On 1/28/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Handled correctly this could be a PR benefit for WP.
Not long ago I expressed my opinion that our view toward Conflicts of
Interest was not a workable one. I'm also of the view that any severe
action against editors who are paid to clean up a company's article,
will only drive such activities underground.
I think that we need to establish a right of defence or rebuttal (or
whatever we want to call it). This would allow anyone who is directly
affected by the article a place to defend his point of view. This could
probably be done in a template that is linked from the page in
question. The person or company affected would have the exclusive right
to make substantive edits to that template. The result would be a
section that is the person's view on the issue; if they want to make a
radical departure from the truth that would be their right within that
context. If the subject tries to put the same information in the main
body of the article that would be subject to the usual meat-grinder rules.
I'm sure that we will have a few of our own dinosaurs complaining that
they should have the right to edit everything, and that having such
pages would be tremendously unwiki, but I think that giving any person
the opportunity to defend himself should improve Wikipedia's image as
one of fairness.
A few simple rules may be necessary for these persons.
1. The writer must be the person himself or have the right to speak
on behalf of the person
2. The writer must be registered and properly identified.
3. All that he writes is subject to GFDL
4. The financial arrangements between the writer and the person are
not our concern.
5. We reserve the right to limit the length of submissions to
prevent long-winded rants.
No thankyou people can buy their own webhosting space. In any case it
risks lessening the requirment on the rest of us to be NPOV.
Aditionaly who is going to speak for Carthage?
--
geni