On 3/5/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)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...