It would be fantastic if the Foundation were to take *positive action*
and make it clear that its employees are immediately directed to not
edit Wikipedia articles about each other, ex-colleagues, the
Foundation, the Foundation's partners, suppliers and contractors or
the Foundation's critics. Even minor edits and corrections seem a
strangely stupid thing for employees to indulge themselves in, when
they know they can simply suggest the edits on on article talk page
rather than having to later defend themselves from legitimate
complaints of editing with a conflict of interest. I am disappointed
to see some of the names of Foundation senior managers acting this
way.
I refer interested readers to my previous suggestion of a simple
proposal to avoid these situations at
- if Foundation employees do not like the words, perhaps employees
would like to propose their own version in their own words.
I congratulate Russavia on a neat piece of analysis which should
concern all Wikimedians who would like to see "advocacy editing" being
managed in a more credible way. It would be refreshing if a member of
the WMF board of trustees, or the current trustee candidates were to
show appreciation for Russavia's work on this rather than silence.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
On 16 April 2014 22:03, Russavia <russavia.wikipedia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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_elect…
[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&acti…
[6]
http://keywiki.org/index.php/Zack_Exley
[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smart_mob&diff=prev&oldi…
[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Coffee_Ethic&action=hist…
[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.…
[13]
http://www.linkedin.com/in/zackexley
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