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
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