Hello all,
My appologies if the subject line appears more convuluted than strictly needed, the
posting guide seemed to suggest something like it. Unfortunately I know I wouldn't be
able to keep up with the list, so you'll forgive me for not subscribing.
Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me - have the Germans
discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of the game on a number of points, from what
i've bumped into. Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't
really go have a look :(
As has been mentioned a few times, there is the "Wikipedia:Conflicts of
interest" proposal that is being slowly worked upon. However before any further
mention occurs, it does have to be pointed out that this is very much a working document
that is still rather in the preliminary ideas stage. Please remember when viewing this
proposal and the associated talk page that it is clearly not complete yet, although
we'd like to get that fixed!
In many respects, this whole issue appears to be one of ethics. As WAS 4.250 said on the
aforementioned talk page, you could argue that ultimately this is a case of Verifiability
and Neutral Point of View. As long as these two policies are met, no one would be any the
wiser if this were to happen from an anonymous account. However recient events have
reminded us that paid editors and others with a conflict of interest may try to use the
community process in unethical ways, and Sheldon Rampton has reminded us here that
it's not just about positive comments on your own article, it's also about
negative entries in those of competitors.
One thing being discussed on the COI discussion is that there are other forms of conflict
of interest. This raises far more interesting ethical questions, since not all such
conflicts are automatically bad. As we understand it, wikipedia would actually be
benifited from experts within a field updating related articles, as long as they avoid
original research! But on the other hand, there is a matter of trust inherant in such
things. An example given for a situation in which some people may feel uncomfortable about
giving that trust would be a christian group editing articles on evolution and inteligent
design.
So far much of the COI talk we have done has focused upon procedures for new articles,
with a current rough leaning towards consensus acceptance being needed. We should really
try and steer some discussion off towards the problem with editing existing articles. Not
only is this potentially more damaging, but it represents a compromise between article
integrity and article improvement. Whilst it would be nice to believe that every request
for work placed on the corresponding talk page would get answered (or rejected, if
needed), I seriously doubt this would happen in a timely manner without an additional
system to draw attention to the work request. Perhaps I'm just bitter and jaded (for
reasons not relating to wikipedia), but in general I've found people would rather
others who they see as being 'able' to do the work do it themselves rather than
ask for it to be done. I suspect some of the issues with editing existing articles would
be mitigated by a stable article system, which would allow for the work to be done, but
verified before being accepted.
I've ran out of steam now, so I'll stop. I'll keep an eye on the list, and you
can get back to me at this address, my talk page (user talk:LinaMishima) or on the COI
discussion. I'm off to move the key points from the thread here to the COI
discussion...
~Mish, LinaMishima
Michelle D'israeli