Marc Riddell wrote:
(from the "Act Independently" section of http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)
We ignore their historically evolved and time-tested solution at our great peril.
We seem to have strayed from Jaap Vermeulen's original inquiry. I still support his ability to receive compensation for his editing. As always, I am going to assume good faith.
Sorry, but I guess I wasn't clear enough.
Jaap's question is, as the subject line says, whether editing for payment of articles related to the payee is a fundamentally problematic conflict of interest. My answer is yes, absolutely.
Further, in many ways, we are in the same situation as journalists. Our product only has value to the extend that we have the trust of the public. That means that we need both to actually be trustworthy and to avoid situations whose appearance would undermine trust. Journalists have been wrestling with these issues for many decades, and we can and should learn from them. That's why I posted the relevant snipped from the SPJ ethics code.
Unfortunately, the assumption of good faith isn't relevant when making this decision. That's a mechanism to defuse conflict and build working relationships. Jaap is obviously acting in good faith. But I have even talked with PR people who were spamming Wikipedia in good faith. They honestly thought that their links and promotional text were true and useful to readers, so there was no harm in including them. The assumption of good faith means that we should be kind to them, to treat them amicably, and to educate them. But it does not and must not mean that we allow the integrity of the encyclopedia to be compromised.
By the way, Jaap, many thanks for being very public about this. A fine demonstration not just of good faith, but good sense.
William
P.S. For those curious, I ran across a nice collection of journalistic ethics codes:
http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=387