[WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

[Jim Trodel]

I agree that having the subject of an article edit that article should be
avoided - unfortunately some of the wikipedians (including Mr Wales*) have
edited their own article so it sets a bad precedent. I would like to see
those that edit their own article encouraged to request the changes on the
talk page and allow others to make the changes.
 my 2 cents,
Jim
 * If you review the history you can see that nearly all of the edits I
refer to here were factual clarifications and clearly not imposing a
particular POV; however, we should strictly follow this guideline regardless
of the nature of the change (especially when it comes to describing the
history of wikipedia and other notable people who are either directly
associated or have made major contributions to wikipedia) in order to
provide a proper example.
 On 11/10/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel Brandt is far from the first subject of a Wikipedia article to come
> along, find the article, and try to 'fix' it, edit it, delete it, or even
> boost themselves on it. And he won't be the last. As Wikipedia becomes
> more
> and more in the public eye, and as well-known people become more and more
> familiar with online things, we'll see it quite often.
>
> We should be more prepared for this. Do we even have a page to point
> people
> at if they are themselves the subject of a Wikipedia article, explaining
> how
> Wikipedia works when it comes to biographies of living persons, and how
> they
> should engage with Wikipedia to improve articles on themselves? If not, we
> should.
>
> We should also try and interact better ourselves with these people, and
> recognise that in most cases their intentions are not evil. They simply
> don't understand Wikipedia or the way it works, and thus misread and
> misinterpret what's going on.
>
> For instance, just yesterday I noticed that an anonymous contributor had
> repeatedly removed a piece from the article on a fairly well-known author.
> After several rounds of removing it, the anon created a userid and removed
> the info again, with an edit comment that the information was inaccurate.
> The username was clearly based on that author's name, so I contacted them
> asking if they really were the author in question or if they were a fan
> using the author's name. The author subsequently contacted me in email and
> verified their identity, and we discussed the issue; it turned out that
> the
> incident being removed was one where the author had been quoted in the
> press
> as having said things they insisted they had never said.
>
> I'm working on a peaceful resolution of this, and I'm very hopeful that it
> can be achieved.
>
> What concerns me is that for quite a few users, the very idea that a
> notable
> person was attempting to remove information from the article on themselves
> would have made them dig in their heels about Wikipedia's rights and
> freedoms, the information would have been kept in the article merely to
> spite the person, and no doubt threats of lawsuits and the like might have
> resulted. We should be aware that many times, if someone is attempting to
> change information in an article about themselves, it is because they
> honestly believe it to be inaccurate. Nutcases like Brandt aren't the
> norm.
>
> -Matt
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--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
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