On 10 Nov 2006 at 20:30, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Asking someone to "avoid" participating does not imply disallowing that participation. It only warns them that this sometimes leads to conflicts. If Angela participates in a discussion about deleting an article about her why should anyone object. Her wiki work has made her notable, but the final decision on this is not hers. I have no reason to believe that her comments will be other than within the bounds of acceptable editing. What would be a conflict of interest would be for her to exercise her influence with the highest levels of WMF as the basis for either including or excluding an article about her.
It seems to all depend on just how the affected party goes about such participation. If they simply write a polite, courteous, concise piece contributing an explanation of why, from their openly noted perspective of involvement in the article's subject, they believe the article should be [kept | deleted | etc.], then there's no reason to object, especially if the conflict-of-interest is noted and acknowledged and the comments are not formatted in the style of a "vote", but rather as information to contribute to the discussion.
On the other hand, if somebody comes into such discussions with a chip on their shoulder, makes long rants about how evil Wikipedia and Wikipedians are because they don't all automatically take the "right" side on the issue, makes personal attacks and legal threats, brings in sockpuppets and meatpuppets to "vote" along with them, and replies to any criticism with further rants which lead to flame wars and pissing contests that make the AfD page in question a mile long and with an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio, then they are not making a very constructive contribution.
I'm not sure what sort of rule, guideline, or policy could be made that encourages the former while discouraging the latter.
On 11/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
On 10 Nov 2006 at 20:30, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Asking someone to "avoid" participating does not imply disallowing that participation. It only warns them that this sometimes leads to conflicts. If Angela participates in a discussion about deleting an article about her why should anyone object. Her wiki work has made her notable, but the final decision on this is not hers. I have no reason to believe that her comments will be other than within the bounds of acceptable editing. What would be a conflict of interest would be for her to exercise her influence with the highest levels of WMF as the basis for either including or excluding an article about her.
It seems to all depend on just how the affected party goes about such participation. If they simply write a polite, courteous, concise piece contributing an explanation of why, from their openly noted perspective of involvement in the article's subject, they believe the article should be [kept | deleted | etc.], then there's no reason to object, especially if the conflict-of-interest is noted and acknowledged and the comments are not formatted in the style of a "vote", but rather as information to contribute to the discussion.
On the other hand, if somebody comes into such discussions with a chip on their shoulder, makes long rants about how evil Wikipedia and Wikipedians are because they don't all automatically take the "right" side on the issue, makes personal attacks and legal threats, brings in sockpuppets and meatpuppets to "vote" along with them, and replies to any criticism with further rants which lead to flame wars and pissing contests that make the AfD page in question a mile long and with an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio, then they are not making a very constructive contribution.
I'm not sure what sort of rule, guideline, or policy could be made that encourages the former while discouraging the latter.
Maybe a rule/guideline/policy against ranting about how evil Wikipedia is, against making personal attacks, against making legal threats, against using sockpuppets to "vote"?
Is there a rule against ranting about how evil Wikipedia is?
Anthony
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 10 Nov 2006 at 20:30, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Asking someone to "avoid" participating does not imply disallowing that participation. It only warns them that this sometimes leads to conflicts. If Angela participates in a discussion about deleting an article about her why should anyone object. Her wiki work has made her notable, but the final decision on this is not hers. I have no reason to believe that her comments will be other than within the bounds of acceptable editing. What would be a conflict of interest would be for her to exercise her influence with the highest levels of WMF as the basis for either including or excluding an article about her.
It seems to all depend on just how the affected party goes about such participation. If they simply write a polite, courteous, concise piece contributing an explanation of why, from their openly noted perspective of involvement in the article's subject, they believe the article should be [kept | deleted | etc.], then there's no reason to object, especially if the conflict-of-interest is noted and acknowledged and the comments are not formatted in the style of a "vote", but rather as information to contribute to the discussion.
This is all fair enough, but the distinction between casting a vote and information is a bit hairsplitting. To the extent that anyone is voting it is after all only one vote, and in a hotly contested request it's importance will be marginalized.
On the other hand, if somebody comes into such discussions with a chip on their shoulder, makes long rants about how evil Wikipedia and Wikipedians are because they don't all automatically take the "right" side on the issue, makes personal attacks and legal threats, brings in sockpuppets and meatpuppets to "vote" along with them, and replies to any criticism with further rants which lead to flame wars and pissing contests that make the AfD page in question a mile long and with an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio, then they are not making a very constructive contribution.
When all this stuff happens conflict of interest is put on the back burner because all of these more serious problems have come into play. As with the more civilised participant, their vote (sockpuppets excluded) is still only one vote. The more outrageous the comments the less they need responses; they speak for themselves in more ways than simply expressing the person's stand on the issue. If they are outrageous enough they may drive voters to the other side.
I'm not sure what sort of rule, guideline, or policy could be made that encourages the former while discouraging the latter.
It doesn't need more rules. Just deal with evident bad behaviour as what it is. Adding more rules instead of relying on the existing ones only serves to ensnare editors who already behave themselves in a web of legalisms.
Ec