2008/5/8 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
In a sense this was all a great pity, as CAMERA and Electronic Intifada could both learned some deep lessons from openly coming to the Wikipedia articles and having to deal with NPOV and consensus building with each other. Instead we got this blowup. It would have been very interesting if they'd taken the opposite track and engaged openly.
Indeed. And have blackened their own names.
One thing that surprised me about WikiScanner's media moment was not that the public were finally getting to know stuff the regular editors had been aware of for years - it was the vehemence of the media and general public reaction to perceived conflicts of interest, and that that vehemence was directed, not at Wikipedia, but at the organisations in question. So we're flawed, but people basically like us ;-)
And that the public perception of how close counted as "conflict of interest" was actually way stricter that what Wikipedia's rules allow, let alone what PR companies and lobbyists try to rules-lawyer with us.
So: organised POV pushing groups don't have to just fool Wikipedia, they have to fool everyone on the net, consistently and reliably.
- d.