On 8/22/06, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
I realize that Wikipedia's existing policies have a lot of history and inertia behind them, but I have long felt that the policy against self-editing is problematic. I think it should be revised to the following:
Editing an article about yourself or your client is permitted, under certain conditions: -- CREATING articles about yourself or your client is not allowed, only editing of existing articles. -- Self-editing is allowed if limited to adding or correcting noncontroversial facts. For example, if the article about me gives an incorrect date of birth, I should be allowed to correct it. -- People should not self-edit when dealing with controversial or disputed facts or interpretations. Any such disputes should be addressed on the talk page and left to others to resolve, and can be submitted to arbitration if they are not satisfactorily resolved. -- People who wish to edit an article about themselves or their client are strongly encouraged to do so transparently, by disclosing that they are editing an article about themselves on the article's talk page.
This is already largely the case. The autobiography guidelines don't forbid all editing related to one's self or related persons/activities and in fact explicitly mention the kind of uncontroversial editing you bring up as acceptable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autobiography
The problem with the current policy is that is is gradually expanding into an umbrella that excludes whole classes of people from participating in Wikipedia. Members of the U.S. Congress and their staffs were banned (although they could easily circumvent the ban by simply editing from their homes rather than their offices). Now we're talking about restricting PR firms. It's easy to come up with other classes of people who could also be restricted from editing on similar grounds. What about lobbyists? Employees of think tanks? Trade associations? Labor unions? Should Christian missionaries and clergy be told not to edit articles about Christianity?
I'd say it depends. Any editor who can write neutrally -- so that no one can tell which point of view they hold, so that they don't seem to be pushing any particular POV, so that they are receptive to criticism and feedback -- I don't have a problem with. When they become obvious or disruptive in their attempts to impose their views, and through that it becomes clear they have a conflict of interest, that is a problem; perhaps we should be quicker to restrict those with obvious potential conflicts of any sort from editing where their editing has been problematic.
A restriction on editing "articles about yourself or your client" is also a poor fit with the problem that the current policy is attempting to solve, because some PR firms do work that is not about their client but rather aimed at attacking their client's COMPETITORS. One example that we wrote about recently involved a PR firm which circulated a claim that Apple's video iPods were dangerous to children because they could be used to download and view pornography. The client in this case was Sony, which makes a rival MP3 player. But how would you enforce a policy that says PR firms working for Sony can't edit Wikipedia articles about Apple products?
The same way we enforce policy saying that PR firms working for Sony can't edit articles about Sony; the same way we enforce the general policy stating that if your sole purpose is to push a certain point of view that you will be disinvited from the project. (Which is to say -- unevenly, spottily, sometimes through long and painful processes, on a case-by-case basis, but once it is spotted it is usually looked upon disfavorably and the editors involved restricted or banned.)
Another recent example: the DCI Group, a PR firm whose clients include Exxon, recently got caught anonymously circulating a video on YouTube that mocked Al Gore's activism on global warming. Al Gore was not their client, and the video didn't mention Exxon at all. But does it make sense to have a policy that says employees of PR firms can't edit articles about politicians?
Preventing this sort of thing from happening on Wikipedia would require a policy that forbids people who work for PR firms not only from editing articles about their clients, but also from editing articles about any topics of potential interest to their clients. A policy of this nature would be so vague that it would be a nightmare to enforce -- especially since many PR firms do not disclose their client lists.
On the other hand, a policy that requires PR firms to be transparent about disclosing whenever they edit an article related to a client or a client's interests, coupled with the restrictions that I outlined above, would be reasonably enforceable. PR firms would be discouraged from anonymous or POV editing by the strong possibility that they would be identified and embarrassed for doing so.
I would prefer that PR firms do not edit in mainspace at all, but confine themselves to talk pages, where indeed they should identify themselves if they are at all ethical, or risk embarrassment. The goal of a PR firm is pretty basically not compatible with NPOV; while the basic information they have to spread may be valuable, any contributions made by them would need careful checking to minimize the effect of outside entities trying to compromise our neutrality. In talk space at least they are simply suggestions to be acted on as time permits rather than something being presented to the reader as encyclopedic material. No, we cannot identify all of them, but we don't want to give the impression that this is something we want or will allow if only someone will jump through enough hoops to do it.
We are already an incredibly attractive target for those who have a view to push; they know about us and how to game us and aren't going to disclose their biases if they think they can get away with not doing so, policy or not. (Indeed, I've seen enough who try to deny their association when called on it.) I worry about what will be allowed to slip in if we do not explicitly take a stand against it. That we have to rely on the judgment of our editors to determine when our policies are being violated instead of having a nice clean line to draw makes it difficult, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
-Kat