[WikiEN-l] Anne Milton (was Re: Attack blogs in WP:LIVING articles)

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote

> What I believe is that if one has a potential conflict of interest
> then (a) it should be declared and (b) one should be prepared to leave
> the last word to others.  

There is no official line on declaring anything, of course. No way Wikipedia could ever advise anyone to post personal information on the Internet. Your point (b), naturally, could be a deterrent to doing (a). 

I will say that the general run of ArbCom cases involving various kinds of COI is not very encouraging to those who try to edit on through. I wouldn't say we rule out conflicted editors being good editors, at all, though. 

You do have to be that extra bit level-headed to cope with adversarial or partisan behaviour in others, when you yourself are that bit too close to the topic. We are just closing a case that illustrates this very well. (This implicitly answers 'what is it that one can actually do about conflict of interest on the site?'; it is the same as for clever rather than crude POV pushing - you'd better stay out of court, and compromise.)

Charles


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