[WikiEN-l] More about PR firms - First post here by myself

[Michelle D'israeli]

Hello all,

My appologies if the subject line appears more convuluted than strictly needed, the posting guide seemed to suggest something like it. Unfortunately I know I wouldn't be able to keep up with the list, so you'll forgive me for not subscribing.

Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me - have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into. Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't really go have a look :(

As has been mentioned a few times, there is the "Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest" proposal that is being slowly worked upon. However before any further mention occurs, it does have to be pointed out that this is very much a working document that is still rather in the preliminary ideas stage. Please remember when viewing this proposal and the associated talk page that it is clearly not complete yet, although we'd like to get that fixed!

In many respects, this whole issue appears to be one of ethics. As WAS 4.250 said on the aforementioned talk page, you could argue that ultimately this is a case of Verifiability and Neutral Point of View. As long as these two policies are met, no one would be any the wiser if this were to happen from an anonymous account. However recient events have reminded us that paid editors and others with a conflict of interest may try to use the community process in unethical ways, and Sheldon Rampton has reminded us here that it's not just about positive comments on your own article, it's also about negative entries in those of competitors.

One thing being discussed on the COI discussion is that there are other forms of conflict of interest. This raises far more interesting ethical questions, since not all such conflicts are automatically bad. As we understand it, wikipedia would actually be benifited from experts within a field updating related articles, as long as they avoid original research! But on the other hand, there is a matter of trust inherant in such things. An example given for a situation in which some people may feel uncomfortable about giving that trust would be a christian group editing articles on evolution and inteligent design.

So far much of the COI talk we have done has focused upon procedures for new articles, with a current rough leaning towards consensus acceptance being needed. We should really try and steer some discussion off towards the problem with editing existing articles. Not only is this potentially more damaging, but it represents a compromise between article integrity and article improvement. Whilst it would be nice to believe that every request for work placed on the corresponding talk page would get answered (or rejected, if needed), I seriously doubt this would happen in a timely manner without an additional system to draw attention to the work request. Perhaps I'm just bitter and jaded (for reasons not relating to wikipedia), but in general I've found people would rather others who they see as being 'able' to do the work do it themselves rather than ask for it to be done. I suspect some of the issues with editing existing articles would be mitigated by a stable article system, which would allow for the work to be done, but verified before being accepted.

I've ran out of steam now, so I'll stop. I'll keep an eye on the list, and you can get back to me at this address, my talk page (user talk:LinaMishima) or on the COI discussion. I'm off to move the key points from the thread here to the COI discussion...

~Mish, LinaMishima
Michelle D'israeli