Hi all,
As you may have heard http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=5179, I am now a full-time, permanent staff member at the US National Archives employed to work on Wikipedia initiatives. This makes me, even more clearly so than previous Wikipedians in Residence which are often temporary workers or interns, a paid editor.
I have rewritten my user page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dominicon Wikimedia projects where I am active to reflect my job (and position with my chapter). I am publishing my entire job description on Wikipedia. I have also written a somewhat lengthy FAQhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dominic/FAQabout my personal history, motivations, and what I will and will not be doing as a paid editor. This statement has been approved by NARA, so it represents their intentions as an agency as well as my personal thoughts. I would encourage you to read it.
I realize that this is going well beyond the conflict of interest statement we usually suggest of cultural professionals editing Wikipedia. I'm essentially doing this for two reasons. First, out of an abundance of caution, I would like to demonstrate a high level of transparency and thoughtfulness, since I am a very public example of being a paid editor. Second, I am hoping that the way I have expressed the rationale for my participation on Wikimedia projects can be an exemplar, both for prospective GLAM partners interested in best practices, and for the Wikipedia community, which is probably sorely in need of positive examples of non-advocacy paid editing right now.
To that end, I'd be interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this approach generally or specifically on the statements I've published. I am still willing any necessary changes if you have a good suggestion.
Dominic
Il 2013-10-30 22:35 Dominic McDevitt-Parks ha scritto:
Hi all,
As you may have heard [1], I am now a full-time, permanent staff member at the US National Archives employed to work on Wikipedia initiatives. This makes me, even more clearly so than previous Wikipedians in Residence which are often temporary workers or interns, a paid editor.
[...]
I realize that this is going well beyond the conflict of interest statement we usually suggest of cultural professionals editing Wikipedia.
Dominic, first of all congratulations!
I am employed at the Ministry of Culture in Italy and I occasionally contribute to Wikipedia content where I clearly have a conflict of interest (e.g. museums or archaeological sites where I work), so can I ask you to point me to the "conflict of interest statement" that you mention above?
I think your approach is correct, and more transparency can only do good.
Ciao Stefano
There are a few examples of Conflict of Interest statements around; I recently posted one here, for use by GLAM professionals attending a Wikipedia Loves Libraries editathon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sarasays/COI
Might it make sense to provide an example (or a few multilingual examples) as part of the existing GLAMwiki documentation? Or maybe there is already one out there somewhere and I have missed it...
Sara
-----Original Message----- From: glam-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:glam-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Costa Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 9:28 AM To: glam@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [GLAM] My conflict of interest statement
Il 2013-10-30 22:35 Dominic McDevitt-Parks ha scritto:
Hi all,
As you may have heard [1], I am now a full-time, permanent staff member at the US National Archives employed to work on Wikipedia initiatives. This makes me, even more clearly so than previous Wikipedians in Residence which are often temporary workers or interns, a paid editor.
[...]
I realize that this is going well beyond the conflict of interest statement we usually suggest of cultural professionals editing Wikipedia.
Dominic, first of all congratulations!
I am employed at the Ministry of Culture in Italy and I occasionally contribute to Wikipedia content where I clearly have a conflict of interest (e.g. museums or archaeological sites where I work), so can I ask you to point me to the "conflict of interest statement" that you mention above?
I think your approach is correct, and more transparency can only do good.
Ciao Stefano
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On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 9:35 AM, Snyder, Sara SnyderS@si.edu wrote:
There are a few examples of Conflict of Interest statements around; I recently posted one here, for use by GLAM professionals attending a Wikipedia Loves Libraries editathon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sarasays/COI Might it make sense to provide an example (or a few multilingual examples) as part of the existing GLAMwiki documentation? Or maybe there is already one out there somewhere and I have missed it...
Particularly in light of the current discussions regarding paid editing (to which I've contributed several efforts asking for a definition of "paid editing" to which most seem uninterested), I think it's important to come up with a definition among the GLAM community, recognizing that it might go against the kind of black-and-white definitions that some want to propose (e.g. "any editing done with any benefit is a COI" - which I think is ridiculous).
One of the problems is that there are not enough examples. The situation is so complex because there are so many variants - and I think it's necessary to cover as many as we can.
Bob