 | This discussion was featured in a Discussion Report in the Signpost on 5 March 2012. It was written by Whenaxis. If you wish to get involved with the Signpost, please visit the Newsroom. |
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Conclusions reached on the basis of this discussion are as follows:
- Closer's observation: This format, with sectioning done not rationally by discussion topic but by person, seems almost guaranteed not to produce any usable result. Any future effort to actually decide anything would probably need to be far more focused on the thing(s) to be decided. However the present discussion serves reasonably well as a general gauge of feeling, which may have been the intention (assuming that it was planned at all).
- On abandoning the conflict of interest concept: There is some support for ceasing to concern ourselves with editors' personal affiliations, and dealing with them purely on the basis of the quality of the edits they make. This viewpoint did not gain consensus here - it is more widely felt that such affiliations are still of some significance for how we deal with those editors and what advice we give them.
- On restricting editing by those with conflicts of interest: In the other direction, there is some support for introducing various new restrictions on editors with certain types of affiliation, in particular paid editors. This too did not gain consensus - some participants feel that this is unnecessary since it is solely the content of an editor's edits that determine his/her suitability, while others point out that, in any case, such restrictions would be unenforceable in general, and would have the practical effect of punishing honesty and openness among affiliated editors.
- Overall conclusion: Nothing in Wikipedia's best practices concerning conflict of interest can be said to have changed as a result of this discussion. The situation therefore remains as it was before: roughly, that conflict of interest editing is "discouraged" (although it remains unclear exactly what it is that is being discouraged and what form the discouragement is supposed to take); that editors with affiliations are encouraged to be open about them, and also to avoid making potentially controversial edits in the relevant area without prior approval; and that we don't post information about the identities of other editors (WP:OUTING).
- Further steps: Although nothing can be said to have been accepted as a result of this RfC, nothing has been definitively rejected either, and a number of interesting ideas have been raised that might go somewhere if attention is focused on them. Participants are encouraged, having looked at the body of opinion expressed here, to consider what realistic proposals they might still wish to make, and to make them as specific, separate suggestions in the appropriate fora.
Non-admin close; no admin has come forward to close this for several months, so somebody had to. Victor Yus (talk) 12:31, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
This is a RfC initiated in accordance with the ArbCom remedy in a recently closed case. The case recommended a community discussion related to the following finding of fact:
Many issues concerning paid editing, anonymous editing, outing and harassment, are unresolved. Our policies and guidelines are complicated and sometimes contradictory. Investigating, sanctioning and/or exonerating editors on the basis of who they are or what they do in real life is not only controversial but often impossible. Furthermore, extreme cases apart, there is no consensus about the extent that editors may edit articles on topics with which they are personally involved. Hence, of necessity, review must focus primarily on the editing patterns of those editors about whom problems are claimed.
00:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)