I feel like I've given the WMF's position pretty clearly upthread, so I'll
try not to repeat myself. I believe that policies like the one described
here would do more harm than good, for reasons including those given by
others in this thread.
To the suggestion that the WMF ought to hold staff to a higher standard of
on-wiki conduct than is generally required by the community: I can see how
that might seem like a good idea, but I believe it would actually have the
overall negative effect of discouraging staff participation in the
projects. The solution would be worse than the problem.
The WMF contains a widely-varying level of on-wiki expertise. That's always
been the case, and I'm sure it always will be. It seems unrealistic to
expect new non-Wikipedian staff to walk in the door and immediately become
excellent Wikipedians, and it seems equally unrealistic to expect seasoned
Wikipedians on the staff to never make mistakes on-wiki. I want WMF staff
to feel encouraged to learn and explore and contribute on the projects,
just like everyone else. I don't expect them to get special leniency just
for being staff, but neither do I expect or want them to be held to an
unattainably high standard. I am also not interested in giving anybody a
special stick with which to beat them.
To repeat what I said before: internal WMF staff policies are developed and
set and enforced by the WMF, based on what we think is best and informed by
our experiences. The community makes rules governing community conduct, and
the WMF makes rules governing staff conduct. The WMF alone makes
determinations about what happens when or if WMF standards are violated.
It's pretty simple.
Thanks,
Sue
Sue,
Thank you for your response, it is appreciated.
Indeed we are all n00bs at some stage, and we all make COI mistakes, and I
can admit to making this mistake myself twice early on. But we all learn
pretty quickly that COI editing is frowned upon, and can cause problems
later on.
I would like to echo pretty much what Pete Forsyth has stated, and
wholeheartedly agree that the WMF should go above and beyond what we would
expect other organisations to adhere to on our projects. Whilst, Pete's
suggestions on possibly policies certainly do go above and beyond what is
expected in the community, they would be quite difficult to implement. So
how about a simple WMF policy that states something along the lines of:
"Employees and contractors of the Wikimedia Foundation shall not edit
articles relating to the Wikimedia Foundation, broadly construed, but at
rather directed to raise potential edits on the talk pages of affected
articles. This directive does not apply to the reverting vandalism,
removing copyright violations or potentially libellous materials."
Such a directive for WMF people would be easy to make, easy to implement,
easy to enforce, and would demonstrate that the Wikimedia Foundation itself
is at the forefront, and setting an example for other organisations and
leading by example.
Comments welcome Sue.
Cheers
Russavia
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