[WikiEN-l] The current purges in English Wikipedia (...and my personal case)

[Ray Saintonge]

Charles Matthews wrote:
> Nathan wrote:
>   
>> On the contrary, my guess is quite a few
>> articles about individuals and companies of mid-level fame were created by
>> fans, friends, associates, employees, etc. Perhaps a deep review with
>> WikiScanner will allow us to identify some of these suspect articles, and
>> delete them because they were created with impure motives.
>>     
> As far as I know, motivation is still a bad argument at AfD.  The basic 
> "conflict of interest" point is not that motives should be pure, 
> whatever that means, but that outside motivation should not be playing a 
> role so large that the interests of the encyclopedia are pushed to one side.
>   


"Impure motives" suggests that somebody knows why the contributor added 
something better than he does himself.  A true conflict of interest is 
rarely so obvious, and rarely so large as to damage the interests of the 
encyclopedia.  Reasonable people will adapt to circumstances when it is 
pointed out that they are in a "potential" conflict of interest that was 
never made obvious to them.

Ec