PAO-GCMC

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, GCMC.June. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:Spam);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Wikiacc (¶) 15:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

February 2021

As previously advised, your edits, such as the edit you made to George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, give the impression you have a financial stake in promoting a topic, but you have not complied with Wikipedia's mandatory paid editing disclosure requirements. You were asked to cease editing until you responded by either stating that you are not being directly or indirectly compensated for your edits, or by complying with the mandatory requirements under the Wikimedia Terms of Use that you disclose your employer, client and affiliation. Again, you can post such a disclosure on your user page at User:GCMC.June, and the template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=GCMC.June|employer=InsertName|client=InsertName}}. Please respond before making any other edits to Wikipedia. Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 12:43, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, but I do not see exceptions or guidelines for DOD organizations. GCMC.June (talk) 15:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

There is no exception for DOD organizations. Cabayi (talk) 11:44, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Your edits

Please stop editing until you have address what is explained above. Continued editing without addressing this will get you blocked.

Please also note;

• Do not copy sections of your website into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not your website.
• Your website is copyrighted. Wikipedia cannot copy text from it.
• Do not embed links to your website in the middle of the article's text.
• A lot of what you have added contains opinions and non-neutral phrasing. Again, this article is not your website and should not be voicing opinions about either the importance or success of the GCMC's work. All opinions on this should be cited to third party sources.

Thanks. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 13:03, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I am the Public Affairs Specialist for the Marshall Center and I am making updates to our command information. I do not have any financial gain. This is a government organization and our website does not have a copyrightGCMC.June (talk) 13:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I do not understand why I am unable to update the information on this page. This is a government organization. Photos and written text produced by our staff does not hold a copyright. Please advise. GCMC.June (talk) 13:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

There is not a conflict of interest. The Marshall Center is a DOD funded organization of which I have no personal or financial stake in, as I am paid as a DOD employee regardless of any information posted on this website. This Wikipedia page does not function as an advertisement, but simply as informational site. Again, the Marshall Center website is a government funded and the website team will be removing the copyright symbol as the information on the site belongs to DOD and does not meet copyright criteria. We went to a new website in April and this was an oversite. As the Marshall Center PAO, I am only providing updated releasable information and the information from our website has been cleared. I am confused about your policy regarding COI as who else would provide the updated information to this site? I inherited this site from a previous PAO who was renamed it for me, but I have tried twice and I have not able to rename it for the new PAO. GCMC.June (talk) 15:22, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

You are employed by the Marshall Center, therefore you must have a personal and financial interest.

The content you are copying says at the foot of the webpage "© 2020 George C. Marshall Center - European Center for Security Studies - Public Web" - This makes it incompatible with Wikipedia's licensing.

You are not prevented from editing the article, providing;

• You follow the instruction noted above about declaring yourself as an employee of the Marshall Center
• You write the article neutrally. This can be difficult when you unavoidably have a personal involvement. That is why editing this article is strongly discouraged.
• You follow other Wikipedia style guidelines and policies.

I know your intentions are good, but these problems are almost inevitable when people edit articles about themselves. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 14:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Where do I list I am a government employee. The information is outdated and I need to update it. GCMC.June (talk) 14:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

This is a government website and is registered under DOD. GCMC.June (talk) 15:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC) So now, I have lost all information and am unable to update. Is there a way to delete the page? GCMC.June (talk) 15:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

The instructions for declaring yourself are itemised in full in the above "February 2021" section. I'm not sure what takes precedence as far as copyright is concerned. However, it's irrelevant. The phrasing and content used on your website is largely unsuitable for inclusion on an encyclopaedia page. Wikipedia isn't here to be a course catalogue or detail the organisation's aspirations. So you shouldn't be directly copying the website contents. Select what's relevant and factual, then summarise. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 15:48, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I have been getting a lot of links and am getting confused. Our Website management team is looking into why our site seems to have a copyright to you because it is a U.S. Government website and thereby not eligible for a copyright. GCMC.June (talk) 15:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Copyright problem

Your edit to George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies has been removed in whole or in part, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. The source website is not a US Government website, and is marked as "© 2020 George C. Marshall Center - European Center for Security Studies". — Diannaa (talk) 14:58, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

It is a U.S. Government website. Thank you for pointing out that there is indeed a copyright. I have reached out to the website team and legal advisor to remove this copyright, as DOD websites are not eligible for copyright. GCMC.June (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)