Hi, Ray. You were speaking about groups, and I'm not sure to what extent you see me as in the groups. But the same issues have come up on the proposal talk page, so I'll take the opportunity to make my position clear.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
What really bothers me is the desire of some to keep such a tight control over the process. They appear frighteningly intent on rooting out every bit that they consider to be against the rules.
In my case, this is not puritanism or process wonkery. It's pragmatic. Journalists have a carefully evolved code of ethics around conflict of interest, and careful mechanisms to separate funding from conflict of interest. I believe we need roughly the same code and equivalent mechanisms, and for basically the same reasons.
[...] Sometimes these people who take strong anti-corporate, anti-commercial attitudes strike me as though they just haven't thought things through, and I end up defending corporations. :-[
For the record, I am neither anti-corporate nor anti-commercial. I've been in business for myself for a decade, and a large fraction of my family runs or has run their own businesses. I make most of my money producing intellectual property for pay, and a portion of that is writing for pay. I have also written for paid publication, and I'm sure I'll do more. I think writing for pay is great. I think people should be able to write on Wikipedia for pay -- as long as that money goes through the Foundation in a way that creates a Chinese wall.
I think we are people who are trying to serve the public. We need to be fair, and we need to be seen as fair. Professionals who depend on that all have rules about who they can take money from. Journalists, who we are most akin to, have very strict rules. We ignore their example at our peril.
William