User talk:MinotStateU

Minot State U
Thanks for contacting me about this, Jason. I know it can be upsetting to see your work reverted so fast in a Wikipedia article. There are two reasons why your text was removed. First, the text was copied verbatim from http://www.minotstateu.edu/president/history.shtml. I realize that you are an employee of MSU and you feel that you should be able to use text from your employer's website and paste it into a Wikipedia article. However, look at this sentence which appears on every edit page "Do not copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. It will be deleted." In other words, text from an external website should only be used in Wikipedia articles if there are no restrictions on the use of that text. The text should be considered to be in the public domain and anybody should be able to use the text for any purpose they so desire. Now, I couldn't find any statement on the MSU website stating that all text found on the website is released into the poblic domain. If it isn't in the public domain, it is not able to be used on Wikipedia. It is almost certainly better for someone like you to add to the MSU article in your own words. You can use the text from the MSU website as a starting point, but you must rephrase every sentence so these are your words created just for the Wikipedia article and not copied from another website. The second reason why the text was removed (and one of the reasons why text like this can't be copied from an external website and pasted in an article) is because it, like text from most commercial or institutional websites, is written very much like an advertisement. Wikipedia articles must be written in a strictly neutral tone...a paper encylopedia would never sound like an advertisement and Wikipedia should never sound like one either. I should also mention that plenty of Wikipedia editors frown on employees of a business or an institution making major edits to the article for their employer. The feeling is that the edits will be a conflict of interest. Now, I know you've been told to work on the MSU article and I really have no problem with that. I just want to be sure that you know that future edits must, again, always be in your own words and should never read like an ad. Please drop me another message if you have more questions. I look forward to seeing what you can add to the MSU article (in your own words!). --Matthew UND (talk) 21:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)