User talk:Merrill College

COI information
Hello, Merrill College. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Philip Merrill College of Journalism, you may have a conflict of interest. People with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, see the conflict of interest guideline and frequently asked questions for organizations. In particular, please:


 * avoid editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, its competitors, or projects and products you or they are involved with;
 * instead, propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the template);
 * avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
 * exercise great caution so that you do not violate Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

Last but not least: All contributors must not contribute content that violates conflict of interest laws (just as all contributors must respect copyright). The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive is valid throughout the European Union. In a German court decision in 2012 (that also relied on the directive) regarding Wikipedia: "The court held that when a company edits a Wikipedia article, the resulting text falsely creates the impression that the edit has no business-related purpose. By implication, the judges found that the average reader of Wikipedia articles expects to find objective and neutral information." That is a very very important condition, comparable to the FTC Guide" that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser”. This expectation by consumers of neutral information on Wikipedia, requires that companies not write "their" WP articles for PR/marketing purposes.

Editors who are compensated for their contributions should make the disclosure by placing the  template at the top of the talk page of affected articles and filling in the parameters. They should also supply this information as part of a list on their user page of all their paid contributions.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, sourcing, and autobiographies. Thank you. Safehaven86 (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2015 (UTC)