[WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

[maru dubshinki]

On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.
>
> If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
> independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
> Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
> FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.
>
> Getting paid to add entries to Wikipedia by the subject of the entries
> is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest
> issues.
>
> --Jimbo

(Note that this screed is independent of any deal Jimmy and MyWikiBiz
may've come to).

This is an absurd block. He was writing perfectly fine, well-written,
*referenced* articles and has so far as I know scrupulously followed
the notability guidelines; would to God that we had a thousand more
like him, and could ditch the bottom thousand editors.  And you are
banning him because the conflict of interest *might* lead to POV? Have
the project abandoned AGF and the notion that one can write in a NPOV
fashion even if POV oneself?

Over Wikipedia's existence, there've been how many articles submitted
by people being paid or who might conceivably have a conflict of
interest?

Then let's get rid of anything politics related by  Katefan0 (who
you'll remember is a professional journalist covering politics - clear
conflict of interest there) or any of our resident academics who edits
articles relating to their expertise (I'd mention Carl Hewitt here,
but he's already banned for being incorrigibly self-centered). Or
closer to home, let's get rid of [[Fujiwara no Teika]], as the
Encyclopedia Project paid me to edit that article, or [[Encyclopedia
of the Brethren of Purity]] and [[Brethren of Purity]] (ditto). If we
require yet more victims for this witch-hunt and to feed our paranoia,
any article ever listed on the Bounty Board is suspect.

What I see here is a double standard: there's  a tiny wiff of a
problem and a user is indef banned, while vastly worse problems like
vandals and copyright violators at least get the courtesy of the
{{test}} templates.

~maru