Reinhard Müller

Welcome!

Hello, Reinhard Müller, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.

I noticed that one of the first articles you edited was Free Software Foundation Europe, which appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.

To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.

One rule we do have in connection with conflicts of interest is that accounts used by more than one person will unfortunately be blocked from editing. Wikipedia generally does not allow editors to have usernames which imply that the account belongs to a company or corporation. If you have a username like this, you should request a change of username or create a new account. (A name that identifies the user as an individual within a given organization may be OK.)

In addition, if you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for any contribution you make, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation to comply with our terms of use and our policy on paid editing.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Best practices for editors with close associations
• Plain and simple conflict of interest guide
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Simplified Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using 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 ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Widefox; talk 11:08, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

@Widefox: Thank you for welcoming me! I still wonder whether an unpaid membership in an organisation constitutes a conflict of interest. I have followed the links you gave me above but I still didn't find a clear answer to that. Anyway I'll probably limit my edits to that article to uncontroversial changes (like updates of broken external links) and removal of vandalism. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't see any disclosure (per that page). There's no disclosures on the article talk either (per that page). Other editors are more likely to be favourable if there's disclosures and no editing by anyone with a COI, but instead using the editrequest. Until all editors on that article have disclosed, how can we have confidence about the content? You mentioned money, but COI has nothing to do with money. Several editors have voiced concerns about COI on that article, but we're waiting for disclosure. Now, saying that, I have seen here that say being an ex serviceperson wouldn't (generally) be considered a COI for editing their respective military articles, but that's a slippery slope argument. Widefox; talk 14:06, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

@Widefox: So I understand that being a member of an organisation already counts as a COI, correct? I've now added the disclosure block at the article talk page, hope everything is good now. --Reinhard Müller (talk) 14:52, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

I've seen you've disclosed on the article talk now, so my answer is belated... I don't know if there's any explicit guidance for group membership or COI generally, but the links and talk discussions may say something (and long WP:COIN history if needed). My counter example was that other editors didn't consider millions of ex vets needing to disclose for US military topics. Widefox; talk 15:29, 28 August 2020 (UTC)