On 19 September 2012 13:17, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote: Just for the record, there's a difference between paid editing and conflict of interest editing. One can easily have a conflict of interest without receiving any financial remuneration. Risker

2012/9/20 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>om>: Well.. English Wikipedia defines the conflict of interest on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_editing_on_Wikipedia "n the context of Wikipedia, conflict of interest editing is the editing of Wikipedia articles by people whose background means that their motives are likely to conflict with the encyclopedia's neutrality policy. Conflict of interest editing includes paid editing or paid advocacy, when employees, contractors, or those with financial connection to individuals, products, corporations, organizations, political campaigns or governments edit articles related to those subjects. Although these edits may often involve minor factual corrections and changes, significant media attention has revolved around the editing of articles which removes or downplays negative information and adds or highlights positive information by editors with a conflict of interest." "Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline states (as of 2012) that a conflict of interest (COI) is an "incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopaedia, and the aims of an individual editor," and that "COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." So, using Wikipedia for paid promoting of a city or a state by pushing placement of the links to the relevant articles on the main page of Wikipedia is or is not a conflict of interest? IMHO - at least potentially there is a conflict of interest. Bear in mind that there is quite long queue for "Did you know" section of main page. So, if you push your (paid) articles using your possition and authority in Wikipedia community, then other, less influential editors must wait longer or the articles nominated/written by them will never appear on the main page. I think the question can be fairly answered by checking how the process of selection happened in case of Gibraltar related articles - if there are proves that there was a kind of unfair advocacy - for example organizing a group of editors to bias the selection process we can say about conflict of interest and unfair behavior. I can't see the conflict of interest with providing paid QR-code based service with use of Wikipedia content - this is an external feature - and indeed anyone can organize it itself - but paid editing of Wikipedia which results in systematic bias on behalf of the contractor is quite obviously a conflict of interest. Is it possible to do paid editing without putting to Wikipedia systematic bias? Maybe in some cases yes - but IMHO there is very often such a danger even if the resulting articles as read separately are OK. -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 1:34 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Florence, This is the guidance I give on my own guide to "Why was my article deleted?" on en.wp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Seraphimblade/Deletion_FAQ#.7B.7Bdb-spam.…). It's not a policy, just an FAQ I put together, but this is what I have regarding the deletion of spam/ad articles. Some have told me they found it useful. {{db-spam}}, G11 The article is clearly written to promote a company, product, organization, website, or really is intended to promote anything. Articles must be neutral in tone, blatantly promotional material will be deleted immediately. While the subject might be suitable for an article if it otherwise passes the notability guidelines, you may not place an ad or puff piece here-period. We strongly discourage editors from editing articles on subjects they have a direct interest in promoting, including articles on the editor him/herself, the editor's company, the editor's employee or employer, the editor's band, etc. Such edits should first be discussed with editors who do not have a conflict of interest. I think a clearer policy on COI editing would be desirable. Personally, I would like to see a "hard line" approach taken, where COI and/or paid editing disclosure is a requirement rather than a suggested "best practice", such editors are restricted to talk page editing on a mandatory basis, and editors found to be editing with a COI or for pay and not fully disclosing it are banned immediately upon discovery. That's just my opinion though, and does not reflect current policy. Todd Allen/Seraphimblade, en.wp