MSNBC articles aren't policy pages. Quoting policy pages excessively is rules lawyering. Quoting MSNBC articles as if they are policy is just ridiculous. Ryan On 4/29/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi(a)gmx.net> wrote:

I'm guessing he was talking about biographical articles, for which that does sound like a pretty good general rule. It's already an informal rule that the subjects of biographies have to be super careful if they ever try to edit their own articles, and I'm pretty sure we were already discouraging it outright. And on the other hand, given that Jimbo's been devoting a lot of attention to excessively derogatory biographical articles lately, I can see the point that editors with a strong negative bias are potentially an even bigger problem there than in other contentious articles. And of course biographies about politicians -- which I now see is what the MSNBC article was about -- have their own special degrees of contention.

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(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Joe Anderson [[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.

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(a)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: --------------------------------- New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.

On 01/05/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill(a)yahoo.com> wrote: 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... Steve

G'day Steve, 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. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.2/329 - Release Date: 2/05/2006

Steve Bennett-4 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? 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 -- Phil -- Phil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/%22should-not-be-written-by-an-interested-party%22-t1… Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.

Peter Jacobi 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. I would prefer to have no article on [[New Kadampa Tradition]] than to have one which is a constant battleground for partisans, taking up huge amounts of times of good editors, legal people, and me. What is preferred, of course, is that thoughtful, reasonable people who know something about the subject interact in a helpful way to seek common ground. -- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################

Phil Boswell wrote: 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. That is a very brilliant statement. And we need to recognize that this is an accurate statement of the facts of a great many of the problem cases that end up in WP:OFFICE. Not everyone is a wikipedian, and some of these non-wikipedians are using Wikipedia to troll other people. We need to find a new way. -- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################

Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Phil Boswell wrote: 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 --------------------------------- Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.

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