User talk:GLOBEHQ

December 2008

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should 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;
participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and,
avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for businesses. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. Themfromspace (talk) 04:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GLOBE conflict of interest

Hello, I saw the message you left on the talk page for the GLOBE program. I added those two tags after seeing your edits to the article. Please be aware that Wikipedia has strict policies regarding editing with a conflict of interest. This is summarized up above. Even if you believe that you are editing in a nonbiased manner, other Wikipedia editors may not see it that way, as anybody who works for a corporation (as you disclosed on the article's talk page) would (perhaps unintentionally) edit the article in a favorable bias. Please read over the guidelines for editing with a conflict of interest that I have linked you to above and feel free to ask me any questions here or at my talk page. The gist of the manner is that you should refrain at all costs from editing Wikipedia where a conflict of interest is present. Minor touchups are ok, just don't add or delete major content without prior discussion. Themfromspace (talk) 20:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. We appreciate your assistance and will provide a response to your inquiry below. GLOBEHQ

Dear ThemfromSpace, Thank you for your suggestions. We believed that we had followed the guidelines for editing articles about our organization which states that we "may do so as specified within the COI guideline, but must be extremely careful to follow policies." We thought that we had been extremely careful to only include factual/historical information about the program. It is not a solicitation. GLOBE is a 14-year old program that is incorporated into the educational systems in the 110 countries collaborating on the project. The article is not a ad; rather the article describes the program. We were alerted that the content in the GLOBE article on the Wikipedia site was not correct and therefore we consulted with the policies and corrected only the information already existing on the site as we understood was acceptable according to Wikipedia policy. No new sections were added. A complete explanation of all edits is listed below:

(1) Section 1: Incorrect history of the establishment of the Program, and incorrect program description of audience involved (e.g. citing NOAA as the funder when it is NASA/NSF, and not citing all the founders of the program to provide equal ownership). Edits were made to include all founders and cite the correct governmental funding base and to include K-16 age groups participating in the program.

2) Section 2: History, Vision and Mission Incorrect vision statement of the program. This vision was created by the international GLOBE community and needed to be corrected for protection of their Programs. Incorrect historical time line cited the beginning of the Program in 1994 when it began in 1995. Edits were made to the historical dates and to incorporate the correct vision, mission and goals.

3) Section 3: Activities Minor edits were made to include the proper inquiry-based pedagogical structure of the activities.

4) Contribution by schools: Minor edits were made to update the impact numbers.

5) Contribution by scientists: Minor edits were made to correct the citation suggesting that the program is only to benefit the research of the scientists since the program is aimed at benefiting students first with scientist as a secondary benefit.

6) Joining the Program Minor edits were made to this section to show that the program is open to all.

7) Miscellaneous fact: Minor edits were made to this section to list facts/accomplishments related to the Program.

8) External links: Significant edits were made to this section. This section listed Web sites for the UK and Australia as the only external links to the Program. GLOBE is conducted in 110 countries (with 140 Partners in the U.S. alone). Almost all these Partners have their own Web sites (meaning that potentially this section could contain over 200 links to individual Web sites for GLOBE around the world). Listing only a couple of the sites caused an equity issue related to all the other countries not having their sites listed, which also introduces a significant problem of potentially having many sites listed that might not function over time. Therefore, we believe that it is best to list only the main GLOBE Web site since links to all the Web sites around the world is located on the main GLOBE Web site.

9) Sources section: No changes were made to this section Thank you for assisting us to ensure that the information provided on Wikipedia regarding the GLOBE Program is accurate/factual and of encyclopedic nature. This is our only desire. GLOBE is a free program that has been operating since 1995 and is well established in 110 countries around the world. We believe that all information contained on the GLOBE Wikipedia page is historical/factual information.

Please let us know what you would like us to do to rectify this situation. We appreciate your assistance. One additional question: Our Partners would like to provide a translation of the final approved page on Wikipedia in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish (the additional UN languages). How should we submit these translations once the page has been approved? Please advise. Thank you again for your assistance. GLOBEHQ

You've done a good job keeping the material related to the subject, but what is often concerning in cases of a conflict of interest is that some of your additions might be unbalanced; they might not scream spam but neither would they be added to the article by someone unaffiliated with your company. For example, the "Joining GLOBE" section can be seen as unduly promoting the company and the "GLOBE activities" section is very vague and reminiscent of material distributed to market the corporation. Themfromspace (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Both the "Joining GLOBE" and the "GLOBE Activities" sections were included in the original article. Very little changes were made to these sections. However, if these two sections are problematic then I suggest that both sections be deleted on the article. With these changes will the article be acceptable so that the two tags placed on the article can be removed? Also, is it acceptable to submit the translations for the final version accepted and how is this done? Thank you for your assistance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.59.201 (talk) 04:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, there are no final "approved" pages on Wikipedia, they can be edited at any time. To submit translations of the page, you have to create the page on the different language Wikipedias. Here are the links to the Arabic Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia, and Spanish Wikipedia. Each Wikipedia operates under a different set of guidelines and I'm not familiar with the differences between them, although I expect that they will allow you to create the article. I do not know any of the languages in the Wikipedias you mentioned so I can't be of any assistance for seeing that they get translated correctly. You could try asking at the help desk if you have any more questions about porting the article to the various Wikipedias. Themfromspace (talk) 01:42, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Themfromspace, Thank you for your continued assistance. You have been very helpful in this process. We will contact the Help Desk in regard to creating the translated versions of the article after the revisions you would like to see made to the article are completed; and after the tags associated with it are removed to ensure that translated versions will also be translated from a satisfactory English version that doesn't contain warnings/tags. Please provide specific instructions as to what you would like to see removed and / or edited from the article to enable you to remove the tags and we will ensure that we comply with your instructions immediately. We look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, GLOBEHQ67.40.53.16 (talk) 04:06, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

December 17, 2008: Dear ThemfromSpace, We request to receive the changes that must be made to remove the tags from the article. Please provide us with direction so that we can fix the article to your satisfaction so that the two tags placed on the page can be removed. Thank you. GLOBE HQGLOBEHQ (talk) 02:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Look over Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view to see how to fix the problems addressed by the first tag. In general, the language needs to be cleaned up. The language is too promotional and needs to be formalized. The article needs to read less like an advertisement and more like an encyclopedia. You yourself can't do anything about the second tag, as its placed as a warning that most of the edits were placed with a conflict of interest. As long as a good deal of the article is being written by the people associated with the program itself, the tag stays to alert editors and readers of this fact. Wikipedia is meant to be edited in a neutral point of view and is not to be used as a tool of self-promotion. Themfromspace (talk) 04:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

December 18, 2008 Dear ThemfromSpace, Thank you for your quick response. Given your feedback we would like to have one of the following actions take place immediately: 1. Revert to the original article that we did not participate in creating, have it viewed in its original form without tags; or 2. Remove the article completely since in its current state, and with negative identification tags, reflects poorly on the international GLOBE Program. Thank you. GLOBE HQGLOBEHQ (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted the edits to the revision before you started editing it and cleaned it up. You can still contribute to the article as it stands without warranting the conflict of interest tag, but only by making minor edits such as adjusting facts and such that don't change the article as a whole. Any major changes you want to make should be posted at the article's talk page first. Themfromspace (talk) 20:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

January 1, 2009 Dear ThemfromSpace, Thank you. Please remove the public view of our conversations. GLOBE HQGLOBEHQ (talk) 21:27, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, talk page blanking is generally against Wikipedia policies. Even if this page would be blanked, a record of our conversation would still be available under the page's history. The only way to delete information permanently is to use oversight, but that is strictly reserved for the most extreme cases such as to remove libel or personal information such as addresses or phone numbers. If you want to hide your conflict of interest for public relations purposes, a name change might help, but your contribution history under your current username will still be transferred over to your new username. Themfromspace (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]