I don't know if this is a broadly shared opinion, but like Rupert, I think this is too difficult to step-in as an organisation. This is in particular true if you want to do it on an international/multi-language level.
GLAMs, which are the organisations we want to treasure, are impacted among others. Read this report from Switzerland for example: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2014/Contents/Sw...
This is of course the duty of each language community to decide how to deal with this thematic. However, Mediawiki can play a role by helping to achieve as much as possible transparency. That the reason why I think these concrete propositions are discussion worth.
I strongly believe that if the tool allows us to better take in consideration and track "Corporate personhood" contributions then the whole debate will be far less passionate, easier to conduct, and at the end better solutions will emerge.
Emmanuel
Le 22/02/2014 16:25, rupert THURNER a écrit :
could wmf please extend the mediawiki software in the following way:
- it should knows "groups"
- allow users to store an arbitrary number of groups with their profile
- allow to select one of the "group"s joined to an edit when saving
- add a checkbox "COI" to an edit, meaning "potential conflict of interest"
- display and filter edits marked with COI in a different color in history
views 6. display and filter edits done for a group in a different color in history views 7. allow members of a group to receive notifications done on the group page, or when a group is mentioned in an edit/comment/talk page.
reason: currently it is quite cumbersome to participate as an organisation. it is quite cumbersome for people as well to detect COI edits. the most prominent examples are employees of the wikimedia foundation, and GLAMs. users tend to create multiple accounts, and try to create "company accounts". the main reason for this behaviour are (examples, but of course valid general):
- have a feedback page / notification page for the swiss federal archive
for other users
- make clear that an edit is done private or as wmf employee
this then would allow the community to create new policies, e.g. the german community might cease using company accounts, and switch over to this system. this proposal is purely technical. current policies can still be applied if people do not need something else, e.g. wmf employees may continue to use "sue gardner (wmf)" accounts.
what you think?