No subject

in high school who can't even spell when I provide higher-level concepts  on 
a subject that I have had a major interest, something's very wrong.   
Moreover, I people use the ad hominems on me, but I get the extension to the  block, 
and I've been reading Wikipedia for years, started the editing account in  late 
'05, even began articles such as the GuideStar article.  Am I in COI  because 
I began the GuideStar article but also was a major founder of a  nonprofit?  
No, but I'm in COI because I talk knowledgeably about a  subject.  The 
article's ruined right now.
 
>I understand you're saying that with people of sufficient honor, we  can 
>hopefully get away with it. It's plausible to me, but I can't see  any 
>clear revision to the COI guidelines that will keep only the  honorable 
>people doing this, and -- just as important -- keep them from  being 
>eventually corrupted. We don't have the mechanisms to enforce  honesty 
>that a major research institution does, and I don't think we'll  be able 
>to afford to build them for a decade or more.
 
Well, Wikipedia's gotten a good deal of public support.   Now  it's coming at 
me not only with anarchy, my complaint from before, but  totalitarianism.  
LOL!

<snip>
>>>> More similar, I think, would be to  compare historians who write works 
on 
>>>> commission.   These are generally paid for by an interested  party,[...]
>>>>     
>>>     
>>> I'd be intrigued to read more about this, but my  guess is that it would 
>>> require several conditions for it to  work:
>>>
>>>    1. The company would have to  have a clear and special interest in
>>>        being seeing as completely forthright.
>>>    2. The  historian would have to be somebody with an established
>>>   reputation and solid credentials.
>>>   3. The historian would do a relatively small amount of work for  the
>>>       commissioning party. (E.g., they  would not be a staff historian.)
>>>    4. The historian  would not primarily do commissioned work.
>>>      
>>
>> The last three at least seem to be the case here---an  established and 
>> well-respected contributor is asking if writing the  occasional article 
>> for a paid commissioner would be okay.  I  think the first is actually 
>> better to avoid having to decide, since  the motives of companies are 
>> rather difficult to discern---so long  as the writer is not a staff 
>> historian, and doesn't do this as  their main living, then whether the 
>> company is interested in  forthrightness or not matters little.
>>   

>No  slight intended to Jaap or any of our contributors but I don't think 
>the  comparison is even close. A professional historian with an 
>established  reputation and solid credentials has put, what, two decades 
>into getting  there? And getting caught distorting the truth means they 
>throw that and  their professional future away. Even our very best 
>editors don't have  anything like that on the line. For those who are 
>pseudonymous, there is  even less penalty for ethical missteps.
>Historians are human too.  I've had problems with them before, but  I still 
end up with Bs in college history, >not higher, not lower.  I'm  planning to 
go back to college even, but in World War II, I should have done  >better.  
I've studied it, along with the Civil War, since I was a  kid.
 
Why, there's complaint about the article on  the American  Civil War being 
"long," and it bothers me.  There's not even a  definition of "First Defender" I 
can find yet.
 
What about pseudonyms when you reveal your real name on your user page  then? 
 I use that of my grandfather, John Wallace Rich, for example,  who was KIA 
in World War II.
 
>And those historians work in a field where academic norms of  
>intellectual independence and honesty have been built up over centuries,  
>with detection and enforcement mechanisms to match. Not to mention years  
>of training in research and writing for every person involved. We aren't  
>even close to having that kind of infrastructure.
 
As far as I'm concerned, there's too much of a lack of ethics in school as  
well.  I've seen it firsthand, and though I've only read half of _The  Closing 
of the American Mind_, I still think we need more checks and  balances.

>As to item 1, again it comes back to conflict of interest. If Intel  pays 
>some professional technology journalist to expand our computer  science 
>articles, more power to them, as I don't see them as having an  interest 
>in distorting them. But as soon as they want changes to  anything where 
>there is a conflict of interest, we should say no.


Yes, but then you see the slippery slope.  Something's wrong here, and  I 
think it's selfishness somewhat.  Moreover, I've seen problems with  Wikipedia 
for a long time.  People troll articles, and provide sleeping-dog  information.  
I can see them yawn in their pajamas on the last Monday in  May.  LOL!

What about the truth for the readers besides just  writing for them?  I don't 
think writing for Nazis in 1941 would have been  a good approach.
 
Vincent



 
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