Delirium wrote:
William Pietri wrote:
So if, say, the Ford Foundation wants to pay a dozen historians to write historical articles, I'm all for it. Right up to the point where they edit anything on the Ford Foundation or its funders.
This is a pretty vague definition, but yes, it's the sort of thing I wouldn't mind seeing expanded. Note that conflicts of interest can be very subtle, though. [...]
Yes, and I think again the journalistic approach is the appropriate one. Declare any interests that might be worrisome, avoid vigorously working on anything where you have a conflict, and absolutely don't go looking for new conflicts of interest.
If our article on [[autism]] was edited by someone paid by a company selling autism drugs, that's a pretty clear conflict of interest. But if it were edited by someone paid by a non-profit group like [[Cure Autism Now]], there would also be potential conflicts of interest; in particular, Cure Autism Now finds views that autism isn't a disease offensive, so would be prone to having those treated in an exclusively negative light if at all.
Right. And although the questions are endlessly complicated, I think the solution is simple. Interests are fine, especially when declared. Conflicts of interest, real or apparent, are forbidden. In practice, this means that if anybody raises a reasonable conflict-of-interest concern, especially one with a pecuniary motivation, the editor steps back and makes their suggestions on the talk page. And that we rule out obvious conflicts from the beginning, in exactly the same way the various journalistic codes of ethics I linked to do now.
William