[WikiEN-l] Conflict of Interest and lobbyists for foreign governments

Hello all wikipedian51 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 30 03:43:10 UTC 2007


I've never known a government or foreign ministry to ever say that they were
doing otherwise but telling the truth and putting forward their case fairly
and accurately. There's a reason why diplomacy is said to be the art of
lying for one's country.

There's also a reason why Orwell named the propaganda department in 1984 the
"Ministry of Truth" and why the Communists called their newspaper Pravda
(Russian for truth).

The point is that a foreign ministry has created paid "fellowships" to
promote its version of truth and that one of their stated targets is
Wikipedia. Your suggestion that we take this passively because their "stated
goal" is to tell the truth isn't credible.

On 7/29/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I say indef block any IP's originating from the institution in question.
> A
> > stated goal of trying to influence Wikipedia in a POV way would get any
> > individual anon blocked, so why not a pseudo-governmental organization?
>
> Technically, their stated goal is to present Israel fairly and
> accurately (ie. NPOV). Their blatant COI means they are unlikely to do
> that very well, but they aren't openly intending to introduce a POV.
>
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