[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic conflict of interest?

[William Pietri]

Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>> (from the "Act Independently" section of http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)
>>
>>
>> We ignore their historically evolved and time-tested solution at our
>> great peril.
>>     
>
> We seem to have strayed from Jaap Vermeulen's original inquiry. I still
> support his ability to receive compensation for his editing. As always, I am
> going to assume good faith.
>   


Sorry, but I guess I wasn't clear enough.

Jaap's question is, as the subject line says, whether editing for 
payment of articles related to the payee is a fundamentally problematic 
conflict of interest. My answer is yes, absolutely.

Further, in many ways, we are in the same situation as journalists. Our 
product only has value to the extend that we have the trust of the 
public. That means that we need both to actually be trustworthy and to 
avoid situations whose appearance would undermine trust. Journalists 
have been wrestling with these issues for many decades, and we can and 
should learn from them. That's why I posted the relevant snipped from 
the SPJ ethics code.

Unfortunately, the assumption of good faith isn't relevant when making 
this decision. That's a mechanism to defuse conflict and build working 
relationships. Jaap is obviously acting in good faith. But I have even 
talked with PR people who were spamming Wikipedia in good faith. They 
honestly thought that their links and promotional text were true and 
useful to readers, so there was no harm in including them. The 
assumption of good faith means that we should be kind to them, to treat 
them amicably, and to educate them. But it does not and must not mean 
that we allow the integrity of the encyclopedia to be compromised.


By the way, Jaap, many thanks for being very public about this. A fine 
demonstration not just of good faith, but good sense.

William

P.S. For those curious, I ran across a nice collection of journalistic 
ethics codes:

http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=387





-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri