BP:DISCLOSEPAY

Paid-Contribution Disclosure Policy (BP:DISCLOSEPAY) requires all editors who are compensated or have a financial and material connection to a subject to explicitly disclose their paid status before editing articles related to that subject on Bharatpedia.

Overview[edit | edit source]

Bharatpedia relies on the integrity, independence, and neutrality of its volunteer community. Undisclosed paid advocacy, writing or editing articles in exchange for money, goods, services, or employment without proper declaration undermines the encyclopedic standard and violates the trust of our readers. In alignment with global open-knowledge governance standards, anyone receiving compensation to edit Bharatpedia must make a clear, prominent disclosure.

Who Must Disclose?[edit | edit source]

You must disclose your paid status if you are:

Employed or contracted by a company, organization, or individual to promote or write about them, their products, or their services.
A public relations (PR) or marketing professional representing a client on Bharatpedia.
Compensated in any form (including gifts, free services, promotional perks, or direct payments) to create, update, or maintain specific articles.
An internal employee or stakeholder editing articles about your own organization, employer, or direct competitors.

How to Make a Proper Disclosure[edit | edit source]

If you are being paid for your contributions to Bharatpedia, you must declare who is paying you, who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. You may do this on your user page, on the talk page of affected articles, or in your edit summaries. As you have a conflict of interest, you must ensure everyone with whom you interact is aware of your paid status, in all discussions on Bharatpedia pages within any namespace. If you want to use a template to disclose your COI on a talk page, place {{connected contributor (paid)}} at the top of the page, fill it in as follows, and save:

Connected contributor (paid) template
`{{Connected contributor (paid)\|User1=Username of the paid editor\|U1-employer=Name of person/organization that is paying for the edits\|U1-client= Name of client\|U1-otherlinks=Insert diff to disclosure on your User page.}}`

The employer is whoever is paying you to be involved in the article (such as a PR company). The client is on whose behalf the payment is made (usually the subject of the article). If the employer and client are the same entity—that is, if Acme Corporation is paying you to write about Acme Corporation—the client parameter may be left empty. See {{connected contributor (paid)}} for more information. Note that other editors may add this template for you. Paid editing without such a declaration is called undisclosed paid editing (UPE).

You are expected to maintain a clearly visible list on your user page of your paid contributions. If you advertise, solicit or obtain paid editing work via an account on any external website, you must provide links on your user-page to all such accounts.

If you propose changes to an affected article, you can use the {{request edit}} template. Post it on the talk page and make your suggestion underneath it.

Prohibited Conduct[edit | edit source]

Even with a disclosure, editors must strictly adhere to the following principles:

No Promotional Tone: Articles must maintain a neutral point of view. Advertisements, promotional language, or marketing puffery are strictly forbidden.
Secondary Sources Required: All claims must be backed by independent, reliable secondary sources, not primary corporate materials or press releases.
Direct Editing of Corporate Bios: Paid contributors are strongly discouraged from directly editing articles about their own employers or clients; instead, they should propose changes via the article's talk page using the {{Request edit}} template.

Consequences of Undisclosed Paid Advocacy[edit | edit source]

Failing to disclose paid editing or engaging in covert promotional advocacy violates Bharatpedia governance and may lead to:

Immediate reversal and deletion of promotional edits.
Temporary or permanent administrative blocks of user accounts and IP addresses.
Public listing of non-compliant accounts on administrative noticeboards.