Managing a conflict of interest
Hello, Dave Webber. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about in the page Mozart the music processor, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:
- avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, company, organization or competitors;
- propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (see the {{request edit}} template);
- disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see WP:DISCLOSE);
- avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see WP:SPAM);
- do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.
In addition, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution which forms all or part of work for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation (see WP:PAID).
Also please note that editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. MarioGom (talk) 12:41, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hello Mario First let me say that I understand your concern. And I hope this is the right place to contact you as I am completely new to Wikipedia's talk facility.
My situation is this: I discovered that the page on Mozart the music processor - don't know who wrote it originally - was out of date by several years, and wrong in some respects. I was keen to correct that, and also keen NOT to have it sound like an advert. Yes, I am the author of the Mozart program: I can't help that, but it does mean I'm uniquely placed to correct out-of-date (now false) information. In order NOT to have it sound like an advert:
- I first studied other pages for similar computer programs ( Sibelius (scorewriter), Finale (software), and others ) and was careful not to anything that these pages didn't
- I preserved the topic structure of the previous Mozart the music processor page (but divided some sections into logical subsections)
- I retained the Limitations section - as this surely would not be included in an advertisement.
I am keen to comply with Wikipedia's policies, but am new at this and would be very grateful if you could give me specific advice on how to do this in this case. Dave Webber (talk) 13:09, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Dave, your efforts on contributing to the article are very welcome. In order to comply with Wikipedia policy on conflict of interest you would need to:
- Disclose your conflict of interest. You already did here, and I added the appropriate template to the Mozart the music processor talk page already. The only missing part here would be adding a notice to your user page. You can do this with Template:UserboxCOI.
- Request the changes you want to do, from now on, on the talk page for the article. You can do this by creating a new section, including Template:Request edit at the beginning, and then describe anything you would like to change. Including this template will include your request on Category:Requested edits and there are a few editors that routinely review pending requests and will help you with them.
- I know you are acting in good faith, since you are not trying to conceal your conflict of interest, and I hope you are able to go through the edit request process in order to improve the article. Please, let me know if there is any aspect of the process that is not clear. Best, --MarioGom (talk) 14:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- Hi Dave, your efforts on contributing to the article are very welcome. In order to comply with Wikipedia policy on conflict of interest you would need to:
- Hello Mario thanks for your acknowledgement of my good faith, and the information about procedures for declaring an interest and requesting edits. I did know that Wikipedia does not allow advertisements (and I hope my wording is sufficiently neutral) but I had no idea that these procedures (or even user pages) existed :-(
- I have now requested a change (permission to remove the 'multiple issues' box and thus ratify the changes I've made) and entered the templates declaring an interest. I put you down in the 'checked by' field of the connected contributor as I'm assuming this discussion constitutes a check - hope that's not out of order.
- Anyway I hope that everything is OK now and the request is approved. Dave Webber (talk) 16:01, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sure. The disclosure is correct. Let's wait for a reviewer on your requested edits. Thank you for your understanding. Best, --MarioGom (talk) 16:05, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
License tagging for File:Mozart14a.jpg
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About citing claims on a wikipedia article.
Hello Dave, I think you misunderstand what it means to cite a claim in wikipedia. For example: When someone says the claim --"The name of the program reflects its author's love of the clarinet and a classical work for that instrument, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's clarinet concerto" -- needs a citation, it means you have to cite a source which says that the author of the software said that he decided to name his software so and so because of this and that reason; for example in an interview to a magazine, etc. This is necessary because wikipedia is a summary of information that already exists in the world, not a place to add new information. It is not enough that you know the information because you are the author of the software as well as of the wikipedia page. The information you put into the article has to be information that any interested wikipedia editor might have come across on their own, given enough time. I find it highly improbable that either of the sources you cited on the sentence in the example above, could have mentioned that in 1994, a person named Dave would develop a software and name it after the musical instrument and/or the concerto. As such I am removing those and restoring the citation needed tag. I'll be happy to answer any of your questions. If you disagree with my rationale, you can start a discussion on the talk page of the article. Regards, Usedtobecool (talk) 17:59, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, yes, I didn't realise what the 'citation needed' referred to. I did do a radio interview once in which this was reported, but it was by phone and went out somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, and I have no idea which station it was. It didn't seem important at the time :-( And it may have been mentioned in some magazine reviews 20 years ago - but I've lost the references. The only other source would be http://www.mozart.co.uk/information/about-the-author/ which explains everything. It's a page which as I recall has been there since about 1996 in one form or another. On the one hand the program's own web site should be a good source of information like that; on the other, do Wikipedia encourage lots of links to the programs web site? And I've been accused of personal reminiscence already. I've put in the citation, but am happy to take it out, if you feel it is out of order?
- It's not considered a quality source. It doesn't help that the style of text is romantic. Wikipedia ideally requires a credible, notable, secondary source (the page you mention is none of those things). Having said that, there don't seem to be many handy sources that refer to your software at all. Still the software itself seems kinda important, and not just to you (Maybe it's because music is a specialised science/art?). In any case, let's leave that one there for now. As we get more sources added in the future, we'll remove the lower quality ones. P.S. you should try to remember to end all wikipedia messages with four tildes (generates signature with timestamp) Usedtobecool (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- (Quality source) - That's more or less what I thought. Signature - I'm getting the hang of things gradually. I only started this yesterday (apart from a brief edit or two several years ago) and am trying to copy what I see.
- (learns to indent) Mozart music software: the program has been available since 1994 and now has tens of thousands of users across the globe. We're a small family business and Mozart sells for a fraction of the price of its main competitors (apart from a recent free one) so we have no advertising budget, and rely on word of mouth for people to hear about it. (None of this information belongs on Wikipedia of course!) But we are, as you discerned, an established item in a large field of programs doing this very specialised job. We compete on price with some and on quality of support with others.
- I've just discovered the history tab and see the page was originally created by someone called Rick Beton in 2007 - I had no idea. But by the day before yesterday it was reflecting Mozart v10 (from 2009) and all I wanted to do was bring it up to date so that it describes the program (in neutral language) as it is now (Mozart v14). I modelled most of the changes on the sort of information contained in other music software programs' Wikipedia pages. All I'm trying to do now is abolish the 'multiple issues' box which Mozart has but they don't. Hope it's going to be possible: I've spent a day on it so far! Dave Webber (talk) 21:17, 19 May 2019 (UTC)