User talk:MilitaryArt

January 2011

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, the username you have chosen (MilitaryArt) seems to imply that you are editing on behalf of a group, company or website.

There are two issues with this:

It is possible that you have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, you must exercise great caution when editing on topics related to your organization.
Your account cannot represent a group of people. You may wish to create a new account with a username that represents only you. Alternatively, you may consider changing your username to avoid giving the impression that your personal account is being used for promotional purposes.

Regardless of whether you change your name or create a new account, you are not exempted from the guideline to avoid editing where you have a conflict of interest. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations.The article in question is Canadian Forces Artist Program. Thank you.

[CharlieEchoTango] 17:25, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments. The user name represents only me, and only in this position. It is a pseudonym because there are security concerns in general, related to the using of real names. I am here to contribute to the reliability of this page, as a subject matter expert, in addition to the other editors. Any discussion is more than welcome.MilitaryArt (talk) 20:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Thanks a lot for your reply. I take it that you are the same user that edited formerly using an IP address, and with which I previously had a discussion on this page? I appreciate the fact that you want to improve the accuracy of the article, and that you openly acknowledge your conflict of interest. If you are in fact the same user, I apologize for the rather unfriendly warnings, but I do hope you understand why they were put up there. Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, seeks to include only well sourced material presented in a neutral way, which is the reason why many editors are uncomfortable with representatives of organizations editing their own articles. This is best described here as :

“

A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor. COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups.

”

Now that this is explained : Because you stated to want to improve the accuracy of the article, I personally don't view it as an incompatibility of aim, because /obviously/ we want to have accurate articles and if that is your also your goal, then it's perfectly fine. The only thing that you need to be careful about is neutrality, and as such, we recommend that instead of editing the article directly, you propose changes to the talk page of the article, where neutral editors will review the changes. This is only a recommendation, which you can follow or not. You can still edit the article.
One of the other issues was the copyrighted material added to the article. This issue is much more of a problem, even if the material you add is from your organization's website. Because Wikipedia's content is reusable for any purposes (with attribution), all the content used in Wikipedia must as well be reusable for any purposes. Specifically, this means that content that is not released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License and the GFDL or in the Public Domain is not acceptable in Wikipedia articles. All the contents hosted by the Department of National Defence is copyrighted. Also, the hosts notice specifically forbids commercial reproduction, which is incompatible with the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, and therefore, not usable on Wikipedia. This is something that is not-negotiable, and copyright violations (yes, even from your own websites) are taken very seriously.
To follow up on the security concerns about names, I have erased the name of the editor (A. W.) from the previous talk page, so that it does not compromise your desired anonymity.
Sorry, for the long message, I just wanted to make sure you understand where we are coming from with all these warnings and notices, and that we only want to make sure that our articles are accurate and free of issues. Of course, it is a work in progress, and a lot of articles are far from perfect... The bottom line is : Welcome to Wikipedia and Happy Editing. Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 01:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I just wanted to give you some more background about the Canadian Forces Artist Program and give you some tips. I ran into this article a while ago and I understand that may be inaccurate; the user who created it was not strong in english. This user also thought CFAP was an operational command, and added it to the NDHQ article. I tried to clean it up a bit, but didn't get a lot of time to spend on it.

Anyway, I know there's a conflict of interest issue here, and some editors would frown upon someone from an article subject contributing to said article. If there's one tip that I can provide to you to make this article neutral and reliable, base any of the content on cited sources instead of your own knowledge. If you do that, any COI is eliminated. If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. Cheers. --Natural R_X 04:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Thanks for the response from CharlieEchoTango, apparently someone on the Wikipedia admin team. I'm not sure whom you are responding to, WRT the concerns about anonymity. There are several people posting on this page. I don't personally have concerns about any identifying details being redacted. At any rate, my activities with the CF Artists Program don't allow the time needed to get into the weeds of Wikipedia; it seems to be much more complicated than I was hoping. I'll just be popping in from time to time to correct certain egregious inaccuracies that keep popping up, such as people making edits that say the program has been dissolved, when in fact it is alive and well. Thanks again & all the best. MilitaryArt (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]