VEDanculovich

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Happy editing! Kj cheetham (talk) 22:29, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Hello, VEDanculovich. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Racine County, Wisconsin, 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 article subjects for more information. We ask that you:

• avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{edit COI}} template)—don't forget to give details of reliable sources supporting your suggestions;
• 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 Wikipedia:Spam § External link spamming);
• 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, publicizing, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.MarconiCheese (talk) 13:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

August 2024

Hello VEDanculovich. 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:VEDanculovich. The template {{Paid}} can be used for this purpose – e.g. in the form: {{paid|user=VEDanculovich|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. 331dot (talk) 08:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I am not directly or indirectly getting paid for my edits. This is on my own time to simple update the page with the correct information. VEDanculovich (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

You said here "I was paid to do it and actually work for the organization". Employment counts as paid editing, you do not need to be specifically paid to edit or specifically asked to edit. Either you work for Racine County or you don't. 331dot (talk) 10:50, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

We don't know when you are "on the clock" at work or "off the clock" at home. 331dot (talk) 10:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Didn't mean to make it confusing. I was just pointing out that this is my own work that the County asked me to design. The County gives me full control over how the logo is used and placed. As for this matter, I placed the logo on the County page on my own time. I wasn't asked or paid to do so. VEDanculovich (talk) 11:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

These statements are in direct odds with your initial unambiguous statement. Are you employed by Racine County? 331dot (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I would like to clarify the situation regarding the logo I added to the Racine County page. The logo is my original work, and I added it on my own time, without any payment from the County.

To provide more context, I am currently an employee of the County, and at the time, I was also an employee when management requested that I design the logo. The County has not submitted the logo for copyright, so I don’t have any documentation to prove its copyright status. Since my job involves overseeing all print and digital media and marketing for the County, I am responsible for the use and distribution of the logo. Therefore, any authorization to use the logo on a Wiki page would go through me.

Please let me know if I am missing any information or steps, as I would really like to have the County logo displayed on the page.

I also noticed that the County’s flag is on the page. Could you explain how it was added without encountering the same issues I am facing? Understanding this might help me resolve the difficulties I’m experiencing.

Thank you. VEDanculovich (talk) 01:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

First, as an employee of the County, responsible for "all print and digital media and marketing for the County", you are a paid editor, full stop. Editing Wikipedia clearly falls within the scope of your job duties, even if you have not been specifically asked to edit Wikipedia. You absolutely must make the Terms of Use-required paid editing disclosure. You must also be familiar with the conflict of interest policy. You don't need to make the less strict conflict of interest disclosure as the paid editing disclosure covers that.

You created the logo at the direction of the County so that means you did so as an employee of the county, not in a personal capacity, so I'm fairly sure that you can't claim it as your own personal work(even though you created it) and that the County owns the copyright to the logo. I'm not sure what Wisconsin law says about the copyright of works of Wisconsin government bodies, if they are automatically in the public domain; the works of the US federal government are automatically in the public domain, but that is much less common for state/county governments. You might want to find out for yourself for the future- but if you are authorized to release the logo, that might obviate the need to find that out.

It's unusual to upload a logo of any kind to Commons- which can only host "free" images in terms of copyright, images that permit reuse by anyone for any purpose with attribution. Most that own logos(especially private businesses) don't want to do that as that means they would theoretically lose control of their own logo. Logos are typically uploaded to this Wikipedia locally under "fair use" rules. As a government body, though, perhaps the County is less concerned about its logo being used by others- I would suggest you open a discussion on Commons(where they have more expertise in uploading images) and discuss your situation to find out the best way to do what it is you're trying to do.

As stated on the image page for the flag, "This logo image consists only of simple geometric shapes or text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain." 331dot (talk) 08:33, 14 August 2024 (UTC)