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

[Delirium]

William Pietri wrote:
> 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.
>   

I don't think our situation is particular similar to journalists'.  We 
are not doing original research, and we are not writing bylined 
articles.  We summarize sources neutrally, post it publicly, and other 
people edit our work mercilessly at the slightest hint of a problem with it.

More similar, I think, would be to compare historians who write works on 
commission.  These are generally paid for by an interested party, but 
with the money given up front with the understanding that they're 
commissioning an independent historical analysis that will not 
necessarily show them in a positive light.  Several German banks 
commissioned historical works about their activities during World War 
II, and the resulting works were not generally very positive.  I don't 
recall any objections to the funding there---that it was a bank 
commissioning its own history---and in fact generally people thought the 
banks *should* be the ones paying for the research.  Now add onto that 
an additional layer of safety, where the work now gets edited by 
hundreds of other completely unrelated people after being written.

-Mark