User talk:LexPD PIO

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by DoubleGrazing was:

This draft's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article. In summary, the draft needs multiple published sources that are:

• in-depth (not just brief mentions about the subject or routine announcements)
• reliable
• secondary
• strictly independent of the subject
  

Make sure you add references that meet all four of these criteria before resubmitting. Learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue. If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia.

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit it after they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Lexington Police Department and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
• If you do not edit your draft in the next 6 months, it will be considered abandoned and may be deleted.
• If you need any assistance, or have experienced any untoward behavior associated with this submission, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, on the reviewer's talk page or use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:26, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, LexPD PIO! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:26, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your account has been blocked from editing because your username gives the impression that the account represents a group, team, club, organization, company, product, department, or website. Your username is the principal reason for the block. You are welcome to continue editing after you have chosen a new username that complies with Wikipedia's username policy.

You should also read our conflict of interest guideline and be aware that promotional editing is not acceptable, regardless of the username that you choose. Additionally, if your contributions to Wikipedia form all or part of work for which you are, or expect to be, paid or compensated in any way, you must disclose who is paying you. You may also read our FAQ for article subjects.

Please take a moment to either create a new account, or request a username change to this account.

• To create a new account with a different username, simply log out of this account and then make a new one.
• If you prefer to change the username of this account, you may do so by adding the following text to the bottom of your user talk page (this page): {{unblock-un|new username|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.
  • Before requesting your new username, check if it is still available. If the search says "There is no global account for [username]", the username is free to use.

The new username that you choose must represent you as an individual:

• You are permitted to use a username that contains the name of a company or organization if it also identifies you individually. Examples include: "Sara Smith at XYZ Company", "Mark at WidgetsUSA", or "FoobarFan87", but not "SEO Manager at XYZ Company".

If your username does not represent a group, organization, department, website, or other entity described above, and if you believe that this block was incorrect or made in error, you may appeal this block by adding the following text to the bottom of your user talk page (this page): {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. 

Thank you. DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello LexPD PIO. The nature of your edits gives the impression you have an undisclosed financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. Paid advocacy is a category of conflict of interest (COI) editing that involves being employed (or being compensated in any way) by a person, group, company or organization to promote their interests. Paid advocacy on Wikipedia must be disclosed even if you have not specifically been asked to edit Wikipedia. Undisclosed paid advocacy is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not and is an especially serious type of COI; the Wikimedia Foundation regards it as a "black hat" practice akin to black-hat search-engine optimization.

Paid advocates are strongly discouraged from direct article editing and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question if an article exists. If the article does not exist, paid advocates are strongly discouraged from attempting to write an article at all. At best, any proposed article creation should be submitted through the articles for creation process, rather than directly.

Regardless, if you are receiving or expect to receive compensation for your edits, broadly construed, you are required by the Wikimedia Terms of Use to disclose your employer, client and affiliation. You can post such a mandatory disclosure to your user page at User:LexPD PIO. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=LexPD PIO|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. If I am mistaken – you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits – please state that in response to this message. Otherwise, please provide the required disclosure. In either case, do not edit further until you answer this message. DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Thank you for reviewing this so quickly! I am not being paid to make this page- I am an intern within the city of Lexington. The lack of a Wikipedia page for the Police Department has been identified as both a safety risk for the city and a further opportunity to educate residents about the public safety features that Lexington has to offer. The main draw for creating a page was having an additional avenue through which residents would be able to learn about the department and specifically, find another way to submit anonymous tips to the department through its Crime Stoppers Program which has been a great boon to the city so far in both resolving active safety risks and in solving decades-long cases. We intended to create a rather simple page for people to find necessary resources with and allow residents, journalists, and local organizations to fill in the rest with whatever information they saw fit.

If this is, in fact, a conflict of interest and we are barking up the wrong tree, please let me know. LexPD PIO (talk) 14:13, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

There are several issues which I need to take you through. (Bear with me, there is quite a lot to take in here.)

Firstly, regarding your user account:

1. I blocked you from editing because your username contravenes our username policy WP:UN. I assumed the 'PIO' part stands for public information officer or similar, in which case that is what we call a 'role account' (like marketing, manager, webmaster, etc.) which refers to a function and not an individual user. If you choose a different username, I can rename your account. Note that the name must be unique to you, but does not need to reveal your real name.
2. (This is somewhat connected to the previous point.) You use the first-person plural voice ("we"), which implies there may be more than one individual with access to this account. Please note that Wikipedia user accounts are strictly for use by a single individual only. If there are more than one of you wanting to edit, you will each need to register your own separate accounts. Or if only one individual has access to this account, please confirm, and take necessary measures to keep it that way.
3. As an intern you are considered a paid editor, even if you're not explicitly paid to edit Wikipedia, and even if you're not being paid at all. You take instruction from your boss or colleagues, and in that sense you're in our eyes comparable to a paid employee. If and when you are unblocked, you must therefore make a paid-editing-disclosure as instructed in the message above, and comply with our paid-editing-rules going forward.

Secondly, regarding your draft, and your intended use thereof:

1. It isn't enough for an organisation to merely exist; to be included in Wikipedia, a subject must be notable, which for most subjects means that it has been covered in multiple secondary sources. For organisations, including police departments, the relevant notability guideline is WP:ORG, please study it and consider whether your organisation meets it.
2. Wikipedia articles are almost exclusively written by summarising what reliable and independent secondary sources have previously published about a subject. They do not consist of what the subject wants to tell the world about itself; that is considered promotional here (see WP:YESPROMO). If you wish to write an article draft about your PD, you need to start by finding multiple secondary sources that have published significant coverage about it, then use those sources to compile the draft; this approach is outlined in WP:GOLDENRULE.
3. As a paid editor, you are free (once unblocked) to edit your draft while it remains a draft, but if it is accepted for inclusion in the encyclopaedia, after that you may no longer edit it directly (except for making minor grammar etc. corrections, or to revert obvious vandalism), and must instead propose edit requests via its talk page, supported by reliable sources. Those edit requests may or may not be accepted, and there will almost certainly be delays in processing them, because our edit request queue is chronically backlogged. Ironically enough, everyone else will be allowed to edit the article, as long as they can support their edits with reliable sources. Some of the edits others might make may not be to your liking, but you would not be able to stop them; you won't "own" the article in any sense, or be able to control it. In fact, you might even find that WP:an article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing (that essay is written for private individuals, but much of it applies to organisations as well).
4. The article would not be suitable for use as an anonymous tip hotline, and that would be quite inappropriate in more ways than one. You should consider one of the many dedicated platforms for hosting anonymous, encrypted tip-off/whistleblowing messaging services, if you do not wish to use your own website for that.

In view of all of the above, I think you will probably also agree by now that Wikipedia is not the right platform for you to achieve your stated objectives?

Best, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:03, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]