On 3/5/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But if someone is being paid to write on a given topic, I find it difficult to understand how that's *not* a conflict of interest.
I find it difficult to understand how the conflict of interest *matters*[1]. As everyone knows, WP is full of crap. Not 100%, but some high proportion. The existence of crap has never bothered us before, and there's every reason to believe that paid, COI edits would still be an improvement, especially if they involve creating new articles.
It would be bad if someone created an article that survived a long time before being noticed and terminated by the AfD mob. It would be bad if someone removed "good" text in favour of some company-preferred "bad" text. It would be bad if a company put significant time and effort into subverting our processes (like AfD or consensus) to achieve their own goals.
However, adding well-copywritten, non-copyright-violating, vaguely NPOV, useful text, even if done with a blatant COI - I don't see the problem.
Steve [1] The acknowledged *perception* of COI aside...