I have supported many editathons and advised many academics on COI. Most academics are keen to edit openly, using their real identity, some have expressed the view that this is how to behave ethically on the internet. If they are likely to be a long term contributor, I strongly advise them to be pragmatic and use an anonymous account. If they make early blunders, or have a long break from editing, they can even throw away the account and have a clean start. This leaves them free to be frankly judged for NPOV as any other editor, without colouring their contributions by a preemptive COI statement. Academics are always going to want to edit in their field of research and contribute to articles about their projects, past projects and colleagues. Though we want expert editors[1] there is always a risk that they will be pestered by a wiki-gnome for adding a reference to a work they were part of editing, or contributed a paper to. I have seen articles languish as drafts for months because an expert in this situation was worried about being publicly challenged by COI claims, and so asked for others independently to review and make the go-live decision. A well run workshop will emphasize what COI is, and how difficult it is to write neutrally. Given that, I have almost always been impressed by how academics wanting to "tart up" their topic on Wikipedia are able to perfectly well stick to sources and write in a neutral style (I cannot say the same for undergrads!). * Key tip: Wikipedia is not academia.net or similar, so university/college profiles are almost never suitable to be "cut & paste" as stub biography articles. It is worth walking through creating a stub BLP as an early example in any academic editathon. Links 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_editors P.S. the date this email is posted to wikimediauk-l may be several days after being sent. On 16 April 2015 at 09:58, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae