European1957

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, European1957. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on the page Ulrike Lunacek, 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, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{edit COI}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest § How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your organization's website in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam § External link spamming);
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

In addition, you are required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use to 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 Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you. Panian513 13:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Panian513 - and yes, I have edited this page myself, can gladly write that somewhere (at How to disclose a COI?) - because simply some things have been wrong (like what I did for NGO's at the UN Women's Conference in Beijing, and which NGOs I am part of, and am part of now), and some (like my 4 books) have been missing.

I have no employer whatsoever, am retired and work once in a while as author (books), moderator or lecturer, sometimes I get paid for this - but there is no Conflict of Interest whatsoever. I am still a member of the Austrian Green Party, but have no political mandate anymore.

I do not have more time now, but the two paragraphs on my political positions are extremely biased (the first ones probably by a rightwing anti-abortion/anti-women's sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) group, the second one by some Serb/anti-Kosovo activist). I will want to change that some time in the future and add other political positions of my 25 years in politics.

So: what do I have to do?

thank you,

best regards

Ulrike Lunacek European1957 (talk) 14:17, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding! This page on disclosing a COI should help. A quick summary of what it asks you to do is to put a template on the top of either your talk page or your user page. This template should look something like this:

This user has publicly declared that they have a conflict of interest regarding the Wikipedia article Ulrike Lunacek.

Panian513 14:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but I did not edit Wikipedia in "my own interest", I added facts (like my registered partnership with my partner, my books, my second "decoration" in 2019 and the NGO's I am currently working with) or corrected false information (like my role around press work for AT NGOs around Beijing Women's Conference or the NGO's which I am no longer a part of). Noone had done that before. If you can do it for me, you can gladly do it and delete my name.

But I definitely do not see how provable facts (and not opinions like the biased "political positions" that someone wrote) constitute a "conflict of interest".

What I can do is write that I "added resp. corrected facts which can be easily verified" in a template. But I will not declare that I have a "conflict of interest". Or do you want Wikipedia to convey false information or not update the entries?? European1957 (talk) 20:28, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not contesting the validity of your edits. As the conflict of interest page explains, "Someone having a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgment about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith."

Basically, what this means is that having a conflict of interest (COI) doesn't automatically invalidate your edits - if anything, they seem to be properly and reliably sourced (which is why they aren't reverted). COI is a state of personal being, not a automatic description of the validity of one's edits. The purpose of declaring a COI, therefore, is a matter of transparency. Panian513 20:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)