On 17 April 2014 15:23, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
After he was hired, Zack continued to use that account -- more
responsibly,
yes -- but he neither corrected the false statement on its user page,
or
disclose his connection to it.
That is untrue; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zackexley
Interesting, but not especially relevant. What path could a reader or editor of the Zack Exley article follow to learn about that connection?
Disclosing on the Zack Exley user page isn't sufficient to meet basic transparency.
Actually, it meets the requirements of the project. It's not perfect, but we have administrators who don't even give that much disclosure to their own alternate accounts (or that they edit without logging in), and nobody's getting the pitchforks out for them.
If you don't like the edits made by the account, work on-wiki to address the issues. You know how to start an AfD for any articles you think are about non-notable subjects, you know how to un-peacock an article.
If one really wants to push the COI envelope, one could say that users who are former employees of an organization shouldn't be editing articles related directly to the organization or its employees (salaried or contract), though. Indeed, one of the biggest COI issues we have on English Wikipedia is former employees trying to use our articles to "bring problems to light" about organizations.
The disclosure was made. Incidentally, that's all that would need to be done even at the farthest reaches of the proposed terms of use amendment.
Risker