Who Cares wrote:

On 1/28/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

Handled correctly this could be a PR benefit for WP.

Not long ago I expressed my opinion that our view toward Conflicts of Interest was not a workable one. I'm also of the view that any severe

action against editors who are paid to clean up a company's article, will only drive such activities underground.

I think that we need to establish a right of defence or rebuttal (or whatever we want to call it). This would allow anyone who is directly

affected by the article a place to defend his point of view. This could

probably be done in a template that is linked from the page in question. The person or company affected would have the exclusive right

to make substantive edits to that template. The result would be a section that is the person's view on the issue; if they want to make a

radical departure from the truth that would be their right within that

context. If the subject tries to put the same information in the main

body of the article that would be subject to the usual meat-grinder rules.

I'm sure that we will have a few of our own dinosaurs complaining that

they should have the right to edit everything, and that having such pages would be tremendously unwiki, but I think that giving any person

the opportunity to defend himself should improve Wikipedia's image as one of fairness.

A few simple rules may be necessary for these persons.

1. The writer must be the person himself or have the right to speak

on behalf of the person 2. The writer must be registered and properly identified. 3. All that he writes is subject to GFDL 4. The financial arrangements between the writer and the person are

not our concern. 5. We reserve the right to limit the length of submissions to prevent long-winded rants.

Um... why? If we write the article as well as we should, they will not have any valid reason to complain, and I refuse to think that we should be hosting blatantly untrue things under the guise of the subject defending himself. Do we really want the White House telling us about how everyone who disagrees with them is a terrorist-lover, in their own page where nobody is allowed to remove the content, or even register disagreement?

Think of it as a parallel to User pages. The purpose would parallel that structure in many ways. The prospect that we will write the article so well that they will have no reason to complain is unrealistic. I would not make the presumption that what these people will write will be so blatantly untrue. On the other hand, how do we prevent other writers from creating an article that is biased against the company. This can easily happen with people who are focused on the company's failings.. If what a company says about itself is really outrageous they'll ruin their own image. If George Bush did what you suggest the demands on the server would be more than we could handle. It is not unusual for people to say that the media, including us, misinterpret them. This would give them the opportunity to "set the record straght". If they take that as an opportunity to make fools of themselves we can't be blamed for that. :-)

Ec