[WikiEN-l] Discrimination on Wikipedia

[Gregory Kohs]

Matt Brown writes:

>Missing one important proviso: public relations workers are quite
>welcome to edit wikipedia in a personal capacity. What has been
>prohibited is editing Wikipedia on behalf of a paying client.

Again, see the case of [[Arch Coal]].  Nobody paid or received any
compensation for the authorship of that article.  Still, Jimmy Wales deleted
it and banned the original author.  These quotes from Jimmy Wales don't
sound too welcoming to public relations workers, regardless of their
potential desires to edit from a "personal capacity":

"I deleted the articles and banned Kellen Communications from contributing.
I think that PR-firms editing in a community space is deeply unethical..."

"I think the article is a travesty of NPOV. I am glad that it is undeleted
so that people can see. It is corporate fluff."  (Once again, this was
regarding an article about [[Arch Coal]] that the community eventually
reconstituted into Wikipedia, and for which no money changed hands.
Nonetheless, the user was still banned for 30 years.)

The more excuses and explanations that the community comes up with, the more
obvious it is that you're avoiding the real issue.  Wikipedia unilaterally
has chosen to discriminate against non-volunteer activity in the article
space, despite the likely fact that the credentials and income sources of
90% of editors are never questioned or verified by the community or the
Wikimedia Foundation.  Only those who state that they are being paid in some
way are excluded.  I would argue that if you looked at the original authors
of the New Pages in Wikipedia, 90% had some financial or career "conflict of
interest" that could be found if everyone was exposed to a background
check.  You'd also be interested to know that a public relations firm called
Schwartz Communications created their own article in Wikipedia, and it was
defended for some time by the Wikipedia community.  Why?  Schwartz did some
amorphous pro-bono work for the Wikimedia Foundation.  Talk about a conflict
of interest!

People who have never purchased or sold a pet skunk are unlikely to start an
article about [[Pet skunks]].  The ones who do start such articles don't
seem to get questioned about their income sources, investigated, or banned,
though.  Seems that there's a different standard when an article is about a
corporate entity.  That's discrimination.

-- 
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354