Anthony wrote:
On 11/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Now, as a reminder, WP:COI says:
* * * * *
If you have a conflict of interest, you should:
1. *avoid editing* articles related to your organization or its
competitors;
2. *avoid participating* in deletion
discussions<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Delet…
articles related to your organization or its competitors;
Am I the only one who thinks point #2 is ridiculously stupid? I think
it's a great thing to hear from an officer of an organization when
considering whether or not to delete an article about the
organization.
Does this carry over to people too? Should Angela not have
participated in the discussion over whether or not to delete the
article on her? Or is there something in particular about
organizations here, that I'm not thinking of?
Asking someone to "avoid" participating does not imply disallowing that
participation. It only warns them that this sometimes leads to
conflicts. If Angela participates in a discussion about deleting an
article about her why should anyone object. Her wiki work has made her
notable, but the final decision on this is not hers. I have no reason
to believe that her comments will be other than within the bounds of
acceptable editing. What would be a conflict of interest would be for
her to exercise her influence with the highest levels of WMF as the
basis for either including or excluding an article about her.
I think that a significant segment of our editors are woefully ignorant
about corporations. This is not surprising given either the academic or
proletarian experiences of so many editors. If we were to survey our
editors to determine how many owned corporate stock of any sort I
suspect that the proportion would be very low. Even a determined
leftist should have a basic understanding of corporations before he
starts commenting on them. The Wall Street Journal has been published
since 1889, but I wonder whether those who comment about the notability
of a corporation have ever bothered to check whether anything has been
written there about it. Basic information about any public
corporations, its address, its products and its directors is certainly
useful, but how much of that do we have?
Ec