Okay, so I have pretty much irrefutable evidence that the Marketing Communications head at an Asian accounting firm registered a real-name account on Wikipedia in early 2008, then proceeded to create an article about his company, which has received the attention of about 90% of his edits on Wikipedia, ever.

Early in its history, the article was nominated for deletion, and there were only three !votes on the matter: a Keep, a Delete, and a Weak keep.

Our good old User:Henrik is the admin who determined that the result would be Keep.

Am I to understand, then, that it's okay for the Marketing Communications person of a company to be just about the sole author of a new Wikipedia article about the company; or is it that nobody ever easily deduced the way I have that this guy was affiliated with the company; or is it just that Wikipedia Review is evil, but all other "conflicted and/or paid" editors are okay to run free within Wikipedia?

(No, I'm not providing diffs -- I don't need to go out of my way to sabotage another firm's successful exploitation of Wikipedia.)

Greg

By the book, there is nothing prohibiting editing with COIs. They are discouraged, and you are encouraged to identify publically when you have one, and so on, and so forth. And people will often hassle you. But there is no hard, fast rule against it.

The original ban on Wikipedia Review was probably bad. But disinterest in justice means that nobody cares, given that you probably would end up rebanned if people worked to get you unbanned.

Or more likely the recognition that going against the Holy Writ of Jimbo on this matter would not be conducive to one's long-term participation in Wikipedia. Plenty of people objected to Greg's ban, but those who did were quickly silenced.

Is the article [[Asian Marketing Firm]]? Is it [[User:Asian Marketing Firm]]? Then it's just stupid.

But, let's say I work for [[Big Mega Happy Computer Corp]] (which is neither big nor mega, and just barely passes the ideals of notability). I am the head of BMHC's public relations department, real name Mrs. Virgina Smith Barnes, and register [[User:Johnny Johnny Jones]], and proceed to create a fluffy, exquisitely sourced [[Big Mega Happy Computer Corp]] article as 99% of my contributions, and then never touch the article again nor Wikipedia except to clean up vandalism, and gradually expand it as every tiny bit of new sourced info comes out on BMHC over the years or months.

How would anyone ever be able to prove [[User:Johnny Johnny Jones]] ever works for [[Big Mega Happy Computer Corp]], assuming he only edits from home, wisely, on his SBC or Comcast connection?

COI is only enforceable on idiots and people that want some pointless name recognition for their contributions in some way.

I think you are reading too much into this. Wikipedia policies are not implemented consistently. There are many admins who either don't know or don't like some of the Wikipedian policies.

Indeed, marketing guys almost always write new articles that falls far afoul of CSD G11 (spammy & unfixable without a total annihilation), but in principle there is no cause to do anything if it does not. One or two guys really get their Irish up if this happens (JzG comes to mind), but most of the time, if it is not blatant spam, it will get ignored and forgotten.

Well, yes. And if you, Ms. Barnes, wanted to run a small and discreet prostitution business out of your home, regular customers only, that would be pretty hard to get you for, also.

Both the law and the church have problems with prostitution most places in the US, but the problems are magnified if you start telling everybody that you're a prostitute and the law never bothers you, and you go to confession and the priest doesn't even make you say Hail Marys. See, this kind of thing causes blood pressure to rise in both vice cops and clergy. Particulally poorly-paid and not-greatly-respected civil servants like vice cops, and particularly poorly paid clergy who work for somewhat penurious non-profit orgs. If you let on that there may be a lot of money in what you do, what do you really expect? With the promise of money and the promise of defiance of them (playing on both their lack of money and respect), people who did look the other way, now suddenly don't.

Greg, what part of this don't you understand? The Jimbo reneging on an agreement I think you now do understand. But that's just Jimbo.

Oh, I understand this whole arrangement of rules that punish those who self-disclose and reward those who choose subterfuge. I thought it was rather clear that I was posing this question as a "lesson" rather than a "query", but apologies if that was not the case.

I do appreciate the many fine responses offered above.

Greg

Oh yawn.

Greg, ever heard of these?

People self-promote on wikipedia all the time. That's not exactly news, is it? It is just that some of them are discrete enough to get away with it sometimes, whilst others get caught, blocked and deleted. Most of those that get caught walk away with a "oh, well, so what, it was worth a try" attitude. However, a few turn into self-justifying obsessed idiots with chips on their shoulders. That's really all there is to it.

COI as applied is an absurd policy that encourages all users to be anonymous. It's perfectly destructive for the encyclopedia--self disclosed COIs can be checked for balance, while stealth is lost in the ocean of edits. For whatever reason, Wikipedians feel a lot of psychic harm when they can discern a COI. The best policies for building an encyclopedia take a backseat to impulses when it comes to deploying the banhammer. The upshot is that honest users are blocked, while (marginally) stealthy COI thrives.

Typical illustration. Thanks for the clarification.

I just think it would be neat if for once the regulars could comment on matters without inevitably highlighting directly or indirectly how they were themselves sodomized against their wikiwill.

It would just make for an interesting change and make us not look like whackjobs.

No offense to the sodomized whackjobs.

And yet others set up the place as an ass-kissing foundation so they can't be touched, and run their for-profit on the side, so that in toto, their own rules for others don't apply to themselves. Which, legally (given laws about foundations and where their resources must go), they should.

But if anyone complained to the district attorney that Jimbo was using foundation funds to siphon profit off to Wikia in various ways, you're get a giant yawn. The DA's after the big cocaine bust, not the public hero who founded Wikipedia.

But Jimbo's not about to let YOU do this scam.

Let's be clear here that both issues are involved: 1) openly flouting policy 2) making policy so that you personally can flout it, but nobody else can. The last, just because you're a narcissistic conscience-free non-introspective dishonest son of a bitch. But otherwise, of modest gifts.

If there were any articles on WP that were PR pieces for Wikia or Jimbusiness that weren't notable, they'd be hauled up on AFD *fast*. The problem is that Jimmy by accident (and honestly, it WAS by accident, no one can plan sudden critical mass like WP) is super-famous, and anything he touches business wise will get a flurry of press, equaling a permanent shrine on Wikipedia.

Many issues, here. First, Jimbo gets a better "shrine" out of anything positive he does, on Wikipedia, than does anybody else. Basically, he's set up a cult to do his advertising for him for free, in exchange for institutional power. And no, I don't think that was accidental-- Jimbo's been getting people do stuff for him for inadequate pay, his whole life. That's what he IS.

We've seen guru-lotioning like that before, but I guarantee you that when other cults and their leaders (Prem anybody) get just as much press, the defenders of the Wiki make sure their leaders get tarred and feathered whenever possible.

(The other less closely related, but still germane issue, is direct encouragement to move content out of WP and into Wikia. That's can be done because Jimbo-and-crew control the content. Anybody suggesting the cruft might go to Wikipedia Review would be instantly blocked. Without Jimbo ever giving the order. No e or paper trail.)

Doc, tell me how that explains the case of Arch Coal, which was not authored by anyone associated with the Arch Coal company, nor was it paid content, nor was it self-promotional. Jimmy Wales called it a "travesty of NPOV" and "a PR puff piece" when he deleted it and blocked the original author who hadn't even entered the content into Wikipedia.

Yes, please do explain. You seem to have a 30,000-foot view of the situation, so I look forward to your explanation.








Here's a comment on matters for you, Root. I would venture a guess that at least 25% of the U.S. business entities that are not in the Fortune 1000, which have existing Wikipedia articles, were either initially authored or substantially edited by someone with a paid conflict of interest vis-a-vis that entity.

Do you view this as a problem, or does this garner a Doc-like "yawn" from you?

See?! No sodomy in this post!

As I've said before the only reason COI exists is AGF.

You cannot simply accuse someone of biased editing on the merits of the edits alone (unless they're really blatant); so COI exists to allow establishing a motive in order to get around the fact that the accusation violates AGF.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't care who was editing, we'd just judge the edits on their own merits.

The problem with this is that it encourages people to see COI as an offense unto itself, so that people get blocked merely for having a conflict of interest even if their edits are in fact neutral.

I was told by folks like Guy Chapman that typical Wikipedians don't have the awareness or intelligence to recognize the bias of a subtly conflicted article. Plus, it is not their "job" to go around cleaning up after biased content entered in exchange for payment.

It's a somewhat valid argument, if you could prove to me that having NO article is more favorable to a useful encyclopedia project than having a subtly conflicted article. I feel that this was never acceptably proven to me, and I was banned in the interim.

The article I mentioned above was viewed just over 100 times in the month of May on Wikipedia. I wonder if the minds of those who read the article were forever tarnished by its subtle conflict and bias, or whether they were thankful to have found at least some information that they had been looking for?

Honestly? No, but here's why: Wikipedia is STILL a private institution, no matter how much people sometimes want to treat it like some natural resource. For better or worse, private institutions make, set, and enforce their own rules as they see fit. You can make the rules as fair or as capricious as you want on Wikipedia Review.org, same as Somey can do on WR, and I can do on a site I own. If "public" editing against the house COI rules gets someone blocked, it sucks, and it could be worth it to get that changed in the house. But the problem is that it's a communal house, so... it may not be easy. If they wrote those articles on the downlow like in my Mrs. Barnes example upthread, then good for them. They figured out how to beat the house AND hopefully add some decent content. If they benefit from an extra avenue of exposure on WP, good for them again. It's no skin off of my or Wikipedia's back, no matter how much zealots on any side try to say it is.



You mean this isn't OzPrisonReview?

You don't seem to have a very strong understanding of the "self dealing" statutes that relate to U.S. non-profit, tax-advantaged organizations, which are "private institutions".

Learn about Oral Suer, then get back to us.

Let's grant that it's true. It might be to an extent.

If one cannot detect bias when one knows the contributer is biased, when will the bias of an undeclared COI contributer be corrected, or even detected? Answer: Never. They will probably never be caught, and the articles never corrected.

This isn't a choice between allowing or excluding COI editors. Open registration denies Wikipedia of that choice--they're going to edit no matter how smug admins might feel when they ban COI editors. It's between declared and undeclared conflicts of interest. There is no sane reason to pick the former.

I've never considered your point about AGF, Rootology, and I think it has merit. COI is a convenient escape clause because assuming insincere motives is practically outlawed. Even when they have stacks of evidence on their side, editors get hassled for assuming bad faith. In contrast, COI charges get users banned without a fuss.

Explain to my ignorant self how Oral Suer deals with my statement that Wikipedia is a private entity that sets its own rules for participants? Not to be mean, but its like any website. If I ran a business forum/message board, and you were a participant, and one day I banned you--I could do so for ANY reason. Maybe I decided you violated a site policy. Maybe I was having a bad day. Maybe another Greg pissed me off that day. Maybe I picked your name randomly out of a hat. Maybe I was cracked out and having a bad trip, and did you randomly.

Either way, if it's a private website, thems the apples. You still haven't refuted that point.

I get the impression what he's trying to do is to redirect the discussion to Wikia.

I think the whole motivation behind the way conflicts of interest are handled is a mix of laziness and incompetence. It is much easier to identify a person's identity and affiliations than it is to determine if their contributions are biased. Wikipedians are not known for their prowess with the English language, nor for their general factual knowledge (oh, the irony), and so they find it easier to control bias by identifying people who they think are likely to introduce bias (based on an analysis of their social connections, something which Wikipedians are generally good at) instead of by identifying people who actually are introducing bias.

This, of course, makes them extremely vulnerable to people who are smarter than they are, and given their relatively low collective intelligence, that's a lot of vulnerabilities.

Trying is great and all, but I'm rather tired of people deflecting this point when I make it. All these ventures are private online. Bitching about getting booted is almost laughable. Any non-government website can freely do whatever it wants with it's users pretty much at-will and with impunity. Web spaces ARE private property that they choose to broadcast, and they can limit access as they see fit. I can ban you from my website for any reason or none at all, in any configuration or way that I feel like doing. I can ban your nickname or username. I can ban your ability to email me about it. Then I can ban your entire known ISP from being able to see the website afterwards, for an extra kick in the junk.

What can you do about it? Nothing, really, under United States law. WP can legally do any of this, Somey can legally do any of this with WR, and Greg can do any of this with Wikipedia Review.org. It's private property.

If I kick you off my lawn, you stay the hell off my lawn. If I don't want you looking at me from across the street and complaining about the state of my geraniums, I put up a stockade wooden fence to keep you from viewing my flowers. If I still hear you, I can put up some system to keep me from hearing you (white noise generator, screens, something). If you sneak into my lawn via a fake mustache, I can kick you out and secure the gate door with a keypad and retinal scanner. Beat those? I can place some nice rottweilers (Admins!) around my geraniums. You come in still? I now have you for trespass--hello, crime. I could have probably gotten you for criminal trespass ten steps ago in the game.

Something else to consider--the WMF if they were crazy enough COULD in theory go after someone for disruption, if the disruption were severe enough, after they were banned. Corporations in the past have pursued spammers for trespass and misuse of services in the same method.

Same on WR, really.



Indeed. Being a WQ admin, I have the perfect, well-sourced quote.

It would be downright dumb to claim there is any perfectly neutral article. "Subtly conflicted" and "not overly biases" are really the standards one might hope to obtain.

JzG clearly takes issue with it beyond that. Why, I cannot say. Jimbo, who knows? I never get the impression he is completely up to speed when he weighs in, so it is hard to guess his thoughts. Now, of course, Greg's cheap shots make the issue personal in return (if it were not already), and there you are.

Oh, you mean we're responsible for the time we put into WP, because we ignored the tombstone-like initial disclosure about the fact that even though it was ostensibly and legally a 501-c-3 foundation, in actuality it was run behind the scenes by a guy who was and is milking it like ATM machine, with very questionable legality? That it exercised complete and total control over content on any times scale longer than a few minutes, yet chose to hide behind web unaccountability laws which were designed for non-moderated websites, not websites which claim you have no rights at all over how they can alter your content?

Shit, I knew there was something I should have spent time on, before spending time on WP.

Erm, now where did they put that info-thing? As a non-profit tax-exempt org they have certain public duties. Just as a church isn't supposed to be campaining for somebody, or even for some party. The IRS grants you certain rights to excape taxation in exchange for certain things that don't get you quite the power of my neighbor over his front lawn.

Nope, you're all missing the point.

COI should be taken care of by NOR.

You see, regardless of what those fun-loving tweens on WP would like you to believe, everything that's added to WP should have a neutral, 3rd party source.

Even if you own the company, if you can provide neutral, 3rd-party sources for all of the information that you provide, then you should be able to edit an article.

COI is simply a way of saying U ben b&. It needs to be dumped, in favor of requiring proper sourcing for ALL edits.

If there was an ultra hardline sourcing requirement, sentence by sentence, I would totally support that, as it would eliminate a whole lot of shit and other problems.

Root, I understand your eagerness to try to make a point here, but as I've alluded to above, and Milton has more clearly outlined thereafter, you don't seem to understand the importance of U.S. laws associated with the legal practice and operation of a 501-c-3 tax-advantaged organization. They are most certainly NOT allowed to "freely do whatever it wants with it's (sic) users pretty much at-will and with impunity."

Perhaps I can help you with an analogy. Shall we imagine for a moment an American Red Cross team going into an earthquake stricken city, then announcing they will only provide blood transfusions to people who can demonstrate that they have donated blood in the past and can firmly demonstrate that they support the free-culture movement? Oh, and no blood to Scientologists and Holocaust-deniers, either. Lastly, the American Red Cross's chairman of the board, Whimbo Jales, also owns a for-profit pharmaceutical plant on the side, so all blood transfusions will be spiked with a free shot of his firm's hottest drug, Culturvia, which the FDA has ruled may have an addictive characteristic and may enhance cravings for pedophilia, but it's okay, since Whimbo is giving it away for free in the blood transfusions, at no cost to the recipient.

How would you feel about that?

This has nothing to do with Wikipedia Review, and if you attempt to paint it as such again, I'll have not much choice but to call you an idiot, and I have a feeling that Milton Roe will likely wish to level a similar charge at you.

Perhaps these discussions of tax-exempt status are going over your head. Do you realize that for a non-profit website, the IRS, after reviewing the application to ensure the organization meets the conditions to be recognized as a tax exempt organization (such as the purpose, limitations on spending, and internal safeguards for a charity) will issue an authorization letter to the nonprofit granting it tax exempt status, but only so long as the organization clearly demonstrates that its leadership is not lying to the government about self-dealing? That's where you should have gotten the hint about Oral Suer. Consequences for lying, and all that rot. Kind of like how Jimbo stretched the truth on a couple of sections on the Form 990 during the early years of the WMF, where even though 60% of the Board of Directors were employed by the same for-profit company, there was no "business relationship" to report between any of the Board members. Do you honestly believe that the Wikipedia Review or Wikipedia Review".org" have a similar mission to pursue as the Wikimedia Foundation, where either of our entities would find it beneficial to seek similar tax-exempt status? If so, I believe you are daft.

Get back to your WikiCult, Rooty. You're probably running low on Culturvia.

Don't tell me WQ has nothing by American humorist Josh Billings? If so, you might recognize some Appalachian wisdom, there.

WQ does!

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Josh_Billings

Well, there you go. The sourced version is from Proverb, 1874: It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

The version so far unsourced is the one we're familiar with:

It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool; it's the things he does know, that ain't so.

Just because somebody said something doesn't mean that he said it first. I see Billings is also credited with

The wheel that squeaks the loudest
Is the one that gets the grease.

That's definitely a traditional proverb.