charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Steve Summit wrote
I'm sure this point got raised in the long thread, too, but: if declaring an interest excludes you from editing the very articles you want to edit, isn't that a sure-fire way of guaranteeing that no one declares their interests?
It doesn't do that. Editing with a real COI is strongly deprecated - what other line can we take? People may declare their interest with a user box, and then edit away; very common. There is such a large grey area, in which people say 'I have some interest here, but I'm not so conflicted that I can't edit straight', that it is de facto accepted that declarations of interest do not disqualify.
The real position on the ground is that people with serious COI do not edit well, when put under the pressure of a real edit war/dispute. This is well established, I think. The point of the guideline is to say: "you don't actually know what you are getting into here". Some experienced Wikipedians do know exactly what they are getting into, but still crash and burn in terms of their reputations.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by COI---if you mean say merely a financial conflict of interest then that's tenable, but there are plenty of others that would seem to disqualify whole slews of editors, especially experts in the subject. For example, artificial intelligence (my area) is a very contentious field, and people within it disagree strongly about what in the field is notable or worth pursuing, and even disagree about how to narrate its history. I think it would be reasonable to say that anyone who is an active AI researcher has a conflict of interest when it comes to editing AI-related articles, and yet our articles wouldn't get very far if all AI researchers had to recuse themselves!
Something similar comes up with people of a particular nationality editing articles related to that country, especially when it's involved in a diplomatic dispute...
-Mark