[WikiEN-l] David is on Channel 4 tonight re MS issue

[George Herbert]

On 1/26/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 26/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this
> >> sort of thing?
> >
> > I see your point, but I'm imagining what the sort of minds who filled
> > our pages with linkspam till we had to switch on nofollow, and who are
> > now whining that we must switch it off again *because* we owe them a
> > living, would do with such a permission, however sensibly worded.
>
> And that's fair as well.  I do think that we're being naive with the way
> we handle this sort of "conflict of interest."  The situation you describe
> helps no one, the situation with Microsoft, at least in theory, helps
> everyone.  I still think it's better to approach it from the vantagepoint
> that we can get a very strong benefit than to assume that anything that
> could be construed as a COI is inherently bad, which is the attitude that
> I get.
>
> I had an off-wiki conversation with someone about a similar issue earlier,
> so it's interesting that it comes up again here.  At the end of the day,
> shouldn't we worry more about the quality of the contributions in terms of
> benefit to the encyclopedia (even the poorly written ones) as opposed to
> who's contributing it?  If paying someone $100 to add information to a
> stubby, but necessary, article improves the quality of the encyclopedia,
> why are we standing in the way?


I am still of two minds on the paying-for-edits issue, but I don't
believe it's going to change soon.

I was thinking of something different over the weekend.  A Wikipedia
Article Subjects Noticeboard, where people or organizations could post
things which they object to (short of what the Office would *have* to
deal with) and editors can watch and respond to normally.

I was thinking that the process could be something like "First, please
post a comment on the article talk page with a detailed explanation of
what you object to and why, and identifying who you are and what your
official standing is.  Then, add an entry to the top of the list below
with template {{Subjectnotice|articlename}}, add some comments, and
sign it...  Please do so from a logged in account so that people can
respond on your talk page as well as the article talk page."

I haven't created the template (I have no idea how they work).

Does anyone think this is a bad idea?  Positive comments?



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com