Hi all,
I just wanted to find out what the stance of the WMF is on the issue of WMF employees and contractors editing articles on themselves, or fellow employees, in direct contravention of COI guidelines? Is this a practice that is officially frowned upon?
Whilst researching the Belfer fiasco I came across User:Wikitedium. The contributions[1] lead me to believe that isn't just a normal editor but one who has an ingrained conflict of interest, and it is pretty clear that the editor is Zack Exley, who is the former WMF Chief Financial Officer.
In April 2006, Exley added links to rootsprimary.org to the 2008 US Presidential election article.[2] Whilst rootsprimary.org no longer exists, it's archived version states: "Who's doing this?: Just me, Zack Exley, and a couple of friends."[3]
In August 2006, Exley created the article on himself.[4] Over the years, Exley made numerous edits to this article. In December 2009, Exley created the article on Argentine Middle School[5], which is in Argentine, a community of Kansas City, Kansas. Exley at the time (so it appears) lived in Kansas City, Missouri.[6] In March 2010, Exley wrote himself into the "Smart mob" article.[7]
In March 2013, Exley created a "nice little article about a notable Springfield coffee shop"[8] -- the coffee shop being in Springfield, Missouri, which is another place that Exley appears to have resided.[9]
Whilst the edits relating to himself were done before he joined the WMF, his article looks like a standard puff piece which is discouraged -- it uses WMF press releases, articles on ThoughtWorks which only mention him in passing[10], a self-authored article on motherjones.com[11]. Exley's only real claim to fame is that George W. Bush once called him a "garbage man".[12]
I had a look at Exley's Linkedin profile[13] which appears to begin in 1987-1988 when he was at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and is current up to the present time, and correlated these to Wikitedium's other edits, and couldn't see anything else of major concern.
What does concern me, however, is that there was a steady stream of WMF staffers/contractors who have edited Exley's wikibio. Although, the edits themselves may not seem to be worrisome, the fact that the puff nature of the article was not picked up on by these staffers is troubling. Also, given that the WMF and the community in general is against COI editing, these edits, as innocent as they are, should not be done by WMF staffers, but rather by others who don't have any perceived COI.
Could the WMF and the BoT perhaps clarify whether COI editing amongst WMF staff/contractors is officially discouraged/forbidden, and whether there is something official in writing which lays out guidelines for how and when WMF staff/contractors should be editing articles relating to their fellow WMF'ers.
Cheers
Russavia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Wikitedium [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_presidential_electi... [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20060423010423/http://rootsprimary.org/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zack_Exley&action=history [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Argentine_Middle_School&actio... [6] http://keywiki.org/index.php/Zack_Exley [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smart_mob&diff=prev&oldid... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Coffee_Ethic&action=histo... [9] https://clarity.fm/zackexley [10] http://www.chicagobusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=9999100029386 [11] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/12/organizing-online [12] http://web.archive.org/web/20060704033659/http://www.tjcenter.org/past2000.h... [13] http://www.linkedin.com/in/zackexley