User talk:Dave at Marshall ADG

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, DavidRReed. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:

Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).
Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Theroadislong (talk) 17:49, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome!

Hello, DavidRReed, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or click here to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! JohnCD (talk) 22:13, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to your message on my talk page

I must first explain that you, and whoever appointed you to "setup & manage a page on Wikipedia" about Marshall, have completely the wrong idea about Wikipedia. It is not the sort of site like Facebook where people and companies tell the world about themselves. There are many sites like that, where the company could set up and manage a page for itself, but Wikipedia is quite different, a project to build a neutral, factual encyclopedia. It is not Marshall's article; it is Wikipedia's article about Marshall. As Wikipedia:Ownership of articles explains, nobody owns a Wikipedia article, not its first author and certainly not its subject. It is not a place for the subject to tell its story about itself; rather, it should be an outside view, based as far as possible on independent sources.

I blocked your User:MarshallADG account, not because of copyright problems, but because it is a Wikipedia policy that accounts are for individual contributors only, who are personally responsible for them, and that accounts whose names are the names of groups or companies are not permitted.

Even with an individual account, as a Marshall representative you have, in relation to any edits about Marshall, its business or its competitors, a Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, and need to read that guideline and the Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. In brief, you may suggest changes on article talk pages, or submit drafts, but should not edit directly. Also, it is a requirement of the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use that you declare your interest in any COI edits.

The page you prepared was a splendid company brochure, listing all the company's services and activities and generally telling the story the company wants to tell the world. That would be fine on a site like Facebook, or on the company's own website (and indeed it was largely based on your website), but it is not an encyclopedia article. I have conversations like this so often that I have written User:JohnCD/Not a noticeboard to explain some of the background.

There is an existing article, now at Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, with redirects to it from Marshall Aerospace and from Marshall ADG, and I have updated its infobox from the one you provided. If there are any errors there, or you have suggestions for improving it, please make them on the article talk page, but understand that while Wikipedia wants it to be correct, we are not here to help promote Marshall. You can draw attention to your suggestions by putting {{Request edit}} above them on the talk page.

In order to use material from the website, we would need a formal copyright release. How to make one is described at WP:Donating copyrighted materials, but it would not be worth doing that because, for the reasons I have described, it is not suitable material for the encyclopedia.

So far as the images go, you uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons, a separate organization which stores media files for all the Wikimedia projects. Commons has its own rules and procedures, and permits company accounts, so your User:MarshallADG account is not blocked there. The images you uploaded are have not been deleted (see Commons:Special:Contributions/MarshallADG), but you will see from messages on your talk page there, Commons:User talk:MarshallADG, that questions are being asked about copyright. The point is that they have to be certain that the actual copyright holder agrees to release the images under a free license, understanding that that gives any reader the right to copy, modify and re-use for any purpose including commercial. It is not enough that someone on the end of a wire says "own work". You will probably have to follow the procedure explained at Commons:COM:OTRS where the copyright holder gives a release. The actual copyright holder is normally the photographer, unless s/he has assigned the rights to someone else, which may well be the case here, if a staff photographer took them for Marshall, but in that case someone within Marshall who has the necessary authority will need to make the release.

If you have any questions, you can ask them below here - I will watch this talk page. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:13, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]