedia Community. They have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
  • Except in very limited cases, usually involving galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, the Wikipedia community does not recommend that you employ paid editors.
  • Paid editors are obligated to follow Wikipedia's conflict of interest management process of disclosure and peer review.
  • They are obligated to disclose their employer, client, and related affiliations on Wikipedia if they are paid or expect to be paid for editing; there is no confidentiality for the client.
  • If they cannot provide you a link to an on-Wiki paid editing disclosure they are violating our rules.
  • Their edits should be peer reviewed to ensure compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines before being submitted, and their edits will be reviewed afterwards through the course of normal work by the Wikipedia community.
  • They cannot guarantee any outcome in Wikipedia - not that an article will be kept or deleted, nor that any content will remain or be deleted, nor that any tags will remain or be deleted.

If you receive a solicitation for paid editing services that contradict any of the above, the paid editor is lying to you. Before even considering employing a paid editor you should read WP:Paid editing disclosure and WP:Conflicts of interest and ensure that the paid editors are following these rules. You should also make sure that you have the paid editor's complete contact information, as you would in any business transaction, in case you have a business dispute or complaint.

We ask that you report any attempted paid editing scams to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org

In serious cases of fraud, you may also wish to make a report to the police or other authorities.