Steve Summit wrote
I'm sure this point got raised in the long thread, too, but: if declaring an interest excludes you from editing the very articles you want to edit, isn't that a sure-fire way of guaranteeing that no one declares their interests?
It doesn't do that. Editing with a real COI is strongly deprecated - what other line can we take? People may declare their interest with a user box, and then edit away; very common. There is such a large grey area, in which people say 'I have some interest here, but I'm not so conflicted that I can't edit straight', that it is de facto accepted that declarations of interest do not disqualify.
The real position on the ground is that people with serious COI do not edit well, when put under the pressure of a real edit war/dispute. This is well established, I think. The point of the guideline is to say: "you don't actually know what you are getting into here". Some experienced Wikipedians do know exactly what they are getting into, but still crash and burn in terms of their reputations.
Charles
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