[WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

Sat Nov 11 23:37:42 UTC 2006

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

>On 10 Nov 2006 at 20:30, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>It seems to all depend on just how the affected party goes about such 
>participation.  If they simply write a polite, courteous, concise 
>piece contributing an explanation of why, from their openly noted 
>perspective of involvement in the article's subject, they believe the 
>article should be [kept | deleted | etc.], then there's no reason to 
>object, especially if the conflict-of-interest is noted and 
>acknowledged and the comments are not formatted in the style of a 
>"vote", but rather as information to contribute to the discussion.
>
This is all fair enough, but the distinction between casting a vote and 
information is a bit hairsplitting.  To the extent that anyone is voting 
it is after all only one vote, and in a hotly contested request it's 
importance will be marginalized.

>On the other hand, if somebody comes into such discussions with a 
>chip on their shoulder, makes long rants about how evil Wikipedia and 
>Wikipedians are because they don't all automatically take the "right" 
>side on the issue, makes personal attacks and legal threats, brings 
>in sockpuppets and meatpuppets to "vote" along with them, and replies 
>to any criticism with further rants which lead to flame wars and 
>pissing contests that make the AfD page in question a mile long and 
>with an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio, then they are not making 
>a very constructive contribution.
>
When all this stuff happens conflict of interest is put on the back 
burner because all of these more serious problems have come into play.  
As with the more civilised participant, their vote (sockpuppets 
excluded) is still only one vote.  The more outrageous the comments the 
less they need responses; they speak for themselves in more ways than 
simply expressing the person's stand on the issue.  If they are 
outrageous enough they may drive voters to the other side.

>I'm not sure what sort of rule, guideline, or policy could be made 
>that encourages the former while discouraging the latter.
>
It doesn't need more rules.  Just deal with evident bad behaviour as 
what it is.  Adding more rules instead of relying on the existing ones 
only serves to ensnare editors who already behave themselves in a web of 
legalisms.

Ec