Ed Poor wrote:

I think Jimbo mentioned last month that there is a problem with self-written biographies: other contributors may be excessively reluctant to 'contradict' the person who presumably knows himself best. This issue arose over the Sheldon Rampton article, although it little or no problem for the William Connelley article.

Jimbo expressed his opinion that this might be a problem, but he didn't offer any evidence to support his opinion, and he didn't propose any policy for dealing with it. Jimbo's theory was that people might be reluctant to contradict an article about me to which I have contributed, but his _reasons_ for thinking this were inconsistent:

(1) Jimbo thought people might not want to risk clashing with me, based perhaps on a perception that I have been combative on this listserv. There are several reasons, however, why this assertion doesn't hold up under scrutiny. To begin with, most Wikipedians don't subscribe to the listserv. Furthermore, there is no particular reason to expect that most Wikipedians consult an article's history before editing it, so many people wouldn't even _know_ whether I have edited the Sheldon Rampton article before undertaking their own edits. In fact, seven different people have made edits to the Sheldon Rampton article since I first contributed to it.

(2) The other issue, which Ed raises here, is whether other contributors would be "excessively reluctant to contradict the person who presumably knows himself best." This is indeed a bit of a dilemma, but the problem isn't in way unique to articles that happen to be self-referential. The same question would arise if someone with a PhD in biochemistry contributed to an article about serotonin, or a musicologist contributed to an article about Mozart. The fact is that people without special knowledge about a topic _should_ be somewhat careful about contradicting someone with special knowledge -- which of course doesn't mean that they should refrain entirely, just that they should be careful. But does Wikipedia want to adopt a _general_ policy that says people should make a special effort to avoid contributing to topics on which they have special knowledge, for fear of inhibiting lay contributors? That would be bizarre, and I think it would be equally bizarre to adopt that policy with regard to biographical articles.

(3) Perhaps the best argument against self-written biographies is that we all have a strong point of view about ourselves. There might be a problem with someone inserting a passionately slanted biography about himself and then adamantly defending it against all contrary points of view. However, I don't see any evidence that this is a worse problem than other POV conflicts that occur on Wikipedia, and in practice thus far it seems to be rare.

Interestingly, the concerns expressed in points (1) and (2) above could be entirely eliminated simply by adopting a policy that says people should contribute _anonymously_ whenever they contribute to a biography of themselves. If I had adopted some user name other than "Sheldon Rampton" when I contributed to the Sheldon Rampton article, no one would worry about clashing with me or about the presumption that I "know myself best." This, however, would come at the price of less transparency, and as a general rule I think transparency is a good thing.

As another interesting aside, the Disinfopedia recently had an exchange with Philip Stott, a British professor who is profiled there. Stott himself made a number of contributions to the Philip Stott article, and I think his participation improved it. Moreover, I saw no evidence that people who disagree with Stott's self-assessment were at all reluctant to contradict him. If people want to see how that article has developed to date, they can read it at the following URL:

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Philip_Stott

Having said all this, I think there _is_ a potential problem with "vanity biographies," but this is really just a special case under Wikipedia's NPOV policy. It might be a good idea to have a policy against people _creating_ biographies of themselves, even though this would be impossible in practice to enforce.