IMO, taking the interested party has a NPOV, it's fine.

For example, a member of the Democrat Party is an interested part in the Democratic Party article, should they be able to edit it? Same goes for the NGS and Wikipedia.

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:

On 30/04/06, Peter Jacobi peter_jacobi@gmx.net wrote:

...

If didn't get this wrong, until now even interested parties are welcome, as long as they aim for NPOV -- with the notable exception of the autobiography clause.

And where does "interested party" start?

There are even topics so obscure ([[New Kadampa Tradition]] comes to my mind), that only vocal opponents and vocal proponents contribute. Should they already be considered "interested parties"? Shall we hope, that they will battle it out so that the result is NPOV?

A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder, employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider interested party to mean the party itself.

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I agree with Steve's definition of an interested party. In this context, that would basically apply to people who's jobs directly or indirectly depend on a political party's success. Politicians, fund raisers, a PR company that does most of its business for a party, a business that receives billions in goernment contracts. WIki has a nice article that covers most of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest

Joe Anderson computerjoe.mailinglist@googlemail.com wrote: IMO, taking the interested party has a NPOV, it's fine.

For example, a member of the Democrat Party is an interested part in the Democratic Party article, should they be able to edit it? Same goes for the NGS and Wikipedia.

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett wrote:

A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder, employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider interested party to mean the party itself.

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G'day Steve,

Actually I don't think we have a problem with people editing articles even if they do have a conflict of interest. It's better if they declare that conflict, of course. People editing articles about *themselves* seems to cause the most problems though, because they take changes so personally, and insist that they know themselves better than any published source could...

Of course, we also see it going the other way. A person's article is wrong, or concentrates too much on the trivial (e.g. Ian McKellan's sexuality), or is insulting. Someone comes along and fixes it, and gets reverted: "WP:AUTO! You vandal!"

And then you get people who'll insist that an article MUST remain the way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it to. People who just want to send a big "FUCK YOU" to anyone who would dare --- dare! --- criticise a Wikipedia article. Imagine if Seigenthaler had shown up and really *did* remove the defamatory sentence from his article, only to be reverted and blocked --- "don't edit your own article! Vandal!"

Moderation in all things. Ask Jimmy Wales what it's like to have an inaccurate bio of yourself on Wikipedia. Ask Chip Berlet what it's like to have most of your bio written by conspiracy nuts. I've never been notable enough for an article and (God willing) never will be, but if I were, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with stepping in to defend my own bio from vandalism and the rantings of fuckwits.

Steve Bennett-4 wrote:

And if instead of actually fixing the article directly, the injured party simply left a message on the talk page, and possibly at village pump or something too? No room for cries of vandal, and probably someone would quickly investigate and fix it.

You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

We should be more careful not to bite newbies, especially when we have...however inadvertent it might have been, and I'm AGFing here like crazy...caused them distress before they even arrive here. We do not exactly improve our general reputation by fostering an atmosphere which potentially allows people to insert damaging and downright mean disinformation into a biographical article, lie in wait for the subject should they turn up, and add insult to injury by castigating their well-meaning if naive efforts to correct the situation.

HTH HAND

Steve Bennett wrote:

Any idea how often people edit their own articles? That is, how frequently an outsider publicly makes it known that they are editing their own article? Once a day? Once a week? We could always have a set of processes for these situations, where users who are good with the kid gloves can take them by the hand and help them get the best out of an awkward situation. There is still the problem of becoming aware of these situations.

Agreed, fully, with both the problem and the general direction of a solution.

WP:OFFICE should be a last resort, and long before we get to that point, we need a way for non-partisan, good wikipedians, who (despite the userboxers and myspacers clogging up the system lately) are still very much in control of the project, to find and concentrate some very strong brainpower on these articles.

Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: Phil Boswell wrote:

You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

Bingo! Phil has it exactly right. The problem we are seeing, again and again, is this attitude that some poor victim of a biased rant in Wikipedia ought to not get pissed and take us up on our offer of "anyone can edit" but should rather immerse themselves in our arcane internal culture until they understand the right way to get things done.

I do not know what is going to change, but something BIG has got to happen and SOON about this issue, because the amount of time it is consuming for some of our best editors is getting way out of control.

I agree completely. The simplest and quickest BIG thing would be to make it VERY, UNEQUIVOCALLY clear that consensus only applies to policy and guidelines, not to article content. All to often, and despite the warning on the consensus page regarding groups taking over articles, admins use consensus as the deciding factor to keep a version of an article up that goes completely against verifiability or NPOV, violating NOR at the same time by accepting the claims, arguments, and votes of the group.~~~~Pro-Lick

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Mark Gallagher wrote:

And then you get people who'll insist that an article MUST remain the way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it to.

Such people should be beaten hard with the nearest available cluebat.

Moderation in all things.

Ok you are right. Such people should be beaten _moderately_ with the nearest available cluebat. ;-)

Vocal opponents in some situations may be "interested parties", such as:

- engaged in legal proceedings with the subject of the article - "professional" critics whose only notability (if any) is that they are critics of the subject of the article - people that run or manage a website or blog whose only purpose is to oppose, detract, or criticize the subject of the article

Nevertheless, I would point out that "interested parties" are only encouraged not to edit articles, not prohibited from doing so. Providing that an editor abides by the content policies of Wikipedia and he/she does that with civility, his/her edits should be welcome.

-- Jossi

On May 1, 2006, at 9:58 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder, employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider interested party to mean the party itself.

On May 3, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

The philosophy that NPOV is achieved by warring parties is one that I have always rejected, and in practice, I think we can easily see that it absolutely does not work.

Sometimes it *does* work, if there is a commitment to Wikipedia content policies.

In my experience in editing [[Prem Rawat]] ((Disclaimer: I am a student of his), and not-withstanding the sometimes contentious nature of the exchanges and the obvious lack of talk-page disciple, the article has amassed more than 130 citations over the two years it has been edited, most of which from scholarly articles, books and other reputable sources, making this article one of the best referenced articles in WP. If it was not for the efforts of interested parties, this would not have been achieved.

If editors (interested parties or not) abide by policy and make efforts to improve articles to make them more encyclopedic and NPOV, I see no problem.

I would argue that most articles are edited by interested parties, after all most of us got attracted to WP to address articles and subjects that we knew something about. In the beginning, and until one learns the ropes, one may do more harm than good, but in the long run and if the commitment is there, editors learn the power of NPOV and of the WP community to assert it and protect it against undesirable bias.

Finally, I personally don't see a way to enforce a ban on interested parties, rather prefer that we trust the power of the community of editors that care about this project to contain these situations and to welcome and coach newbies on the best ways to contribute.

-- Jossi