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

[David Gerard]

On 30/07/07, 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.


In practice, advocacy groups are not really that much of a problem. We
get this sort of thing *all the time*. What usually happens is that
blind POV pushers make themselves known quite quickly and aren't very
effective, and we accumulate new editors who understand what Wikipedia
is about and who realise the very best thing to do is to write
something NPOV.

Even on the Israel-Palestine articles, we have a core of sensible
Wikipedians who may strongly disagree on the issue, but have a clue
how to present it.


- d.