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2004 – August 2006 different pagename: Vanity guidelines August – September 2006 August – October 2006 Editing with a conflict of interest October 2006 – March 2007 March – July 2007 August 2007 September - December 2007 January 2008 - February 2009

Contents 1 Proposed rewrites of Templates 2 BIAS and COI 3 Policy? 4 Help with a copyrighted version of a game? 5 Page about yourself 6 Would this be considered outing? 7 Administrative action COI? 8 Requested Articles and Articles for Creation 9 Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing 10 editing my own page 11 Request input on possible COI 12 Newby-biting incited by this policy 13 New templates needed 14 Personal interest other than material gain or recogition 15 Non-controversial edits 16 Legal antagonists: relation with WP:NLT 17 COI question 18 Archives 18.1 Non-controversial edits DRAFT 19 Self-citation 20 Rewrite the lead? 21 Statement on what COI is not 22 Archives exception - clarification please 22.1 Legitimate concerns 22.2 Proposed minor changes 22.3 Disputing #7 22.4 Counter proposal 2 23 New FTC blogger rule 24 Cite source 25 Noting COI without adding to Cat:Notable Wikipedians 26 advice for the cultural sector 27 What we want and what they want 27.1 Edit Break 27.2 Edit Break 3 27.3 Edit Break 4 27.4 Edit Break 5 28 Category of COI not directly addressed? 29 Restoring the COI exemption #7 30 How is consensus achieved on this Project? 31 WP:COI application to discussion pages? 32 Suggestion for a change in the lead 33 Special consideration for lawyers

[edit] Proposed rewrites of Templates

I have created a {{COI-check}} template and propose a rewrite of the {{COI}} template. Discussion is at Template talk:COI, and your thoughts are appreciated. THF (talk) 17:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] BIAS and COI

I am troubled by the deletion of the blog in the AfD of Dave Johnson (blogger) by User:Fram. The blog entry shows:

1. that the deletion nominator feels the subject (Dave Johnson (blogger)) is relevant, because he wrote about it at length himself.
2. There appears to be some political bias and possible conflict of interest in this deletion nomination.

Under the circumstances, I would suggest closing this AfD. If someone else wants to nominate, they can.

I don't understand the entire history of this situation, so maybe this is out of bounds.

I don't know if I am breaking any rules by posting this. I have never dealt with WP:OUTING and only briefly dealt with COI, which resulted in nothing happening. Please advise if I am. Ikip (talk) 12:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I have raised your concern at WP:ANI. THF (talk) 12:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Policy?

Is anyone interested in helping to get this into shape so that it could be promoted to policy? We seem increasingly to be dealing with people who are self-promoting, and it would be good if we had a page that prohibited it without exception. On the other hand, we don't want to exclude people who may be experts in something, so the wording would need to be just right. The writing would also need to be tightened generally. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I've been bogged down for a month in an article where individuals with clear religious/nationalist POVs that really are COIs have insisted on trashing a critic's BLP, and if I ever get out from under it, certainly would like to see this article be upgraded. (I still haven't fixed the language for identifying entities I commented on above.) It seems that if there is a Noticeboard where people get warnings (which I used successfully in article in question), it should be the reflection of a policy not just a behavioral essay. On the other hand, of course, the policy has to be very clear to avoid one person with a minor POV being accused of COI, while someone else's employee gets away with all sorts of shenanigans. CarolMooreDC (talk) 13:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

What makes it clear that editors "with clear religious/nationalist POVs that really are COIs" are "trashing a critic's BLP"? Your edit, above, seems not to assume good faith, and to assume, rather, religious/nationalist POVs. I know that you intend well in your edits, but someone opposing your well meant editing goals does not necessarily make their editing goals bad, or COI. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 16:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

There's no doubt that getting such editors sanctioned the First time they start accusing other editors of being antisemites is a good way to start the process of proving WP:COI as a nationality. If someone lists having lived in a certain nation for several years on their talk page that's another good indication.

But as someone commented somewhere on this essay WP:Advocacy if we can't enforce Civil:POV pushing and WP:tenditious editing, it's hard to go after advocacy, except when there are clear violations or indications like above, plus lots of other evidence from a number of editors. And a settled arbitration like WP:ARBPIA or similar arbitrations. It's just a matter of having one more clear policy that such people can violate. CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:04, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

What is for one person POV pushing can for another editor be a good faith edit. What makes me particularly concerned is when an editor finds bad faith, and COI, on one side of a disputed issue and never on the other. In other words, attempts to block editors on one side of an editing dispute, using COI as the grounds, may be just a wikilawering attempt to remove an editorial obstacle to one's own editing goals. WP assumes that all editors have a POV, and the intent is to get a balanced article by balancing POVs through compromise. If one side tries to get rid of the other, or to scare them through threats of sanctions, the possibility of a balanced article is diminished. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 17:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

In opening this thread, SlimVirgin suggested promoting the COI guideline into a policy, and tightening the language. I'd have to see some details before believing it would be an improvement. EdJohnston (talk) 17:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Concrete proposals always help but I can't make any til get finished with a current editing conflict where two editors follow me around constantly and comment on just about any policy idea I have, whether or not related to current conflict. Sigh... Anyway Wikipedia:Advocacy has some ideas. But it also is a matter of not throwing the baby of knowledge/interest out with the bathwater of POV pushing and edit warring. CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinking about it, real solution is for wikipedia to raise lots of money to hire a bunch of part-time admins to deal with the WORST offenders of various policies, clearly, decisively, repeatedly. Generally most people with a conflict of interest will be breaking all sorts of rules way before it becomes clear they are guns for hire. And if they are good editors, who really cares? How about raising money by registering all users, letting them have their first 500 edits free, and then charging a couple cents an edit. When is that micropayment system they keep talking about going to get going? Or start wikipedia's own paypal. And then fine abusers $1 a warning, $5 a block. And make sure their accounts page is open for all eyes to see. Carol the fiend... :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 18:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

<*Chuckle*> It’s so tempting, isn’t it, Carol? At least making them submit to a thorough whacking with a wet trout would give a little satisfaction.

I would like to point out that an attempt to raise WP:COI to policy will require revisiting the point I made last October regarding the essential conflicts between WP:Outing and WP:COI. The fact that the latter is a policy and the former is a guideline was offered as the main reason for a general refusal to address that conflict: if it’s an absolute rule – as generally asserted at WT:Outing – that no one can be “outted” (a term that I continue to insist is unfortunate and inappropriately applied to the phenomenon), then it’s technically improper to identify anyone as having a COI in many (if not all) cases. Askari Mark (Talk) 18:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

At what point does POV cross into COI? I suppose, just to be sure WP is pure, every editor who has a POV could be indefed. That would certainly eliminate any crowding problem here. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 18:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

<backdent> Actually I just got in a debate about policy/guidelines and guidelines are really almost the same as policies, just a tad more flexible, so in the end it's not that big a deal. See Template_talk:Policy#Let.27s_make_the_box_yellow CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

اردو زبان لفظ اردو عربی زبان کا لفظ ہے جس کا معانی لشکرہے۔ Asiftahir (talk) 11:42, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree we need it to get tougher, whether that means calling it a "policy" or not. Too many people are using Wikipedia for self-promotion, and the situation seems to me to be getting worse. (And is partly the reason I semi-retired). Here is what I would suggest (with some comments in italics and brackets).

• A COI is defined as: when the article is about yourself, a family member, a friend, or an employer. (This is pretty much what it is now).
• You may not edit an article where you have a COI (subject to other WP policies, e.g. deleting libelous stuff per WP:BLP is acceptable). (This is a step up from the current wording of "strongly discouraged").
• If you have a COI and you wish to change content, raise it on the Talk page.
• If you have a COI, and raising it on the Talk page does not work (which is likely to happen on a little-used page), there is a general page (called "WP:COMPLAINTS" or similar) to raise complaints.
• Unauthorised edits by a person with a COI should be blanket reverted, with a message directing the editor to the article's Talk page.
• If an article has been created by a person with a COI, that is grounds for deleting the article. (Because there are too many borderline notable people who are advertising themselves on Wikipedia).

Peter Ballard (talk) 10:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

This should never be policy. It is a guideline for editing only. It is intended for reading by individuals who may have a conflict of interest. It is not intended for admins to beat new contributors over the head with. It should never be used as a rationale for blocking. There are appropriate policies elsewhere. --Bastique ^demandez 20:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

COI applies to edits, not editors. A great deal of the discussion above seems to be about associating people with COI. The goal seems to be to tag the editor as COI, and thus silence them. This is plain wrong. Declaring a person to be COI is nothing more than an Ad hominem attack.

Besides, think about it - qualifying a person as COI is much harder and more dicey than qualifying their words as POV.

Wikipedia's active COI policy is absolutely correct. "Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." Note the language - it speaks to the editor's motivation - not the situation. It is true some insiders engage in wrong COI edits, and it's also true some are incorrigible. However -- WP:EQ WP:AGF WP:DONTBITE are crystal clear -- they get a presumption of innocence, and their words get measured against Wikipedia policies just like everyone else's.

So I strongly disagree with Peter Ballard's scorched earth policy - I'm sorry if those problems occur frequently on Wikipedia, but that doesn't entitle you to assume everyone's a bad guy. Hey, there are already enough bad guys out there... we don't need to turn good guys into bad. If a person is an unreliable editor, that will come out quite soon. If the edits studiously satisfy Wikipedia policies, then Wikipedia has no cause for action. Again, the COI policy is very clear - it doesn't say "prohibited", it says "dangerous". If the insider wants to risk the "dangerous", i.e. the scandal if caught out at it ... well, that's between the insider and the scandalmongers. All we can do is warn the insider about this. Harpwolf (talk) 22:49, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

COI applies to edits, not editors (above) may also be viewed as "Sin" vs. "Sinner" and "learning from all people." Both of these concepts are tied to what some may call "religion." Being "religious" involves 2 areas, one of which is "between a person and their fellow person." Conflict_of_Interest may in some cases be a matter of the definition(s) of Balance based on "eyes of the beholder."

I recently looked at some of the comments at Talk:Antisemitism#Hyphen and Talk:Antisemitism#Hyphen (continued_from_above) regarding the choice over naming an article "antisemitism" vs. "anti-Semitism" (and possibly "anti-semitism"). More bytes on Wiki's servers can be filled on this and other matters and yet the appetite for learning may still not be met.

There are some topics for which there can't be 2 sides permitted to have a place without destroying. An example, perhaps not a good one, might be: copying copyrighted text into Wikipedia to openly demonstrate that an individual or organization is saying one thing in one place and another thing, possibly its opposite, in another.

In short, there is something called Evil and our job is to try to avoid doing that which is wrong. ("First turn away from Evil, then begin to do good.") Dad7 (talk) 20:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I never thought of it in the "sin vs sinner" light and I don't see anything religous about it (unless you count Wikipedia policy as religion! *chuckle*) I see it as more a case that, just as the WP:COI policy said at the time I wrote the above... COI is more about someone editing to advance their personal agenda rather to improve Wikipedia. And that can be very subtle. For instance John Doe edits Ford Motor to say it went bankrupt in 2009, citing a blog which is in error. Bill Ford himself reverts the edit, citing it as plain wrong. Does that automatically make it a COI edit? Think carefully, review WP:COI.

Next, suppose John Doe absolutely hates Ford, and this bias made him too quick to believe a blog that was wrong. Think that through - who's the COI editor? Who's serving himself rather than Wikipedia? I submit this case is a turnabout - the willful outsider, not the insider, is the real COI. This is more common than you might think. Now, you might say "Well Bill didn't need to fix the Ford page, another editor would do it in minutes". True. But in a huge number of cases, the field is so specific that the population of knowledgeable people is too low. There isn't enough of a "crowd" to achieve critical mass. So the insiders have to work it out responsibly. Harpwolf (talk) 05:56, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Help with a copyrighted version of a game?

I'm not really sure how to handle this so I haven't filed it yet. There's been an article on Ladder golf for awhile, which is a lawn or backyard game. Earlier this month [1], User:Laddergolf erased everything and wrote a new article with only their copyrighted version of the rules, with the edit summary "Ladder Golf® is a brand name for a tossing game. Not a generic term for this type of game." I would assume that User:Laddergolf is a representative of that company. A user reverted it back [2] saying "see WP:TRADEMARK". User:Laddergolf reverted it again [3], saying "Ladder Golf is a brand name for a tossing game and not a generic term used to describe a type of game. Please create your own page for similar generic type games." Then a couple days ago I restored the original version [4], and now an IP which I assume is User:Laddergolf has reverted it again. That's happened a couple more times, with the last revert by them saying "Seriously.. Who do I need to contact about your trademark infringement. Why do you keep changing this to something that is not Ladder Golf!" What do we do? I would argue that it's just a game that happens to have trademarked rules, just like kickball and beer pong, but that doesn't mean they own that game. --AW (talk) 20:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

For US usage, at least, they own the name. They are trying to prevent it become genericized trademark. Their defense of the name is a necessary legal component to maintaining ownership of it.

I'd suggest that we move it to one of the popular alternative names, such as "Hillbilly Golf", with a redirect, and focus on the general concept of the game rather than the trademarked name, much as we have "Facial tissue" separate from Kleenex. Information on the trademarked version of the game in the main article can specify that it is trademarked in the US and also note that the term is used generally, if reliable sources support that. If the trademarked game "Ladder Golf" ever becomes notable enough for its own article, then it can have one. Currently, I don't know that it would be, since most of the news references I see are to the concept. If there are ever versions of Ladder Golf outside of the United States, then we have no issues, since Wikipedia is not US centric, and their right to the name in the United States does not supersede the rights of others to the name elsewhere. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I'll do that. Thanks. --AW (talk) 20:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Page about yourself

I would like to create a page about myself in Wiki as well as having my own webpage outside of Wiki. The page in Wiki is intended to reflect the knowledge that materials technologists have. Having said that it may be better to create a page entitled Materials Technology or something along these lines. I would welcome comments, ideas and thoughts so that I or someone else can get started. A page on Wiki would open it up for editing by others as opposed to any individual writing about themselves. Comments welcome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JRPatel (talk • contribs) 08:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

For a page about yourself, every Wikipedia editor has a "User" page which is "your page"... kinda. Yours is at User:JRPatel This page doesn't quite belong to you, others can edit it too, but generally what you put there won't be messed with. Wikipedia is not like a free hosting site. Every page must meet Notability tests among others. If you've read them and you're sure, go for it :) You already know about COI obviously. (Harpwolf (talk) 21:52, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Would this be considered outing?

A user set up an account in their real name (first initial, last name). The account is single purpose, making only edits to the article for a particular organisation, and to link other articles to the main article. The organisation has questionable notability, and the article is written like an ad right now. In a simple Google search, I found that someone with the same name as the SPA is the public relations director for the organisation. Would it be outing to ask the user on their talk page about a COI, or to mention COI on the article talk page? Dawn Bard (talk) 16:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fair to give the usual COI warning template, or something similar that you put in your own words. To minimize the chance of outing, you may want to avoid saying why you believe a COI is present. In a case like what you've described, if the article is written like an ad, you have a good case for promotional editing, and there is a clause about that in WP:COI that doesn't require showing the editor's affiliation. The fact that the account does nothing but promote a single organization is enough to get COIN involved. EdJohnston (talk) 16:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

If it's written like an advertisement, I would tell the user about the proper ways to organize Wikipedia articles. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Administrative action COI?

If an administrator issues a page protection in response to a vandalism/harassment solely on that page, and the vandal contests the page protection as being issued on incorrect grounds and in conflict with existing policy, is it a conflict of interest if the same administrator blocks the vandal after the vandal contests the protection? I am not sure if COI applies to administrative actions or if this is too complex and situational to have a policy. Some guy (talk) 08:37, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

COI usually applies when an editor has a real-life connection to the topic. Your example doesn't seem to involve that. From a look at your contributions, if my surmise is correct, it seems that this case is already being looked into elsewhere and doesn't need our review. EdJohnston (talk) 16:54, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I am double-checking my understanding of policy before continuing to a formal complaint; I had no idea of COI applied and now I know it does not. Thank you for your feedback. Some guy (talk) 22:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Articles and Articles for Creation

Under the section "Suggesting changes to articles, or requesting a new article", this page does not mention Wikipedia:Requested articles or Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Is there a reason we do not direct editors who may have a COI to these channels? The Articles for creation wikiproject in particular looks like a good way to balance our need for quality with our need to welcome bold new contributors. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing

This is overdue, probably: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid Editing. Given that this (and related WP:COI issues) seem to be coming up more and more, I've launched this basic RFC. We've never had an actual community discussion or mandate about this. Please review the statements, leave yours, endorse as you see fit. Should make for an interesting and enlightening discussion. rootology (C)(T) 19:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] editing my own page

I wasn't aware it would be a problem to go in and make a few edits to my biography. Since there were obvious mistakes, I thought it would make it more accurate. I did nothing to glamorize or promote or exaggerate anything, but now the page is all messed up with messages about "conflict of interest" and so forth, and someone has gone in and take stuff out, as well as added errors. One error, for example, is that I did the first 5.11 climb in America. I doubt this is true. I did the first 5.11 in Yosemite and probably the first in Eldorado Canyon, but Royal Robbins, Dave Rearick, and John Gill, among others, such as Greg Lowe, did 5.11 prior to my first routes of that grade level. How do I now clean up the mess? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pat Ament (talk • contribs) 04:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Request input on possible COI

Hello. Looking for some input on a possible ongoing long term COI. Thanks Garycompugeek (talk) 15:14, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Newby-biting incited by this policy

Lots of idiots write unencyclopedic material intended to promote their own businesses (and the reason for my calling them "idiots" is their usual lack of any attempt to make the articles conform to Wikipedia's usages and conventions). This COI policy is needed in order to deal with that.

But on the other hand, you have people like user:Waabu, who adds an external link to one of his own web pages to 14 Wikipedia articles in 61 minutes, and it's relevant and appropriate material in every case, and would be considered a good contribution if put there by anyone else.

So what happens under this policy?

One might think that an extreme concern with the hazards of conflict of interest could lead someone to tell him politely that he should ask another regular user to be the one to add the material—perhaps someone who can judge the fitness of the material for the articles.

But instead, he gets a notice that says:

Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did to Algonquian peoples. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings. If you continue spamming, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.

That is rude. In this case, it is newby-biting. Why does such a notice have to be the same dumb boilerplate message that might be appropriate for an idiot trying to promote his business or alter search-engine rankings? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:26, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Two important points about the above:

• The standard template that mentions "inappropriate material" should be used only when the material is inappropriate; not when the person adding it should recuse himself from the decision to add it because of a conflict, and it would be appropriate if added by someone else.
• That same standard template that warns people against "advertising or promotion" should be used only in cases of advertising or promotion; not indiscriminately used in all cases where the person adding the material should have recused himself from that decision because of a conflict.

In the case mentioned above, the material itself was in some instances clearly appropriate; it was only the fact that the person adding it had a conflict that could be considered inappropriate. And in the case mentioned above, no one has even attempted to make any case that advertising or promotion was the purpose, and it's hard to see how they could make such a case. Michael Hardy (talk) 11:52, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I partially agree with you that I think people are sometimes too quick to jump on a potential COI and revert without considering whether the change was appropriate or not. I would note the COI guideline doesn't actually say any change made by someone with a COI should be reverted. On the other hand, I can understand why if someone adds 14 links to the same website particularly if at least some of them are inappropriate (or has a history of that) or makes many or large scale edits to an article particularly if some of them are inappropriate (or has a history of that) why other contributors are not going to bother to check each edit to see if they're okay. Especially on a BLP situation, I think editors should not revert if the only 'problem' is a COI. I think if you do come across some edits that are inappropriate, editors should be encouraged to explain or mention these rather then reverting because the other editor had a COI. Links are perhaps the most difficult issue due to the frequency of spam and the fact they are going to be seem as spam when added by an editor with a COI regardless of whether they are appropriate Nil Einne (talk) 12:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree. I may have prevented a similar problem a few months ago. A nature lover had first created a nice, completely advertising free, well researched website with edibility information about numerous wild flowers, and then started adding the information to the articles where it was relevant. He knew he needed sources, so he linked to the only online source where all this information can be found: his own website. Based on general impressions of how certain people handle such situations, I immediately decided that I had to protect him against overeager spam fighters. Hans Adler 12:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

---

I haven't yet done emendations per the discussion above because this overlaps with WP:SPAM and it appears that maybe that page and some templates associated with it may be involved, and I wasn't sure where the emendations would go in this policy. (The "new templates" discussion below is also relevant.) I've now commented at Wikipedia talk:Spam. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I must say I disagree with this. Biting the newbies and informing them of our policies are completely different matters. We shouldn't allow Wikipedia to fill up with stuff that is against our policies just because the editors who do it are new. They should be politely pointed at the relevant guidelines, which I believe is what the standard templates do. Of course if the user has a question about the policies the templating editor should answer them in his/her own words instead of pasting a harsher template, but I belive the templates do a commendable job at getting the word out to new users that we have standards and if users are welcome to edit here as long as they abide by our policies and guidelines. As always, the templating editor should know what is written on the template before they use it and if none applies to the situation the editor should write a message on the spot.

I think the problem with the scenario described above is that the templating editor started off with a third warning instead of a first warning which is much more polite. If the new user was presented with a welcoming template (which we do have and they are the ones recommended for first offenses) then it wouldn't seem to be biting. My experience is that the templates work quite well if the templater knows what they say and uses them when the advice on them is relevant. ThemFromSpace 23:03, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem with welcoming templates is that the COI welcoming template only applies to editors who created the article that they have a COI with. It doesn't apply to editors who have a COI at an article that they didn't create. Other than that there is only a single COI template (so there's no such thing as a "third warning"). I find myself having to leave editors a personal COI warning almost every time, which isn't a bad thing of course but it's more time-consuming. -- Atama頭 23:39, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New templates needed

Someone has said on my talk page that the warnings added to user talk:waabu "have been formulated with great attention to precision regarding graduated severity." That is nonsense. There was not only no precision in their application to this case, but in fact the templates could not have been more inappropriate. They assume guilt from the beginning and they violate the policy requiring an assumption of good faith.

• The first one (which appears twice on the user talk page) says Wikipedia should not be used for advertising or promotion. I submit that such a template should be used only when there are signs of advertising or promotion. There are none in this case. It says the links fail to comply with policies. In fact, many of the links (e.g. the ones to toponymy and Algonquian peoples would have been considered appropriate if an unconflicted person had added them. What was inappropriate was not the links themselves, but at most that the person adding them should have asked others to judge whether they should be added. One should not say that the links violate policies when in fact what violates policies is something other than the links themselves. It implies the user was trying to treat Wikipedia as a "collection of links" or to use Wikipedia for "advertising or promotion". It's language about "search engine rankings" does not say that he runs the risk of being suspected of such things, but rather it just assumes guilt. It fails to say that since he should recuse himself because of a conflict, he should ask others without such conflicts to judge whether the links should be added. It fails to mention the provisions in WP:COI about "declaring an interest". It makes it appear that if he moves ahead at all, bad faith will be assumed.
• The second one is entirely negative, telling the person only what to avoid, and not telling him how to move ahead with the matter. It fails to say that since he should recuse himself because of a conflict, he should ask others without such conflicts to judge whether the links should be added. It also fails to mention the provisions in WP:COI about "declaring an interest". It makes it appear that if he moves ahead at all, bad faith will be assumed.
• The third one says that the links themselves were inappropriate, rather than that he was not the right person to add the links. To say the links themselves were inappropriate means they would still be inappropriate even if added by someone else. That is clearly false in the cases of Algonquian peoples and toponymy.
• The third one gives great emphasis to the word "spamming". Spamming means certain kinds of inappropriate links, not links added by a person who should have asked others to make the call on whether to add them, because of a conflict. This is a clear-cut case of guilty-until-proven-innocent, and that in a case where there is no evidence of guilt.
• The third one refers to "advertising or promotion". Such language should not be used except in cases of advertising or promotion. Whoever decided to use this template in this case ignored that. The person using the template did not attempt to provide any evidence or arguments showing that there was advertising or promotion in this case.
• The third one clearly states that the person is guilty as charged, in this case of spamming. To draw such a conclusion in this situation is just dishonest. I don't see how it could be viewed otherwise. It says "If you continued spamming...". Spamming consists of actually inappropriate links, not of links that another, unconflicted, person should have passed judgment on. The phrase "If you continue spamming..." implies that the person intended to add material that he should have known was inappropriate. The material was not inappropriate; at most what was inappropriate was to proceed without either "declaring an interest" or asking others to make the call.

The use of these templates in this case was a massive violation of the policy of assuming good faith. Michael Hardy (talk) 12:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you here. The only template available for a person with a COI is uw-coi, and only that. There's no friendly "welcome to Wikipedia but you might have a COI" template, at least listed on this guideline. Generally if I see someone with a COI who I think hasn't been violating any other policies I'll usually just leave them a personal message rather than the template, but a friendlier COI template option would be helpful. -- Atama^chat 04:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a vast number of people answering, so we need to set to work writing the new templates and the policy revisions. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:50, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I would give it a couple more days before making any changes. Not everyone checks their watchlist every day. I won't have time to participate in the discussion but I promise not to complain about the result. Rees11 (talk) 13:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I see from Michael Hardy's talk page that the standard arguments have been aired, so I won't say much at the moment. I hope there is extreme clarity in any new template to show that there is a problem when a new editor makes minor additions to 10 articles, 9 of which just happen to add links to the same web site. At the very least, the problem is that there is an apparent COI which should be resolved before the editor adds the same link to more articles. Of course there can be no guideline about what is reasonable ("anyone wanting to promote their web site is advised to add links at the rate of 5 per day because consensus says that is ok"). Lots of examples of people adding unhelpful links are shown at WT:WikiProject Spam, and the attacks are going to escalate as the popularity of Wikipedia grows, so any new templates need to make clear that the addition of multiple links to the same site suggests that WP:COI applies. It's not relevant to the general principle, but in the case of the new user mentioned above, two added links that I checked go to the same list of documents which (I think) cannot be viewed without at least registering with a "verification required" email address, in apparent conflict with WP:ELNO#6. Johnuniq (talk) 02:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

When Template:uw-coi was created, some effort was put into making it helpful. I'm not at all distressed that such a template was used in Waabu's case. It includes links to such places as Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations which was also carefully written so that sincere new editors, affiliated with companies, who just didn't know the ropes could figure out how to contribute here appropriately. If the need is just for a slightly friendlier version of uw-coi, I wouldn't object to that. I note that, in his entire history on Wikipedia, Waabu has never left a talk message, and I personally would not want to keep any of his links. If people think he was not well-treated, I propose that someone open a report at WP:COIN so that others can comment on his case. EdJohnston (talk) 21:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

We need to be more specific than just saying the template should be "slightly friendlier". We need to get rid of the presumption of guilt and tell him how to proceed if he's innocent.

If someome writes good content by editing Wikipedia articles, he may get a barnstar, but if he puts exactly the same content in external web sites and then links to it, he gets accused of "spam" because he has a conflict of interests, since the writing he's linking to are his own. That's an absurd situation. 22:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

• Waabu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log)

Waabu has an interesting point here. If you write something on your website, then cut/paste it into Wikipedia, that's all manner of policy violation. If you write it on Wikipedia first, then cut/paste it onto your own web page, that's excellent web-2.0 reuse encouraged under GPL. Harpwolf (talk) 04:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Cases at WP:COIN often involve new editors. Some percent of these are just inexperienced, and need a few pointers. Others are 'unguidable' and need escalating warnings. There is a shakeout period when a person has made very few Wikipedia edits and we don't know which of these two is more probable. If there is any hint that a person is trying to add real content and just needs a bit of help, if the matter is filed at COIN they will get sympathy quickly. A tougher case is the one like Waabu's where the only activity consists of adding external links. The spam people can't just stand still forever, in a case like his when a person won't respond to warnings. Somebody who won't talk is necessarily treated with less sympathy than one who comes in willing to negotiate. Responses to the early messages should be carefully watched, but in Waabu's case there was no response. That is probably why he got a series of warnings that became less and less sympathetic. EdJohnston (talk) 23:00, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that, ceteris paribus, those who won't talk deserve less respect. But the notices to his page presumed him guilty unless proven innocent, and did not offer to listen attentively to explanations that would show he was innocent. The things he'd written that he linked to could have earned him barnstars if he'd written them as Wikipedia articles. The proper thing to do would be to explain that he should declare a conflict on the COI noticeboard and to explain what behaviors could arouse suspicions. That was not done. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:14, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that there are a tremendous number of single purpose accounts and everything is stacked in their favor: having worked out how to format a link, an SPA can simply paste the link into more articles with a few easy clicks. I think that a person of good will who added their link to ten articles, then got the first message shown on User talk:Waabu would have to accept that the text had a point, even if it is somewhat dogmatic. In this user's case, it is unfortunate how two editors arrived at the same time, each wanting to add the warning. By then, Waabu had performed 22 edits, each concerned with linking to one web site, so I feel that the warnings are quite reasonable. Personally I would like some mechanism (the edit filter?) to show a friendly warning (with a link to a friendly guideline) when a new user adds any external link, then the template can assume that the guidelines have been seen. Re this particular case, has anyone read a documents linked to by Waabu? Am I correct in thinking that you have to register (and provide a verified email address) in order to do so? Johnuniq (talk) 04:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I looked at one of the documents and didn't need to register or log in or anything like that. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:56, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

We do have Template:Welcome-COI, which nobody has brought up here yet. It's accessible in Friendly. I usually greet linkspammers with Template:uw-spam1 which doesn't use the projorative term "spam". Once users have been presented with the relevant guidelines they can be warned more strongly if they continue to go against them. Generally the most important thing about templating newbies is to know what is written on the templates you use. ThemFromSpace 07:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

That may be just what we need; next we need to modify the manual to prescribe that template. Whatever happens, the template should never implicitly accuse the person of anything beyond what the particular case calls for. And that happens with the currently conventional templates. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't bring up Template:Welcome-COI because I couldn't find it. It's not mentioned anywhere on WP:COI, not that I could find. That's why in my initial reply I stated, "There's no friendly 'welcome to Wikipedia but you might have a COI' template, at least listed on this guideline." The COI guideline should state that if you don't have reason to suspect that a person has malicious intent then you should use the welcome template, for a new editor at least. I will say that there are situations where an established editor has a COI and the welcome template isn't appropriate, or where a person only has an interest in promotion and doesn't show any wish to actually improve the encyclopedia, and in those cases it's best to use the "warning" template rather than the "welcome" template. -- Atama^chat 23:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yea, the template is only a few months old and not popular yet. I agree that prescriptions for its usage should be written into the guidelines. ThemFromSpace 03:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

An update... I tried to use the Template:Welcome-COI template today on a new editor with a fairly clear COI. However, when attempting to apply it I noticed two problems. The first is that the template assumes that the editor created the article, which isn't always the case (and certainly wasn't the case today). The second problem is that it tries to do some sort of "subst", I'm assuming an attempt to put the editor's name in the article automatically, but it fails and just gives raw code in place of the name. Finally, it would be nice to be able to add the article name after a pipe the way you can with Template:uw-coi but it currently doesn't work. I might see about editing that welcome template myself to address these problems. -- Atama^chat 22:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Well remember how folks arrive at use of a template. Read WP:COI again - It's a very common cause of other problems, but not a problem of itself. So most likely there's also something else - POV, tendentiousness, and the like. Saying COI instead of POV ought to be a case of trying to be helpful, to further customize the answer for the person. But your guess of COI can be wrong, and then you look stupid. COI is sometimes used when the net-cop can't find any other violation. Since the template says essentially "YOU should not edit this article because of an irrevocable personal characteristic", it's a real favorite among abusive wiki-bullies. With such a damnation, what is there to do but go away? Of course if the template recipient actually follows the links, he reads a WP:COI policy and guidelines which say something quite different: COI applies to edits not editors; here are common mistakes; proceed with care. Doing so, of course, taunts the wiki-bully... hilarity ensues! Remember - even the best wiki-cops have perhaps read the guidelines once, several years back... but read the template everyday. Ever try to tell a wiki-cop to go read the guidelines again, LOL, that ain't gonna happen... so a correct template is a big win. Harpwolf (talk) 04:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

"COI applies to edits not editors"... I'm sorry, but that is absolute nonsense. There is no such thing as a "COI edit". Also, what you're "quoting" from the COI guideline doesn't even exist there. I do appreciate the spirit of your comment (which is basically "don't bite the newbies"), which is something I agree with. But you seem to be misinformed. The COI guideline is specifically about editors and their relationship to what they are editing. COI is somewhat like SPA (and in fact in many cases a person with a COI is a SPA). It isn't something that is automatically pejorative. I've seen editors with a conflict of interest who have made fantastic improvements to an article. I've seen the same from single-purpose accounts. Declaring a COI is not saying anything about the nature of a person's edits, it's saying something about that person's connection to what they are editing. There is one very true statement that you made, however, that I think every editor who interacts with another editor who has a COI should remember, "It's a very common cause of other problems, but not a problem of itself." Very true and very important. -- Atama頭 20:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You know, *laugh* I actually read it wrong. And so did you. Read the first two paragraphs of WP:COI again. They are clear enough. (and good thing, because most of the rest is necessarily weaselized). COI means not only do you have cross-interests, but that you have failed to put Wikipedia first while editing. That sure sounds pejorative to me. How do you determine that another editor is "advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia" without mind-reading? Only way I can think is to look at the edits... so we're back to my notion that it's about the edits. Harpwolf (talk) 07:57, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

How do you determine that another editor is "advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia" without mind-reading? - Read the guideline. It explains how you determine that. You're selectively quoting the guideline and making incorrect assumptions. There's an entire section called "What is a conflict of interest?" that you're ignoring.

Let me explain it in clear language rather than just referring to the guideline. Fred and Bob are both editors in Wikipedia. Fred works for a company that sells bottled water. Bob has no affiliation with the company but drinks the water on a regular basis and really likes it. If Fred were to write on the company's article that the bottled water is refreshing, that would be a conflict of interest because as an employee he is tied closely to the article's subject and his motives would be quesionable. If Bob were to make the exact same edit, word-for-word, no COI exists because Bob is just giving his personal opinion and would have nothing to gain from promoting the product. Both edits would probably be violations of WP:OR and WP:NPOV, but only Fred has a COI. Again, not because of the edit, but because of Fred's affiliation with the company. So clearly it's not the edit itself that is the COI concern, it is the editor. A conflict of interest is really just a "red flag" that can bring more scrutiny to the edits that an editor makes, but of itself isn't necessarily a problem. -- Atama頭 19:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me take this a step further, Atama. Suppose the Fred/Bob edit was actually compliant with all Wikipedia rules and guidelines, such as "In August 2009, XYZ Bottled Water Co. acquired through a stock purchase the ABC Aquifer Management Co. and its clean water holdings in the state of Wyoming." And the edit was fully and properly cited to both the New York Times and to the Wall Street Journal. The very model of a modern Wikipedian! Now, if Bob makes that edit, it's lovely. But if Fred makes that same edit, he has a conflict of interest. So, what is your recommendation to the Wikipedia community, to Bob, and to Fred? Are we actually saying that if Fred is "caught" making that edit, he should be reprimanded; but if Bob is found to be making the edit, he should be rewarded a barnstar? This is why I found Wikipedia's attempt to create the WP:COI policy as a reaction to my enterprise, MyWikiBiz, to be a logically flawed effort. I'm not trying to troll here -- I honestly would like to know your reaction to my scenario above. (Note, for the truly dense, I will explain my position once again -- editors with a financial conflict of interest may often have more incentive to build a factually accurate encyclopedic article about their subject than do disinterested volunteers. The secret sauce to prevent undue bias creeping in is full disclosure, coupled with harmonious community support of the conflicted party's efforts to help build encyclopedic content. Somehow, most Wikipedians, including the Big Cheese, missed this fairly simple bit of logic and experience when they had the chance back in 2006. Confrontation and the adversarial relationships they produced were the chosen path, instead.) -- Thekohser 03:21, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I spend quite a bit of time at the COI noticeboard (it's a cool place to hang out). There is nothing wrong with having a COI. Nothing at all! In fact, I've applauded people with conflicts of interest at articles they've edited. Look here where I suggested how to deal with a COI editor who hadn't done anything wrong. Look here where I told an editor with an obvious COI to continue the good work he was doing. I said already that there's nothing pejorative about having a conflict of interest. This guideline doesn't say you can't edit an article where a COI exists, it just makes suggestions on how to avoid conflict when you have a COI. I hope that answered your question? -- Atama頭 04:29, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Yes, I see the fat lot of good your support got one of them. Happy to see that the Imperial War Museum guy fared better. Now, may I ask -- what will happen if I begin editing the article about Comcast in the same style that User:IxK85 edited Imperial War Museum? -- Thekohser 12:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad to see my efforts are appreciated. I would assume that if you did as good a job as IxK85 on any article you'd be commended for it (I'd commend you for it, certainly). Do you think you might have a COI with Comcast? If you did, what I would suggest (to anyone who wants to edit an article where they have a potential COI) is to declare it somewhere. For example, the company that I work for has an article on Wikipedia. I've read it but have never edited it. I believe that I would have a COI if I did. I don't have any desire to edit it, but if I did I would state on my user page that I am affiliated with the company. That way if something happened, let's say I accidentally edit while not logged in, if someone gets suspicious and traces the IP to my employer I won't get blamed for trying to hide my affiliations. Also I consider it courteous to be open about such things, but that's just my personal opinion. -- Atama頭 15:57, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Personal interest other than material gain or recogition

I have reverted changes to the description, as they were inaccurate. There was no finding by any non-involved editor of a CoI; material or otherwise. Continued conflation of POV with COI can only further confuse issues. -- Avi (talk) 18:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

You can't have it both contrary ways, Avi. Indeed my edit reflected exactly that -- the claim you supported here, along with the editors not involved with editing circumcision articles, was that one needed material gain or recognition to be involved in a personal interest or else there is no COI; and that outside advocacy in an area is not indicative of a COI when editing articles in that area. My edits here[5], which you instantly reverted citing WP:POINT (!)[6], reflected exactly that position, your position and those of the editors outside circumcision articles, not the position that there was a finding of COI in that case -- your comment above being a non-sequitur. Your instant reversion of edits reflecting the position you yourself argue, however, does show that the issue is not "resolved" (and collapsed, hidden away, minimized) as was inaccurately marked by yet another editor wishing the issue to go away. Either make the guideline consistent with your arguments, or admit that the guideline applies in the case of any personal interest, not just that for material gain or recognition. It's really quite simple. For the record, I don't care which is decided, but I demand consistency between the text of the guideline and the prevailing interpretation of the guideline. It seems to be worthless otherwise. Blackworm (talk) 18:59, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Also speaking of hiding things away.... Blackworm (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not know anything about the background to the above difference of opinion, but I support keeping the COI guideline as simple as possible, and I prefer the version which appears to have existed for some time. Essentially the proposed change was to introduce the text shown in bold:

Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests involving material gain or recognition, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers, unless you are certain that the interests of Wikipedia remain paramount.

I do not like the new text because it provides unnecessary encouragement to someone who might dream up a new COI motivation (the new text provides too much wriggle room). Per WP:BURO, guidelines should describe in general terms what should be avoided, without listing exactly what is prohibted (with the suggestion that if it isn't on the list it's ok). Johnuniq (talk) 04:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

At the same time a clear distinction has to be made between WP:COI and WP:NPOV. Otherwise we might as well delete this guideline. If we allow editors to assume that any intangible benefit an editor might receive from editing an article presents a conflict of interest then any editor with a point of view could have a potential COI. The background to the above difference of opinion, which I was involved in simply to comment on the applicability of COI claims in a dispute, involved that exact problem. For example, an editor who is a fan of Star Wars shouldn't be discouraged from editing the article simply because they like the Star Wars films. They may gain an intangible benefit (a "warm and fuzzy feeling") by hyping up their favorite films but that's a far cry from someone who works for Lucasfilm doing the same. It's critical that a distinction be made, or there's no point to this guideline. I think that it should be stressed that there must be a tangible benefit to an editor working on an article, either through promotion (or defamation) or because they are being paid to do so. Maybe not in those exact words. -- Atama^chat 23:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I still think it is best for the COI guideline to be as open as possible because no legal phrase has ever been effective in defining all bad behavior to be avoided. If someone labels a Star Wars fan as having "COI", that issue will have to be argued out on a case-by-case basis; we can't give genuine COI promoters any wriggle room to argue that their particular benefit is not covered by the precise wording in our guideline. Johnuniq (talk) 08:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems the behaviour to be avoided is largely on a case-by-case basis. This guideline carries little weight with me, given the enforcement of both its language and its contrary application. Blackworm (talk) 01:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I still think it is best for the COI guideline to be as open as possible because no legal phrase has ever been effective in defining all bad behavior to be avoided. What do you mean by "as open as possible"? Firstly, we're not "defining all bad behavior to be avoided", we're defining what could be considered a conflict of interest. It doesn't have to be a checklist of behavior that a person goes down to verify 100% whether or not a person has a COI. But it must distinguish a COI from simply having a point of view, and currently it fails in that. I suggest that if people want to have wishy-washy language that's so open that it could potentially apply to any person who edits Wikipedia with a bias or belief (and that naturally applies to every person who edits, period) then we should consider retiring this guideline and the conflict of interest noticeboard, because they are redundant when we already have a WP:NPOV policy and WP:NPOV/N noticeboard. -- Atama^chat 20:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we were discussing adding the following underlined words to the nutshell: "Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests involving material gain or recognition, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers, unless you are certain that the interests of Wikipedia remain paramount." The underlined words suggest that some "interests" are not considered COI, and inventive minds will then argue that their "interest" is outside the underlined words. Wikipedia is not the law: we do not have to spell out precise definitions for what is and what is not legal, and it is best for the nutshell to encapsulate the central principle without any wriggle room. There could be some words in the article to say, for example, that it is not a COI for a Catholic to edit an article on Catholicism, if that were really felt necessary, however I would not try to explain common sense in the nutshell. Johnuniq (talk) 01:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

But many, not just many but most interests are not considered COI. We don't need to specify wording as if it was a "law", it's not even a Wikipedia policy. But it needs to be differentiated from WP:NPOV. Maybe you can explain how a guideline that suggests that a person shouldn't edit an article whose subject they are fond of is needed when there is already a policy stating that your edits must conform to a neutral point of view? I'm personally a big fan of Dr Pepper, should I refrain from editing the article? -- Atama^chat 22:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Are we talking about some semantic issue? I mean "interest" as in "conflict of interest". Yes, there are quite a few other interests, but the nutshell is not the place to spell out what "interest" means. I might be interested in apple pie, but that is different from the meaning in the rest of the nutshell ("the interests of Wikipedia"). If we were drafting a law for which a breach meant 5 years imprisonment, we would have to spell out precisely what we mean (and even then, the courts would grow fat from debating what we really meant). However, what we are doing is trying to make it clear that when an editor's "interest" clashes with that of Wikipedia, the editor loses. If necessary, the article can offer wriggle room ("a person who likes apple pie is welcome to edit articles on apple pie"), but it's not needed in the nutshell. Johnuniq (talk) 03:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not semantics at all. I'm not disagreeing with you. It doesn't have to be rigidly defined, I'd say it shouldn't be and probably can't be. All I care about is that this guideline isn't redundant. I don't see how the guideline as written differs from Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ#Dealing with biased contributors in any substantial way, but it should, because a conflict of interest doesn't mean simply having a bias. We don't have to define it precisely, but since we have examples of what a COI is, shouldn't we have some examples of what a COI isn't? -- Atama^chat 05:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good, so long as it's not somewhere prominent like the nutshell (if in a prominent place, it may be the only thing that is read, or may have undue weight). I also agree that COI is different from bias, one quick thought being that I may have a COI but still do good edits in the topic of my interest, while significant bias would color many of my edits. Johnuniq (talk) 05:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non-controversial edits

Where others have put in a request for citation, filling in the citation request should be consider a Non-controversial edit. I have been dinged for doing this to a bio page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology/Workshop&oldid=292921824. If nobody objects I would like to add this and then do it. After all, who knows where the cites are better than the subject of a bio page? And if someone request a citation, filing in the request should be non controversial. Keith Henson (talk) 04:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Legal antagonists: relation with WP:NLT

Is really the Legal Antagonists section related with the WP:NLT? The Junk Police (reports|works) 09:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] COI question

I mainly refer COI as conflict of interested people to a case, like Pope to Catholic sex abuse cases or some editors editing per their religious beliefs. My question is do COI limited to people involved a case per organisation and economically, or do it involve religious-political beliefs like a Catholic writer's comment in Catholic sex abuse cases. Do COI involves the case, or is there any other policy about that case. Since apparently involved parties by race or religion have comments on the articles, yet when stating their origin there are some interest as "do not label" or do not yellow badge people. Which policies I should read about the case. Kasaalan (talk) 07:42, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Clearly no, although the guideline as written certainly suggests that would be the case. You should not consider a person's religion, beliefs, race, or nationality to be a conflict of interest, ever. That is discrimination and is antithetical to the core values of this project. A perfect example is here, an arbitration case which actually gained media attention in its results. The media reported this as saying that Scientologists were banned from Wikipedia. This is not the case, editors who believe in Scientology are welcome to Wikipedia, and are also allowed to edit Scientology-related articles as long as they follow the usual policies and guidelines, and don't focus on Scientology-related articles as single-purpose accounts (those restrictions apply to everyone, actually, not just Scientologists). Arbcom did, however, block edits coming from IPs affiliated with the church itself. Now, while that arbitration wasn't based solely on COI matters (it was seeking to prevent further disruption of Scientology topics) you can be sure that COI was a factor in the decision-making.

In your example above, a Catholic shouldn't be considered to have a COI at a Catholocism-related article. On the other hand, if that Catholic happened to be working for the Holy See in their PR department, a COI would certainly apply. As I stated before, a COI should only apply when a tangible benefit could be gained from editing an article. This can't be rigidly defined, but some examples would be if you were an employee or owner of a company that had an article, or whose product had an article, if you were close friends or a relative of the subject of an article (or if you were yourself the subject of the article), if the article were something that you had created (a piece of software, a book, a film)... One thing I ask myself, is that if the editor were a judge, and the judge had a case before them involving the subject of the article, would that judge be expected to recuse themselves? Again, that's a subjective judgement but it should not be so broad as to include any interest a person may have in the subject. Surely a Catholic might be interested in editing the article you suggested above, but their contributions shouldn't be given a second thought if such contributions were otherwise proper. I hope this helps make such a murky subject a bit more clear. -- Atama^chat 20:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation so COI is only covers, directly involved parties.

I may be "racist" against myself, yet personally I try to stay away my own country's [political-war related] conflicts in wikipedia, and try to deal with other world issues, which I try to handle more neutral. Yet on the other hand I confront with some users, since they deal with their primary-secondary conflicts as [mostly] involved parties, and the balance is somehow broken through AFD, DRV or editing processes.

Yet is there any policy for involved commenting parties of a conflict.

I know the Scientology case well and they asked that ban themselves, yet that is another issue.

As an editor, I have been dealt with lots of Wikipedia:Single-purpose accounts especially on religious oriented conflicts. Race and religious beliefs differ, yet on the other hand some religiously involved parties lots of time edit by their belief system's bias, some happen to tell their origin rest does not, yet is it clearly apparent by their edits. When an apparently Catholic tries to trim Catholic sex abuse cases, or a Judaist for Yeshiva Torah Temimah pedophilia case, with no consensus and tries to WP:AFD it, there should be a Wiki Policy about stating their own involvement to the case first somehow. That is not about contributing, yet that is about WP:BIAS. There are some systematic bias in wikipedia, which is hard to track or locate, yet that even include some admins. Yet that is about editor side, my main question is about references in the article.

Second when building racially or religiously involved matters like Catholic sex abuse cases, it became obligatory to note critical or commenting parties' stance, especially when they alleges extreme criticism or defense. Yet when you do you should "label" the references somehow as conservative, leftist, Israel, Jewish, Arab, Catholic or any other way.

A 2005 article in the Western People, a conservative Irish newspaper proposed that clerical celibacy contributed ...

When we do note the origin of the sources, arguing parties happen to claim "racism, anti-religion, yellow badge" etc. However presenting comments from "religiously or racially" involved parties of the conflict [like they are 3rd party] is misleading by itself in the first place. It is really hard for conflicting cases. Not noting the references origin is misleading, and when you do note, it is alleged as "labelling". So is there any Wiki policy that deals with the issue about Neutrality of the sources. I don't like to trim even WP:POV sources, yet stating their origin is essential to me. Kasaalan (talk) 15:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it a conflict of intrest if you work for a company and are trying to update the companies page? Most people who don't work for the company may not know the correct info or have the desire to produce current and accurate info...Also I read that I can submita draft to an editor for review of the content to make sure it is un-biased. If this is correct does it matter who the editor is? LesliemariecLesliemariec (talk) 17:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Updating an article for a company you work for is an unambiguous conflict of interest. Your safest bet is to propose the changes on the talk page of the article. If your request goes unnoticed, you can post at the conflict of interest noticeboard and make the request there (that board is both for COI complaints and for people with an acknowledged COI asking for advice and requesting changes). By the way, thank you for asking and for wanting to comply with Wikipedia's guidelines. -- Atama頭 17:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Archives

I have proposed an exception to the finantial section

 employees of archives are excepted when adding "Research resources" to articles pointing to holdings of original  materials about a topic. 

About a year ago Stanford Special Collections and University Archives got shut down for adding material which pointed to their archives of unique materials. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Durand

The goals of such archives are essentially congruent with those of the Wikipedia. Archives are providing service and almost never have a finantial motivation in adding pointers to their materials to Wikipedia.

I will leave this up for comments for a week or two and make the change if there is no objection. Keith Henson (talk) 14:35, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality is an important objective and one of the 5 pillars on Wikipedia. Archive Webmasters and system administrators (employees) have an invested interest in "increasing" traffic and broadening exposure to there site, despite not outwardly appearing to have financial motivation. Employees and affiliates such as these have to show "results" in order to justify employment to the Archive. This is not congruent, but an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia and the aims of the "Archives" employee. The decision about when it would be beneficial for articles to include particular links should not be left to the affiliates of those websites, but to neutral editors.--Hu12 (talk) 15:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I wasn't clear about the nature of the kind of archives I am talking about. These are physical repositories of paper and related that have been donated to universities and a few other similar places. To use them you normally have to go there (there is no charge to use archives beyond copy charges). I suppose having this information on Wikipedia will increase the number of people who consult original sources and to that extent could be considered promotion.

 Ellwood Patterson Cubberley Papers, 1886-1965 (3.25 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special  Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries 

This is the kind of notice they would be putting in and while there are web pointers to Special Collections and the library, I suppose they could be left off and let people Google for them. I doubt that the web traffic to such sites is considered in employment reviews, but it might be.

I agree that the people in the archives are going to have a certain level of internal motivation (like being paid) to attach information about where original source material about a topic is located. In spite of that, it would seem to be benificial to Wikipedia to inform its users where additional materials can be located. And if the special collections people don't put it in, who will? Attaching location data to articles is tedious not to mention that the employees are the only ones who know what is in their special collections. Keith Henson (talk) 01:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to add that a financial motive is not necessary for a COI to exist. Promotion is another way for a COI to exist. Writing an article about your father would have no financial motive, but by inflating his importance you would in turn be promoting yourself by proxy. Someone adding links to their own web site to an article would increase awareness and drive traffic to that site, even if they make no money off of it. Those are certainly conflicts of interest. -- Atama頭 18:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The question about this COI exception is: do the users of Wikipedia benifit from knowing where to find original material? And can Wikipedia trust archivist/librarians not to abuse this exception? If this policy change is accepted perhaps it should be reviewed in a few weeks or months. Keith Henson (talk) 01:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There was a similar case about the Newberry Library in Chicago discussed at length at User_talk:JeremyA#Biting_Newb.28ur.29y.3F and at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Libraries It strikes me as common sense that research institutions putting ways to access further info on a subject are acting in the best interest of Wikipedia and building a better encyclopedia. Consider this fantasy case (yes, I just made it up): say the Library of Congress decided to better inform people on the extent of its collections by selectively linking specific resources (e.g. photos, indexes of material at Presidential Libraries, collections of personal papers) to Wikipedia articles. Wouldn't that be one of the best things that could happen to Wikipedia?

In short allowing this type of external link would build a better encyclopedia. Smallbones (talk) 05:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Most topics covered in encyclopedias have been studied for a long time, and there could be hundreds of major repositories with information related to each article. There are many thousands of articles on Wikipedia that could have a link saying that extra information is held at the Library of Congress. At some point, it stops helping the article because readers can't see the really useful links. Johnuniq (talk) 08:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there are many links that would be more useful than a link to a true research archive. One or two links per article of this type shouldn't confuse anybody. Perhaps the discussion should move to WT:EL where they argue about links to Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. Research archives are clearly much more encyclopedic than most of their other arguable links. In the meantime, post the link to the article's talk page, if somebody else think that it's worthwhile, it will be made part of the article. Smallbones (talk) 16:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It adds another step, but it's a possible solution. Re worrying about lots of links, it's fairly seldom that more than one archive has original material on a particular subject. More than 90% of this stuff is the donated papers of someone relatively famous. It is not often that these papers get donated to more than one place. Exceptions are such things as the Stanford archive of a heap of dime novels. Keith Henson (talk) 04:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I would have to agree with Smallbones, I think that while there's certainly a potential COI for an archivist to link to the archives where they are employed, the potential benefit to Wikipedia outweighs any such conflict. I guess the thing to ask is this... We have numerous examples of people linking to their own web sites or trying to puff up their employer in an article, only to benefit themselves and often making the article worse in the process (by violating WP:NPOV for example). Does anyone recall an incident where an archivist was inappropriately linking to their own archive? Or is such a thing only hypothetical? -- Atama頭 16:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

FWIW. My concerns are not so much about the content of the site, as by the behavior/motivation of the individuals adding the links. heirin lies the neutrality problem. Perhaps having individuals work with specific wikiprojects would be benificial, however lets face it archives need money and funding. Lets look a bit at the Newberry Library case (mentioned above);

• http://www.newberry.org/giving/donate.html Giving to the Newberry Library
• http://www.newberry.org/giving/
• http://www.newberry.org/giving/Corporate.html Corporate Support
• http://www.newberry.org/giving/Foundation.html foundation giving
• http://www.newberry.org/giving/Estate.html Estate Planning and Life Income Gifts

Clearly the Newberry Library does have an invested interest in "increasing" traffic and broadening exposure to there site. Despite not outwardly appearing to have financial motivation, like the links added by User Newberry_Library_SC, organizations need to measure and justify their archives. Statistics can be used to justify additional funding. They can show, for example, traffic improvement and page hit ratios. Which is why the decision about when it would be beneficial for articles to include Archive links should not be left to the affiliates of those websites, but to neutral editors. --Hu12 (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I went and read through the Newberry discussion on Jeremy's talk page. I suppose what needs to be decided is whether such links are appropriate at all. In a sense, those links are an advertisement to researchers working on the article. It's almost like putting a link to Amazon.com that shows you all the books related to the subject. Unlike Amazon the archivists aren't directly selling you something, but advertising is advertising. After all, we treat people who spam for charities no different than people who spam for profit. -- Atama頭 17:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, really? How did we treat this spammer? Note, you'll want to be careful with that one. They donated $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation, and they've lodged a representative on the Board of Trustees. -- Thekohser 18:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't see anything on the talkpage nor any mention of this IP on wikipedia[7]. Doesn't seem to be spamming at all... Just some past COI edits to Omidyar Network, Here and Pierre Omidyar, Here. That IP 207.47.3.98 is registered to Omidyar Network Services, LLC. Probably should not have been editing those articles. On the other hand, for $2 million I'd say they didn't get their "edits" worth. (I digress) LOL:)--Hu12 (talk) 20:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I can't decide if this is potentially valuable to Wikipedia or a source of trouble. If this is accepted, I suggest it be revisited in not more than a couple of months to see if it is useful and not being abused. If it isn't accepted, then the alternative of putting the information on the talk pages should be offered to the archives. That would not require a policy change but it would generate a lot of work for editors and someone would probably just write a bot for it. Keith Henson (talk) 04:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I respectfully request that discussion in this thread be limited to updating the COI guideline and that discussion on the appropriateness and treatment of links be done at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Libraries. This will insure that input is received from those most experienced in each subject. There are several concerns that come up frequently with edits by archive personnel that should perhaps be highlighted in the COI guideline. First, they often use shared, single-purpose accounts. They should be referred to WP:SPA and WP:NOSHARE. Secondly, they should be cautioned about WP:NPOV, and not to introduce material that shows their institution or benefactors in a positive light. Lastly, they should be cautioned to read WP:ELNO and post any questions about the appropriateness of links they intend to add at the External Links Noticeboard that we're in the process of getting up and running. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up these points. I commented at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Libraries.

I am not sure that "Research resources" or whatever it gets called should be considered a link. If it just points to the organization holding the material, there is no point in a link. If it points to a finding aid, maybe. (Well, maybe if it provides directions to the real world location a link to that would be useful.)

Re WP:SPA and WP:NOSHARE, even if people use a personal handle, it is going to be obvious that they are working for a library or archive. Nobody else would have a clue as to what holdings they have! So should we write exceptions for people adding pointers to the locations of original materials to those two policies? (Actually, SPA are not forbidden: "If you wish to continue working as a SPA, capitalize on the strengths of that role, particularly as regards sources." NOSHARE should not be a problem for archive employees, just create an account for each adding pointers.) I am in complete agreement with NPOV and showing organizations in a positive light (beyond the fact that they *have* someone's papers). But adding material saying where original material is located isn't advocating a point of view, at least I can't imagine a situation where it would be. Keith Henson (talk) 04:10, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that archive employees can work within these policies. They typically do follow NPOV, but they often fail at the others. The only policy that we might want to amend is WP:ORGNAME, to say that usernames containing a library/archive as part of the name are permitted so long as they follow all other policies. This is because, as you said, it's not hard to figure out where they work. An intern working for such an organization may want to use a different account for personal contributions not related to their work so that their personal contributions aren't associated with the organization. This is also currently permitted. UncleDouggie (talk) 11:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at WP:ORGNAME. The applicable line seems to be "Explicit use of a name or url of a company, group or product as a username is not permitted. Your username should represent you." Long as they use a user name like mike-at-newberry-lib they should be ok under this policy. (I will ask on the talk page.) And, as you point out, multiple accounts are permitted when there is a good reason. Thanks for bringing up the various ramifications of this proposal. Keith Henson (talk) 14:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Current practice at UAA is to block usernames that contain the name of a group, and "mike-at-newberry-lib" would be softblocked based on current enforcement trends. I do not agree with it but I'm just letting you know how it is; an amendment to the username policy would likely be needed. Shereth 15:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Changing WP:ORGNAME has been rejected in favor of encouraging such users to declare their affiliation on their user page. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal, the term "Archive/Library" is far too broad. While there are indeed good archive sites out there that could be included, there are plenty of spam/non RS ones. And who's to say libraries/archives don't spam/promote themselves? IAR and common sense just be used in cases where the links added are "good". Triplestop x3 20:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Triplestop, if you want to use a more restrictive term or define the characteristics of good archives, I will go along with you. (We could even have organizations apply to get this exception or block accounts that spam.) Second I agree with you that IAR and common sense should be enough. But it doesn't seem to work out that way. About a year ago Stanford Special Collections (which is about as good an archive as you can find) had an intern start putting in links where they had substantial holding related to Wikipedia articles. All 100 of them were reverted.

After they read the COI rules, which [which they read as] outright forbid[ing] people from being assigned to work on Wikipedia this way, they decided they couldn't do it and didn't come back. (I put the links back in on about 40 of the articles, but ran out of time and patience.) So unless you go deep into the history of the articles, the information is lost. My guess is that Stanford Special Collections has original papers related to thousands of Wikipedia articles. It seems to me that Wikipedia would benefit from that information being added, but I am not going to go against consensus (even if I could). Keith Henson (talk) 00:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Which COI rules are you talking about that "outright forbid people" from anything? -- Atama頭 01:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

"Financial

If you fit either of these descriptions:

you are receiving monetary or other benefits or considerations to edit Wikipedia as a representative of an organization (whether directly as an employee or contractor of that organization, or indirectly as an employee or contractor of a firm hired by that organization for public relations purposes); or,"

Stanford Special Collections people read this and gave up on Wikipedia. Keith Henson (talk) 01:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we should soften this policy. As it clearly states, the intent is to avoid violations of WP:NPOV. It seems to me that archive/library employees don't have a big problem in this particular area, so there's no need to ram it down their throat and make them give up. The policy as written is not absolute and exceptions can even be made. So let's be more accommodating and focus on enforcing the other policies instead for these folks. I propose we add an exceptions section under financial with an exception for the Reward Board and another for "Archive or library employees who provide contributions on their organization's unique holdings related to the main subject of an article. Such employees are especially reminded to review WP:NPOV, WP:EL and WP:NOSHARE. UncleDouggie (talk) 08:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

"Stanford Special Collections people read this and gave up on Wikipedia."' - That's their problem. These are guidelines making suggestions about propriety. This isn't a policy setting rules. There's no need to "soften" what looks like one of the softest guidelines in Wikipedia. Did someone chase them off Wikipedia in a fit of zeal or did they just misunderstand what they were reading? Either way, all we can do is write the guidelines, we can't do anything about people who misinterpret them. -- Atama頭 15:31, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Third paragraph under Financial already provides an exception for the Rewards Board so we don't have to change that. As you point out, the intent is to support WP:NPOV. And (again as you point out) archives/libraries generally support NPOV anyway. The other reason for the policy is to prevent Wikipedia from being used commercially or for promotion. Very few archives are commercial. There is an element of promotion that is unavoidable in the location information.

The other big problem with these organizations is "culture clash." Wikipedia is a strange place for organizations to interface with. They generally don't understand a statement like: "The policy as written is not absolute and exceptions can even be made".

As I think deeper about this, Wikipedia might consider an outreach program to these people. They have a lot to offer. They also need guidance if they are going to fit into the local culture. It's true anyone can edit Wikipedia. It's also true that unless you fit into the culture, someone is likely to revert your edits within a day--especially if you do a lot of them.

User pages like this might help (assuming we add the exception).

"Hi. I'm Sam. I work for Special Collections at the University of xyz. I am here under exception x of WP:COI Financial and have been assigned to add Research resources pointers to articles where Special Collections has relevant materials and external links to finding aids and scans of related materials. Please let me know on my talk page if editors find link errors or have any other questions about these additions to the articles."

Perhaps the local culture would be more friendly if these people don't just barge in and start adding pointers/links.

After reading some of the Newberry library clash I can see there needs to be some effort put into managing expectations. Libraries are putting more and more stuff on line. Wikipedia could be the primary link to finding that material. The minimum is just saying they have original materials, the next step is on line finding aids that describe the material, and finally, some of this material is scanned and put online. The last two are external links, the first is just a notice of where research material can be found if you want to travel there (or talk the archive into making and mailing copies). As a suggestion, "Research resources" should not be considered an external link, but a pointer to where you can find this material in the physical world. Keith Henson (talk) 16:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you Keith. As for whether we actually need to soften the policy, the rest of the partial quote above is:

...then we very strongly encourage you to avoid editing Wikipedia in areas where there is a conflict of interest that may make your edits non-neutral (biased). Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy states that all articles must represent views fairly and without bias, and conflicts of interest may significantly and negatively affect Wikipedia's ability to fulfill this requirement. If your financially-motivated edits would be non-neutral, do not post them. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:27, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

The COI exception we are talking about here is really limited. If it becomes policy we are letting archive agents say the a library/archive/special collection has material about the topic of the article, nothing more. They have no reason to say anything beyond what they have and where it is. The assumption we are making in letting them off financial COI is that such pointers are inherently unbiased. If you can think of an exception case, please let us know. Keith Henson (talk) 17:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is one of the softest guidelines in Wikipedia. It reads like we don't want them, but our lawyers said we can't outright ban them, so we left in a narrow escape clause that they will never be able to satisfy. As soon as one of their edits is reverted based on claimed COI or spam, their fears will be realized and they will leave. They won't have the experience to fight it, or even know that there is such a thing as WP:NPOV/N. The tone of this text contradicts the "guideline" nature of the document claimed in the intro. I realize that the guideline has developed in response to real problems. Sometimes when doing this we cast the net too wide. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:27, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

If an edit is reverted based on spam, and properly done, then they shouldn't have been spamming in the first place and I don't have much sympathy. If an edit is reverted with a claim of "COI" then the editor who made the revert needs to be told that such a revert is invalid, we don't revert someone just because they have a COI. UncleDouggie, you're seeing what's simply not there in the guidelines. "Very strongly encourage" means just what it says, it's not a rule. Nobody can justifiably stop someone from editing only because of a COI, and if they try then that editor should be warned. If there is a large consensus of editors who feel that a particular editor who has a COI shouldn't edit an article, then the editor can be topic-banned but the same can happen to anyone. Frankly, seeing this as "we don't really allow it but we can't say that because of our lawyers" is nonsense and borderline paranoia. Wikipedia has plenty of fairly stone-clad rules that unambiguously say do not do this. Just about every policy in Wikipedia is full of strong language because those are rules people aren't allowed to break (except in special circumstances). Take a look at WP:OUTING, or WP:BLP, or WP:OR that are full of words like "must not" or "will be immediately reverted". Some guidelines, like WP:N are nearly as important as policy and enforced strongly. The COI guideline is as much to help people who have a COI as those who are identifying another editor with a COI. The guideline only suggests how a person with a COI can avoid conflict, and suggests how a person can contribute without "making waves". If someone reads this guideline and gets spooked then they're reading it wrong. If someone reads this guideline and makes bold edits that get reverted and decides that Wikipedia doesn't want them, then they ignored the suggestions on using the talk pages. Any policy or guideline can be misread or misinterpreted and that often leads to conflict in the encyclopedia, and the COI guidelines seem to be better than most, using clear language rather than legalese. If a person can't understand these guidelines then I wonder how well they would function in Wikipedia anyway. -- Atama頭 16:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Is it spam or COI when an archive assigns some intern to put in hundreds or thousands of pointers in articles to their holdings? The interns are getting paid and that makes their edits suspect if not forbidden on COI grounds. *I* think such pointers to original source materials are good for Wikipedia but YMMV. I submit the Stanford example a year ago as one where just on the application of policy, good information was discouraged to the point they gave up. (They made other newbie errors, but I know that reading the COI policy was what made them give up.) As to how they would function in Wikipedia, the answer is not well at all. The employees or interns who would be putting in such information are not usually the combative personalities who do well on Wikipedia. Re "bold edits," putting in a note where some documents can be found may be useful, but it is about as far from "bold" as I can imagine.

We don't have to make an exception in COI for archive agents putting in useful pointers. It has been suggested that we tell them to put the pointers on the article's talk page and let regular editors copy/paste the pointers into the articles. Or we can just drop the whole thing. Keith Henson (talk) 17:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Could we please have some other non-paranoid editors read the entire guideline from the point-of-view of an archive intern and give us their opinion? It's pretty clear that Atama, Keith and I aren't going to reach a consensus here by ourselves. Thanks! UncleDouggie (talk) 21:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I concur, I think we're just going back to the same arguments over and over. (And I don't mean offense by "borderline paranoia"; no implication of mental illness, nor personal persecution, but I did mean that the interpretation of the quoted passage was seeing a non-existent threat.) -- Atama頭 22:28, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

One minor addition to UncleDouggie's comment. The policy needs to be read from the viewpoint of the intern's manager, especially after having an entire day of the intern's work deleted.[[8]] (July 21) There is always more work to do in a library than they have people to do it. If they see Wikipedia as a hostile place, they are not going to waste time with it. I find it interesting that one library that puts up links gets the links tagged: (Tag: possible conflict of interest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Spcoll.) Right now Wikipedia doesn't have a consistent policy toward the addition to this type of pointers by special collections.

At the root of this, do Wikipedians want this kind of input from archives and related places? If no, end of discussion. If yes, what (if anything) should be changed? I am open to anyone's answers to both questions. Keith Henson (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I just don't think adding specific exemptions like this is the right answer for this. Perhaps a section on describing what type of edits that may be construed as COI are actually welcomed, as well as emphasizing compliance with the external links page. Triplestop x3 02:27, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a good approach. Unless someone has a better idea, I will add your suggestion to the non controversial edits section in a few days. Or someone else can do it. Keith Henson (talk) 19:11, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

On the basis of the above discussion I believe this incorporates all the comments, objections and suggestions. If I have missed anything, please comment.

[edit] Non-controversial edits DRAFT

Editors who may have a conflict of interest are allowed to make certain kinds of non-controversial edits, such as:

(snip 1-6)

7 Adding pointers (Research resources) to primary sources in archives, special collections, libraries, etc. or External links to finding aids and digital or digitized primary sources. Editors working for such organizations are requested to review WP:NPOV, (seldom a problem), WP:EL (useful links related to the article, not promotion), WP:NOSHARE and WP:ORGNAME. The last two mean don't create a shared organizational account and don't include the name of the organization in the account name. It is recommended but not required for such editors to declare their affiliation on their user page.

To determine what is controversial, use common sense. If another good faith editor objects, then it's controversial.

Keith Henson (talk) 18:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a slightly modified version:

“

Editors who may have a conflict of interest are allowed to make certain kinds of non-controversial edits, such as: (snip 1-6) 7. Adding pointers to primary sources in archives, special collections or libraries in the Research resources section of an article. Also, adding External links to digital primary sources. Editors working for such organizations are requested to review WP:EL (useful links to on-line, non-promotional material related to the article), WP:NPOV, WP:NOSHARE and WP:ORGNAME. The last two mean don't create a shared organizational account and don't include the name of the organization in the account name. It is recommended but not required for such editors to declare their affiliation on their user page. If another editor objects for any reason, then it's a controversial edit. Such edits should be discussed on the article's talk page.

”

I took out the AGF ref because I didn't think it made sense in this context. It could be read to say that some editors who object are acting in bad faith. But, we're supposed to AGF, so it just seemed out of place. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, with minor additions to your version I added it as #7. Archive people make a distinction between material that was born digital they hold and "digitized" (usually scanned) paper. Finding aids (if online) give more detail about what they have. The last line on AGF was in the original but your version is better so I updated it too. I thought about adding something about NPOV, but decided it probably won't be an issue. (Pointing to where someone's papers are is the essence of neutral.) If it ever becomes a problem the editors can jump on it.

"Research resources (section)" might need to be defined. They are not links other than to the institution that has the material.

We should come back to this in 2-3 months and see if it does what we want and is not being abused. Keith Henson (talk) 19:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Self-citation

I write for a music review site called Roughstock. While the reputability of the site has never been questioned, I've been a bit afraid of citing my own single and album reviews in articles. The closest I've come so far to adding my own review is in Joey (song), where someone else added my review and I trimmed a little so that it didn't look like my review was receiving undue weight. WP:COI says "Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is notable and conforms to the content policies." The site seems to conform to the policies — it has a somewhat bloglike format like The 9513, which was also declared reputable by various other editors; in addition, main Roughstock editor Matt Bjorke has reviewed for other publications such as About.com, and guest editor Michael Sudhalter also writes for Country Standard Time magazine. I think that the use of my review on "Joey" is neutrally worded. Would it be acceptable to cite my own reviews on song and album articles in a similarly neutral fashion? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 17:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

This is the sort of thing that might be best taken up on the conflict of interest noticeboard where you can ask about your own potential conflict of interest. Or are you asking here to make a general comment/ask a general question about self-citing in articles? Generally it's considered a COI to link to materials you've written yourself because it could be considered self-promotional. The example you provided above (trimming where someone else added your review) doesn't seem to present a conflict because someone else presented it in the first place. So if you're asking if you'd have a COI with those links the answer would seem to be "yes" in my opinion.

The other question, should you provide those references anyway? This guideline doesn't forbid anyone from contributing anything, so you certainly can. In my opinion if you want to avoid the appearance of impropriety, suggest your reviews as sources on the talk pages of articles where you feel they are appropriate. Or you can go ahead and add them directly to the articles but declare your COI openly on the talk page of such articles so that nobody thinks that you're trying to sneak in self-promotion. -- Atama頭 20:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll take it to COIN. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 20:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite the lead?

I've got a new editor that I'm trying to bring around from promotional editing to constructive editing because he/she does have good material to offer. I keep pointing him/her at policies and guidelines and he/she keeps finding some way to interpret them in their favor. I'm not asking for any help in this particular case, I can handle it for now. However, the latest misinterpretation on the lead of WP:COI is perhaps eye-opening for us. We know what it means, but it's hard sometimes for us to read it as an editor with a COI might see it.

The sentence in question is: "Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." The interpretation is that if an editor contributes material that clearly advances the aims of Wikipedia, they may also advance their outside interests so long as the outside interests are negligible in comparison. So, adding 100 good words entitles one to add 5 promotional words. The nutshell sentence can also be interpreted this way. It seems that we don't want to permit any direct advancement of outside interests period. I say direct because if I contribute to an article in my professional field, it may advance my industry and I may then derive indirect benefit. I don't think we want to ban this; we need all the experts we can get.

My proposed nutshell: Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers, unless you are certain that a neutral editor would agree that your edits are in the best interests of Wikipedia.

My proposed rewrite for the bold sentence in the lead: "When an editor's purpose is to advance outside interests, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." UncleDouggie (talk) 05:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the general outline of your comments. One way around the problem might be to define conflict of interest in objective terms, rather than as a state of mind. The state of mind might be what we really want to stop, be if there is no way to objectively say "this is coi" and "this is not coi" then it will be difficult to enforce. With a state of mind definition the only person who would really know about whether there is a coi or not (the editor in question) would always be inclined to say that there is not a coi - and how are we to say he is wrong? Smallbones (talk) 22:23, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I too agree with the concerns expressed, and would support the change. In response to Smallbones, how about: "If an edit advances outside interests, rather than the aims of Wikipedia, the editor stands in a conflict of interest." LK (talk) 02:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's keep it as simple as possible: If an edit advances outside interests, the editor stands in a conflict of interest. UncleDouggie (talk) 05:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

A great deal of our legitimate editing advances outside interests. If I write that The New York Times made a profit last year of X million, and was voted the world's greatest newspaper, I'm advancing its interests. The problem arises only if I place the interests of the Times above the interests of Wikipedia; that is, if my main or sole reason for being an editor is to advance the interests of the Times. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 07:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

What about this? "When an editor's primary goal is to advance outside interests, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." -- Atama頭 08:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, we've gone full circle with no agreement, and everyone has good points. The root problem is that the boldface sentence is just plain wrong. The sentence before it is the correct one, it's just not in bold: COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. I propose we keep that one and delete Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Now that I look at it again, the one I want to keep has a similar problem to what SlimVirgin identified. I wonder how much of the rest of the guideline is also messed up? How about COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups with whom you have a relationship. It's still not perfect, but I can't stand to look at anymore bold right now. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Now, how about my proposed nutshell sentence? I know, I didn't put it bold above so everyone ignored it. OK then, my proposed nutshell: Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers, unless you are certain that a neutral editor would agree that your edits are in the best interests of Wikipedia. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm good with that as the nutshell sentence, I see no obvious flaw. However, the sentence we were discussing still needs to be fixed. Following SV's objection, I suggest, If an edit advances outside interests, and does not advance the aims of Wikipedia, the editor stands in a conflict of interest. LK (talk) 16:09, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems that people are OK with the new nutshell, so I'm going to put it in. It's a fairly small change, but I think it helps. On COI editing, I propose:

"COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia to:

1. Advance your own interests
2. Advance the interests of your employer
3. Advance the interests of other individuals, companies, or groups in cases where you value such interests above the interests of Wikipedia"

This restricts the value judgement to the cases identified by SlimVirgin while making the first two cases unambiguously COI. UncleDouggie (talk) 08:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I guess this didn't horrify anyone. Does anyone feel that we need more discussion before making the update? UncleDouggie (talk) 06:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's a modification with one more caveat:

"COI editing involves contributions in any of the following categories:

1. Theories supported or refuted by research in which you have participated
2. Advancement of your own interests
3. Advancement of the interests of your employer
4. Advancement of the interests of other individuals, companies, or groups in cases where you value such interests above the interests of Wikipedia"

UncleDouggie (talk) 12:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

(1) Is wide open to misinterpretation and use to attack subject matter experts. A creationist can accuse a biologist of 'conflict of interest' if he/she has done research involving the 'theory' of evolution (which is pretty much everyone in the field, as evolution is a bedrock of modern biology). The cases where an article may directly affect the career or standing in the community of a researcher, is already covered by (2). LK (talk) 13:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

This certainly wasn't my intent, but I agree it's a problem. We could drop it. Let's see if others feel it's worth coming up with better wording. UncleDouggie (talk) 14:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

For (4), I would remove the caveat altogether, and make it, "Where you value the interests of other individuals, companies, or groups other than Wikipedia." Otherwise, the supporter of a particluar group can argue that his COI is fine, as he values that group's interests slightly less than the interests of Wikipedia. LK (talk) 13:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

This was pretty much my proposal half-way up this topic, but it was legitimately shot out of the sky by SlimVirgin. The same objection applies here. UncleDouggie (talk) 14:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no way around it, we have to look at intent. Your original, "where you value such interests above the interests of Wikipedia" also looks at intent. COI is about intent. We have to say that when you intend to advance an outside group's interests, you have a COI. LK (talk) 15:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, which is why I modified my proposal. At the same time, I removed intent intent from cases 1-3 to give the lawyers less room to wiggle through. UncleDouggie (talk) 22:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Statement on what COI is not

I think it's a good idea to have a statement concerning what COI is not near the beginning of the page. I've just had someone argue to me (an admin no less), that COI is what drives Wikipedia, because whenever someone knowledgeable in an academic discipline (like a professional biologist for instance) edits with the intent of making articles reflect the beliefs in that academic discipline, they have a conflict of interest.

In WP:SYN, they have the statement: "Carefully summarizing or rephrasing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis—it is good editing. Best practice is to write Wikipedia articles by researching the most reliable published sources on the topic and summarizing their claims in your own words, with each claim attributable to a source that explicitly makes that claim." I suggest that we include a similar statement:
"When edits are made with the common goal of the Wikipedia community to build a better encyclopedia, there is no conflict of interest. Editors advance Wikipedia's interests by editing articles to impartially summarize reliable sources with proper weight for all notable viewpoints. "
--LK (talk) 16:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The proposed wording reflects what good experienced editors know, but the guideline is not necessarily for good experienced editors. I'm just wondering what kind of trucks some folks are going to try to drive through that little opening, e.g. a business owner writes text that clearly promotes his business. When questioned he states "it's building a better encyclopedia," since it's all true and in RSs (even if he did leave a few unpleasant things out). I'm sure there are several other ways to twist your perfectly pure text. So my only question is "Does the text clearly distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable editing so that all parties can understand it?" Smallbones (talk) 17:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a thought - how about a new symbol, much like a footnote subscript, that identifies information that has been added by someone with an acknowledged COI? Or even an article/section tag? "Sections of this article include information that has been directly edited by a representative of the company the article is about and may reflect bias" or some such. --Insider201283 (talk) 18:27, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

We already have a COI tag for articles. But I'm against putting a red letter on everyone with a COI. It's a good thing to be able to recognize and acknowledge editors who have a COI, and it's important to protect the encyclopedia against disruptive editing caused by COIs who are attempting to promote one entity or another. But at the same time there are some good editors who contribute positively despite the COI. The guideline as written takes pains to not stigmatize COI editors and I think we should honor that. -- Atama頭 19:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The word "bias" typically carries a pejorative tone, so such a tag would itself be introducing bias to the article. In my experience, often when a representative of a company edits the article about the company, it is to correct some glaring error (even a six-year-long mistake) that a volunteer editor published. That's not bias, unless truth and verifiability are a form of "bias". -- Thekohser 19:13, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, the guideline specifically allows for non-controversial edits. The current COI tag is intended to be placed when a COI editor violates policy in their edits, and inserts language that has a particular POV and/or is promotional. It should be accompanied by an explanation of the tag on the talk page. But it shouldn't be placed just because an editor might have a COI. A new, more strongly-worded tag isn't needed. -- Atama頭 20:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Seems like we've stalled here. Are people OK with my inclusion of a statement about what COI is not? LK (talk) 07:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it is needed. It is technically true that practically everybody has a conflict of interest somewhere, and that almost everybody edits in those areas (I'm working in chemistry, still I do edit many pages about chemicals and related subjects .. but I do try to not advance my own situation). That is a 'conflict of interest', but it is not a problem. We should not include a statement that it is not a conflict of interest, the guideline should (and is, IMHO) say that people with a conflict of interest should not edit to advance their own situation. The argument has been used against me sometimes, 'sure, I have a conflict of interest, but I am a specialist in the field, so of course I edit my own pages' ... the problem is, that those editors don't neutrally word their own results or knowledge. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:34, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

No – words like those would be excellent if contributors have no hint of a problem to begin with. However, there really are people who (perhaps unintentionally) would interpret your statement as a green light to "impartially summarize reliable sources..." by spamming the benefits of their organization complete with references to their PR-produced sources which (AGF!) they believe are reliable, and of course everyone believes "I am impartial". Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The proposed statement would cause more trouble by people misinterpreting it. It's better to clean up the existing language on what COI is, which is what I'm attempting in the topic above this one. As you can see from that discussion, defining COI accurately is really hard. Once we get it right, the last thing we need is to further confuse the issue by including an inverse statement. UncleDouggie (talk) 08:31, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I can see how problems can arise from people who have COI but refuse to admit it. But, we do need something about how biologists editing biology articles in topics that are not related to their research or jobs do not have COI. Subject matter experts has been accused of having COI just because they are subject matter experts. For example, Dirk Beetstra seems to express that opinion above. So, how about: "A person with knowledge and interest in a particular subject matter does not automatically have a Conflict of Interest, if that person edits in that area. There is no conflict of interest when a person edits solely with the intent to create a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia." LK (talk) 15:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Scaring away experts, or giving editors the ammo to attack experts by citing COI is bad. And I've seen it happen. I'm not sure the best way to add the info, maybe at the end of "What is a conflict of interest?" but before listing examples of conflict of interest, that might be a good location. -- Atama頭 16:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Added statement to place suggested. LK (talk) 07:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the statement and I think others will as well. Please don't make such changes to the guideline with only a few hours notice. People aren't online all the time or even every day. I could drive a truck through that statement. If someone is making edits related to their employer, they DO have a COI. There are no exceptions and I've proposed new language in the thread above to make this clear. Having a COI doesn't mean that a user absolutely can't make an edit. The guideline explains this. The answer to permitting more editing isn't to redefine away COI, but rather define better what a COI editor is allowed to do. Making neutral edits is essential of course. We need to know who has a COI so others can take a closer look to make sure the edits really are neutral. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, I agree. As UncleDouggie pointed out below, we already have text that says, "Editing in an area in which you have professional or academic expertise is not, in itself, a conflict of interest." It is located in WP:COI#Citing oneself. So that language would be redundant even absent the other concerns. -- Atama頭 22:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Lets look at the statements in question:

1. A person with subject matter knowledge and interest does not automatically have a conflict of interest when editing in that area.
2. There is no conflict of interest if a person edits with the sole intent of creating a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia.

Do you have a problem with 1 or with 2? LK (talk) 10:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a problem with both of them given the way that they are phrased:

1. I'm not aware of a guideline that says a SME is automatically in a conflict of interest by virtue of their knowledge, so the statement isn't needed. All it does is open us up to a trap in which anyone can claim that because they are a SME, they don't have to worry about COI. This is further reinforced by the second statement.
2. We already have a policy about neutral editing. This statement then says that if an editor follows NPOV they don't have a COI. The conclusion is that because everyone is supposed to follow NPOV anyway, we can throw out the entire COI guideline. I'm sure this wasn't your intent. But this is how the statement will be interpreted by editors angling for a way around the rules.

Just read about the wiki-lawyering we're trying to counteract in the topic above this one. That's trivial compared to how these statements will be abused. If you feel that the current guideline is wrong, let's fix it. Creating conflicting inverse statements won't get us there. UncleDouggie (talk) 11:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

So, from above, you do agree that both statements are correct, but are just afraid that they can be wikilawyered. All statements can be wikilawyered. You are only thinking about one side of the problem. What about the newbie biting of scientists that's going on, like Atama notes above? I too have personally seen newbies attacked with COI just because they are subject matter experts. As for you arguments that we don't need it because it's already covered in other policies, you can say that all the behaviours noted in the COI guideline is already covered in V, OR and NPV, why do we need this guideline? We need guidelines to point out the obvious, because sometimes the obvious is not obvious to everyone. LK (talk) 11:23, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

From a literal reading, #1 is correct but #2 is incorrect due to the "sole intent" language because there's quite a difference between intent and final product. I've tried to address this with the recent update to the nutshell to give more clear guidance. I still don't think that #1 should be included in this form. I would support something along the lines of: "Contributions by SMEs are encouraged. In the cases where a SME has a conflict of interest, it may be best to add material to the article talk page for discussion and inclusion into the article by neutral editors." I would appreciate comments on the "Rewrite the lead?" topic because I think our first order of business is to cleanup the shortcomings of the current guideline before we try to add more escape clauses. I will note that three other editors in this thread have objected to the new clause as well so I don't think I'm alone. UncleDouggie (talk) 12:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It turns out that we already have the first statement in the form of "Editing in an area in which you have professional or academic expertise is not, in itself, a conflict of interest." UncleDouggie (talk) 22:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Archives exception - clarification please

Dear all, I've heard from several archivists and people in the cultural sector that they are very interested in the new section to Non-controversial edits that allows them to include references to their own collections. They are extremely pleased to see that, from their perspective, we Wikipedians are not "anti-archives" but are looking to collaborate with them. They, in return, are very keen to "not break the rules" and are somewhat afraid of being bitten.

However, there are two questions I have which were raised and I would like clarification on:

1. The exception specifically refers to "archives, special collections or libraries" and I know some museum curators who feel that they've been left out of this exception. Was the intention to NOT allow museum artefacts to be linked to/added in the same way as archival resources (noting that the line between "museum" and "archive" is quite blurred)? If so, why? If not, then can we re-phrase the exception to explain that we mean all 'cultural collections institutions' (a.k.a. GLAMs)?
2. The exception refers to the "research resources" section of the article. Is this a new section that should be added to the end of the article or is this a cover-all term for the Standard appendices such as "external links" and "further reading"?

I have made a blog post about these questions and this policy exception in general here. Witty Lama 15:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) link above is quite important and everybody interested in WP:COI ought to take a glance. I'd definitely include museums, but I do have potential problems with:

1. Commercial museums - e.g. the roadside attraction, 2 room "museum" of rocks, hex signs, one-hit wonders, etc. that are intended to bring in customers to the restaurant or gift shop.
2. Museums with commercial content (even if they are non-profit) - e.g. there's a National Corvette Museum in Kentucky that's rather nice, but would tend to be promotional. Circus museums, museums on historical figures who have been made into Disney characters (Mike Fink, Francis Marion) or even the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. might all be questioned similarly.
3. Too many items in the "research resources" section. 3 or 4 shouldn't be a problem, but 10 or 20 would be for many editors. Please remember that Wikipedia has a fairly general audience, not an audience of research specialists. (BTW a special section is fine with me, as is just using an External links section).
4. Size, reputation, sponsorship issues. I'd love to see the Stanford University Library, Newberry Library in Chicago, or even the Milwaukee Museum of Art provide links. I'm not so sure about small museums sponsored by cities, counties, religious organizations, or small non-profits, e.g. the Minshall House Museum in Media, PA (open on weekends in the summer), or even the Friends of the Brandywine Battlefield Park. I like both of those last organizations, but ...

Maybe somebody could write an essay, guiding the GLAMs through the Wikipedia minefield, providing examples of acceptable and unacceptable GLAMs, including a big "gray area," and then suggesting that, for cases in the gray area - just put the link on the talk page. Smallbones (talk) 14:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

sofixit :-) (only kidding). But seriously that's a good idea and something I might try to do one day when I get the time. I think the concern about commercial/corporate museums is valid and could be addressed by a sentence in the policy exception describing the purpose of allowing the linking and that the exception doesn't mean links-as-advertising are suddenly ok. However, does this mean that you think that museums and galleries should be treated equally as archives and libraries in this policy exception (taking into account the commercial concern)? Witty Lama 15:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Why not? For our purposes they're the same thing. They are places that hold unique resources. A museum may have a 3,000-year-old Grecian urn that is the only intact example of a particular pottery style, and if we have an article about that style then getting a photograph of that urn would be invaluable. If there are no free photos online (or any photos) then an editor who lives near the museum might go and take a picture. That's just as valuable as an archive that has the only copy of a book that someone wants to use as a reference. -- Atama頭 16:48, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Just read the blog - looks good. I've got absolutely no problems with libraries and archives, but museums are a bit tricky on some fairly minor things (see above). If it was "non-commercial museums with a national or regional reputation" I'd have no problems - but how to put that more concisely? When I wrote my 1st response, I was thinking of a very witty guy who could certainly write a good guide for GLAMs on Wikipedia, but realized the "sofixit :-)" idea as soon as I hit the enter key. I could not write a guide for GLAMs, but would willingly help edit it from a "consumer of research" POV. If somebody who was a long term administrator with an interest in COI was also interested, it might help get acceptance here. Smallbones (talk) 17:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

As Lama says, "the line between "museum" and "archive" is quite blurred." If museums have archival materials that they allow access to (and many do), then they fall under archives as far as this COI exception goes. For other materials, how about some specific examples? Atama's comment about pictures is excellent, I don't think anyone would object to Creative Commons photos of items they have in their collection being uploaded by museums, and of course taking credit for the photos. It's a COI, of course, but if it doesn't fall under some exemption, we can add it to the policy.

I suggested "Research resources" be used where it is just a pointer to paper archives since "External links" isn't descriptive (if something under this heading has a link, it would just be directions to the physical location of the archive). On line finding aids or digital materials can be actual External links. Re the number of entities under "Research resources," I think it is rare for more than one or two archives to hold original papers from a person or even on a topic (to give an example, how many libraries hold large collections of dime novels?). Let's see if it becomes a problem. The policy should be reviewed in a few months to see how it is working.

Thanks to Lama for drawing my attention to this discussion. Keith Henson (talk) 23:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe my 1-4 problems above are only theoretically problems, best left out of practical discussions. In any case, I don't disagree with what everybody has said. Smallbones (talk) 03:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

"Research resources" should be a separate section at the end of the article. We haven't added it to the layout guideline yet. I suggest after References and before External links. I agree with Keith Henson on the content of Research resources vs. External links. On museums, I concur with the caution advised by Smallbones. Archival collections are clearly permitted even if housed in a museum. For other types of collections, I recommend either first adding the material to the article talk page for discussion, or if a large number of articles are involved, post a question at WP:ELN. Over time, we can update the guideline based on what we see is working well.

The blog post is great. The linked user page doesn't really have the best declaration for archive users. They aren't restricted to only adding material to the talk pages and they shouldn't really reference "archive xyz related pages" as that would imply that they are promoting the archive. It would be better to just clearly state that they providing information on the primary sources in their collections that apply to specific Wikipedia articles.

A bit of caution on biting is in order. The first archivists to edit under the new guideline should expect to get bitten at some point. Please don't take it personally. We have thousands of users who aren't familiar with the COI change. Linking to "[[Wikipedia:Coi#Non-controversial_edits]] #7" in the edit summary will surely help. However, it will take time to educate everyone. Archivists should not engage in any heated discussions or edit wars, but rather bring any resistance to WP:ELN and let the community take care of it. We will eventually reach a critical mass in which any stragglers will be quickly educated by those already exposed to the changes. Until then, please bare with us. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The GLAM suggestion and "Non-controversial edits#7" (added here) may allow a large number of links to be added, and I think some examples of what might be involved should be considered. Consider WT:External links#Libraries which discusses the addition of links to a library by an SPA. What about this example (picked randomly from the 80 article links): David Woodward includes external link http://www.newberry.org/collections/conbib.html (the same link also appears in Cartography and History of cartography and Outline of cartography). Is that external link helpful? Is it covered by "Non-controversial edits#7"? How many other links might GLAM institutions add just for this one topic? Johnuniq (talk) 08:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

This link is to a list of secondary sources that has been in David Woodward for three years. It's not a link to a primary source that was added by an archivist with a possible COI, so I don't think that it's a good test of the new guideline. I question the suitability of the link in David Woodward, but that's a separate issue. UncleDouggie (talk) 10:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) So - the issue of the "research resources" section belongs in a discussion at WP:EL - I'll leave that for a different discussion over on that page.

OK. So it looks like there's a reasonable consensus here that the non-controversial edit#7 (which I call the "archives exception") is also meant to apply for Museums and cultural collection organisations. So, for example, I think we can all agree that, if it was not already the case, the Powerhouse Museum employees should be able to link their own extensive catalogue record on their steam engine (which actually uses a mixture of creative-commons licenses might I add!) to our article about the same object. Currently, the "archives exception" denies them this possibility because they are a museum, not an archive. As you can see here, there is considerable interest from the museum community that they would be finally allowed to edit Wikipedia too: [9]

Proposal: So, I suggest we should expand the wording of the text from "archives, special collections or libraries" to "cultural collecting organisations (GLAMs)". What do you think? I believe this is an uncontroversial change. (and yes, I do agree that issues of spamming/commercial interest need to be addressed, but as others have mentioned, this exception doesn't all of a sudden allow linkspam - that's just as uncool as ever - and we can give guidelines about what constitutes spamming).

The key principles that I would suggest the GLAM employee follow is to ask themselves whether their editing is to build a better encyclopedia (good) or whether their editing is merely to improve the visibility of their organisation (bad). This would go along with the 4 other principles I listed in my [blogpost: Refer to unique (and uniquely relevant) content in your institution; Refer to content not just generic info in your institution; Get a personal account; and Declare your interest.

There is also a second, wider issue I'd like to broach:

The "archive exception" currently only talks about external linking. Could we discuss expanding that statement to say that a GLAM employee should be allowed, not only to link to the item in their collection but also to improve the text of the article itself (in accordance with all the usual policies especially NPOV)? This brings the discussion specifically to one of CoI rather than just being about external linking. I would argue that it is an allowable/acceptable CoI for a museum curator to become engaged in editing the Wikipedia articles directly relevant to their expertise - especially if we have an article about the specific object. For example, should we allow/encourage the art-historian employed by the Louvre to study the Mona Lisa to edit Wikipedia's article about it? I would say yes. I would say this is exactly the person who should be assisting Wikipedia about that article. This is different to them editing the article about the Louvre itself because that would be regular, uncool, CoI. If a curator/archivist were to start to whitewash articles about their area of expertise they would still be subject to the normal 3RR and other rules of NPOV. Technically speaking I don't think this Mona Lisa example is forbidden because we already have this statement: "Editing in an area in which you have professional or academic expertise is not, in itself, a conflict of interest." But I would like to see what people think about making a specific statement that employees of GLAMs are not necessarily breaking our rules by editing articles about things in their collection.

Discussion: So, I would suggest that we should explore ways of making it allowed for museum curators and archivists to write on Wikipedia. This may not belong in the "non-controversial edits" section because it is a larger scope. Anyway, the wording of the text currently says "...Adding pointers to primary sources..." Should there be something more general along the lines of "...Editing articles about topics on which you are employed by a cultural collections institution to provide expertise..."

I know there will be many edge-cases that could potentially undermine this idea. Please don't reject the concept because of an edge-case but think about the curator of the Mona Lisa and how we would allow/encourage that person to add their expertise to our article on the painting - because under current policy they don't feel welcome.

Thanks everyone for your great feedback Witty Lama 15:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Counter Proposal: change the wording to "archives, including those in museums, libraries, and special collections (GLAMs)." A lot of people won't have a clue on what "cultural collecting organisations" are.

Also #7 should be shortened to principles only, not details. I suggest that an essay be written to help the GLAMS through this. It wouldn't be policy or a guideline, but it should be "authoritative enough" to cover the questions of a pretty small (but important) group of editors. I'd certainly contribute or comment on the essay, but the author needs to have a detailed understanding of how GLAMs work and what they really want.

The Mona Lisa expert employee definitely has a COI, but is allowed to edit - just tell Ms. Giaconda to be careful and sensitive to other editors and to declare her COI. That should bring a smile to her face. Smallbones (talk) 16:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

We can't use "GLAM" without mentioning galleries for the G, which is left out of both proposals. I don't think the counter proposal is satisfactory because it is still restricted to archives, which is defined as being documents and records. I'm not sure where Smallbones is going with principles/details, perhaps an example would help. I support an essay as well and witty lama's blog post is a good place to start. Making it an essay instead of a blog post will allow all of us to contribute. I'm not convinced that text contributed by a Mona Lisa expert is defined as COI today. Where are you seeing this in the guideline? I think the bigger risk in such a case is original research and POV. UncleDouggie (talk) 22:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Modified counter proposal

7. Adding pointers to primary source media in galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and special collections (GLAMS) in the Research resources section of an article. Also, adding External links to digitized or digital primary sources or finding aids. Editors working for such organizations are requested to review WP:EL (useful links to on-line, non-promotional material related to the article), WP:NPOV, WP:NOSHARE and WP:ORGNAME. The last two mean don't create a shared organizational account and don't include the name of the organization in the account name. It is recommended but not required for such editors to declare their affiliation on their user page. See the essay WP:GLAMS for best practices in this area.

Mona's COI is best described under "Close relationships," but there are all sorts of outs given there. "When in doubt, declare a COI, then edit carefully" might be a good rule-of-thumb for editors. Smallbones (talk) 22:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with SmallBones that it would be nice to make the exception short and if we could remove all of the details about WP:EL etc. to seperate place that would be good. I however would prefer not to make a long and specific list of organisation types (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, special collections) because it is prescriptive. What if the collector at an Arboretum comes along do we add that to the list too? I'd prefer to use the term that is used in industry - "cultural collecting institutions"[10] [11] and then clarify it with a link to the meta page m:GLAM.

If we think that the Mona Lisa example is already ok as per a "close relationship" clause, then that should be mentioned somewhere - I'm pretty sure that curators/archivists feel that they are prohibited from editing completely so we need to make that plainer.

To that end - do you think we should create WP:GLAM as a central place for information/advice/best-practice for people editing from these institutions - something that our CoI, EL etc. policies could refer to? It could be directed at becoming a guideline and be effectively a more specific/targeted attempt at WP:EXPERT.

What do you say? Witty Lama 03:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Good. However, there needs to be some discussion of what reasonable linking involves. While it would be crazy to have rules that hinder experts from contributing, it would also be undesirable to imply that linking to any archive is ok. Suitable wording would be tricky, but we must avoid giving promotional accounts a green light to add links to material of marginal benefit to Wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 05:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's a very topical issue that might help clarify this discussion. Rabhyanker has been adding links on different pages that link to Trademarkia, an archive of trademark information. This is being done somewhat indiscriminately and in a manner against the WP:EL guideline (for example, these links are being done in the article bodies). I reverted them once (not as vandalism) and gave a level 1 spam warning, but that was before I looked closer at the site they were linking to. How do you think that this should be handled, considering our discussion here? -- Atama頭 22:01, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

1) As Johnuniq says, there does need to be a detailed discussion of what kind of linking to, and information from, GLAMs is appropriate (and we need to provide a support mechanism for archivist to seek advice. I suggest there should be basic/factual info both at WP:CoI and WP:EL which both link to WP:GLAM where more nuance, examples, details can be deliberated. Not only about external linking but as a place to support GLAM employees in general - a clearing house of info for GLAM professionals interested in engaging with Wikipedia. What do you think? 2) What do you think about changing the wording of the "archives exception" to "cultural collections institutions (GLAMs)"? 3) I wouldn't like to give my opinion about the trademarkia issue here - it's something that can be dealt with within the confines of the WP:EL discussion and it's not a GLAM organisation so I don't have any expertise in the matter. Witty Lama 23:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the steps should be (in order): create WP:GLAM (possibly in a user space sandbox if you do not think you can contribute much at the moment); add a small amount to WP:COI and WP:EL with a link to WP:GLAM; use the talk of WP:GLAM both to work on the guideline and later to assist GLAM contributors; later, if warranted, create a GLAM/Noticeboard. I might help with some ideas but clearly Witty Lama is the right author. However, if there is some reason WL does not want to create the page atm, I am happy to do it although it would just be a crude outline, suitable only for a sandbox.

I understand why WL has ducked the Trademarkia issue, but it is an excellent example of the difficult problems that the GLAM proposal will produce. Considering the user contribs shows good edits which just happen to add promotions of a particular web site. The content of that site is not relevant, in fact imagine that it is a prestigious library or museum. I would strongly oppose link additions as in this example, and believe that some rule of thumb needs to be devised saying that GLAM links should be added in a limited manner, for example, under External links and to a maximum of three links unless consensus among independent editors agrees otherwise for a particular article; other GLAM links should only occur when adding useful content (not as in most of the Trademarkia examples). Johnuniq (talk) 07:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we should write WP:GLAM first. I don't see a need for a GLAM noticeboard. Just reference disputes to WP:ELN or WP:COIN as appropriate. I would need an example to evaluate the issue with Trademarkia. UncleDouggie (talk) 08:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok then, if people are happy with the idea of WP:GLAM being a place for a "clearing house" of info for GLAM employees working with Wikipedia (not just CoI but anything that they want help with) then I'll kickstart that. I'm working on a few collaborations with GLAMs right now so it would be good proof that the Wikipedia community wants to collaborate. Eventually WP:GLAM might grow a noticeboard or a wikiproject or a m:wikipod or whatever - we'll see where it leads. I'll put something together (later this week) and ask some GLAM people I know to suggest things they would like to see in that page (after-all, it's directed at them) - there are places on Meta etc. where we already discuss how Wikimedians/chapters can approach GLAMs but this could be a place for the GLAMs to learn how to approach us. Once it's more ready we'll refer to it from WPL:EL, WP:CoI etc.

In the mean time, I would like to press ahead with re-wording the WP:CoI "archives exception" if we're happy (independently of the progress of WP:GLAM). Can we agree on the aforementioned wording?

Finally, the Trademarkia thing belongs squarely in the normal EL/noticeboard area. It is possible that many organisations might try to apply to work on Wikipedia via the GLAM exception but we don't have to solve all issues with the one policy. Prescriptive rules like "only three links" is bound to end up in a world of hyper-specific-policy-bloat. As a community we've always tried to shy away from this - the only time we didn't was the creation of WP:3RR which is "the exception that proved the rule". Witty Lama 01:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

We should hold off on the rewording until WP:GLAM is ready. The current proposal would open us up to abuse by pseudo-museums and remove a number of cautions with nothing to replace them. UncleDouggie (talk) 02:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with UncleDouggie – it is too early to reword WP:COI or WP:EL. Combating linkspam can already generate quite a lot of drama, and some people will take any opportunity to exploit a weakening of policies/guidelines. Also, while Witty Lama's comment about policy bloat is perfectly correct, the issue of what links are appropriate needs to be addressed before WP:GLAM gains consensus – search for "Newberry" on this page for an example. Johnuniq (talk) 06:15, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you want to hold off rewording the CoI "archive exception" until WP:GLAM is "ready" then we'll be waiting for a very long time. WP:GLAM is a long term idea whereas rewording the "archive exception" to include the possibility of museums etc. is a (IMO) minor and uncontroversial change. The Newberry example is something that will need to be worked through (at WP:GLAM or WP:EL etc.) but that doesn't have to be solved before we can reword the "archives exception". Witty Lama 06:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I've started the sandbox version of the WP:GLAM page at my userpage here User:Witty lama/Sandbox. Please jump in and add sections or even just bullet points for what should be listed. I also invite you specifically to make my formatting prettier (e.g. autohide the policies & guidelines template) Witty Lama 11:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I am Raj Abhyanker, affiliated with Trademarkia mention above. I want to be fully compliant with Wikipedia policies and contribute/add useful information on trademarks. Beyond being the unpaid CEO of this venture, I have a lifelong passion for trademarks and industrial history. There is a lot missing in Wikipedia entries because of a lack of previous transparency in trademark data. I'd like to participate and help out in any way I can, and am committed to keeping Wikipedia neutral. As to verifying historical information, as an example, here is a link to all U.S. trademarks filed in 1906. This information was first publicly archived by Trademarkia and cannot be found anywhere else on the public Internet. Let me know what I can do to help and comply with Wikipedia policies. If you wish to talk with me over the phone, you can call me at 650-965-8731. Raj Abhyanker 06:11, 22 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rabhyanker (talk • contribs) 13:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Legitimate concerns

Agreeing to allow a GLAM marketing representative to mass spam wikipedia is misguided. Some here need to consider why don't allow this in the first palce.... the founding principle of...neutrality! We don't want to sabotage and create a chilling effect on one of Wikipedias Five pillars. Conflict of interest isn't just a matter of Useful vs. non-useful, but about self-promotion in general. The decision about when it would be beneficial for articles to include particular links or material should not be left to the affiliates of those organizations. Typically of all organizations, particularly non-profits and GLAM"S, its about generating traffic and increasing exposure. Generating traffic and increasing exposure is how they justify funding. A concern here is about producing a "how to" (GLAM) "game the system" and use Wikipedia to promote their own interests. WP:SPAM, WP:EL, WP:COI, WP:NOT and Neutrality are all consensus agreed upon, widely accepted standards that all editors should follow. Re-wording to an "archives exception" to the encyclopedia is not achieved by violating long standing community guidelines.--Hu12 (talk) 17:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Hu12 that we open the process to potential abuse. That's part of the reason we need to keep an eye on this Non-controversial edit policy addition. If it is abused I will be the first to suggest it be reverted.

People with possible COI can edit with a neutral point of view. Simply saying where MLK's papers are located doesn't advocate one way or the other.

We are trying to allowing archive employees (or interns) to add useful and non promotional pointers and links to articles. Especially with "Resource resources" pointers to "3.25 feet of X's papers in library Y," they are the only ones who know where this stuff is located; if they don't put it in somewhere, it won't be added. To be useful it has to mention various archives (i.e., locations) but there will be the same level of promotion no matter who puts in such pointers.

I can't think of an example where a GLAM would would be motivated mass spam Wikipedia, but it might happen. If you can think of a potential example, please write it up. We can keep an eye out for such abuse.

I was just looking at the Norman Rockwell page for examples.

The first link

http://www.normanrockwell.com/index.php

in "external links" is broken. I would would not have a problem with the target of the link fixing it even if they are outright commercial.

In regard to you concerns, it is worthwhile to keep an eye how this works out. Thanks. Keith Henson (talk) 21:08, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a potential example, which I already mentioned above. It was for Trademarkia, which is a potentially useful service. It's free and has historical information for trademarks (or so it claims, I haven't checked it out myself). Rabhyanker is Raj Abhyanker, a patent attorney and according to Trademarkia's FAQ, the co-founder and CEO. Rahbyanker hasn't exactly done a "mass spam" but he did link information from Trademarkia to various articles somewhat indiscriminately (see his history). I reverted one of his edits with a low-level spam warning but that was before I noticed that his edits may have been allowable under the proposed GLAM provisions to the COI policy. Keep in mind, too, that if we are going to be lenient on these kinds of edits it may be necessary to change or at least review other guidelines and policies like WP:SPAM and WP:EL. -- Atama頭 20:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I have been really busy with RL issues lately and have not been paying attention as much as I should. We may have to review other policies. On the other hand, all this policy change should be doing is letting people who work for such places put unique information they have into the Wikipedia without getting zapped by CoI rules. Just because you put a lot of information or pointers into Wikipedia does not of itself make it spam. If the information would have passed muster otherwise had it been added by a bunch of people, and in this case I think it would have passed, then I wouldn't be concerned about it.

Actually there are large set of data such as these pointers to research materials that are a pain to work into articles. But Wikipedia has a lot of people out there who would patiently work their way through such distribution to articles. As a thought, perhaps an upload section where the data sets could be vetted might be useful. Stanford Archives, for example, has not come back simply because they currently lack the staff. Or maybe places like Stanford could just post a link.

I have no idea of where to bring up such a suggestion. If any of you do, let me know, or better yet just do it. Keith Henson (talk) 14:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I am Raj Abhyanker referenced in the Trademarkia mention above. I want to be fully compliant with Wikipedia policies and contribute/add useful information on trademarks. Beyond being the unpaid CEO of this venture, I have a lifelong passion for trademarks and industrial history. There is a lot missing in Wikipedia entries because of a lack of previous transparency in trademark data. I'd like to participate and help out in any way I can, and am committed to keeping Wikipedia neutral. As to verifying historical information, as an example, here is a link to all U.S. trademarks filed in 1906. This information was first publicly archived by Trademarkia and cannot be found anywhere else on the public Internet. Let me know what I can do to help and comply with Wikipedia policies. Raj Abhyanker 06:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes. This is exactly the kind of neutral and informative material the COI exception was intended to cover. Thank you very much for your contributions. Keith Henson (talk) 04:17, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed minor changes

[12]

This reduces the Wiki jargon as well as clarifies important policy that would need to be followed and also emphasizes that this exception is not an excuse to add linkspam. Triplestop x3 22:22, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the change is harmful, but it is longer and contains a pointer to one more ever shifting wiki policy. It's hard to say it reduces Wiki jargon. I don't think it is needed until we see evidence of abuse. I would rather save up the suggested changes for a while. There has been considerable discussion about clarifying the policy here and little consensus. What *is* needed is a template for "Research resources since those are real world pointers distinct from external links. I don't know how to do that. Is there a pointer for how to make these? Or would someone just do it? Keith Henson (talk) 07:59, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I can create the template if you give me solid requirements for what it should do. One thought I have is to include a {{coord}} tag for the location of the resource. This could be done with the standalone template, however, we might not want the bots to think that we're tagging the entire article. --UncleDouggie (talk) 12:33, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Up thread is a sample

Ellwood Patterson Cubberley Papers, 1886-1965 (3.25 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries

There are a couple of URLS in the version Stanford was putting up.

I don't know about the coordinate thing. It might be useful. Keith Henson (talk) 14:29, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Disputing #7

I don't know when it entered, but I think that number 7 here is totally out of line, points 1-4 are pretty much cover types of vandalism, 5 and 6 are requested or discussed edits, which would be good already, number 7 is 'when you work for the organisation, you can spam if you like'. NO. Please take that out, it is in contrast with our other policies and guidelines. It is true, GLAMs can be just good editors, but I have in the past encountered several who are here plainly to spam, to promote, to drive traffic to their site, to get their organisation known, or to improve their position. Being a GLAM is not a greencard on Wikipedia to spam wikipedia, moreover, if I am a viagra spammer with a bit of a homepage with at least a bit of information on my page, I call myself an archivist, and that is another way of wikilawyering myself out of it.

I have NO problem with GLAMs editing here, they are very useful, they are extremely knowledgeable, etc. etc., and I have been involved in guiding and helping many of them. However, I am sorry to say, some need to be slapped multiple times with wikitrouts, blocked or even banned: some do not wish to be here to improve, they are here plainly to spam.

Again I will come up with the bad-faith examples, examples which I, unfortunately, have encountered:

• Having your links here means that more people are visiting your site, more visitors on your site shows your Board of Directors that your webserver gets more hits, and hence that you need a bigger webserver. Hence: it pays to be linked!
• Having your links here means that more people are visiting your site, more visitors increases the chance that people will actually visit your museum (oh, that is where we go on holiday this summer, lets put it on the list of things to visit). Entrance fees are not always for free, so there can be a financial gain, even for non-profit organisations!
• Having a quilt in your collection, does not mean that you can add also your link to Quilt.
• Having a copy of a rare (but not unique version!) of a book, does not mean that we have to link to your copy of it, it is still neutral to link to the book just by name, we don't need to link to every available online copy of it (unless it is unique or especially remarkable in some way, but then you reference it)
• Having a new organisation means that you need to get known in the world, what is (one of) the best place(s) to make sure that happens: Wikepedia.
• (reused example) I have a website which covers much information, but is there basically to sell my product, and I am not a non-profit organisation. I call myself an archivist (well, I basically am!), and I can add my links everywhere.
• ...

I know, many GLAMs are here really to help us, but please don't give them free way, but guide them, and please try to filter at least those which are not here to help, but are here to promote (in whichever way). I therefore strongly oppose that we include that number 7 there, and would suggest to remove it as such, the wording of the rest of the guideline is just fine. If a library is disclosing their COI, discusses etc., and knows properly the policies and guidelines, then there is nothing wrong, and we certainly could put a paragraph on it, but not this or other free pass to spam. Having a COI does not forbid you to edit anyway, but it asks for extreme caution, not for 'oh, you're an archivist, link what you like'. We have several COI GLAM's, who basically only link to their organisation, but are extremely helpful (I will name the Victoria and Albert Museum as one positive example, I won't name the really bad example, but the organisation was basically spanning a continent, and I am still convinced that their only reason for being here was driving traffic and promoting themselves, absolutely nothing else, even after being told several times). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Also note: The COI position of a GLAM adding information to an object in their library to the page about such an object on Wikipedia is in nothing different from the CEO of Pfizer adding information to Sildenafil. Both have a conflict of interest, and both should follow this guideline and others. Both are welcome specialists! Being an archivist there does not make your position more special. Both editors are welcome when they abide by the policies and guidelines, both should take care. I see no need to put #7 here, are we going to follow it up with more of those (#8, working for the company that produces a product you write about here?). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:02, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I have had a slightly uneasy feeling about #7 for some time, and the above post has rung a bell for me. All an "archivist" has to do is put "COI non-controversial #7' in their edit summary (or their user page) and no one can touch the 100 links they added last week, or the 100 links they are going to add this week, and more in the future. It is hard enough fighting linkspam now without adding a hopelessly naive exception to COI. Johnuniq (talk) 11:27, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No - people can & will still remove them. But I agree the text here is too widely phrased. I have just added a "useful" before primary sources. The text here is much more widely drawn than the new MLA specific advice currently being developed at User:Witty lama/Sandbox, & very soon to hit mainspace. That puts much more emphasis on the real utility of links to the reader, & also on links that lead to actual information online, not just information about information (library catalogues etc). I don't think we want many such links at all, except to libraries holding the main collection of personal papers of the subject of a biography for example. I'm not sure about the whole concept of a "research resources" section" - what will this end up looking like for World War II, for example? Really if you want to know where the best primary archive sources on a subject are, you should look at the apparatus (bibliograhy etc) of a standard academic book on the subject, not at WP. Most of the time I think we should stay out of that game, especially on general subjects. Johnbod (talk) 11:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No, this still gives the wrong impression. Of course I find links to my articles useful. This is not an exception that we can write here like this, I still think the whole phrase should go, and we could think about an 'expert' section which suggests these and other experts how to move on.

The User:Witty lama/Sandbox draws on this sentence in the two minute guide, and both are too easily gamed. If you have a COI, be very careful when adding links, and carefully avoid to be a spammer, no excuses around it. Remember, it is not the genuine editor who wants to game these (and they don't have to), it are the spammers who game these. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:14, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

And the wording in WP:COI is critically important because when someone reverts 50 links to libraries etc, they often get pushback from an editor who has not seen the horrors of linkspam, but who perceives a diligent editor (the person promoting their library by adding 100 links to pages which are at least plausible) being attacked by a deletionist intent on removing all useful links from Wikipedia (the person trying to revert the spam). The current #7 (even with "useful") could easily be read as overriding the EL and spam guidelines). I just do not see how I could remove a link to a library given that wording. Johnuniq (talk) 23:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The edit made here would have addressed this problem. It stated, "Links failing the external link or reliable source policy are subject to removal as spam." That language should definitely be there, along with the language warning that editors should abide by WP:U. -- Atama頭 00:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No, not entirely. It only adds to the confusion. As I said somewhere: but of course my external links don't fail the external link and reliable source policy, and WP:COI says I can link whatever I want. Genuine editors don't need this #7 as an excuse, they edit fine, all others will only use #7 to wikilawyer. #7 is really unneeded. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 00:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If your external links don't fail WP:EL or WP:RS then you should be able to add them. The absence of #7 can allow people to use WP:COI to wikilawyer when an archivist links a good resource in an article. It goes both ways, what matters is whether the benefit of giving COI exemptions to archivists outweighs the danger of potentially allowing more spam into Wikipedia. -- Atama頭 00:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Now that we have the MLA page, would it work for you if we just removed #7 here (and references to it there, & just had the specific MLA guidance on links at the MLA page, with a link to that here? Johnbod (talk) 00:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Atama, I'd rather avoid the impropriety that only adding links may imply, and as I said above, I have seen both sides of the medal, and one did start as a new editor who seemed unwittingly adding links and editing, but ended in clearly showing that they were here only to promote their organisation. #7 simply does not add anything.

Yes, Johnbod, that is what I would suggest. I don't see what #7 adds, but adding to confusion and possible wikilawyering. It could however be a more neutrally worded own section. GLAMs are not special in some way in comparison to any other specialists. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 00:44, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I wrote #7 after considerable discussion here. I suggest that we leave it as is for a while and see if it gets abused. So far I am not aware of any abuse, if anyone has an example of where an archive or related is abusing this exception to the CoI provisions, please let us know. It isn't all that much of an exception, people with a CoI (like they get paid) can edit with a neutral point of view. Saying where some related primary source is isn't biased as far as I can see. It does promote the organization that has primary sources, but I can't see harm in that. I mean, if someones papers are at Stanford, then that's where they are. Keith Henson (talk) 07:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I know, Hkhenson, I am sorry, I missed it. I know it is there with the best intentions, and I know that most of the actual GLAMs are here to help us, but they (those which are here and who are following the guideline) do not really need this rule, the ones who are here to promote will use it against us.

I have been seeing many, many of these situations, I think I was the initial reverter and opener of the discussion with VAWebteam, and many others (sitting close to the fire on IRC may have helped). Many of these edits 'don't look so bad' in the beginning, but practically always they include a significant number of questionable insertions. Spammers (even good faith spammers and people who are not intending to spam) are a different ballpark than by far the most vandals, they are here with an agenda. The problems I have with #7 is an extension of what I already have with the general language of many spam-related guidelines: they are quite soft (and they have to be, we have to assume good faith), but if you read WP:EL, WP:COI, and WP:SPAM, then a real spammer is not forbidden to spam anywhere, and the general excuses are known ('my link is not disallowed by WP:EL', 'I have the best information', 'my website is the only one with this info', 'we are not trying to sell'). Wikilawyering is already the big problem, and this only adds.

And I still don't see why we put the GLAMs in a special position. Why are GLAMs different from a specialist working for Pfizer, someone working for IUPAC, or a representative of the RSC or ACS (sorry, I am in Chemistry, but there we do have contact with people that do have these conflicts of interest, and we dó work together with them, they have thé databases we want to link to, #7 does not apply to them, still they do have to follow WP:COI). They all should be here to improve, add content, not links only. So if #7 stays, then we need #8 - #10 covering other types of specialists.

I'd really prefer that when a GLAM is coming here, that they first discuss with wikiprojects, read the guidelines and essays, ask on talkpages, find editors with likewise interests, and ask how they can be of help. And not that they are starting with boldly 'spamming' articles with external links. Not because they do it wrong, but just to avoid the impropriety. And we should not encourage appearance of impropriety in this way. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I mentioned GLAMS. The reason this whole thing developed is that about a year ago the Stanford archive started added pointer to various articles about the research resources they had on the particular subjects. They were booted off on CoI. They had a lot of useful information that was certainly neutral and the only promotion was to say it existed in the Stanford archives.

I don't know what the VAWebteam is about. If it is about an abuse of this policy change, please point me to it. Keith Henson (talk) 21:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No, VAWebteam is a (IMHO really good example) how we can work together with a museum where the people working in the museum contribute images, content, references and occasionally external links; they are not an example of abusing the COI guideline, and they are not an example of an account who only adds external links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I now know where in my mind the problem lies. And I added this also to the GLAM sandbox page (can't think of the name now). My problem:

The sequence should be:

1. Try to add content and use your site (or the documents you have access to, not even linked to your site) as a reference
2. or try to use your site as a reference to replace a {{fact}}
3. If 1 and 2 fail, consider if your site adds something that is not in the document, etc. etc, and if there are not too many links already (of which some already cover the same info as you). If so, add it as an external link
4. if 1, 2 and 3 fail, and it is not suitable as an external link, consider if you could write a new article from the information
5. And if none of that is the case, then maybe just move on to another document

(And if you are unsure, go to the talkpage, or a wikiproject, but not add the link 'just in case')

And hence not:

1. Add your site as an external link, and let others see what they want to do with it

I find the language here now more suggesting the second scenario, and I completely disagree with that sequence. Thát is not the way forward, and though one can argue that it improves the encyclopedia (yes, it does, though in their enthousiasm sometimes it quite some of the adidtions don't), the first scenario is improving it WAY more, avoids that we have to walk behind them and improve it ourselves, or cleanup when it is inappropriate, it avoids the possibility of impropriety of the link-additions (which may have negative effects on the name of the institution ..), &c. &c. Moreover, they have access to the original information, if we want to use the information their page on the website is giving us, we may be less capable with that to actually improve the document (it is generally a story on a book, or a summary of it that is on the webpage, they can actually pull the actual copy from the shelf and use the info inside). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Stanford ARchive is aware of the policy change, but due to staff limitations has not come back and Wikipedia is poorer because of it. However, your suggestion certainly has merit. Wikipedia has thousands of people who would work their way through lists of archival research resouces adding them to articles if there was a place where they could be mass uploaded for distributed processing. I am not deep enough into Wikipedia culture to know where to take such a suggestion. Perhaps you have ideas?

In the meantime, please draw my attention to abuses of #7. It's not meant to be used for people to defend their spamming, or other noxious behavior. It's there to keep Wikilawyers from booting helpful people on CoI grounds alone. Keith Henson (talk) 21:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has numerous editors, and I am sure that some are aware of the existence of Stanford Archive, and are using it. Yes, it would be good to have the specialists themselves editing as well, but as I say here, and suggest below, preferably in a proper way. I mentioned above that withing the Chemistry/Chemicals WikiProjects we work together with other types of archives and specialists, and that way of working together goes very well, and those are for-profit organisations, and they don't just add external links, they contribute in helping verification of the information we have.

A good deal of this information isn't even links. It of the form archive x has y feet of z's papers. You want to see them, you have to go there. The next stage up is a finding aid and those are real links. Keith Henson (talk) 22:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

So why is it fine for non-profit organisations to only add external links, why they also could do so much better.

It isn't just links, but archives seldom have anything to say about a topic beyond that they have original materials. That's part of what makes what they say neutral on a topic. Keith Henson (talk) 22:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding mass upload, also that is in the projects I am working with, though we do use the information in a different way. I am not fond of the idea of mass uploading massive numbers of external links. We are not a linkfarm.

Apparently I didn't make myself clear. This is for internal use only, a list of what an archive has so regular editors can work their way through the list adding the information to articles (as they see fit) instead of archive employees doing it. Keith Henson (talk) 22:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

And no, I am not going to wait until #7 gets abused, I'd like it reformed to a form where it can't be abused, but which still gives GLAMs (and other professionals, both from the non- and the for-profit sector) gives the possibility to contribute, especially if that is more than only external links (vide infra). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Number 7 isn't a free pass, it just protects them from getting booted automaticly because they work for an archive or are an intern for an archive. They still have to behave. But I understand where you are coming from. Very few professionals stick around Wikipedia very long. If they know something about a subject, that is taken by the wikilawers all too often as an automatic CoI. I happen to know a great deal about space based solar power, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485. That makes it essentially impossible for me to contribute to the article. Re chemistry, I fixed the physical properties of carbon dioxide from my copy of the CRC handbook a few times and then gave up. It's a major problem, it's been discussed a number of times and to the best of my knowledge does not have a solution. Perhaps we should take this offline, even talk on the phone or skype. My email is on my user page. Keith Henson (talk) 22:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, let me reply to the point of the mass upload. I indeed misunderstood it. That is easy, that can be done in project- or user-space. Create a subpage, make a list, break it up in reasonable chunks, work your way through it. See e.g. User:Beetstra/listing1. Those lists are bot generated by comparing wiki documents with external documents and finding likely overlaps which can then be checked by a human.

For the latter, no, I disagree. You may get that feeling from the examples you see with interns of archives, but we do have many, many counterexamples. User:VAWebteam is related to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and very productive, User:ChemSpiderMan is related to ChemSpider, and very helpful in validating chemistry related articles (and in a way, he is an archivist as well!), furthermore, the list of participants in the Chemistry/Chemicals WikiProjects counts numerous professors. And there are also several librarians. No, I don't think we have a problem keeping those specialists. We may loose some, sure, but that is not due to this.

WP:COI has never forbidden these editors to edit, or to do things. Yes, they do have a COI, but when they use that in an appropriate manner, there is no problem. What I am arguing is, that we have to make sure that they don't give the impression of impropriety. And that can be done by contributing in an appropriate manner, and I am sorry, but just adding your external links is not an inappropriate manner.

You continuously ask for current examples, but those are not there (yet, maybe, this line is not that long here). I am sorry, I am not going to give you the old examples (though I was already writing them earlier) I am not prepared to mud-sling to those accounts. As I said, I did have a situation with a multi-country organisation once, and no, they was not here to improve, they was here to promote their organisation. They might be a specialist, but that was just what WP:COI and WP:SPAM are about, self-promotion. And being a specialist does not mean that you can add your links to 100 pages of objects which you have in your museum (including on Quilting .. ), copyvioing articles to be able to link their article, adding their links as most important to the top. We are now getting close to 'you can't say to a GLAM that he has a COI, because they feel easily bitten and you scare away that specialist'. As I have now said a couple of times, GLAMs are in no way more special then the CEO of Pfizer editing Sildenafil. They both are allowed, as long as they keep in mind that they do have a COI, and that it is better for them to avoid impropriety. I am not willing to make GLAMs special just because of that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)(repaired word --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)).

Regarding keeping the data on CO₂, we are working on it, it is a slow process, and specialists like User:ChemSpiderMan are involved in it, see Special:Contributions/CheMoBot (choose mainspace contris). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You know it is legitimate for people with a CoI to edit and so do I, but the problem is the editors who decide CoI, particularly working for an archive, rules out adding utterly neutral research resources to an article *because* they have a CoI. The editors are correct from the viewpoint that Stanford saying they have some dude's papers does promote Stanford. My argument is that the information is valuable enough to ignore the mild degree of promotion.

Thus the CoI exception. I.e., so just working for an archive or similar place is not enough to get you booted off.

If you can think of a better way to keep the contributions of these people (who are the only ones who know what they have) in the Wikipedia I will certainly listen. Keith Henson (talk) 01:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Counter proposal 2

I would suggest to remove #7, and add a section 'Subject professionals' (or something along those lines) below it:

Museum curators, librarians, archivists, art historians, heritage interpreters, documentation managers, subject specialists, or managers of an academic special collection (or similar profession) are encouraged to use their knowledge to help improve Wikipedia.

Wikipedia prefers the addition of referenced content, or the addition of references where they are requested, not the addition of links only. There where the material is not suitable for inclusion, but the material on the linked document does provide information which is not included in the document, and which is not already covered by other links in the document, the addition of a link to the material under the further reading or external links sections should be considered. Such links should not be in violation of the external links guideline (preferably not be covered by one or more of the points under 'Links to avoid'), or in violation of the 'Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files' policy.

When in doubt, consider to discuss the link addition first on the talkpage, or with an appropriate WikiProject. For more information, see Wikipedia:Advice_for_the_cultural_sector

(I am not happy with the 'in violation' language, and maybe that should be expanded/rewritten per my earlier concerns). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:27, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

This makes sense from the viewpoint of Wikipedia culture which values time very little. It doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time by some summer intern asking on talk pages before they add to an article that archive x has y feet of z's papers. It's definately a culture clash. I hope you can apprecite the limited resources of the archives. Keith Henson (talk) 21:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The faster way, go to a wikiproject. I appreciate that there is limited time, that also goes for me. Still I am, with just a few others, meticulously going through every single page out of a 10.000 page set, trying to upgrade them. It's not a culture clash, GLAMs are in no way more special than Chemists, or whatever, neither have time. Sorry. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I am going to add this. If that intern does not have time to discuss links on the talkpage, then he does not have time to add content, that makes sense. But then he can just as well propose them on the talkpage, in stead of putting them in the document itself. That takes exactly the same amount of time. And in both cases the link is available to editors to expand the document. The intern does not have to wait for every single link to be granted and be added, it is the content that we can draw from it. This is not an excuse to add external links only. We are not a linkfarm. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:05, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

This text should also be included somewhere here, but does not really below in the list of exemptions I think - something like Wittylama's below might be better for the list. At the end of the day, if we still find people using whatever text we end up with to wikilawyer, we can just tighten up the wording. There is a strong anti-spam consensus here. Johnbod (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New FTC blogger rule

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6652792.html

I wonder if that applies to Wikipedia.

70.90.174.101 (talk) 16:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a blog. -- Atama頭 16:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. However, it's interesting that we don't mention anything about an editor who has received a freebie having a COI. Assume there is no other payment and the freebie is given unconditionally before anything is written on Wikipedia. Obviously the editor couldn't directly report on their own personal experience. The question is whether the freebie influences their editing and selection of sources in any way. To the point of the FTC rule, would such an editor be required to make a disclosure? Would a talk page disclosure be sufficient? Note that the new rule covers product reviews in general, not just those titled as a blog. UncleDouggie (talk) 03:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

We don't do product reviews in Wikipedia, per WP:NOTOPINION and WP:ASF. At most we might repeat information given in a product review, but we're still a step removed from the actual review itself so the FTC rule still wouldn't apply here. -- Atama頭 04:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Cite source

Hello, some users on Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling/Style guide wants to enable the wikipedian to use the cite episode template on the project. Can a moderator or others see what to do? Jeangabin (talk) 15:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

WT:PW#Can I get some opinions please? seems to already have a pretty lively discussion. I don't see why you posted a notice at the talk page of the COI policy since the wrestling discussion has nothing to do with conflicts of interest. -- Atama頭 00:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Noting COI without adding to Cat:Notable Wikipedians

I've run across an article which was edited by either the subject or the subject's writing partner (the user name is the collective name of the partnership). I've AFDed the article but in the meantime (and should it survive) is there a template to note the COI without adding the person to the Notable Wikipedians category? Eddie's Teddy (talk) 04:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's the {{coi}} template that you can place on the article. Keep in mind that the purpose of that template is to give a notice that an editor with a COI has edited the article and that cleanup is needed as a result, and should be accompanied by an explanation on the talk page of the article that says what needs to be fixed. -- Atama頭 15:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] advice for the cultural sector

as has been mentioned before, the essay/help page previously being staged at my userpage is now live at Wikipedia:Advice_for_the_cultural_sector. Feedback is, of course, still very welcome.

Moreover, not withstanding User:Beetstra's dislike for the "archive exception" in totality, I was wondering if we could revise its text to be more brief and to refer out to WP:GLAM? Currently the "archive exception is dramatically longer than the other 6 exceptions because of all the discussion of WP:NPOV, WP:NOSHARE etc. This stuff is covered in detail (and detail specifically relevant to the audience of the "archive exception") so I was wondering if:

1. We could change the text to simply:

"Adding pointers to useful primary sources in archives, special collections or libraries in the Research resources section of an article. Also, adding External links to digitized or digital primary sources or finding aids. For precise details please see WP:GLAM."

1. Furthermore, could we please also add the word "museum" (or "museum catalogue") in there alongside "archive" and "special collection? Several museum professionals I know have asked me why they were excluded from this text when it is my understanding that this was not intentional.

Sincerely, Witty Lama 14:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I would not mind adding "museum" but I would prefer that it be done in response to a problem. I am not aware of people from museums being booted for CoI for working on articles, something I know happened to the Stanford Archive. If there are no examples, and museum people are not having problems, then I see no point in fixing something that is not broken. If they are, please point me to examples. Keith Henson (talk) 21:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well the museum people I've heard from will not be editing on Wikipedia at all until they are given permission to do so and under the current wording they feel they have no permission. Therefore, I cannot point you to any diffs of Museums being reverted because (for at least the people I've heard from) they aren't editing at all! Witty Lama 22:25, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I think something like Witty Lama's draft above is what we need. On museum COI, there was the V&A User:VAwebteam, who had a COI, but after discussion learnt how to contribute useful articles, links & help clearing pictures for commons. You can pick up the history from the links on their webpage. Johnbod (talk) 22:39, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest to include it. VAwebteam is indeed the positive example, I am unwilling to give 'bad' examples for BLP type reasons. No need to mudsling, they just belong in the same list (but so do many specialists, I still don't see why these specifically need to be exempted, see my proposal above). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Your Counter_proposal_2 should also be included somewhere here, but does not really belong in the list of exemptions I think. At the end of the day, if we still find people using whatever text we end up with to wikilawyer, we can just tighten up the wording. There is a strong anti-spam consensus here. Johnbod (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest to make it a separate section like the Wikipedia:COI#Photographs_and_media_files-section (I tried to use that section as a bit of an example). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 00:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, why not do that? Johnbod (talk) 00:16, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I have boldly implemented that solution .. diff (or do I have a COI with also having made the suggestion). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 00:25, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What we want and what they want

I support the change by Dirk Beetstra (see these three edits) that removed non-controversial#7 and added a "Subject professionals" section. Any further explanation for professionals should occur at the new WP:MLA.

One problem with the previous wording is that there was no attempt to precisely define who we are talking about (and in fact that would be pretty impossible, and often counter productive since even a one-tin-shed museum may have some useful information). The professor with thirty years experience is very likely welcome. Their intern (often a proxy) may very well be welcome: it all depends on what the professor and the intern do. However, the previous wording put the burden of proof on anyone wanting to remove 100 links: prove that the links are not for "useful primary sources in [major] archives...", or prove that the external link to an image from a page in non-unique book is unsuitable. Sure, I know that the removing editor could argue that WP:COI does not trump WP:EL (and the wording requested those adding to review WP:EL), however the wording in WP:COI should not give a misleading picture to professionals. It is preferable to maintain WP:COI (adding links to my place of employment is a conflict of interest), and have a pointer to a long guideline (WP:MLA) that spells out that just because there is a COI does not mean we do not want your edits, and in fact we welcome work done in accord with WP:MLA and will assist (and may even be able to add the links for you).

For an indication of the importance of the wording of WP:COI, see this blog which is titled "News: Wikipedia policy change means archives can post links in articles! Go crazy, archivists!". It includes the following advice (later watered down):

"I would do so tentatively. Create a new account and start with making just a few additions per day. When you have done that for a few weeks, you can probably turn someone loose on a larger scale. (Have each person you assign to this make a new account too.) I would use a heading 'Research resources' in places where you are just pointing to holdings. If you have material on line, put it in as an external link."

For an indication of what professionals want, see Witty's blog. Here is one issue discussed:

These edits added a "Resources" section with two links to a university collection. They were immediately reverted with a blunt warning on the user talk. The user is indef blocked ("shared account").

The reverted text was eventually re-added and can be seen at William F. Durand#Research resources.

I only checked a few of the user's edits, but they are a classic WP:SPA who edited 117 different articles in one week. It looks as if each edit was to add a link. The edits may be excellent (and in fact many, perhaps all, have been restored), but our wording needs to spell out just what documents are suitable for linking (as WP:MLA attempts to do). Not all organizations with "library" or "museum" in their title should add 117 links in one week. Johnuniq (talk) 02:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

As I understand links (click on the link and it takes you somewhere) none of these were links. They were notices to the effect Standford Archives had material about the subject of the article. To use this material you would have to be a serious scholar who would actually travel to the Stanford Archives and look at original paper. Keith Henson (talk) 05:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes - should this not be at the MLA page though? I think what we want in this area needs to be defined further. It does seem to be accepted that a "research resources" section with a link to link to a briefish description of a significant deposit papers held in a library is acceptable in a biography. But one of Stanford's links was (and is) at Alfred Austin, which now has an additional (templated btw) link: Archival material relating to Conflict of interest listed at the UK National Register of Archives No need for the Stanford link then? Well the National Archives list 20 collections, but not Stanford. Perhaps this is because it seems to consist mainly of letters to Austin, admittedly from the Prime Minister of the day (5 linear feet over 15 odd years!! I doubt Seamus Heaney got that from Blair). One can see this sort of thing getting out of hand. Harry Gamboa, Jr. (Chicano artist etc, b 1951) is a complex one. The article starts out in 2005 as what looks like a pure copyvio (non-COI by the look of it) of this biography from the Stanford archives, which it gave as a reference (2nd diff). Three years later, the man from Stanford arrives & repeats the link, not apparently noticing that the article is still largely a copyvio, and already has the same link. This is reverted within hours by the illustrious User:Ryan Postlethwaite, giving no reason, but I think he was foillowing Stanford around by then. A month or two later someone moves the Stanford link to be a ref and notes the possible copyvio, editing some of the most striking phrases to be quotes with refs. Typically, after a screen full of edits over 4 years, some from the copyright holder itself, the actual text of the article has barely altered. Aaaargh!! Can you have a conflict of interest with someone else's copyvio of you? Well in Wikipedia everything is possible. This guy is another example, adding 30+ links in 3 days in May to papers at the Washington University in St Louis. Their site gives fuller details than Stanford, & I can accept the few edits I looked at. Johnbod (talk) 04:44, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I think we are in agreement; sorry I was unclear about which page. Yes, I think the details should be at WP:MLA, and WP:COI should have the current "Subject professionals" statement which merely gives a summary of fairly standard practice, and a link to WP:MLA. WP:COI should not attempt to define exceptions for MLA professionals, but should encourage them to improve Wikipedia, and guide them to WP:MLA where details can be developed. The next few months will provide several examples which I'm sure many editors will track, and we will actively help good contributors (and if necessary expand WP:MLA). Johnuniq (talk) 06:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: I don't think 'my' wording would disallow 'Stanford' to add 'Archival material relating to Conflict of interest listed at the UK National Register of Archives' to the external links section. An editor from Stanford could look at this, and consider:

1. can I expand the document with this? .. no, not really, most if not all is there.
2. can I use it as a reference? .. no, all is referenced.
3. does it add here? .. yes.
4. is it covered by the other external links? .. no.

So it can be added.

As I said, I have seen many of these cases, and if in 100+ additions there is one or two who are 'wrong', that is fine, but if there is a clear indiscriminite addition (a museum of old stuff from an area who adds between other links links to Quilt, because they have one (not telling more); having a one-liner wiki-article where something similar to Archival material relating to Conflict of interest listed at the UK National Register of Archives is added (sorry, then I will NOT believe that you can't use the letters to expand the article, use some letters as a reference, and maybe the whole list as an archive. Yes, it takes more time, but if you don't have that, go to the talkpage); adding a link to your scruffy copy of a reasonably unique book above Project Gutenberg who has full scans of the first edition and 3 others, including a better example of the same edition of your copy; or adding your link with minimal information to a list of 10-15 other links (sorry, I don't think it adds)), or it is clear that the addition is aimed at linking (as the name of the editor implies they are not an intern or working there, but are in the promotional department), then the order of the day is: revert all, warn the editor (point them to a suitable WikiProject?), and consider to discuss all additions on a case-by-case basis. Maybe all the links can return, but please avoid the impropriety, and be considerate in your additions, don't blindly add only your links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for you work and your bold action in creating this section. Can I make two suggestions/qeustions:

1. The section is titled "subject professionals", is that perhaps to broad? We are referring specifically to a range of related professions in the cultural sector ("GLAMs") but "subject professional" could mean professional chemists, model-train makers, marketing professionals... Would it be a good idea to change "subject professional" to "cultural sector professionals"?
2. Under the current wording of the new section it doesn't specifically state that, our misgivings about spam nothwithstanding, it is actually allowed to create links. It says that we prefer referenced text and that we want their participation but it doesn't state outright that they are the ones who are allowed to add these references to external sources. Should it? Witty Lama 10:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

You might note that archivists are very seldom "subject professionals." They know about storing (talk to one about humidity!) and locating documents, and usually not a lot about the subject. About all I can see them contributing to articles is that a certain archive has material about the subject of the article. I have seen some archives/libraries link to descriptive "finding aids" which are more detailed than saying they have 3.5 feet of material. But I have yet to see an archivist who expressed an opinion on the content of the material they are holding. I get the impression it would be considered unprofessional. Keith Henson (talk) 05:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Re 1: nah, it in principle goes for all of those who manage a database, not only the cultural ones, I would not mind ISO/DIN/CAS or other identifiers to be swept under the same rug. And both for professional and

Re 2: I would not specifically state that in such words. This does not disallow that (it is 'option 3'), but if a resource needs to be in the external links only then I would say that that has to be coordinated through established editors or a WikiProject, and that that the editor has to be fully aware of WP:EL and WP:NOT#REPOSITORY etc. And some of these databases can maybe be linked in infoboxes (like the 'Identifiers' section in the infobox on Benzene, or a {{imdb}} or {{NRA}} in the external links or similar section). I am a bit against saying 'just add links, its fine', then you run into the same situations as often happen with the reviews in the music album infoboxes (excessive numbers, pushing, socking, &c. &c.). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Let me put it like this, I would strongly suggest that if such an account is to add links only, that they do that in collaboration and/or after a discussion with a WikiProject or some interested ('established') editors. We are doing that in Chemistry with e.g. the ChemSpider ID and the CAS registry number, we work together with the owner of the site or maintainers of the databases, those identifiers hook into massive amounts of data and information, but in this way it is difficult to say 'wait, you are linking to commercial databases, are you doing that for commercial gain or for improving of the Wikipedia' (as both explanations are possible here). With free collections that commercial gain is of course nihil (though there cán be indirect financial gains as well!), still I think it is just better to avoid such appearances. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:23, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I restored some of the pointers to materials the Stanford Archive intern added, but most of them are lost deep in the article history. I frankly don't have a problem with a summer intern adding hundreds of such pointers to original materials to a wide list Wikipedia articles, seemed useful to point people to original sources if they can be found in an archive. Original sources are rare enough that only a tiny percentage of articles would ever get pointers or links.

I see you deleted #7 and added a section that doesn't address the problem (as I understand it) as well as being darn near incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in wiki culture. I don't think you had consensus to do that. However, I am off to a conference and don't have time to defend the policy so I will not revert it now. When the announcement of the policy change went out to the archive community, they were warned that the new policy was no more fixed than anything else in Wikipedia. The word of this deletion will get around in that community in days and I suspect they will take it as a rejection and just give up. I still think you should have waited to see if it was causing problems before deleting it. Keith Henson (talk) 02:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I do read support for both sides, and I do think that we should be able to meet in the middle. Hkhenson, the 'problem' is not the guideline, the problem is how people handle the conflict of interest editors. Under the old text, under the earlier text and under the text as it is now, they are allowed to add links only, if they do obey our policies and guidelines. The problems were already there under the old version, the version with #7 would only make it worse. I have already said a couple of times, I am not giving you the examples of those who misused it in the past, go through the archives of [WP:WPSPAM]] to see. And my example of Quilting is not fiction, but if you want, I can add Automobile musea, Stamp collectors. Moreover, GLAMs are NOT special, I don't see why they should have a special exception. And I don't see a problem with them first talking to a wikiproject and then mass adding. AVOID the impropriety .. they can have a free pass if they ask for it .. they can have a free pass if they do take care, and strictly follow the policies and guidelines. What is the problem? Explain it to me. Why is a GLAM different than the CEO of Pfizer, why is a GLAM different than a Nobel prize winner? Again, the problem is NOT the guideline, the problem is that the specialist has to avoid impropriety. I am editing chemistry articles, but I take care not to promote myself, or even give the impression that I promote myself. I don't friggin' see why they are not here already, improving Wikipedia, they have their hands full of information that we can use. Why can they only add links, and not talk with the community, discuss with other editors, participate in WikiProjects, and why is that possible for commercial databases of chemical compounds? Please tell me. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that "our policies and guidelines" are not the least bit clear for people who are not deeply into Wikipedia culture and they shift like desert sands. Wikipedia has a divergent culture with special meanings for words and coined words that has drifted away from common English nearly as much as a cult I cannot name. Take WP:GLAMs as an example. Recently coined word that hardly exists outside of Wikipedia. Archivist is the accepted term for people who take care of and provide access to stored information (mostly paper but rapidly incorporating other forms of media).

I don't understand the examples you cited. Looked at all three articles. If the problem is in the article history, could you point to it? Is what the Stanford intern added considered spam?

Your suggestion about first discussing what they are adding with a wikiproject won't work if my understanding of wikiproject being subject limited is correct. Take a look at what the intern from the Stanford archive added, it was all over the map. What the intern was doing is adding information about where original sources of information are located, mainly papers of various people. The archive of Robert Heinlein's papers (365 boxes) at UCSC is an example. (The Heinlein article does have a pointer to his papers. I didn't look to see who added it.)

The reason they are not here is simple. They have a conflict of interest and that has been used as a reason to delete their contributions. As a result a lot of them consider Wikipedia a hostile place and a waste of time not to mention they always have have too much work to do. As for getting them into Wikipedia culture, you might do that in some cases. In general though, I doubt it, these people are not going to do this when they go home. The cultural gap is very large partly because Wikipedia is not trusted by library people. Wikipedia will have to make special provisions if we want the information these people have. The purpose of #7 was so they could add such pointers to what the archive has and not be instantly booted by other editors on COI.

It's not like archivists (and particularly summer interns) are likely to contribute content to the articles. They would be adding pointers or links saying where original material about the article subject can be found. That doesn't give them a free pass to spam.

As for your wider concerns about specialists, if you know something about a topic, especially if you work in the area or have published on it, that is an automatic COI to a lot of editors who use it as a reason to delete content or even whole articles contributed by specialists. I have not looked recently, but last time I did, some editor had deleted essential math from the space elevator article. Few specialists (especially working ones) will put up with this very long. It's the main reason I don't contribute very much. Keith Henson (talk) 16:55, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I have seen plenty of promotional link spamming deleted, but I have not seen edits by a specialist deleted on the basis of some automatic COI assumed by others. Of course anything can and does happen here, and if you have an example I would like to see it. As well as major universities, there are lots of minor organizations that would like the free exposure provided by adding links at Wikipedia, and some procedure is necessary to limit the number of links added to articles. If an institution wants links in 100 articles, they should be prepared to apply more effort than simply addding the links. Johnuniq (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Rather than point you to previous examples, why don't we just provide a live example. I am considered an expert in a number of areas, among them evolutionary psychology and power satellites. Pick one or the other. I will either create an article or make a serious contribution and you can see for yourself my efforts being reverted or deleted--typically on COI grounds. It's a well known problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_retention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Experts_are_scum

My guess is that the Stanford archives has original materials on perhaps 1000 of the several million articles in Wikipedia. It is free exposure since it would be useless to say original materials exist and not say where they are. I have no idea what you might mean that they should apply more effort than simply adding links. If adding these links to where original materials can be found is not considered valuable to Wikipedia in and of itself, then archives should be advised to stay out of Wikipedia because that's all they can contribute. Keith Henson (talk) 08:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Certainly lots of expert editors have got tired of the rubbish and drama (per WP:RANDY and more) at Wikipedia, but that has nothing to do with COI. From what you have said, I'm sure that you have seen someone use COI as a reversion reason, but there would be many more cases where passers by have simply damaged articles from misguided or malicious edits. Also, many experts run into a crank who argues about tiny details, and the expert can see that the crank is simply wrong, and provides detailed reasoning that the crank ignores. Very frustrating, but nothing to do with COI. It is not a COI for a brain surgeon to write about brain surgery. It's only a COI if the surgeon writes in a way that might promote their business. An employee of a major university who adds a significant number of links to their university's collections does have a COI – that's what COI means in common usage and is nothing special to Wikipedia. The WP:MLA page spells out that (provided certain procedures are followed), we welcome such experts despite the inherent COI. Johnuniq (talk) 03:54, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I quite understand the problem presented here. This page says "Editing in an area in which you have professional or academic expertise is not, in itself, a conflict of interest." (emphasis added) Editors that revert expert contributions solely because knowing what you're talking about is believed to be a COI should be educated about what this page says on that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't going to protect the pointers to original materials archivists add from being deleted because with rare exceptions they don't have academic expertise about the subject of an article. And they do have a conflict of interest as defined on the COI page.

As for educating editors who delete the contributions of those who have expertise, lots of luck. I could go into details, but there is no point in stirring that pot again. Keith Henson (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no procedure that will work for all cases. Sure, a link to a high-quality research collection would be great. But you are not addressing the common situation where hundreds of links are added each day by WP:SPA accounts. One expert adding 100 links to the expert's site needs some thought. There really are a lot of libraries and other organizations that might want to add links to a particular article. We need a procedure to guide that process. Johnuniq (talk) 03:54, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with someone in an archive being assigned to add a hundred or even a thousand resouce resources or links to Wikipedia articles. It is inherently a short term project and if they are good pointers or links to original materials about the subjects of articles, they should be added. I also have no problem with other editiors going through these links and pruning them if they are no good or spam, say if a library is trying to get a link in because they have a book by some author (unless it is a really rare book). There are simply not that many topics that have more than a few original sources. I.e., it is not common for the papers of someone to be spread out amoung several archives. I just asked my wife (who is an archivist) and the only example she could think of is John Steinbeck whoes papers are in several places, all listed in the article about him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#External_links. Gore Vidal consolidated his papers to one archive, but where his papers are isn't listed in the article about him. There should be a pointer to them. Keith Henson (talk) 05:24, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Me neither, I don't have a problem with it, but I would really want to see to urge them to take care, to be considerate. Being an archivist should not be an 'excuse' to go wild, you still have to observe WP:EL, WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, etc. etc. That should be clear. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Break

A few comments on the last foot or so above:

1) Some libraries/archives have assembled little or not so little web features or collections of documents and images that are directly useful to WP web-users, without them having to pack a suitcase (and probably get a letter of recommendation from a professor) to access raw archive material. Washington State is an example that has explained their motives, actions and experiences very clearly. This sort of thing is far more useful, and we should consider distinguishing between those two types more here - WP:GLAM tries to do so.

2) At some point, and why not now, we need to obtain consensus on what sort of "notice only" links are actually useful. I tried to open up the issues in my analysis of the Stanford posts above. The UK National Archive entry for Alfred Austin has 20 links to archive collections, mostly I'm sure with nothing actually online. If that were not there, would we accept 20 links for this relatively minor figure? The 20 don't even include the Stanford one, because that is a notice of a collection described as very largely letters to him, not from him, that are of more relevance to the politics of the sender than the poetry of the recipient. Should that link be there? Maybe so, but I think we should attempt to work out some consensus either way to cover such situations, as Johnuniq says.

Way up this discussion there is a section where it was suggested to distinguish a notice that an archive has papers as "Research resources" and to use External links to either finding aids or scanned materials.

I looked at it, and the Stanford link in this case is marginal. If there was a link in the UK National Archive entry to the marginally connected materials Stanford has I would say definitely not. Even archivists have problems deciding what to keep. I guess if an archive keeps cubic feed of marginally connected paper on some topic, Wikipidia can afford 50-60 bytes in some cases. It is a judgment call. Keith Henson (talk) 03:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

3) I tend to agree with Hkhenson that we are more likely here to be dealing with interns with little or no real subject knowledge (of the subjects of the articles they add to), rather than real experts who will usually edit as individuals, & will not be adding links en masse anyway. Just being an expert does not give you a COI, though it can compromise NPOV when dealing with views of other experts.

4) I'm not sure "exception #7" is actually any easier for said COI interns to locate and understand than the longer and more nuanced sections on links at WP:GLAM. The Stanford librarian essentially said: "we got an intern & did what the Texans did". Whatever guidelines & policies we put up, many places will not find them or care about them, & just crash on regardless. Equally I'm not convinced exception #7 really gives the "green light" Dirk fears, & if it proves to do so, we can always turn it orange. Johnbod (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The people who need to read and understand #7 are mainly other Wikipedia editors rather than interns or even their bosses. This provision doesn't mean such interns can fill the Wikipedia with spam pointers or links, just that working for an archive or related and inputing notice pointers and links to what they have into articles is not in and of itself a reason to revert based on COI. The material they put in can certainly be reverted if it fails to pass muster on other grounds.

And I fully agree with your last point. If #7 causes problems we can put in dire warnings, tighten up the policy or even delete it. Keith Henson (talk) 03:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, I don't have ANY problem with whoever adding massive numbers of links. I have given a recent example of someone doing that in large quantities. All of them considerate additions, thinking about what they are doing. However, the Stanford example that keeps being brought up as 'a good editor and a loss': that editor made mistakes, it is not just misformatting, they added links where they simply did not belong (I gave about 11 concerns, some minor, but this is major)! They were not considerate. And then when challenged they avoided discussing. Yes, there links do lead to a resource for more information, but I have now seen so many of these archivists in so many forms (academic, non-profit, for-profit) that this is not the way forward. Why wait first until that becomes a problem while it already was a problem, even with the Stanford case (and the Stanford case is .. minor, I have seen way worse!). Could we please try and come up with something that just covers that? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I have a hard time understanding what you are trying to express. Perhaps Skype or a phone call would help. I am hkhenson on Skype. My Skype is a bit flaky at the moment so persist.

The Stanford intern situation unfolded thus: An archive manager set up an account and assigned an intern to enter a long list of pointers. Neither the management nor the intern were particularly up on Wikipedia culture and made both social and editorial errors. When called on it, the manager read COI policy and concluded that people like the intern (or other people with an employee like status) could not enter material for their employer. I know there are exceptions to the policy, but having been told by two editors that COI was an issue, they gave up.

COI is to a large extent an offshoot of NPOV. It's hard to have a NPOV when you work for a company and are editing the article about them. But when an archive says they have Malcom-X's papers, it is about as neutral a statement as you can get; the papers speak for themselves. #7 is a recognition of that fact.

I think everyone is in agreement that Stanford Special Collections has useful information on thousands of subjects, a great deal of it original materials. The same is true of a large number of other archives and related.

Now #7 does not give people who work for archives and related a free hand in adding pointers and links to Wikipedia, the *only* thing is does is prevents deletion of the pointers and links on COI grounds alone. If they add poorly formated or inappropriate links, fix them or delete them. Explain why to them. If they spam and persist, ban them.

The one thing I extracted from your comments is the need for these people to become socially engaged in Wikipedia. I now see your point and agree. I am not sure if this is expressed in the "advice to the cultural sector" but if not it should be. The managers who assign people to this task need to understand the need for being engaged. If we express it as the way the interns are 'on the job" trained to work on Wikipedia, they will probably understand. Keith Henson (talk) 17:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, that is indeed exactly the point. I have no problems with those editors adding the pointers, and the text already allowed that before #7 was inserted. I am a fierce spam fighter, and I have reverted many of these as being out of line, but what I don't see is the recognition that I also leave a lot of them. Some start of with things which are semi-questionable, and when contacted they explain, and things get repaired. Sometimes there are things which are really out of line, and they get reverted, pages deleted (copyvio pages, duplicates), etc. etc. And when you contact them, they either stop, or continue pushing (ending with spamming personal forum links 'tell me what you think about my organisation!').

The comparison is simple:

• Special:Contributions/Arcadia616
• Special:Contributions/Sulair.speccoll

Arcadia616 very much gives me the feeling that they is considering every edit (significantly less than 1 per minute, I found only one instance of 2 edits within a minute, no sequences of 4-5 additions in 4-5 minutes), I guess checking if it is correct, reacts to remarks, I have not seen any mistakes, &c.; Sulair.speccoll does 1-2 per minute (several times 2 edits in the same minute; several sequences of 4-5 edits in 4-5 minutes), makes serious mistakes (and there are many concerns and other, smaller, mistakes), and only started discussing in the end. Sulair.speccoll is here certainly with the best intentions, but my message to this editor and others who want to contribute in this way, is to be considerate, consider the ways here, and interact (especially when challenged). And in a way, I don't see any problem for them to contact some knowledgeable editor first (not that they have to, but why not ask 'I am an intern, I have this data, how can I be of help?'). Just avoid the impropriety!

There is nothing wrong with just starting to add the pointers, but when challenged, DO react. DO listen to the concerns. And that was the problem under the pre-#7 time, and the #7 does NOT resolve that, it does not resolve the problem. It only says what the guideline already allows, it does not help with the ones which are here in good faith (just maybe 'don't know our ways'), but, I feel, would 'allow' those who are not here in good faith ('hey, I am an archivist, per WP:COI I am allowed to add my links, why are you telling me not to?'). And I would prefer that that is something that we stress, they don't need the 'go ahead' (really, it is fine), but please become, as you put it, socially engaged in the encyclopedia.

The Stanford situation did not have to end like this, if you see the timeline. The editor made mistakes and there were other concerns. IF that editor would have started discussing, talking, helped in first repairing the mistakes and then going on, then nothing would have happened. But the mistakes stayed, the editor went on. And if there is one mistake, who says there are not way more. Who is going to check? Do we need someone who is going to check the hundreds of edits, while a bit more considered addition would not result in that problem?

I still feel that #7 is out of line with the other 6, it does not belong there, though I do think that we should be able to come up with something similar, somewhere else in the guideline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

If you go up this page to the section above http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Non-controversial_edits_DRAFT you can see where letting archive employees out of the financial provisions of the policy was considered and I agreed with the arguement against doing this. If you can figure out a better place for #7, please make a suggestion or just move it. You make the case above that: "It only says what the guideline already allows,". I think #7 clarifies what is a murky policy in regards to employees' essentially automatic COI. Editors citing COI (financial interest) is what discouraged Stanford from coming back. #7 says that even though archive employees have a financial COI, they are permitted to do certain kinds of edits.

The section you added on "Subject Professionals" kind of implies this. Incidentally, I don't think "Subject Professionals" is a good section title since these people are seldom "Subject Professionals." Though I hate the word, I think "GLAM employees" would be more descriptive of your intent.

(Dealing with real "subject professional" is another can of worms entirely.)

As for controlling spam and other misbehavior, they can only make non-controversial edits per the next line which is:

"If another editor objects for any reason, then it's a controversial edit. Such edits should be discussed on the article's talk page."

If someone adding links for an archive screws up, any editor can tell them that all their edits are controversial and let them out of it later if they improve.

No policy is perfect of course. But given these clarifications, do you think you could try living with it for a while? Keith Henson (talk) 16:37, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Stanford gave up or were driven away, as you both assume. I suspect they just finished their list and stopped. Otherwise I agree with Keith. Johnbod (talk) 17:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I know for a fact (having been in direct contact with the person involved) that Wikipedia editors citing the COI policy to them why they quit. Jehochman blocked them on other grounds but suggested they read policy and come back. They did read and decided (rightly or wrongly) that they could not get around COI. The list they had was much longer. If they ever find the resources to edit here again, I am going to suggest that the list be reviewed and weeded out before they enter any of it. Keith Henson (talk) 21:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

COI isn't a policy at all, and shouldn't be used to bludgeon editors over the head. This isn't WP:BLP or WP:HARASS or WP:COPYVIO where an editor needs to step lightly or risk a ban. A COI could be used as part of a justification for a ban but on its own shouldn't be driving people away from the encyclopedia. I don't know that this guideline needs to be changed much, it's pretty soft as it is. -- Atama頭 21:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

What can I say? Archives come here, get dinged for COI, go read the "guidelines," especially the financial one about getting money to edit--which they are doing--and conclude they can't add pointers and links here. As I recall, Stanford was called out by two editors on COI. The guideline is probably just fine, on that I agree with you. But people not into Wikipedia culture just read it as locking them out and drive themselves away. That's why #7 "you have a COI, but for this limited class of edits you can edit anyway." Maybe it does need to be in its own section. On the other hand, pointers and links should be non controversial. If they are not, then they shouldn't be using this provision. Keith Henson (talk) 01:01, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Keith, I can live with it, but not there as a #7, and I would still put a provision in it that still urges them to discuss or interact when challenged. I feel that it does not belong there, but it can be worded in a separate section, as I tried. Maybe renaming the 'subject professionals' to something else (as you say, it are not necessarily subject professionals that we are talking about here, GLAM would be better, though does not cover them all either, "subject professionals, GLAMS, database managers ...")? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion It would be incorrect to say that adding links to your own institution is ok under the heading "Non-controversial edits" – SPAs adding links to their institution will always be controversial. What is needed is some wording to say that despite the COI, certain kinds of link additions are welcome, provided they are performed diligently and in accord with WP:GLAM. If an institution provides staff to add 100 links, they need to also get those staff to take the time to read WP:GLAM (an attempt to centralize all they need to know). Looking at the TOC makes it clear that "6.1 Non-controversial edits" includes both "6.1.1 Photographs and media files" and "6.1.2 Subject professionals". However, when reading 6.1 that point is not clear. Perhaps a new #7 could be added to "Non-controversial edits" to clarify that the next two sections are also non controversial. Perhaps 7. Adding material in accord with the Photographs and media files or Subject professionals sections below. Johnuniq (talk) 23:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Consider what you have written as a logic statement. If SPA adding links to their organization is always controversial, then they can't add links to their organization under a non-controversial section at all. And as a matter of fact, what you say here: "What is needed is some wording to say that despite the COI, certain kinds of link additions are welcome" is a restatement of the lead in to the non-controversial edit section and #7. Keith Henson (talk) 01:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not as a #7, but in the line just introducing that, but I think it is a good plan. And I still would consider a rename of the 'Subject professional' section to something more general that also covers GLAMs. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, you will see that I have inserted some text that I hope is satisfactory. I do not think we are going to find a better term than "Subject professionals" for the heading (and it conveys the right attitude: if there is no expert at the least in the background, the editor should think seriously before bulk editing). The list of professions under the heading could be expanded if required, but I don't see how it can be better summarized. Also, I do not think the heading is a big deal: anyone interested in the issue would read the whole thing (particularly now that it is mentioned under "Non-controversial edits"), and would quickly see that it encompasses more than just experts in a subject. Johnuniq (talk) 01:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Being a "subject professional" on several topics and having been bitten, I really don't think you should even try to get into this area in the COI section. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Experts_are_scum, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Expert_retention. If you want to go off and do battle in this policy area, I will be happy to go with you and back you up. Maybe we need a new section "deference to experts" (which I think would not be accepted) or perhaps more widely, some way for an expert checked version of an article to be seen even if it is a hundred edits down in the history list. Of course, we would need some way to certify experts as well. Keith Henson (talk) 01:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Newbies are indeed sometimes bitten, though I have not seen that often with this type of editors. Expressing concerns to such an editor (like was done with the Stanford editor) or even putting a {{uw-coi}} (or even {{uw-spam1}}) on the user talkpage is not biting. And if the editor is not responding but continuing with the 'problematic' (!) edits then even a follow up with {{uw-spam3}}/{{uw-spam4}} or other level 3 or 4 warnings is still not biting. Even a username block isn't. Such edits are controversial (even when most of them are not a problem), and the concerns exist.

Stanford was a case of an intern, but whatever username they choose, we NEVER hardly ever know who is really behind it. If it is an intern or someone like that, that makes the COI problem smaller, but if the person who is really behind the account is actually the Marketing or Public Relations officer who is only here to promote the site .. we do not know who it is, and the edits may appear the same (actually (bad faith warning), the unconsidered additions of Stanford are not very dissimilar from what I once saw from one of such Public Relations officers .. wrong linking/over linking/etc.).

I STILL don't see why they (the GLAMs) can't start one step slower .. really ask them to make contact and be very considerate. Don't just start adding. Even if your intentions are perfectly, genuinely to improve this Wikipedia, (yes, again, this is something that I don't seem to get an answer to!) AVOID the impropriety!! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:21, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Break 3

Isn't this clearer?

Adding pointers to primary sources in archives, special collections or libraries in the Research resources section of an article. Also, adding External links to digitized or digital primary sources or finding aids. Editors working for such organizations are requested to review WP:EL (useful links to on-line, non-promotional material related to the article), WP:NPOV, WP:NOSHARE and WP:ORGNAME. The last two mean don't create a shared organizational account and don't include the name of the organization in the account name. It is recommended but not required for such editors to declare their affiliation on their user page.

Keith Henson (talk) 04:09, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Is your text a proposed #7 under "Non-controversial edits"? This talk thread is too complex and I did not respond to your earlier comment starting "Consider what you have written as a logic statement" but a brief response now is that SPAs adding self-links is controversial, but the fact that it is controversial does not necessarily preclude the activity. The topic of COI editing is complex so we should expect the guideline to be somewhat complex, and polishing the text to remove all possible objections may not be worthwhile. The current wording provides specific guidance for how certain "Subject professionals" editing is encouraged, and points such editors to WP:GLAM. Why would any more be needed here? Also, no wording on this page will prevent professionals from being occasionally abused by other editors, and I think this guideline should not attempt to define what SPA link additions are acceptable. Johnuniq (talk) 07:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It may be clearer, but it avoids the point. This is the same type of remark as the old #7, and this is just the same as what was the problem with Stanford, and what has been giving so many problems already. No, I disagree strongly with this type of wording. This type of edits are controversial, but do not have to be a problem. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This section is followed by

"If another editor objects for any reason, then it's a controversial edit. Such edits should be discussed on the article's talk page."

Since you and Beetstra have made a blanket statement that all such edits are controversial, and both of you are "another editor" then all such links must be discussed on the talk pages.

That's ok, it's more work for editors concerned with the pages, but you have made a clear statement that such links by archives can only be added to the talk pages. I think the archives can live with only adding links to the talk pages and letting other editors transfer them to the articles or not. In a few days I will write up new Wikipedia instructions for archives and get my wife to send them out on the archives list server. Keith Henson (talk) 03:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That may be best, really. It complies totally with the guidelines as they currently stand but still allow the archivists to contribute. -- Atama頭 03:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

No Keith, that is not what I say. I still think, that when the 'archivist' is adding external links to their own organisation to the page, that that can be fine, as long as they are very considerate, and that they discuss when challenged, and obey the policies and guidelines. Yes, it is better to ask first on the talkpage (I would suggest to go to a wikiproject, announce yourself there, and then they can add links themselves; adding to talkpages only is double work, they can certainly do it themselves as they do know best what they have), but it is not a must. Again, the Stanford made mistakes, was not considerate, did not discuss, the other example that I gave is an editor which is considerate, who discusses, and I have not seen mistakes. I am against the blanket statement 'it is fine with us, you can add the links' (and it is out of line as #7 next to the other 6), but not with 'as long as you obey the applicable policies and guidelines, and discuss when challenged, you can add the links'. That can certainly be said somewhere in the guideline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikiprojects I don't think are possible. For example, which Wikiproject would Stanford have gone too? I am after something simple not only for the archivists to understand but for the editors who go on search and destroy missions after them. I agree it doubles the work, but Wikipedia has lots of hands to do such. I believe both you and Atama have stated that all such edits are controversial and that negates there being any point to a #7 type exception. I agree with your conditions for SPA editing and being responsive and all, but I think they are just too complicated to describe or apply. But if you want to attempt it, be my guest. (It would be less complicated for Wikipedia to assign someone as liaison to archives and related, but I don't think the "management" of Wikipedia is up to such a task.) Keith Henson (talk) 04:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Surely. I clicked on the 6 last link additions of each of the above named accounts (User:Sulair.speccoll and User:Arcadia616), and looked at the talkpages. I see there the wikiprojects, and one that is on all 12 of them (!), is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, which here seems IMHO a good start (I should of course have looked at the first 6 contributions, my mistake, there there is not one clear project ..). For musea who are specialised in Quilting, Embroidery we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Textile Arts, we have Wikipedia:WikiProject California who can help a random Californian museum to see if their pictures/links, &c. fit somewhere .. &c. &c. Sure, there are not always suitable wikiprojects available, and it may not always end up with the best wikiproject, but very often there is somewhere a collective group of editors who are willing to consider.

Moreover, User:Arcadia616 did not go to a wikiproject, User:Arcadia616 did not ask on talkpages for every link, but if I look at the contributions, I think they did read the policies and guidelines. Their additions are, IMHO, considerate, &c. &c. I, nor others, are forcing the editor to go to a wikiproject, I am not forcing them to ask for every link on the talkpage. Surely, the edits are not non-controversial (note: I do not say they are controversial), but what happened to WP:BOLD? If your link additions improve this encyclopedia, go ahead, 'go wild!'. But then be aware that if your WP:BOLD edits are met with WP:BRD reversions because you make mistakes, and/or there are other concerns (like the other 10 I mentioned for Sulair.speccoll somewhere; if I include other accounts there are 3-4 others which may occur), then use WP:COMMON sense, don't persist in what appears to be a WP:SPAMMER, don't WP:IGNORE the rules, but help in solving the problem (first). And actually, Keith, I think thát is where it went wrong with Sulair.speccoll, there were, many, concerns, and it could not go on like that. With or without #7, Sulair.speccoll was on a (good faith) wrong track!

As mentioned earlier, I believe that #7 was in that place out of place, but that does not mean that we can't say something to 'subject professionals and GLAMs', and I think that the section that we now have for subject professionals could be a good start. Maybe we can state it a bit simpler, or we can sort it in a different way, but I don't think we can make it in a plain exception as #7 was stated. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I know for a fact that after the intern's work was mostly reverted, the archivist in charge looked into COI (having been called on it) and her reading of the COI kept them from trying again. I agree with you that Stanford screwed up and should have engaged in discussions, but I think what you are missing is that these people are *paid*. For them to put significant work into a project and have it all deleted under COI, well, they are going to find something more productive to do with their time. Think of telling your boss that all the work you did last week was deleted. You cite 5 conflicting wikipedia policy pages. There is no way people are going to read them, much less understand them, even if they didn't change from day to day. Putting their contributions on the talk pages and letting other editors with too much time on their hands transfer them is a better approach than putting such links and pointers on the article pages and having them deleted by editors with too much time on their hands.

Indidentally #7 wasn't a blanket exemption since any editor could bitch about it and make adding a link or pointer controversial. #7 was just to keep uptight editors from throwing out all such additions on COI alone. The advice going out on the archives list will be "If you want to add Wikipedia links to your materials, add them to an article's talk page. They will often be transfered to the article by other Wikipedia editors if they are good links or pointers to original material. You may try to directly add links and pointers to the articles, but such additions, even if otherwise good, are likely to be deleted under Wikipedia policies such as COI and SPAM." Are there other points that should be mentioned? I may include a link to the last three months of discussion here. Keith Henson (talk) 19:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Keith, I am sorry, but you say they are paid for the job. And because they are paid for their time, all you want them to do is to read one or two sentences in one policy or guideline and then can add links? When I start on a new project, I spend several weeks reading myself into a subject, and that is before I hit a fumehood. WP:COI is never a sole reason to revert, it is never a sole reason to block an editor. Again, Keith, you know that I am a fierce spam reverter, see my contributions of the beginning of November when I tried to keep up with the bots for a week or so, and the result on my talkpage, I run those bots and XLinkBot, I keep an eye out regularly for these and bad spam editors. But I did not even think to revert Arcadia626. While the COI is admitted, and it sets of not only the bells of WP:SPAMMER, also the blue and orange flashy lights go off! Stanford did not blow it because they had a COI, they blew it because they were ignorant of the other policies and guidelines. Links failed our core policies and guidelines, they made serious mistakes, and they did not discuss when asked to. They got reverted because if there are so many concerns then it is better to clean first and then reconsider. Arcadia626 is not, whatever the reason, Arcadia626 seems to have taken the time to glance through the applicable policies and guidelines. Believe me, we've done the experiment of leaving it there, and the crap stays. It does not work. We can't leave the crap there just because 'well, most of the links are fine, and it is a good organisation'. I've been bashed repeatedly on my head (and other 'spam fighters' have had the same, we sometimes make it to AN/I for it) for reverting such 'good, good faith edits', and most of the time people went through the reverts afterwards and checked, if you leave them that does not happen. And I can fully justify my reverts when I did those, as for these, all these reverts are justifyable.

1. 7 was there out of place, that is my problem with it. Maybe the section that replaced it should be tightened in such a way, but there is no escape, they will have to read. They will have to spend 15 minutes before adding links only. WP:COI is not the first thing to read, but probably on should read: WP:EL, WP:COI, sections of WP:NOT, WP:COPYRIGHT, maybe WP:NPOV, glance through WP:SPAM, and though Sulair.speccoll nor Arcadia626 get to this, some should also read WP:YFA, WP:COPYVIO (I've seen an archivist creating articles with a different name (it should have been a redirect already ...) which were plain copies of the two lines of text on their server and included the link, where Wikipedia already had a 2-page article on the subject which contained more info than what that specific 'archive' could provide in any form).

So the sentences: "If you want to add Wikipedia links to your materials, add them to an article's talk page. They will often be transfered to the article by other Wikipedia editors if they are good links or pointers to original material. You may try to directly add links and pointers to the articles, but such additions, even if otherwise good, are likely to be deleted under Wikipedia policies such as COI and SPAM.". NO (again, see Special:Contributions/Arcadia616), it is not true! They are not likely to be reverted because of COI or SPAM, they might get reverted if there are more concerns, these are generally not reverted on the basis of just this. => "You can improve articles by adding links or pointers to relevant pages on your organisations website directly, but be sure they do not violate WP:EL (specific one or more points of WP:ELNO), and the sections WP:NOT#REPOSITORY, and WP:NOT#DIRECTORY. You might also want to have a look at WP:COI, WP:SPAM (specifically WP:SPAMMER), WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:COPYVIO (Note that these guidelines do not forbid you to do these additions, as long as they adhere to these policies and guidelines). When in doubt, discuss the link additions on talkpages (where they are likely to be transferred by other editors after review), or with other editors via e.g. a suitable wikiproject. When your additions are challenged, make sure to discuss your edits before you proceed adding more links or pointers." (and we could include something that when there are too many concerns, that that may result in all of them being reverted). No-one is forcing them to do it all via the talkpage only, it is inefficient, it is likely not to help anyway, and that suggestion would violate WP:BOLD and WP:IAR.

Keith, I am so much more liberal and open to these people than you seem to feel. You give me here the strong impression that you think that I, and/or maybe others who follow link additions on Wikipedia are here only to bash anything that may be interpreted as a spammer out of Wikipedia, that we hunt them away, that we revert without reason, whatever. At least I am not blindly reverting them. Really, it is all fine with me, and I think the same of other spam-reverting regulars. WP:COI is not preventing them anything, it merely suggests them to be careful, to be considerate. If they do get reverted, there are other things wrong, then there are more concerns, or other concerns. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:46, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Your first point is well taken. Perhaps contributing to Wikipedia should not be as complicated at making some awful chemical in a fume hood, but it is.

Number 7 was put where it was after two weeks of discussion on this page between September 2 and September 16 with half a dozen editors contributing. You might want to read that discussion since it covers most of your points.

COI was cited to Stanford as a reason to revert by two editors named above, and those editors deleted every one of Stanford's contributions without evaluating them. Not saying it's correct, it just happened. Also not saying you do it.

Expecting a 19 year old summer intern working at an archive to grok WP:BOLD and WP:IAR and all their implications is over the top. Put yourself in the place of a one who has just been handed a list of subjects the archive has original materials on. In the first place, saying archive x has y feet of original materials on the subject of this article is the least bold thing I can imagine.

Re modified advice to archivists, third sentence: "You may directly add links and pointers to the articles, but they may be deleted by other editors." That better? Keith Henson (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Break 4

All I meant was, that there is nothing wrong with first reading into your project, and that does not have to take weeks, for this you don't have to read all of all the policies and guidelines, but to me it sounds more than reasonable that a bit of reading is done.

I read the discussion, and I am sorry I did not come in earlier.

COI was indeed cited as a reason, but I think more of a problem was the style of editing, seen the first sentences there. Indeed, when there are serious concerns and when there are mistakes, then I do say, revert all and do a careful re-addition. The style should have changed, the errors repaired. As I said, that goes better from a clean sheet, than just leaving the who-knows-how-many mistakes there (here there were only few), and waiting for someone to clean it up. If things are challenged, then discussion needs to take place before addition, not leaving it there and waiting for someone to clean up.

No, I don't expect a 19 year old summer intern to grok WP:BOLD and WP:IAR. What I mean is that they can just add the links themselves, but I do hope that the supervisor of that intern does instruct the person properly to be considerate, and check that the subject on their list is the same subject as that the wikipedia article is talking about. That is not something that the Stanford intern did, nor what their supervisors did.

No, there is no reason for them to be deleted by others, if they are correct and in place. I have no reason to revert Arcadia616, there is nothing anything wrong with the additions. Why would we say that they 'may be deleted by other editors'. That sounds a bit hostile to me. As long as the person adding them makes the links follow our policies and guidelines, there is no reason to revert. And I don't see why we can't say that, have a look through the policies and guidelines (and not only the intern, also the supervisor). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry you did not come in early too. The addition of #7 (including the policies they should read) was discussed for two weeks with half a dozen editors and we more or less reached consensus, and were going to see how it worked in a few months. I doesn't matter what the real reason was the editors mass deleted what the Stanford intern had put in, it was the supervisor reading COI that made them give up and not come back. I thought we had a test solution but apparently not, and it's not worth it to me to get in an revert war even if I don't think you had a consensus for the changes you made.

As for following policy, heck, the policy is so conflicted I doubt anyone could understand it even if the policy didn't keep shifting. A lot of it is unwritten, depending on idiosyncratic mutual social support. If you have that, you can stuff the Wikipedia with nonsense for years before someone notices. As for "hostile" put wikipedia hostile in Google and follow a few of the 12.8 million links it reports. Keith Henson (talk) 00:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Saying that Wikipedia is hostile is easily done, and even easier posted on the different fori. And finding documents on the opposite may be difficult to find (which, I am sure, is merely due to it being difficult to find the proper search terms). Though I know that there are several specialists around here who, with a massive COI, are happy with their collaboration with Wikipedia.

And I don't think that Sulair.speccoll was not being met in a hostile way, there is a welcoming template, low-level 'warnings' (the first warning almost 3 days after the welcome, they could have seen the Five Pillars and Manual of Style). You may read that as 'Wikipedia has been hostile to Stanford', but then I am going to counter that with 'Stanford has been completely ignorant about Wikipedia'. There is biting and there is feeling bitten. When you are a genuine spammer, you don't care about Wikipedia's ways. When you are a respective organisation, you care. What would Stanford hae done when Wikipedia was not freely editable, but they still did feel that they could make a significant contribution to it? They mail and ask how. Here they just started (boldly, and that is perfectly fine), but when they were contacted, they did not react, but just went on (and as the account is 'anonymous', who knows who is behind it, a bot (see the speed and the errors), a marketing person (see the errors), the archivist himself (strange, making errors?), an intern (could be, may make some errors if not properly instructed)? This sets of a spam radar, especially when not answering when being warned.

I am not asking for archivists (nor their interns) to read into all the ways of Wikipedia, but, again, I do ask them to be considerate, I do ask them to interact (I don't expect them to start interacting, though they may, but I do expect it when messages are left). And then they can perfectly add their links themselves. Keith, why does it work with VAWebteam, and why does it work with Arcadia616? Would they call us hostile? I am sorry, but this discussion almost gives me an image of an archetypal archivist, someone with small, round glasses, wearing a dusty coat and two white gloves, working from behind some old green-on-black terminal in the back of the archive (they is sitting there, sipping coffee, just around the left, behind the shelf). Daylight is scarce (I can imagine them being afraid of daylight!), just as is the social interaction (people only come to you when they need to find the last copy of La sombra del viento).</joking> Still, Keith, what is wrong here, why can't they come to us 'how can we be of help?', or why can't they just help and respond when asked, or why can't they first read a bit and then help according to our ways, or, what I suggested earlier, why can't we go to them and ask 'hey guys, you have a great archive, can we link to you, can you help us?'. Why does it have to be in a way where they blindly add, don't interact, start socking, plainly spam, start creating duplicate articles, create copyvio's, link inappropriately, add links in wrong places (yes, really, these are examples of the many things I have seen with archives!!!), why do they have to violate some of our core policies. And why should we allow them to, just because they don't want to take time to read a bit into our ways and because they are archivists? And I know it does not have to be that way, again, see the Victoria and Albert Museum, and see Bancroft Library, and see ChemSpider, see the Chemical Abstract Service. Am I really, really asking so much (too much?) from the keepers of our treasures? Please, Keith, help us welcome them and 'educate' them in how we can get the max out of them, if only they would first read a bit, we don't need to scare them away by reverting their edits or blocking them. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Dirk, Stanford screwed up. Until all their edits were deleted, I doubt the archivist in charge was looking at her user page, being totally swamped as usual. I am virtually certain the intern wasn't looking at the user page either, and may not even have known there was one. They were running open loop with predictable results. But that is not/was not my concern or the reason for #7. After being called on COI, the archivist read into the page and her plain reading of the page indicated they could not participate in letting the world know what they had through Wikipedia. (Just read the financial section.)

And #7 was a very limited exception to COI. It told archives they could put "Research resources" or links into Wikipedia about what they have under an exception that those would be considered non-controversial and thus even though they plainly have a COI this limited kind of addition was permitted anyway. It said nothing about letting them off on socking, spam, duplicate articles, copyright violations, or anything else. And right below that, they were put on a short leash because any editor could call an addition controversial and they would have to go through the talk page.

You and Atama declared above that you consider all such edits controversial. Even if I restored #7, they would have to go through the talk page on that basis.

I was trying to permit archivists to participate in adding the unique resources they have to the Wikipedia. I wrote the announcement that went out on the archivist mailing list quoting #7 with its four pointers to Wikipedia policy pages they should read. http://forums.archivists.org/read/messages?id=34701#34701 and a follow up at http://forums.archivists.org/read/messages?id=34701#34703. They were excited about the change that would let them participate. http://www.wittylama.com/2009/10/conflict-of-interest-archives/

At this point I need to tell them the COI exception is no more and adding what they have to the talk pages is their only option. You want to write a draft for posting to the archive list? Keith Henson (talk) 19:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

But Keith, what I am saying now for 3 or 4 posts, maybe even longer, they can add the links themselves. They don't have to go through the talkpages (OK, when they are in doubt in a specific case, then it is better). And the exception is still there. All I did was move it away from the 6, as I don't think it is in line with those 6, and into an own section. I never disallowed them to do it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I have expanded the subject professionals section in the guideline, to reflect more of the #7. I also renamed the section to 'Subject and culture sector professionals', as that seems to more cover the content. Thoughts? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Break 5

As I have mentioned before, a subject professional is going to make an entirely different class of substantive edits to articles rather than putting in a pointer to where more information can be found. Think of the difference between a working organic chemist and an archivist who has charge of Friedrich Wöhler's papers. I found your approach to be unclear and confusing, even to someone like me who has been reading wiki policies for some time. But you should not accept my opinion on this. Find someone who can post to the archives list (or sign up yourself, I think it is open) and ask for feedback. Alternately, there are a few editors from archives you have pointed out. Ask them if what you have written is both clear and accomplishes whatever you are trying to convey.

I asked my wife (who is an archivist) to read the section and she has no idea what is meant by "Wikipedia prefers the addition of referenced content, or the addition of references where they are requested. When material is not suitable as a reference, but provides information which is not included in the article," What is "reference content?" Does the next sentence mean an archive should wait for someone to ask? Keith Henson (talk) 23:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

But they do know how to add external links, and they do know what external links are? Or the not-existing (in Wikipedia terms) 'Resources section'? Wait, what is a section. You're right, Wikipedia terminology is a bit thick, I'll add some more pointers to read .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Having said that, WP:EL, WP:NPOV, WP:NOSHARE and WP:ORGNAME certainly are known by them, are they not? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Adding more (often confusing) Wikipedia policy pages for archive managers or interns to read isn't going to help. I think the ones in the original #7 were enough. In particular, they don't need to read WP:NPOV. Letting people know that an archive has original materials on a subject is inherently neutral, at least I can't think of a case where it wouldn't be.

A "Research resources" heading should be used when it is just a note that an archive has original materials on the subject of the article.

If the archive has a "finding aid" online describing their materials on the article subject in more detail or the archive has gone further and scanned some of the materials they have then it should go under the External links heading. Clicking on something under external links should take your browser there.

Could you comment on what you mean by the terms you used the section you wrote? Keith Henson (talk) 19:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Confusing policies and guidelines? Well, if they have questions, they can always ask. We were all beginners once, and were all pointed to policies and guidelines once. And they don't have to read it all, or even grasp it all ..

I don't understand your last question, could you clarify which section you mean? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The section you wrote containing this: "Wikipedia prefers the addition of referenced content, or the addition of references where they are requested. When material is not suitable as a reference, but provides information which is not included in the article," What is "reference content?" My wife is an archivist and she has no idea of what you are talking about. Keith Henson (talk) 00:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that, I already changed that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 00:18, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I by the way saw no the same typo twice, you mention 'reference content' .. though that is also a correct English term, it said '... referenced content ...' .. should it have said 'sourced content'? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I still have no idea of what you intend this to mean in the context of what an archive has to offer. Could you provide an example? Keith Henson (talk) 16:15, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Simple:

• Can the archive use the contents of the archive to add content to the body of the article?
  • Yes? Then add content and link to the archive information with a reference,
  • No? Does the archive contain relevant, meaningful information that is not suitable for inclusion?
    • Yes? Then it is an external link or a link in research resources section that can be added
    • No? Next page, nothing to do on this page.

Does your wife's archive contain information which can be used to expand the article and to be used as a reference? It is clear from your points above, that the answer is no. Does it contain relevant, meaningful information? YESSSS .. so there we are. Add it in the research resources section.

I am sorry, Keith, I don't understand what you don't understand. Arcadia616 perfectly demonstrates what this means in the context of what their archive has to offer. Do you really want to say, whatever content you have, add it as an external link? For a true archive that is maybe the only option, but for a museum it is not, and even archives have sometimes something to offer in terms of article content (see, again, what Arcadia616 does!). If an archive (which contains material that can be used to expand the article and be used as a reference) would follow the advice 'just add it as an external link', then that would be a violation of WP:EL, and such an editor would surely be reverted, and we are likely haunting away another useful editor who could have helped us so much further. And that is just what you want to avoid, is it not? Why insist that these editors first choice of edits has to be the addition of external links (or at least, a link under a 'Research resources'-section), and not the consideration of actually expanding articles and adding appropriate references. Because that is what WP:EL says. If you say, as #7 said "Adding pointers to useful primary sources in archives, special collections or libraries in the Research resources section of an article. Also, adding External links to digitized or digital primary sources or finding aids. Editors working for such organizations are requested to review WP:EL", then that means that the editor has to read (and understand) WP:EL, if you say here, try to see if you can add content with references, but if that is not possible, but it does "... provide information which is not included in the document ...", then add it as a link to the archive, then they do not really have to read WP:EL. (when in doubt, discuss first blah blah). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you have an unrealistic view of the interactions most archive clerks and interns would have with the Wikipedia. About the only thing most archives employees would add to articles is a statement for researchers that they have original materials on the topic. Also, Arcadia616 came here clearly as a result of the Archives mailing list since the first thing they did was quote #7 on their user page. Comparing them to Stanford who came here without #7 is not fair. Your complicated version is a little better now, but is still verbose and confusing. If possible you should get someone to edit it down and put into standard English. Keith Henson (talk) 02:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think my view is unrealistic. I have had interactions with some already on all sides of the spectrum, and I do see what is around. If my view is unrealistic, then I am afraid it really gets close to that description higher up (which is actually not how I see them).

This is a wiki, people will come and rewrite it. I am actually waiting for that. But if this is not correct, then I can imagine how difficult it is to understand all our other policies and guidelines. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Category of COI not directly addressed?

I've been watching a couple of conversations with a "new" kind of COI as the common thread. You might describe them as "purpose in life" COIs: people that aren't paid (money), but believe that it's their "unpaid job" to promote a particular POV. It's not "awareness" per se; it's really just POV-pushing -- but POV-pushing based on the idea that the editor's unpaid position requires representing the POV on Wikipedia. Some examples might illustrate the concept better than I can describe it right now:

Dispute	We say "Financial COI"	We say "Some other COI"
Vaccines	Employee of pharmaceutical company adds favorable information about the flu jab	Owner of a zero-revenue anti-vaccination website adds unfavorable information
Antibiotics	Seller adds information about benefits	Unpaid founder of an anti-antibiotics organization emphasizes adverse effects
Autism	Vaccine seller adds (accurate) information that the (discontinued) preservatives in childhood vaccines don't cause autism	Parent of a young autistic child that was never exposed to this preservative promotes this disproven 'cause' anyway, to the off-wiki cheers of his support group
Transportation	Employee of road construction firm adds information supporting highway expansion	Volunteer for an anti-highway group says that driving kills people
Water conservation	Employee of water agency adds information about program benefits	Unpaid anti-tax advocate adds unfavorable estimates of costs
Scandals	Lay employee of religious organization adds favorable information	Unpaid clergy for the same religious organization adds favorable information

We've done a good job of identifying "getting paid money to push a POV", but we don't currently seem to have directly addressed "getting non-monetary compensation for pushing a POV".

Non-monetary/psycho-social compensation can include personal fame, compliments from people you admire, a feeling of satisfaction at promoting your beliefs, or other nontangible -- but still visible, measurable, and real -- benefits. IMO, developing a identity as being "the wonderful person that makes sure Wikipedia reflects our community's point of view" is every bit as real a conflict of interest as getting paid to do the same thing. I've seen several editors that are "experts" at internet-based support groups and that have appeared at Wikipedia solely to "correct" medical articles to reflect the beliefs of their members. They seem to want to retain their social status in the other group by wikilawyering around Wikipedia's rules, even if it means thwarting this community's standards. Getting praised and honored by your support group for POV pushing here is "payment" that keeps people motivated to persist in POV pushing.

I think we should consider adding another section, perhaps titled something like "Unpaid positions", to briefly address this conflict of interest. I'm interested in other people's experiences of this phenomenon, and any ideas about how to express this in a couple of short sentences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:NPOV WAS 4.250 (talk) 20:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

WAS' comment is a bit cryptic, but if I understand him correctly I agree: WhatamIdoing, your examples are outside the scope of COI and must be handled simply with NPOV. And we shouldn't change that. It doesn't really matter why someone has a strong, ossified POV. The purpose of WP:COI is merely to cover some of the most common and most obvious cases. If we make it too widely applicable it will be abused. Hans Adler 20:53, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

So you think that if you run an organization dedicated to promoting a particular piece of information, and you make an effort to be quoted in the newspaper for its purpose, and the major goal of your life is to be seen promoting the Truth™ -- but that you don't get paid in money for doing it -- then you don't have a conflict of interest?

Let me give you an entirely hypothetical (I hope) example: Imagine an unemployed Orthodox rabbi who removes information about child sex abuse from Yeshiva Torah Temimah#Sexual_abuse_case. You are saying that he has no conflict of interest -- even though, in his mind, being a rabbi is far more fundamental and important than whatever he might do to keep food on his table -- but the school's janitor, who might be paid minimum wage and might have no particular interest in the school except as it puts food on his table, has an automatic conflict of interest? Is money so important to you that you can't imagine it not being equally important to everyone? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:35, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

A COI is not about money. It can be, but doesn't have to be. A COI occurs when a person is too close to what they are writing about. The COI comes about because of who that person is, not what they think. If that Orthodox rabbi were a friend or relative of Yeshiva Torah Temimah, for example, there would be a COI even though obviously there's nothing financial involved. If we exclude people from articles because they have strong feelings about those subjects, we'd kill the encyclopedia. Many, perhaps even most articles are edited by people who are either fans of the subject, or at least have a strong interest in it. That's what drew them to the article in the first place. As to the first comment, the person running an organization dedicated to promoting something, if you don't edit an article about the organization or try to promote the organization by mentioning it in related articles or linking to its web site, then no, there is no COI. -- Atama頭 18:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

In your opinion, would the founder of or major volunteer at a "Parents Against Deadly Vaccinations" or "People Harmed by Antidepressants" group generally be too close to the subject to edit articles about different vaccinations or antidepressants? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

No, as long as they don't act to promote their particular organizations in the article mainspace. On the other hand, if they were an advocate/activist and edited in that manner they would probably get blocked for reasons unrelated to COI. -- Atama頭 18:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You say above that COI is about "who that person is", but you don't believe that "who I am is a person that has dedicated my life to getting vaccines banned" (or whatever) is a COI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That's right. I'm a big fan of Star Wars. Should I be considered to have a COI in editing Star Wars articles? I can't stand the taste of mushrooms, should I not be allowed to edit articles about them? Even very strong opinions don't equate to a COI. It's when you are directly connected to what you are editing about that the COI would apply. If I were to link to a Star Wars fan web site I created then I'd be in violation of a COI. If I got mad in a restaurant because they served me mushrooms, and I caused a ruckus and ended up in the newspaper, I'd have a COI if I added that info to the mushroom article. (Not that I would do that of course.) The COI has to be something obvious and clear, not something intangible and indirect, otherwise it would be too restrictive. -- Atama頭 18:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

And, in your opinion, owning or running an organization whose sole purpose is to ban vaccines (or whatever) is not "obvious and clear" -- up until the moment that the owner/operator gets paid to do exactly what he's doing now for free (since the COI page does include getting paid to push a POV). Correct? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but being paid is a slightly different subject. If that same person is paid to say vaccines are good, that would be a violation of COI even though they are editing in a manner different from their own personal views. Editing with a bias is allowed, in fact our NPOV policy assumes that every editor has a bias on one topic or another, it's human nature. The point is to keep that bias out of your edits. -- Atama頭 21:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

For an exhaustive and sometimes heated discussion about a real situation similar to the scenario you described, please see this archived discussion where an editor who runs a circumcision web site was editing the circumcision article. Because he didn't try to promote his web site or organization, it was the opinion of myself (and others) that there was no COI despite the editor's personal beliefs. -- Atama頭 21:30, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Restoring the COI exemption #7

I think I am going to restore #7, perhaps with a bit of explanation as to what it's function is, unless there is serious objection. Keith Henson (talk) 05:30, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I do. I still would suggest them to proceed with care. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:39, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Why is exemption #7 needed now that WP:MLA exists? Before declaring COI exemptions, I think you would need to provide some real examples that show that good edits have been lost – edits that probably would not be lost if #7 existed. Also, any form of restored #7 would need to define the terms more precisely because a link spammer would have no hesitation to declare that they have "useful primary sources" or "digitized or digital primary sources". Johnuniq (talk) 08:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

"Why is exemption #7 needed now that WP:MLA exists?"

Because WP:MLA is 45,000 bytes of dense prose. You can't expect archive employees to read it, much less understand it. The same is true of run of the mill editors, they will just automatically revert on COI or other grounds what archive employees put in.

Re "link spam" take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_steinbeck#External_links. Because his papers are in several locations, that article may be a high mark for links. The most important links are the top ones to the Stanford Special collections. They were added by the intern and partly deleted by Orangemike if you want an example of edits lost becaues there was no #7 in those days. Keith Henson (talk) 21:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Seen the discussions we have here, I really don't think that #7 belongs in a section 'non-controversial edits' .. depending on the situation, some GLAMs' edits will certainly be controversial. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

See what I wrote on my talk page. Also, "If another editor objects for any reason, then it's a controversial edit. Such edits should be discussed on the article's talk page." The point being the other editor has to object on some grounds, not just blindly revert all the work an archive intern or employee has put in. Keith Henson (talk) 21:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

An example showing good edits that have been lost (edits that #7 would have saved) is really needed. Also, if someone wants 100 links to their own institution, they need to have sufficient time and motivation to at least skim the WP:MLA page (they are here to help the encyclopedia?). The MLA page makes clear that any questions or problems should be posed at the MLA talk page, and the editors monitoring that page would be extremely helpful to the archivist. Johnuniq (talk) 23:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned the one by Orangemike http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Steinbeck&action=historysubmit&diff=226499213&oldid=226489331

Here are three more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seema_Aissen_Weatherwax&action=historysubmit&diff=226499791&oldid=226312785

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthur_Torres&action=historysubmit&diff=227086796&oldid=226312231

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tillie_Olsen&action=historysubmit&diff=227086812&oldid=226280683

The fact that Stanford special collections has 60 feet of her papers is not in the article.

You might want to fix it.

I don't think the reality of archives adding links has sunk in. The people who do this will be interns or library staff who have been assigned to add a list of pointers or links to articles. They are making an *extremely* limited contact with Wikipedia at the request of manager librarians/archivists who are motivated by their function of letting the world know what they have. These people are not going to get involved in the rough and tumble of Wikipedia politics.

They get bitten, their one or two line pointer contributions reverted, and they are gone. Managers are not going to waste precious resources where their efforts get deleted. If accommodating them is not acceptable to Wikipedia culiture we should just tell them to stay away.

If that's the consensus of what you want, it's an acceptable resolution far as I am concerned. Keith Henson (talk) 02:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The treatment of User:Sulair.speccoll is shameful. Here is someone who just wanted to add relevant information to Wikipedia articles, given a 'Final Warning' for his/her hard work. I don't think COI exemption #7 is the way to go, as it's too long and complicated a situation to fit there. But we definitely need something on this page, with a link to WP:MLA. I suggest either a paragraph in the examples section, or a section following the 'Non-controversial edits' section. --LK (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but note that a section has been added to the page (see WP:Conflict of interest#Subject professionals). It finishes with "For more information, see Advice for the cultural sector" which is the WP:MLA page. Johnuniq (talk) 06:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops missed that. Good point. LK (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

We seem to agree that Stanford University had something to contribute to Wikipedia. However, I do not think that they were prevented by the COI guideline – it was the actions of the single-purpose account who continued adding links that had a misguided style after the intial warning on the user's talk page. It was only when faced with a "final warning" that the user responded. COI was raised with the user, but that is fully correct: university staff adding links to their collection do have a COI regardless of what our guideline says (that's just a common usage meaning of "COI"). Regardless of any COI, the link formatting was misguided because each item contained three external links to Stanford University, and a lot of superfluous text (one third of a typical entry describes the item, and two thirds describes the institution).

At User talk:Sulair.speccoll, Orange Mike said "I am reverting your edits because they do not conform to our standards and practices", and also issued the standard COI template. Gadget850 said that the links do not add any information, and referred to WP:EL and WP:SPAM. Ryan Postlethwaite issued a final warning referencing the addition of spam links, and later mentioned COI. Jehochman explained that shared accounts are not allowed and blocked the user after it was apparent that at least two people were sharing the account. This could have been handled better, but it was the link spamming that got attention; the COI was a side issue. Wikipedia needs something like WP:MLA to handle this kind of situation because it is not acceptable to have outside parties (with no demonstrated interest in improving Wikipedia) deciding for themselves whether their external links deserve special exemption from the normal guidelines. Johnuniq (talk) 06:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how many times I have to say it but archivists are NOT "Subject professionals." They know what the archive has without knowing much about the subjects. If they did, they would be the most awesome polymaths on the planet.

I know for a fact, having talked to the person at Special Collections, that the COI issue was what kept them from coming back. My email is on my user page. If you want direct contact with the person at Special Collections to get their view of the situation, I will be happy to forward your thoughts or send you their contact information.

If it is the consensus here that the only thing archives can offer is considered spam, then we should not only drop this discussion, but go into hundreds to thousands of articles and delete the "Research resources" pointers and links to archives.

If we do want what they can offer than #7 or something as short and clear needs to be part of the policy. Keith Henson (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

See my last comment at the bottom of Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#What_we_want_and_what_they_want above. We seem to have several sections discussing this at once. For heaven's sake don't let's open any more. Johnbod (talk) 19:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Depending on the content of said section, "Research resources" may be a violation of WP:NOTLINKS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

"Research resources" are not even links, just a note that an archive has original materials on the subject of the article. Re links, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster and click on the links. I think the article is much improved to have the links handy, but if you don't, you can delete them. Keith Henson (talk) 01:00, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps some of tiny number of them don't amount to a separate section of external links, but they sure look like external links to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

And in some cases, actually a whole set of them. In case the original concern did not get through, this line should look like:

• Tillie Olsen Papers, 1930-1990(call number M0667; ca. 62 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries

No need for the excessive linking. Only the first one is directly related to the subject, the rest not.

As a side remark, I wonder if Wikipedia and the New York Times are wrong, if Stanford is wrong, or if this is another accidental overlap in name, but actually a different person? Linking is fine, Keith, but we can gain so much more from these archives, and vice versa. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Why do you think there is a conflict between the Stanford materials and the NYT?

What do want to gain from archives beyond links or pointers to original materials? Keith Henson (talk) 22:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

(I answered this also on my talkpage) Well, the gain in this specific example might be the other way around, birthday is wrong on Stanford, and there are more discrepancies (hmm, linking to factually incorrect material ..?). But the next time it could be the other way, where Wikipedia does not have a date of birth, or something similar, or got some dates wrong. Why do you think that there is never anything to gain on either side. It could have been so much better (and it can be so much better ... if only we would have taught them to be considerate in their edits early on. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How is consensus achieved on this Project?

Hi I am new here, so please forgive me if I am treading on some toes/ bringing up a topic that has already been discussed to death. However, the associated Project page says that any substantive edits to the page should reflect consensus. I therefore wonder if consensus was achieved before the recent addition by Sebwite? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It's just a "See also" to an essay he wrote. It's not a change to the guideline itself. If someone objects to the essay they'll propose it for deletion, make changes, or discuss concerns on the talk page of the essay. If someone objects to its inclusion in the "See also" section of this guideline they'll remove it. I read it and thought it was okay or I would have removed the link myself. For the most part, Wikipedia works on the BRD principle; Bold, Revert, Discuss. Make a "bold" edit, if someone objects to the edit they "revert" it, and then editors "discuss" the attempted edit on the talk page. Editors are discouraged from being too bold with policies and guidelines, as you've pointed out already, but adding a related essay to "See also" isn't that controversial.

If you don't like its inclusion, though, make your concerns known and we can get right to discussing it. :) -- Atama頭 20:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining to someone who is relatively new at Wikipedia. I don't see how [[Wikipedia:An article about yourself is nothing to be proud of]] relates to Conflict of Interest so I reverted its addition by Sebwite.Ottawahitech (talk) 13:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WP:COI application to discussion pages?

Hi.

I saw this: Talk:Homeopathy/Archive_40#Rephrase_please:

"It seems this user has a pretty strong personal WP:COI regarding this discussion, and should probably bow out of the discussion (feel free to provide RS or contribute in other areas). The Ennis email is not a WP:RS. Please don't bring your personal disputes to wikipedia. I agree with Scott, there is no issue with the text in the article. Verbal chat 17:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC) "

This suggests that WP:COI also applies to talk, which would then make it seem like then there's no way for anyone with COI to resolve the problem. Or is this only for certain special cases (like possibly this one)? If so, shouldn't the guideline specify how and when it applies to talk as well? mike4ty4 (talk) 20:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

That was a very, very special situation. The COI user had just been back from a 1 year(!) site ban related to endless and fruitless discussions in his field. (I felt it was a bit harsh, but he seriously got on my nerves as well.) And Verbal is often very brisk. COI was technically not a good argument in this context.

I think it's just right that the guideline doesn't specify any restrictions on talk pages. COI editors often have valuable knowledge; we want them to be active on talk pages, although obviously they shouldn't normally dominate the discourse. Hans Adler 21:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for a change in the lead

The third paragraph of the lead states the following:

"When editing causes disruption to the encyclopedia through violation of policies such as neutral point of view, what Wikipedia is not, and notability, accounts may be blocked."

I have some problems with the the inclusion of notability in this statement. The first is a matter of semantics; there is no notability policy, it's a guideline. Another problem is that "violating" the notability guideline would never lead to a block; you might be blocked for creating articles about non-notable subjects but only if you are also causing some other infraction, such as creating an attack page or unambiguous advertising. The last problem I have is that the rest of the article doesn't support this assertion, the only other mention of notability is in the autobiography section, and that section actually runs contrary to the assertion, it says that even if you do follow the notability guideline you still shouldn't create an autobiography because if you are notable an independent editor should create an article about you eventually.

My suggestion is to either remove the example entirely, or replace it with an appropriate policy, such as WP:OR or WP:COPYVIO, which in my experience are both common problems with COI editors and which are discussed later in the article. I would have made this change already, but it is a pretty big change as it affects how the COI guideline is supposed to be enforced and I would rather get some agreement that this change is okay before implementing it. What I'd like to do is replace notability with both OR and COPYVIO. -- Atama頭 23:11, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

What you say makes sense. However, the sentence would be quite cumbersome with both OR and COPYVIO mentioned, and it doesn't have to spell out every blockable disruptive behavior, so some simplification might be desirable. I'm guessing that notability is mentioned because a COI editor may be inclined to create several articles with variations on a non-notable theme. I don't see how to succinctly explain that. I wonder how often COI editing involves WP:OR – is it enough to warrant mentioning as blockable? Johnuniq (talk) 03:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Original research is a very common problem with COI editors, but you make a good point, I don't think that OR leads to a block that often. Copyright violations can quickly lead to a block of an editor continually does them so maybe that alone would be worth mentioning. -- Atama頭 04:53, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Special consideration for lawyers

I was recently involved in a AfD and COIN that involved a series of articles which covered certain sports attorneys and their athlete clients. The result was that the three attorney biographies were deleted. The SPAs which created and edited these articles appeared to have ties to the attorneys' firm. (One SPA was the name of one lawyer with all lowercase characters.)

There are special ethical rules that govern attorney advertising, and some state ethic panels have ruled that online websites are covered by such rules. Some states require the use of disclaimer language in advertisements. Some others require a pre-approval process for any lawyer advertisement.

Most states have adopted some version of ABA Model Rule 7.4, which states that a lawyer cannot call himself an expert unless he has been “certified as a specialist by an organization that has been approved by an appropriate state authority or that has been accredited by the [ABA].”

Would it be appropriate to add something to the WP:COI page noting that attorneys who seek to add content (directly or through representatives) may be subject to special eithic rules in addition to the WP:COI policy? Perhaps such a statement may discourage COI self-promotion by attorneys. Racepacket (talk) 02:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

That's difficult, because we'd need some law experts to be sure that the information is accurate, as well as someone to keep it up-to-date in case that changes. And as you've said, this varies from state-to-state in the US, and what about editors from all the other countries in the world? I'm not against anything that discourages COI editing similar to what you had pointed out, but it seems like this would be messy to implement and keep track of, and probably not worth it. -- Atama頭 01:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)