[Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content

Fri Oct 29 02:12:55 UTC 2004

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Selected, non-involved editors?
>
>If they were interested or competent with respect to the subject they would be involved.
>  
>
This is hardly the case. Many contributors who are both interested and 
competent with respect to particular subjects nevertheless do not edit 
pages on those subjects, for a variety of reasons.

1) Based on liability or ethical concerns, professionals in various 
fields (doctors, lawyers, etc.) might choose not to edit articles 
related to their specialty, so as not to create any relationship with 
the reader or potential for malpractice complaints.
2) Contributors who also make a living from their writing might avoid 
covering the same subjects on Wikipedia that they cover professionally. 
This is true whether they receive income from their writing directly 
(why give something away when you can get paid for it?) or are paid by 
an employer (in which case the employer might argue that what they write 
on the subject is work for hire, and object to having it contributed to 
Wikipedia or licensed under the GFDL).
3) People with a distaste for the intense disputes that rage over some 
of our more controversial pages may consciously avoid those subjects, 
regardless of how interested or competent they may be.

--Michael Snow