On 8/1/12 1:51 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Yann Forget, 01/08/2012 13:13:
I have suggested some basic rules about this on
the French WP, but not
only they were blankly rejected, but I was barred from mentioning the
whole subject. The first step against CoI is making the editors
conscious that, because of their profession, background, culture,
etc., they may have a bias on a subject.
We regularly discuss this in the Italian community about the so called
subject matter experts, reegularly coming to the conclusion that we
surely make it clear that their opinions/original research is not
welcome (it regularly gets deleted), the question is whether thay can
find a way to contribute or they're unrecoverable.
I think it can work well, if the Wikipedia manages to develop a core of
"expert" editors in an area who also understand Wikipedia norms, and can
spread that culture. On the English Wikipedia this works reasonably well
in some of the scientific and mathematical areas, where most of the
involved academics understand that they need to cite third-party
reliable sources for statements (increasingly true in the history
editing as well, I believe). On the other hand, there is still some CoI
that goes on now and then, with people writing articles to promote their
own findings (or even an article on their lab, university, or themselves).
-Mark