On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
After a post here mentioned it, I went to WP:COI and WP:AUTO. These two articles seem to promote the view that you're not supposed to edit an article about yourself. However, WP:BLP seems to suggest that you can to remove libel or unsourced material, and it's a common refrain to complaints about Wikipedia, "why didn't you just fix the article yourself?"
A valid criticism.
I boldly added a Nutshell to AUTO:
[ This page in a nutshell: Avoid writing or editing an article about yourself, other than to correct errors of fact ]
Hopefully that will help move things in the direction of forwards.
It's a tiny step. It's not *bad*, but I don't think it'll help much either, because the real problem has always been one of emphasis. Just adding a sentence doesn't change the emphasis all that much; cumulatively, WP:AUTO and WP:COI still state in such strong terms that a user should not edit his own article that most if not all new users will conclude that they're not supposed to do it.
It's only going to be solved by going through both articles line by line and making it clear throughout them, not just in one sentence at the top, that it isn't meant to discourage fixing libel or unsourced statements. And I'm not going to (and can't) do it.
Besides, saying "other than to correct factual errors" interferes with another policy: verifiability, not truth. You aren't allowed to correct verifiable false information (and believe me, I argued against this one lots of times in WP:ATT).