Bharatpedia:Paid-contribution disclosure

A paid contribution is any contribution made to Bharatpedia in exchange for money, goods, services, or other forms of compensation or inducement. This includes creating, editing, modifying, or removing content from any page, including articles, talk pages, user pages, and other Bharatpedia namespaces.

If you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for your contributions to Bharatpedia, you must disclose who is paying you to edit (your "employer"), who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. It does not matter whether you are paid directly by the client or indirectly through an employer, agency, intermediary, or another organization.

All editors engaging in paid contributions must comply with this policy, Bharatpedia's Terms of Use, and applicable community policies and guidelines.

Bharatpedia Terms of Use

Bharatpedia's Terms of Use and paid contribution disclosure requirements require editors to disclose their employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Paid contributions without disclosure

Editors must not engage in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, or fraud.

As part of their obligations, editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which they receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

The disclosure must be made in at least one of the following ways:

• A statement on the editor's user page;
• A statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions; or
• A statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.

Applicable law and Bharatpedia's community policies and guidelines, particularly those addressing conflicts of interest, may further restrict paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure.

The above requirements constitute Bharatpedia's paid contribution disclosure policy.

Meaning of "employer, client, and affiliation"

Editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any paid contribution to Bharatpedia.

• Employer: The person or organization that pays, either directly or through intermediaries, a user to contribute to Bharatpedia. This includes cases where the employer has hired the user as an employee, engaged the user under a freelance contract, compensated the user without a formal contract, or compensated the user through employment by another organization.

• Client: The person, company, organization, or institution on whose behalf the edits are made. The client is often the subject of the article being edited.

• Affiliation: Other relevant connections, including people or businesses that provide text, images, or other media for paid contributions. If a paid editor works as a contractor, affiliation also includes any broker or intermediary involved in the transaction (e.g. Fiverr, Upwork, etc.).

• Contribution: Any text, image, file, or other material added to, modified on, or deleted from Bharatpedia. This includes talk-page and sandbox contributions, as well as material prepared by paid editors and subsequently published by other editors on their behalf.

• Payment or compensation: Includes, but is not limited to, money, goods, services, discounts, employment benefits, or other financial and non-financial incentives.

Users who receive compensation for publicity, public-relations, promotional, or reputation-management activities related to the subject of their Bharatpedia contributions are considered paid editors, regardless of whether they were specifically compensated to edit Bharatpedia.

For example, if Smith PR pays an editor to work on Bharatpedia content about Acme Widgets, Smith PR is the editor's employer with respect to those contributions, while Acme Widgets is the client. If an editor is hired by a public-relations firm to edit Bharatpedia, both the firm and its client must be disclosed.

Often, the employer and client are the same entity. If Acme Widgets directly pays an editor to create or modify an article about the company, Acme Widgets is both the employer and the client.

Interns are considered employees for this purpose. If interns are directed or expected to edit Bharatpedia as part of an internship, they must disclose their employer, client, and relevant affiliations.

How to disclose

Further information: Bharatpedia:Conflict of interest § Paid editors

Editors who receive, or expect to receive, compensation for their contributions must disclose their employer, client, and relevant affiliations. They must do so through at least one of the following methods:

• A clearly visible statement on their main user page;
• A statement on the talk page accompanying the relevant paid contributions; or
• A disclosure in the edit summary accompanying the paid contributions.

Paid editors are strongly encouraged to use the {{paid}} template on their user pages and the {{connected contributor (paid)}} template on the talk pages of affected articles, where these templates are available.

Editors should also maintain a clearly visible list of articles and other pages on which they have made paid contributions.

Paid editors who cannot disclose their employer, client, and relevant affiliations must not undertake the relevant paid contributions. Non-disclosure agreements do not remove this requirement.

It makes no difference whether a paid editor writes content outside Bharatpedia or in their userspace and subsequently asks another editor to move that material into the main namespace on their behalf. Both editors must disclose their respective roles and any relevant paid relationship.

Disclosure of external paid-editing accounts

Paid editors must provide links on their Bharatpedia user pages to all active external accounts or profiles through which they advertise, solicit, or obtain paid Bharatpedia-editing services.

Such accounts may include:

• Freelancing platforms;
• Professional service marketplaces;
• Personal websites;
• Business or agency websites; and
• Social-media accounts used to solicit paid editing work.

If an external account is deleted or removed, any corresponding disclosure link on the Bharatpedia user page must remain visible for at least one week.

Additionally, paid editors must provide links to their Bharatpedia user account or accounts on every website where they advertise, solicit, or obtain paid editing services, as well as in direct communications with clients and potential clients, including emails and business proposals.

If a paid editor has used or controlled more than one Bharatpedia account, every account used for paid contributions must be disclosed.

This transparency helps the Bharatpedia community understand and evaluate the source and scope of paid editing and determine whether contributions comply with Bharatpedia's policies and guidelines.

Bharatpedians in residence

Bharatpedians in residence who receive compensation must disclose the organization or institution that employs or pays them.

They must also disclose any additional client relationships or affiliations relevant to their Bharatpedia contributions.

Administrators

Administrators making paid contributions are subject to the same disclosure requirements as all other users.

Administrators must not use their administrative privileges, tools, or special permissions as part of paid editing activities.

Administrative tools must not be used to obtain commercial advantages, influence editorial decisions for paying clients, protect paid content from community scrutiny, or promote the interests of an employer or client.

Any misuse of administrative privileges for paid editing may result in administrative sanctions, including removal of administrator permissions.

Promotion and advertising by paid editors

Paid editors may not advertise or promote their services on Bharatpedia.

The disclosures required by the Terms of Use and this policy are not considered advertisements or promotional activities.

Bharatpedia is an encyclopedic project, not a platform for commercial advertising, marketing, or reputation-management services.

Conflict of interest guideline

Paid editing is further regulated by Bharatpedia's community guideline, Bharatpedia:Conflict of interest.

Editors with a conflict of interest, including paid editors, are strongly discouraged from directly editing articles affected by their financial, professional, personal, or organizational relationships.

Instead, paid editors should:

• Disclose their relationship with the article's subject;
• Submit proposed changes on the relevant article's talk page;
• Provide reliable, independent sources supporting proposed changes;
• Allow independent editors to review proposed changes; and
• Avoid promotional, misleading, or unverifiable content.

New articles involving a paid editor's client or employer should be submitted through Bharatpedia's Articles for Creation process, where available, so that independent editors can review them before publication.

Disclosure does not guarantee that proposed content will be accepted.

Reporting undisclosed paid editors

If you believe an editor is conducting undisclosed paid editing in violation of this policy, you may report the matter to the Administrators' Noticeboard (Incidents) or the appropriate Conflict of Interest noticeboard.

Reports should include relevant evidence, such as links to affected articles, contribution histories, publicly available advertisements, or other verifiable information.

Reports must not involve harassment, threats, or the publication of private personal information.

If a report involves private information that should not be publicly disclosed, contact the Bharatpedia administration at infobharatpedia.org. You may also contact an authorized CheckUser team member where appropriate.

Users should avoid making unsupported accusations and should distinguish between confirmed paid editing and suspected conflicts of interest.

Enforcement

Failure to comply with this policy may result in administrative action depending on the nature and seriousness of the violation.

Possible actions include:

• A formal warning;
• A request for immediate disclosure;
• Review or removal of affected contributions;
• Editing restrictions;
• Temporary account suspension; or
• Indefinite account block in serious or repeated cases.

Administrators should consider the circumstances of each case, including whether the failure to disclose was intentional, whether the editor cooperates with the community, and whether the contributions have harmed Bharatpedia's editorial integrity.

Changing this policy

This policy may be changed through Bharatpedia's established community discussion and consensus process.

Proposals to modify the disclosure requirements must be discussed openly and should consider the principles of transparency, editorial independence, and prevention of conflicts of interest.

Changes that would remove or substantially weaken the paid contribution disclosure requirements must be explicitly identified as such in the relevant Request for Comment (RfC).

Editors participating in discussions concerning changes to this policy must disclose any relevant paid affiliations that could affect their participation.