Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest/Archive 12

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Working on a draft rewrite

I'm working on a draft rewrite at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest/draft. It's still a work in progress. The goal is not to change the practice and policy in any significant way, it's just a major and long needed cleanup of a guideline that has grown organically. Other than cleanup a major goal is to untangle the terminology so that we can have more productive conversations on the topic of COI. Your input is invited. Gigs (talk) 21:48, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

The draft has come a long way. Please come review it for any issues. I'd like to go live with it soon. Gigs (talk) 17:51, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Good work. But I don't think that it's going to fly to say that you're going to replace the entire guideline with the only process being that you invited input on the drafting of the new one. North8000 (talk) 23:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the idea got started that we determine consensus through polling. We don't, and never have. Gigs (talk) 00:51, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I guess this is moot now, I've integrated the active draft threads here and shut down the draft for now. Gigs (talk) 01:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits

I've done two things today:

• I copied the WP:NOPAY section of this guideline, the section about financial editing, to Wikipedia:Paid advocacy, and placed the guideline tag on that page, based on the guideline status of this page. That gives us one page where paid advocacy is clearly and succinctly addressed, without it getting lost among a lot of words. It isn't written the way I would want to write it, but I copied it so that I was using the consensus version. The section is repeated here, so we will have to keep an eye on both to make sure they stay in sync.

• I have copy edited this page by removing unnecessary words and sections. I have tried to do it without changing the meaning, so again, it's not written the way I would want to write it, but it is clearer than it was because it's shorter. Before (3687 words) and after (1,855 words).

I hope this is okay. A lot of our COI disagreements stem from a lack of precision, a conflation of COI editing with paid editing and paid advocacy, and the length of this guideline. So if we can keep the guideline shortish, that will help a lot, I think. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:11, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a good start that nearly makes the draft rewrite I was working on moot. I think there are some things I still want to integrate from the draft, but it need not be done as a complete replacement anymore. I think the new guideline is much cleaner and easier to read, without losing anything of serious substance. Gigs (talk) 01:15, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Gigs. If you want to incorporate material from your draft that's fine by me. I just wanted to establish a baseline of something under 2,000 words, so that if people object to any of the new draft words, we have a more solid guideline to revert to. I'm hoping that whatever direction it takes we can keep it under 2,000. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:35, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

PAY/NOPAY

(This thread transplanted from the draft page, please review the versions below for context)

SV, potential controversy aside, do you disagree with the recent changes I made to NOPAY? You've said in the past we need a cleaner distinction between paid editing and paid advocacy, and that's what my changes were attempting to make. Gigs (talk) 22:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we do need a better distinction in a rewrite (which would need fresh consensus), but not in a copy edit (which doesn't). I am confused about which you intend this to be. I thought the former, but if so we need longer to work on it, and it needs to be cut roughly in half, in terms of length. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:34, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I intend this to be an extensive copy edit. There's stuff at the top of this talk page about it. I find the way you are using the word consensus to be ... confusing. My goal with this is to change the guideline to more correctly describe the current consensus. The guideline doesn't define our consensus, it's supposed to describe it. That's especially true with such a neglected guideline as this one, that has grown to be so sprawling with many essay-like additions. I guess a better question I should ask is "Does my new version of NOPAY (and the section above it) correctly describe community consensus on the issue"? If the answer to that is "yes", then there's no need to get "fresh consensus" beyond the normal talk page consensus on which wording we should use to describe community consensus. Gigs (talk) 23:16, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, well I have started the tightening of COI to try to reduce the wordiness. Already down to 2,892 words. As for your version of NOPAY, I'll compare the two again. My concern (based on previous experience of contentious policy editing) is that any change, no matter how minor, will be jumped on as a significant change, only because that is the key issue that people are fighting about. And then we'll be off defending changes that aren't really changes. But I'll read the two again carefully side by side. Or maybe you could post them here side by side to compare. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, the feel I get is that very few people really care about exact wording, as long as we don't put something in here that goes against consensus (or exceeds what is widely accepted, such as if we were to state that paid advocacy is completely banned, and not just "strongly discouraged"). I think that's reflected in the mess that the guideline has become. Gigs (talk) 00:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

BTW- regarding you recent copyediting on the main policy, I think phrases like "paid advocacy is a subset of COI" are exactly the kind of meaningless and imprecise thing we should be avoiding. A paid advocate has a conflict of interest, and paid advocacy is a generally problematic type of paid editing. Other than some imprecise wording, the rest of your edits look fine. Gigs (talk) 00:47, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Comparison of NOPAY versions

Financial

Further information: Wikipedia:Paid advocacy

If you fit either of these descriptions:

1. 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
2. you expect to derive monetary or other benefits or considerations from editing Wikipedia; for example, by being an owner, officer, or other stakeholder of a company or other organization about which you are writing;

then you are very strongly discouraged from 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.

If you have a financial interest in a topic (either as an employee, owner or other stakeholder), you are advised to provide full disclosure of your connection, and to use the article talk pages to suggest changes (using the {{Request edit}} template to request edits), rather than editing articles directly. Requested edits will be subject to the same editorial standards by neutral editors (which means they are not guaranteed to be carried out) and will help avoid situations of advocacy and related problems.

Generally speaking, the Reward Board is an exception to the above cautions. There, you may derive monetary gain from editing Wikipedia, as these are usually rewards for featured or good article status which should not introduce bias. However, be wary of editors asking you to make specific edits that challenge your sense of neutral perspective, or to clean up a "hatchet job", as you may unwarily become their meatpuppet.

Paid editing

Paid editing is the practice of accepting money in exchange for editing Wikipedia, or writing material for Wikipedia. Paid advocacy, that is, being paid to promote something on Wikipedia, is a subset of paid editing. If you intend to participate in paid editing, transparency and neutrality are key. Editing in a way to bias the coverage of Wikipedia, or that violates our core policies is not acceptable.

The act of accepting money or rewards for editing Wikipedia is not always problematic. The Reward Board, for example, is a place where editors can post incentives, financial or otherwise, for other editors. This is a transparent process, and the goal is usually to raise articles to featured or good article status which helps avoid problematic bias. However, be wary of editors asking you to make specific edits that challenge your sense of neutral perspective, or to clean up a "hatchet job", as you may unwarily become their meatpuppet.

Paid advocacy, public relations, and marketing

Editors should not create articles or make edits which serve solely to promote their subject. All Wikipedia articles should contain useful information written as if from a neutral point of view. The writing of "puff pieces" and advertisements on Wikipedia is strictly prohibited. If you contribute to Wikipedia on behalf of clients, you owe it to both them and the encyclopedia to make very sure you understand the standards for content here, and do not insert promotional material.

1. If 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
2. you have a close, financial, relationship with a subject you wish to write about, such as being an owner, officer, or other stakeholder of a company or other organization;

then you are very strongly discouraged to edit 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.

If you have a financial interest in a topic (either as an employee, owner or other stakeholder) it is advised to provide full disclosure of your connection, and to use the "discussion" pages to suggest changes (using the {{Request edit}} template to request edits) rather than editing articles directly. Requested edits will be subject to the same editorial standards by neutral editors (which means they are not guaranteed to be carried out) and will help avoid situations of advocacy and related problems.

I'm going to boldly add the new version. Edit it forward, or revert and discuss below. Gigs (talk) 02:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I worry that the first section (paid editing) now contradicts the second (paid advocacy) a little. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:23, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Did you address this in your most recent edits? Gigs (talk) 02:28, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

What warrants a COI

I was looking at the recent changes, and kept coming back to something which they didn't alter, but always seems jarring: the statement: "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest". Is there any chance of changing that to "risks standing in a conflict of interest". The problem is that having outside interests that are more important than improving Wikipedia doesn't place you in a conflict of interest, as that doesn't mean that there is a "conflict" as such. A conflict only exists when those more important interests are at odds with the interests of Wikipedia.

I find it odd that the definition of COI that we're using doesn't require that a conflict exist in order for someone to have a COI. - Bilby (talk) 01:25, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree completely that that sentence, bold as it is, is nonsensical. Here's what the latest was over at the draft page:

• Conflict of interest editing occurs when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia..

My preferred replacement is:

• Inappropriate conflict of interest editing occurs when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia.

Gigs (talk) 01:30, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I prefer the current sentence. I didn't quite follow the objection to it, Bilby. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:38, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The problem is the lack of reference to "conflict". It is possible for someone to have outside interests which are very important to them, and which will be advanced by editing Wikipedia. For example, an academic editing Wikipedia to meet their community service obligations, or a student editing in order to pass a course. In these cases, advancing their outside interests are more important to them than advancing Wikipedia's interests. However, they don't have a COI, because their interests are not in conflict with those of Wikipedia.

The important thing in a conflict of interest is the existance of a conflict, yet our highilghted definition doesn't include any reference to that. :) - Bilby (talk) 01:47, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

(e/c)I think he's making a good point that isn't addressed by either of my proposed wordings, now that I read his message several times. I think it's another symptom of our imprecise and jargony terminology. If we just used a reasonable definition of "conflict of interest" that the rest of the world uses, we wouldn't have this problem. Gigs (talk) 01:52, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

(2 x ec) The point is that, when you are editing, the interests of Wikipedia must come first, as far as your edits go. So if you are a student writing an article to pass a course, while you are writing on WP you must be thinking of WP's needs and interests. That is your primary role. Being a student is a secondary role while you are editing. See Conflict of Interest in the Professions, edited by Michael Davis, Andrew Stark, Oxford University Press, 2001. Some of it is visible on Google. It discusses COI in terms of relationships and the clash between primary and secondary roles. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Gigs, just a note: that description did come from an academic book on COI (when advancing outside interests is more important than ...) I forget which one, but it was definitely sourced. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:00, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's wrong on a technical level, using the common definition, a conflict of interest exists even when advancing an outside interest is less important. The key feature of a conflict of interest is that there are two competing interests, where one has the possibility of corrupting the the other one. When the outside conflicting interest is more important than Wikipedia's goals, then there is a much higher risk of that corrupting influence leading to problematic actions. Gigs (talk) 02:11, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, but it seems to me that that is what the sentence says: "Conflict of interest editing occurs when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia." Note: more important. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

That one you quoted was a variant of my version, not what's in the guideline. While not perfect, I think it's a small but important step in the right direction. Gigs (talk) 02:26, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, by all means add it. I'm about to go offline, but I just want to say please feel free to copy edit the copy edits, and tweak the tweaks, and I hope I can feel free to do the same. That way, we might edge toward coherence. :) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:35, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I still think we're missing something important here. SlimVirgin, I don't disagree with what your saying, but we're missing the main point. Let's say that we use your approach, and that when editing WP your primary role has to be that of a WP editor. I agree fully. The question, though, is what circumstances will prevent you from taking editing wikipedia as your primary role? If your outside interests prevent you from doing that, because they are in opposition to the interests of WP, then you have a COI. But if your outside interests are more important than WP, but they don't prevent you from accepting being a Wikipedia editor as your primary role, then you do not have a COI.

So for an alternative wording, how about:

Conflict of interest editing occurs when advancing outside interests prevents an editor from advancing the aims of Wikipedia.

Or:

Conflict of interest editing occurs when an editor's outside interests are in opposition to the aims of Wikipedia.

(I'm not really happy with either, but that's the direction I'm thinking of). We need to word it in such a way as to say that you can have outside interests that lead you to be editing Wikipedia, and they can be as or more important to you than editing Wikipedia, so long as they don't prevent you from treating the interests of Wikipedia as your primary concern when editing here. - Bilby (talk) 03:30, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Excellent work, SlimVirgin, on tidying up the guideline, but I must agree with the others that the definitions at the top are still not tight enough. We oughtn't to be concerned with imponderables like what's going on in a particular person's mind and which of various competing aims are of greater relative importance. We should be concerned (and on this page, actually are concerned) with situations where an editor has an actual connection with the subject of the sort which can reasonably be expected to produce biases. Victor Yus (talk) 07:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that the current sentence is near-perfection (unlike the rest of the guideline) and that the changed versions are not as good. North8000 (talk) 10:30, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

You said that before, but you don't seem to have responded to the criticisms. How can we know, or why should we want to know, or how can the person know himself, which of two (or more) possible motivations is "more important" to a given person? And what does it have to do with what's written on the rest of the page? Victor Yus (talk) 10:52, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Responding on several points at once:

• I think that the current main sentence implicitly includes: "while / with respect to editing Wikipedia". I think that that answers a few of the points raised above.

• It is a very sound, accurate, and universal definition. It encompasses a wide range of COI's (advocacy etc.) that are not covered by the rest of the policy nor by some ideas being promulgated. And it is important to have a sound and universal definition as a starting point. The complexities of reality make it hard to implement. "Hard to implement" is not an argument to get rid of an accurate definition. Conversely, "easier to implement" is not grounds to implement a defective definition. (not that any of the above ideas is a defective definition).

• The standard for a replacement isn't "no severe problems with it", the standard is that it be shown to be better than the current one.

• The two proposals above do not make modifications in the areas being criticized, so what is the proposed new wording?

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The thing is, it is not an accurate definition. We've offered a definition of "conflict of interest" that requires interests, but doesn't require a conflict. :) It is very unusual in that regard.

The reason I'm concerned is that whenever we try to tackle the paid editing issue, people interpret it in different ways. The vastly different understandings of what is being referred to as "paid editing" encourages extreme and polarised views, which prevents us from getting anything that resembles consensus. My recollection is that one of the issues that has come up in the past is a belief by some people that the COI guideline prevents students from editing Wikipedia, or that it prevents paid employees in the GLAM sector from editing WP. In both cases, (along with many others), the belief is that the COI guideline won't permit them to edit because they are not primarily here to edit WP, but are primarily here to pass their course or perform their responsibilities for their employer. Accordingly, they have opposed policies concerning paid editing because of a fear that it will encompass these other activities.

So what I would like to do is clarify the wording it make it clear that just having outside interests does not mean you have a COI. You only have a COI if those outside interests prevent you from making editing WP your primary role, and thus prevent you from maintaining and furthering Wikipedia's interests. There needs to be a notion of conflict in the definition. - Bilby (talk) 12:35, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

North8000, My concern about it is a little different from Bilby's, but along the same lines. My concern is that it confuses the actions that might result from a conflict of interest with the existence of a conflict of interest. The two are independent. I think my version starts to address that concern by specifically addressing the damaging actions (inappropriate editing). I agree that my two proposed wordings above don't really address Bilby's concern, which is a little more subtle. Gigs (talk) 14:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree 100% with everything that you both just said. But I don't see how it says that there is a problem with the bolded early sentence; in fact I think that what you both just said tends to reinforce it. I DO see how it says that the rest of the policy needs work. North8000 (talk) 17:49, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

It is always better to focus on the edits themselves then who is making them. While we should provide guidance to steer editors away from common pitfalls, such as allowing COI to lead to POV editing, when it comes to enforced policy, it should always return to the edits, not the editor. Monty₈₄₅ 17:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

North8000, if you read an implied "through improper editing actions" in to the middle of our current line, then yes, it's fine. The problem is it doesn't say that. It's like those demonstrations of the power of the human brain where a bunch of broken up line segments are easily read as the number "5". I think your brain has filled in a blank here because the literal text of the line is nonsensical. I think the last thing we need is assumptions and vagueness here, Our discussions have been plagued by people who are basically in agreement arguing with each other because of a lack of shared definitions to effectively communicate. Gigs (talk) 19:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that what you say is implicit in that sentence. But it might be a good idea to change implicit to explicit as you suggest. But "improper" is a pretty high bar. Maybe something like "and reflects that in their editing". North8000 (talk) 22:40, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I did forget about another piece of it I have a problem with, "stands in a conflict of interest", encourages the sort of confusion as we are discussing below. The state of "conflict of interest" is not defined by the bad action, though the bad action and motivation is a strong symptom that such a state exists. I'd rather not change this until we can get some real consensus about definitions below. Gigs (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The importance of relationships, and primary and secondary roles

(mainly responding to Bilby and Victor), first, what I did yesterday was a copy edit to clear away unnecessary words. I didn't want to introduce changes of definition, because then people might have reverted the copy edit in its entirety. So I tried to streamline what was there, whether I agreed with it or not.

Having said that, I agree that a COI is not about a person's mental state (beliefs and desires). It is about external relationships. I want to read some more material about this, including Conflict of Interest in the Professions, by Michael Davis and Andrew Stark (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2001. It argues that COI is based on external relationships, and it talks about how those relationships (secondary roles) interfere with a person's primary role.

So a judge's primary role of being a judge is undermined by his secondary role of being the defendant's husband. That is the definition of a COI, where a secondary role undermines the primary role.

I would like to introduce this into our COI guideline, both in the lead and in more detail in our Relationships section, because this is the key. That a person's primary role while editing Wikipedia is to be a Wikipedian. And that a COI occurs when that primary role is undermined (arguably or inevitably) by a secondary role of being a PR rep, the article subject's spouse, a member of a political campaign, and so on. The emphasis is on roles and relationships, not beliefs and desires. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:02, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree that that is much closer to the widely-accepted business and organizational definition of conflict of interest. However, since everyone here is a volunteer, and we have topics on just about everything, I'm not sure that we can directly apply it in the way that business usually does (required disclosure, abstention from any decisions related to it, etc). Everyone here has a conflict of interest in at least one topic area, save the random dude in his parent's basement. I think we need to emphasize the distinction between the existence of relationships that create conflicts of interest, and the potential actions. Such as is quoted below from the auditing handbook: "A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results." We need to de-stigmatize the term "COI" in order to use the more encompassing real-world definition, and I think a key to that is avoiding jargon like "COI editing". Gigs (talk) 00:11, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is whether the secondary role undermines (or could reasonably be argued to undermine) the primary role that matters. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:16, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Then I think we are on the same page. Define COI in terms of relationships that may undermine our duties to Wikipedia, destigmatize the term "COI" in recognition that nearly everyone potentially has one, and make clear the separation between COI and improper actions resulting from it. Heh, all those business ethics classes they made me take in college are finally coming in handy. Gigs (talk) 00:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I wish I had taken some myself, but I've been doing some reading and things are becoming a bit clearer.

What's important is that we use real-world definitions, because this is an issue that the professions have had to deal with at great length, so we don't need to reinvent the wheel. No one could justify sitting as a judge in a case where one side was paying him. Declaring the COI would make no difference, nor would his final decision; it would be regarded as wildly inappropriate regardless of consequence. So when paid advocates argue "what matters is the quality of the content, " or "what matters is that we've been transparent," they are ignoring that their arguments would cut no ice in the real world, and there is no reason that WP should have lower standards. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I've added a section on the primary/secondary role issue (see What is conflict of interest?). Haven't changed the lead; I'm thinking that should wait until we get a clearer idea of things. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Just quick couple of points - I really appreciate having this discussion, and it is helping to clarify a lot of issues from my end. For me, looking at what was said above, the line: "That is the definition of a COI, where a secondary role undermines the primary role" is great. (I also love this primary and secondary role distinction, so I'm going to have to get a copy of Davis & Stark, as it sounds like an excellent work). Anyway, I like that line, because the problem with our current summary is that it leaves out the "undermines" part. When we say "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia ..." we make mention of the roles, so it does fall into the scope of the primary and secondary account, but we don't make mention of those outside interests undermining the aims of WP.

As a bit of an aside, the courtroom analogy probably isn't the one to take, as we could reasonably argue that the role of an editor is closer to that of an attourney than a judge, and attourneys are expected to have a COI. Instead I think a better analogy would come from journalism or academia, where all parties responsible for the process should avoid a COI, as opposed to an adversarial process where a bias is required. - Bilby (talk) 02:45, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I like the judge example to show the primary/secondary role distinction because it's so clear, and we are here on WP (in our ideal form) as impartial adjudicators summarizing competing claims. So we are more like judges than attorneys in that sense, I would say. But I've included a journalism example too.

I agree with your point about the sentence "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia" not mentioning the undermining of WP, or the undermining of the primary role (which is the key issue). SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

"Paid Advocacy"

First off, I have a potential conflict of interest here (ironically), because I'm drafting a proposal called WP:COI+. SlimVirgin has objected strongly to the COI+ draft, so I'm wary of continuing that dispute to this page, but I'm also concerned that recent changes to WP:COI are injecting a tautology: The recently changed usage of the term "paid advocacy" equates having a corporate/professional/financial conflict of interest with being an advocate. This assumes that those with such a conflict of interest are in fact editing or seeking to edit wikipedia non-neutrally. In past RFCs, many have expressed the view that there is a difference between the person and their edits. While having a COI predisposes one towards a higher risk of being non-neutral, it does not tautologically guarantee it. Also, whether a company tells a representative to "edit Wikipedia" or to "edit Wikipedia to promote a product, client, or company" or to "edit Wikipedia to improve its accuracy, completeness, and neutrality" is unknown to us. The term "paid advocacy"/"paid advocate" confuses or equates the person and their COI with their behavior. I'm quite open to suggestions and responses, but I do have concerns about this terminology. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 07:09, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It's another of the terms (like COI) which I would either avoid, or nail down with a proper definition. They mean too many different things to different people to be allowed to just float about. Victor Yus (talk) 12:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The examples given--lawyer, PR rep--people who are de jure advocates, whose ethical principles actually demand vigorous advocacy... is far narrower than the given definition of "anyone with a direct professional or financial conflict of interest". Aside from the fact that even bonafide 'advocates' might actually edit in a way that improves wikipedia, a whole host of others with a professional/financial COI are painted with the same brush as tautologically engaging in 'advocacy'. We have a problem with the term paid advocacy. What does it mean? Where is consensus for that definition? Then we have a problem with interpretations of consensus about paid advocacy. Is it very strongly discouraged? Or is it explicitly banned by NPOV and WP:SOAP? Is using the term advocacy, which is deeply associated with prohibited engagement assuming the conclusion that those with a professional/financial COI are engaged in the same? At the least, these issues need consensus if not a full-blown RfC. They should not be merely copyedited into policy.Ocaasi ^{t | c} 13:24, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

We do have to make sure that it is crystal clear here that advocacy of any type is prohibited, not just strongly discouraged. We also have to make sure that "The examples given--lawyer, PR rep--people who are de jure advocates, whose ethical principles actually demand vigorous advocacy... " are informed that they will be violating their legal and ethical duties if they edit here with a neutral point of view. Thus they will be breaking our rules (if acting legally) so we might as well specifically ban people in these catagories, but let people decide themselves whether they are in these categories. I would have thought PR reps would have been considered possibly outside the "defined as advocates group" because that seems to be the crux of the issue for many people. If we can solve this one, everything else is just minor details. I personally believe that 98%+ of PR reps are legally required to advocate, but it depends on the contract (written or oral) they have with the firm. They could have a contract that says they they are being paid to increase the amount of neutral information easily available about the firm. But the overwhelming majority are paid to "represent the firm" i.e. to only give the firm's point of view. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

But a good advocate coming to edit Wikipedia may well decide to do so in a way that doesn't conflict with our aims, precisely because he knows that editing in this way will bring the best lasting results for his client (simple puffery is going to be removed sooner or later). Victor Yus (talk) 14:26, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Smallbones, PR ethical principles are both reassuring and conflicting. For example, the Public Relations Society of America's ethical principles encourage PR pros to: 1) Protect and advance the free flow of accurate and truthful information. 2) Foster informed decision making through open communication. 3) Protect confidential and private information. 4) Promote healthy and fair competition among professionals. 5) Avoid conflicts of interest. 6) Work to strengthen the public’s trust in the profession. Sounds good so far. On the other hand, their professional values include: Advocacy, Honesty, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty, and Fairness. How one can be honest, fair and independent AND also a loyal advocate is somewhat beyond me. It's a tension inherent in the profession and I've yet to hear a good answer to how its resolved/executed in practice. In any event, those people are 'advocates', but whether they 'advocate' on Wikipedia depends on their actual edits. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:36, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Ocaasi, don't feel like you are bringing a dispute here. I have invited your input here repeatedly, and your concerns are valid. One thing I need to make clear, however, is that it was me that changed the section on financial conflict of interest here, not SlimVirgin. This was done in close proximity to her copy edits, but was not a part of them. My goal with the change was to differential mere "paid editing" from the subset of paid editing that involves itself with promotion of an outside interest. I agree completely we need to make sure we can work from common definitions. I will comment more on this issue later. Gigs (talk) 14:48, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the invitation and the welcome. I apologize if I attributed something to SlimVirgin that was false. She has argued strongly for the current definition of paid advocacy but if she did not introduce it into the document then I was mistaken. Sorry, SV. Gigs, I look forward to nailing this down. I will not rush COI+ while these discussions are underway. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:55, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

What's in there now is much milder than what SlimVirgin, Jimbo, I, and others have proposed, that "paid advocacy" be defined in a way that is completely prohibited, and broken out to a separate policy. It's not a new term, it's one that's been kicking around a while, at least since 2011. So what you are arguing is that we define a class of people that have a relationship that creates a duty to advocate that would be compromised if they followed our policies, and then completely prohibit editing by them? Did I get that right? Gigs (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm very much aware of the vocal group of editors--many of them experienced, sincere, and influential--who want to ban "paid advocacy" outright. The term however has never gained true consensus that I know of. The binding precedents are the 2009 paid editing RfC which came to no consensus for a ban; the 2012 RfC which was equally indeterminate; and the COI guideline which until this week did not include the term "paid advocacy". When I see an RfC on the term "paid advocacy" itself, however we define it (or about how to define it)--and second what to do about it (very strongly discourage, ban, etc.) then I will support that being reflected in this document.

I believe the term as currently used reflects a particular policy interpretation and outlook. It's not 'neutral', and I believe it's loaded with many presumptions. The problem is not that there aren't paid "advocates", legally/ethically obligated to be so... The issue is 1) not all paid advocates actually engage in advocacy; a lawyer may correct/improve inaccuracies, incompleteness or bias; a PR professional likewise; a freelance editor the same. There's a solid argument and an equally dedicated and vocal group of editors who believe we should judge editors them only by their edits and not by their COI. 2) Not all editors with a professional/financial conflict of interest fit the definition of legally/ethically obligated advocates. That's a conflation and assigning a narrow and prejudicial label to a broader and varied group. The specific term advocate should either apply to that narrow sphere of lawyers working with their clients, PR pros working with their clients, or freelance editors working with their clients who were hired specifically to advocate for their clients. Or, it should apply to the edits themselves and not the editor and his/her COI. Right now the term "paid advocacy" is bundling a presumption with an overly broad category, and in a way that I believe is not supported by consensus.

To be more constructive, let me suggest a wording I prefer. This is from the failed proposal Paid editing (policy). It defines: "Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view. Advocacy of any sort is prohibited by our policy on neutral point of view, and paid advocacy is considered to be an especially egregious form of advocacy." That is more specific than the current grouping of "paid advocate" with any editor having a direct corporate/financial/legal COI. Now the next sentence from that failed proposal was: " Editors such as employees of public relations firms, lobbyists and lawyers, who advocate for their clients outside of Wikipedia must be especially careful not to edit their client's articles on Wikipedia, as they may be presumed to be paid advocates." That is one more indication the ban on even paid advocacy never gained consensus and has to be address anew and in full for any such change. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:05, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The thing that we don't want to ban: case study.

I don't think anyone here would block User:ChrisPond for the type of transparent and good-faith behavior he's exhibiting. I agree with Ocaasi that we do want to encourage this behavior, at the same time, taking a hard stand against those who are unable to edit in a way compatible with our goals. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive either, if we are precise with our language. Gigs (talk) 22:17, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

He isn't editing articles directly in the area where he has a paid COI (he is asking others to make the edits), so this guideline already says this is okay.

The difficulty lies in contentious areas, and in our having ideologically driven editors who will insert bad edits without understanding the issues. But that is a separate issue – proxying for paid advocates – that isn't even mentioned by the COI guideline. Some proxying is helpful (like the Chris Pond example) and some not. It boil downs to the common sense and editing skills of the editor who is acting as a proxy, and we can't legislate for that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:31, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Well obviously there is a line where you have to apply common sense. Otherwise we'd call every admin that answered an editprotected template a meatpuppet. Gigs (talk) 23:36, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to remove "very strongly discouraged"

The guideline says at WP:NOPAY:

If either of the following applies to you (you are receiving monetary benefits or you expect to receive them, etc):

"then you are very strongly discouraged from editing Wikipedia in areas where those external relationships could reasonably be said to undermine your ability to remain neutral."

Then it goes on to say:

"you are advised to refrain from editing articles directly ... You may use the article talk pages to suggest changes, or the {{request edit}} template to request edits."

One of these sentences isn't needed, and there's a slight tension between them. Direct editing with financial COI is not only "very strongly discouraged," but we arguably go one step further and advise people not to do it. This is quite close to saying "don't do it."

Note: these points are not recent introductions. Looking back to October last year, the same advice was in that section: "very strong discouraged" and "If you have a financial interest in a topic ... it is advised ... [that you] use the 'discussion' pages to suggest changes (using the {{Request edit}} template to request edits) rather than editing articles directly."

I would like to streamline this to: "If either of the following applies to you [same points as above], you are advised to refrain from editing any affected articles directly." So that section would look something like this. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Take a look at what I just proposed below. I'm not opposed to this tweak, but it may be controversial since the "strongly discouraged" meme has inertia, even though it is incorrect to apply the same standard to advocacy and plain everyday COIs. Gigs (talk) 20:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't see the conflict, saying its discouraged, or advising someone not to do something are both recommendations to not do it, and neither outright prohibit doing it. Monty₈₄₅ 20:43, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard/Header

"Accusing another editor of having a conflict of interest in order to gain the upper hand in a content dispute is prohibited, and may result in sanctions against you."

This text was removed in the recent trim from the guideline, leaving this on the COIN header without context. It was recently quoted to me at an AfD, where someone was arguing that considering the COI of the contributor of a self-promotional article at AfD was inappropriate. I think this is a misinterpretation of what this warning was supposed to be about, since we have policies on promotional articles that should definitely be considered at AfD. We should either restore something in the guideline that gives this some context, or remove it from the COIN header. Gigs (talk) 17:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

It looks a bit odd to have on the one hand a guideline saying some behavior is bad, and on the other an instruction that you should never (except as a disinterested observer) accuse anyone else of that behavior. It needs to be clarified in both places what exactly is meant (if anyone knows). Victor Yus (talk) 08:40, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

One of the common methods of the warfare-with-immunity that is widely practiced across Wikipedia is false and often baseless accusations of violations of policies and guidelines. Since this is an area where the important information is unknowable by the accuser, I think that it it particularly appropriate to provide a warning against accusations that have no substantive basis. The qualifier provided by the deleted sentence is a pretty good attempt at this. North8000 (talk) 11:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I put it back in. North8000 (talk) 11:50, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

So should the condition "that have no substantive basis" not be included in the warning? Particularly since (if we define COI as you would like to) then we can know the important information, just by observing the other person's behavior. Victor Yus (talk) 12:26, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

It absolutely should mention "no substantive basis". In the AfD where that was quoted at me, it was a pretty obvious autobiography. Clearly that's something that should be considered at AfD. It may not automatically mean that we delete the article, but it's absurd to have a guideline that someone might possibly read in a way to say that we can't even bring up the fact that an article was an autobiography at AfD. Gigs (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Did I violate this guideline here? [1] I don't know if I like the term "harass" being in there. When we discover a paid advocate and systematically trim, edit, and delete their handiwork, it's going to be very easy for them to claim we are "harassing" them. I invite everyone to read the entire exchange on my talk page with the paid advocate in question. Gigs (talk) 18:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

• I sincerely believe that you violated no guideline--neither in letter nor in spirit--with that message to the editor in question. You invited him to be open about what he is doing. It is a long-standing practice that WP:COI editing is seen in a much more benign light when the COI is disclosed. The same should apply to paid editing, since paid editing is a subset of COI editing. Paid editors should be up-front about what they are doing. That is what you were inviting the editor to do. Unfortunately, he did not take you up on your suggestion, and he is continuing to pretend to be editing as a neutral, disinterested, volunteer editor, when in fact every move he makes around here is part of secretive paid editing. In other words, anytime he does anything around here--since he is not disclosing that he is doing it for money--he is acting in bad faith. If he strikes one letter on the keyboard with his pinky, it is in bad faith. So no, you were not in the wrong in your efforts to try to bring him into the daylight of honest editing. Qworty (talk) 21:26, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I think he's trying to muddle the issue by focusing it on you. He hasn't really addressed my suggestion that he make his paid editing transparent and not so promotional. My point linking to it here is to illustrate that we need to be careful how we phrase this stuff so we don't inadvertently aid the people who are actually violating our norms, giving them some avenue for wiki-lawyering against those who are trying in good faith to defend the encyclopedia. I completely understand abuse of guidelines by disputants in content disputes, I see it all the time giving third opinions. So I think I know where that statement was coming from, and it probably wasn't intended to address actions taken by uninvolved people against confirmed COI-driven editors. Gigs (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I made a bold edit to this bit. Edit or revert as usual. Gigs (talk) 14:30, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Discussion on proposed NOPAY changes

• Oppose both drafts: There's nothing wrong with the current WP:PE. Faustus37 (talk) 03:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • These drafts are obsolete anyway, and the current PE includes some bits of them. Gigs (talk) 13:34, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Reminder of COI process: discuss before adding template

I've been unofficially helping a group of students on an educational assignment (having no connection with the topics, the college - apart from being within the same part of the UK - or the academic involved, but just coming across some of the work while stub-sorting and getting more involved). One of the students came to my talk page, confused and puzzled, to ask why a {{COI}} banner had appeared on the page she was working on. It seems, from discussion, that an editor had misread her user page and wrongly inferred from it that she was a student of the person whose article she was working on. (Said subject being based in two other continents, and with nothing to support this inference except that, unsurprisingly, she works in the same broad subject area the students are studying).

The editor who added the {{COI}} banner had not discussed anything on the article talk page or the student editor's user talk page before adding the erroneous banner. And the article talk page had the standard "Educational assignment" banner, which the editor seems not to have noticed.

Could I just remind all COI-focused editors of what it says in the guidelines at Wikipedia:COI#Noticeboards_and_templates:

The first approach should be direct discussion of the issue with the editor, referring to this guideline. If persuasion fails, incidents may be reported on the conflict of interest noticeboard (WP:COIN), and users may be warned with the {{uw-coi}} user warning template. Conflict of interest is not in itself a reason to delete an article, though other problems with the article arising from a conflict of interest may be valid (see criteria for deletion).

If you are sure that an editor is violating this guideline, relevant article talk pages may be tagged with {{Connected contributor}}, and the article itself may be tagged with {{COI}}. COI allegations should not be used as a "trump card" in disputes over article content.

It's of the nature of student editors with assignments that they will work on one article, or perhaps a group of closely-related articles, and appear to be WP:SPAs. But that essay itself acknowledges that "Many single-purpose accounts turn out to be well-intentioned editors with a niche interest", and students on educational assignments come into this category. The fact that they are working hard on one article, with little editing elsewhere except to their tutor's or fellow-students' talk pages, is not evidence that they have any COI.

Please leave the heavy COI hassle for those cases where it's appropriate, and don't bite newbies or students by slapping confusing, and potentially wrong, banners onto articles without any prior discussion. A calm discussion on their user talk page, if you have any COI concerns, could be a useful part of their educational experience. Thanks. PamD 15:21, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I think you've hit the nail on the head. That's a good point.

Or, for a wild anecdote - the largest class I ever supported had first come to community attention when somebody started an AN/I thread about what seemed to be a tsunami of sockpuppets, and then another editor decided to stop them spreading "vile propaganda". Lots of editors - students most of all - start out by focussing on one particular article, and simply labelling them as "SPA" or "COI" &c without discussion and without looking at the quality of their edits is deeply unhelpful. bobrayner (talk) 16:11, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Your student was spamming external links throughout the article the same way that spammers do. I agree Qworty should have assumed good faith, but it wasn't completely out of the blue. Gigs (talk) 18:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

COI campaigns?

Came across an article, "ACORN Founder Proposes Mass Pro-Union Wikipedia Editing Campaign", and was wondering if this fits the definition of COI. I'm aware of WP efforts to teach and promote editing by students, but that was general, not to promote such a clear agenda through crowdsourcing. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 21:25, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The link is to a right wing site and their link to the "original" source is dead, so it's hard to know who's campaigning about what. But the point is taken that there are not just pro-business, PR, and marketing folks who want to advocate on Wikipedia. I'd guess the potential articles on company products outnumber the potential articles of interest to unions about 100 to 1, so let's not fail to take action because we can't get every little bit. Many of the things done here may also affect legal, marketing, and PR people from the unions (of course they have them), as well as general left-wing and right-wing political orgs, and let's not forget actual political campaigns - but just because we can't cover all of that is one section of the COI guideline, let's not throw out the one section. The perfect can be the enemy of the good. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:05, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It bothers me that we have no solid policy that says "this isn't OK" in no uncertain terms. And the current proposal on "paid advocacy" wouldn't address it either, since this sort of thing is based on volunteers. Gigs (talk) 23:41, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

My wife is part of a "scavenger hunt" with 600 teams that apparently (basically) includes an item to vandalize a Wikipedia page "seamlessly". I told her I would be happy to make any edit that is a genuine improvement. The article got locked down after so much vandalism. Even this scavenger hunt is a form of COI ;-)

The prize for the winning team is a trip to Scotland (or something like that). That's a lot of incentive to make COI edits to Wikipedia. More incentive than someone paid $500 to write an article. Corporate 17:06, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

We have rules regarding vandalism and rules regarding POV editing and rules regarding common sense. As soon as we start splitting hairs, then we open ourselves up to the argument that we didn't have a special rule for a special case. Back in the '90s, a lot of corporations started producing policies regarding e-mail etiquette. One of the more experienced corporations had a very simple policy: "all our policies regarding interpersonal and client communications apply equally to e-mail." Likewise, Wikipedia could simply say, "all our rules regarding NPOV, UNDO, SOAPBOX, etc" apply to COI editors. Rklawton (talk) 17:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

You said yourself that you don't think our existing policies support the blocking or banning of people engaging in paid advocacy. You can't have it both ways, unless you've changed your mind since that prior comment. Gigs (talk) 18:21, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Note that all of these are covered by the current excellent first sentence. North8000 (talk) 18:01, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

They are also covered by the delete button. Qworty (talk) 19:07, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• I'd be quite happy if a half dozen new editors rolled in interesting in working on the histories of specific labor unions. Send 'em my direction, I'd put them to work, for sure — a fairly vast number of old AFL craft unions are showing as redlinks... Sadly, this is a blog post by the Heritage Foundation making spooky Halloween noises about the "infamous" ACORN and not meant to be taken seriously. Carrite (talk) 23:14, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• • A working link to the original source is "Webwork:Labour Wikipedia Initative" by Derek Blackadder, as referred to in "Just the Facts and Watching our Backs on Wikipedia" by Wade Rathke. Both essays seems somewhat unclear about the difference between NPOV and adding counter-bias. As Carrite says, we are woefully short of genuine NPOV material on labor unions, in the US and elsewhere. It's even worse than our shortage of non-promotional material on business enterprises. Alas, in both cases, we are much more likely to see promotionalism and propaganda than actual NPOV articles--if nothing else, it's so much easier to write when you don't have to concern yourself about reliable substantive sourcing. DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
    • We do have a sort of "notability systematic bias" against companies. We regularly keep articles on nearly unknown sports people who played one or two pro games, but we've deleted articles on big companies that employ thousands of people world-wide. I think part of that is reactionary against the constant barrage of promotional corporate articles, but it's there nonetheless. Gigs (talk) 00:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

What you state is certainly true. But a part of that arises from that fact that our concept that "coverage is a rough indication of notability/suitability for an encyclopedia" breaks down in certain areas which are coverage-heavy. E.G. in sports even the most trivial non-encyclopedic topics get coverage. North8000 (talk) 02:05, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Having no interest in sports myself, I am rather reluctant to say we over-cover it, because possibly people might say the same about the areas I am interested in. In any case, just to set the record straight, we do not cover "the most trivial unencyclopedic topics". We do not for example have separate articles on individual high school athletic teams, nor do we even mention most college football games. And similarly in other fields. There is in practice a level below which we do not fall. DGG ( talk ) 03:38, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Each time that I buzz through random articles (usually 100+ at a time) I come away with the impression that the bar seems too low for sports related topics. And the conclusion that my previous post gives the main reason. About 1/4 or 1/5 of all Wikipedia articles seem to be about obscure and narrow sports topics.North8000 (talk) 13:48, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I see the same thing from running unsourced BLP patrol. So many thousands of tiny articles on obscure people. It's a liability. Anyway we're getting offtopic here and I realized I've derailed this into one of my pet topics, sorry. Gigs (talk) 13:57, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Resetting the conversation - There is already a Wikipedia "Organized Labour" (sic.) project and barbarians at the gates with visions of inserting bias can quickly be brought up to speed on the doctrine of NPOV. I don't have the slightest doubt that a handful of trade union functionaries coming in with one preconceived idea of what they think they need to be doing can be made into fruitful (and uncontroversial) Wikipedia contributors with a day or two of supervision and help. LIke I say, send 'em my way, I'd be happy to crack the whip on 'em and get 'em rolling writing history pieces... I'm totally serious about that. Per the comment of systemic bias against business coverage, this is largely a fair complaint, outside of a handful of sexy big tech companies and the like and a smaller number that have been written by company insiders. Coverage of that fare will improve when a handful of good content writers get together and decide coverage of that topic needs to improve. I recently bumped into a few volumes of a multivolume encyclopedia of business histories, company level, on ebay but forgot to make a note of the title and lost it again. It is the sort of thing that WMF needs to invest in, reference works of that sort, with a view to starting a lending library for contributors needing esoteric sourcing for their work. Carrite (talk) 16:19, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

My newly posted reply to one of the blog posts cited at the start of this thread:

The view that Wikipedia content needs to be accurate is correct and the idea that it needs to be monitored against vandalism and sabotage is uncontroversial. By all means, make sure things are accurate and free of vandalism. New content contributors need to come in with a correct appreciation of what Wkipedia is, however, don't think of it as a battleground in the war of ideas. It is an online encyclopedia and we, speaking of the so-called "club" of Wikipedians, have expectations and needs regarding neutrality of tone, fairness of coverage, accuracy of content, and sourcing of facts. We openly WELCOME anyone wanting to come in an improve content in a neutrally written and well-sourced manner. It's a complicated community and if anyone needs a tour guide or editing help, don't hesitate to ask.

The formal "correction process" — filing of a bureaucratic request for correction, etc. — is indeed complex and dysfunctional, as noted above. If something needs to be fixed, fix it — or if you are concerned about crossing Conflict of Interest boundaries or unclear about the process, find a Wikipedian to fix it. Every article has an "edit history" and every edit history has a list of contributors, and every contributor has a link to their "Talk Page" listed. If something needs to be fixed, find a recent contributor to that piece and leave a nice note for them on their "Talk Page" detailing your concerns. That should work in the majority of cases.

Again, if you really want to raise a posse to improve trade union coverage on Wikipedia, do that and get in touch with me and I will get you up to speed on how to contribute CORRECTLY and will help familiarize you with the maze of guidelines, policies, and discussion fora. Charging in like Pamplona bulls, while a good way to get adrenaline flowing, will end with picadors and matadors and nobody wants that.

:Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR, USA /// MutantPop@aol.com /// "Carrite" on Wikiapedia

P.S. There is already an "Organized Labour" (sic.) work group on Wikipedia, for what it's worth. There's plenty of serious work to do and they can always use new, enthusiastic help.

The "lending library" idea would be difficult to work considering how strict copyright laws are. We'd have to mail physical copies around. Gigs (talk) 17:56, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

That's true, but book rate postage is cheap in the United States anyway and WMF has money coming out of their nasal passages and very little vision of how to spend it to improve the project. But that's a debate for another place. Carrite (talk) 17:49, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

advices

These information needs advices on how/where to report conflict of interests like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mark_Stephens_%28solicitor%29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.72.236.203 (talk) 22:38, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a link to WP:COIN at the top. Gigs (talk) 17:49, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Intractable COI

I would like to propose the concept of "intractable COI" based on Ocaasi and SlimVirgin's input above. This removes the focus from money, actions, and motivations, and creates a very specific case where we can say something definite:

• If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation, whether contractual or ethical, to edit in a way contrary to our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you must not directly edit articles or participate in deletion processes related to such a relationship.

Thoughts? Gigs (talk) 20:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't have an objection to the language on principal, but I'm concerned it may not do what some are hoping for. Say I'm a PR representative, and I've been hired to remove the 'inaccurate' information and 'unfounded' attacks from an article about ABC corp. I could certainly rationalize that the above language does not apply to me, because I am editing to remove the bias against my employer, and restore the article to an unbiased state. The problem is that my employment by the company may influence my perception when considering what information is accurate, and what negative information is unfounded. Monty₈₄₅ 20:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I view it more as a starting point for further guidance that's written in terms normally used in conflict of interest discussions in the wider world, avoiding Wikipedian jargon. It's not meant to describe the shades of gray, it's meant to describe the sort of intractable conflict of interest that's fundamentally incompatible with editing in a neutral fashion. It's the baseline from which we can start to have rational conversations regarding how we want to deal with the shades of gray. Gigs (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

• I like that a lot.

There's a paper here that might be worth reading, regarding the "standard view" of COI, which talks in terms of duties. It's a bit of a dense read, but there might be something helpful in it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:55, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Good source. That paper by Stephen Coleman, "When conflicts of interest are an unavoidable problem" from the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics 12th Annual Conference 28–30 September 2005, Adelaide makes reference to

• Michael Davis & Andrew Stark, eds. (2001). Conflict of Interest in the Professions, Oxford University Press

viewable online via Questia subscription. My point is: we don't have to, and should not, struggle quite so much with making up descriptive or prescriptive language about the subject, we can literally cite scholarly and professional sources about it (which I advocate for all guidelines and policy). --Lexein (talk) 20:36, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

• Thinking of some other ways to express COI, particularly paid COI:

• "Conflict of interest occurs when considerations of personal gain influence an editor's exercise of his duties toward Wikipedia," or;

• "Conflict of interest occurs when considerations of personal gain interfere with an editor's primary role as a Wikipedian."

SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:07, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

• Fiddling with Gigs' sentence and mine:

• "Conflict of interest occurs when considerations of personal gain influence an editor's exercise of his duties toward Wikipedia. If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation, particularly a contractual one, to edit in a way contrary to our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you must not directly edit articles or participate in deletion processes related to such a relationship."

I like this. But I am worried about not mentioning the paid-to-promote aspect. That is the bright line. Otherwise we risk sucking in (or looking as though we are sucking in) subject-matter experts -- people with a lot of knowledge, strong beliefs, obligations toward educational institutions, etc. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:15, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it has that problem. As long as their obligations toward the educational institution don't create a duty that conflicts with our core policies, they are fine. If it does, then we do have a problem, WP:CURATOR notwithstanding. Gigs (talk) 22:32, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the perception bit is going to be a hard sell to the community. I know it's almost always included in real world COI policies, but I'm not sure we can sell it here. Gigs (talk) 22:42, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, removed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:52, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

These are the distinctions that matter:

• the vice-president of marketing for a company that owns casinos, and anyone working for him directly or indirectly (paid advocates, must not edit affected articles = bright line)
• the Wikipedian who has been paid by a museum to get its archives referenced in related articles (benign paid editing, may edit affected articles)
• the professor of biochemistry with strong views about a particular issue, who is convinced her work is better than anyone else's (this is a POV issue, not COI, so she is allowed to edit affected articles; she'll have a COI if she starts self-citing, but not one that necessarily means she has to stay away from affected articles)
• the girl who really loves Barbie dolls and who won't allow anything bad to be said about them (this is a POV issue, not COI).

Anything we write has to respect those distinctions very clearly. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:03, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

This looks good to me. I think we should abandon the entire term "paid advocacy" and start redrafting the bright line policy based on your latest bolded wording. Gigs (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I think we do need a reference to payment somewhere to make clear we're talking about the first example above. And the thing about "paid advocacy" as a phrase is that it has caught on. Everyone knows what it connotes, even if they couldn't give a clear list of what it denotes.

Also, some of the words above risk conflating the editor and the edits - "to edit in a way contrary to our core mission of unbiased coverage". The paid advocates will say they are not paid to edit contrary to that. Their argument is " if the edits are good it doesn't matter that we're paid advocates." That misses the point that we can't judge the edits 99 percent of the time, because we're not all-knowing, and so a huge amount of what happens on WP is based on trust. The payment element destroys that trust. That is what is wrong with it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:49, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Remember that we need to maintain these distinctions:

• COI = be careful
• COI because of paid editing = be very careful
• COI because of paid advocacy = stick to the talk page

Or are you suggesting that the guideline should say no direct editing for any form of COI, defined as above (the duties sentence)? I don't think that would gain consensus. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:54, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Both, really. If their obligations to their external entity truly are compatible with our goals, an intractable conflict of interest doesn't actually exist. If they aren't, as determined by other editors, then despite their proclamations otherwise, we can still enforce this against them. This is a very narrow construction of COI, narrow enough that we can outright ban editors with it from editing those topics directly. Not every external relationship carries a duty or obligation incompatible with our core mission. A line cook at Taco Bell doesn't have much of a duty or obligation to their employer that would prevent them from editing related articles. A lawyer representing Taco Bell would, even though they aren't a "paid advocate" under many of our previous formulations (they aren't paid to edit Wikipedia). This is why I think a formulation like this one above is better than anything we've proposed before, in a very fundamental way. It's more encompassing in the right ways, yet at the same time, narrow enough that we can still take a bright line on it.

"to edit in a way contrary to our core mission of unbiased coverage" is a crucial phrase. It is what allows paid editing that is compatible with our mission, such as the reward board, which is transparent and generally has a goal of GA or FA articles, which are audited for neutrality. Gigs (talk) 01:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

• "Conflict of interest occurs when considerations of personal gain influence an editor's exercise of his duties toward Wikipedia. If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation, particularly a contractual one, that, if fulfilled, would prevent you from editing in a way compatible with our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you must not directly edit articles or participate in deletion processes related to such a relationship."

Is this a little better? Gigs (talk) 01:26, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

It occurs to me that the first sentence you have added is a little weak in that it seems to negate some of the nuanced scope that the rest offers. The marketing employee doesn't derive any additional personal gain from editing Wikipedia, but they do usually have an obligation to their employer that would prevent them from editing in a neutral way. Gigs (talk) 01:33, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Personal gain as in "I will lose my job if I don't" or "my boss will like me if I do." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think "if fulfilled" helps. The point is that a paid advocate will always say, "I am not paid to edit in a way that is incompatible with WP's mission." They are, but they will always say they are not, and sometimes they will believe it. I agree that it's a crucial phrase (the mission bit), but they will drive buses through it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:42, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

That wording seems so generalised that it might even cover various other, more harmful, types of pov-pushers - such as those who have a religious or nationalist mission to get the TRUTH onto wikipedia. If it does cover them, then I'd be happy, but I imagine other wikipedians might consider it overreach. If it doesn't cover them, I would ask why we're just picking one subset of editors regardless of whether or not they're the ones making bad edits. bobrayner (talk) 01:56, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Babrayner, It may very well cover certain kinds of POV pushers, namely those who have what would commonly be considered a conflict of interest. This is our conflict of interest guideline/policy after all. We already have WP:PROMO, this guideline should rightfully be more encompassing. This isn't only about paid editing and paid advocacy.

SlimVirgin, keep in mind this doesn't have to be the final word on the issue of paid editing, and shouldn't be. Like I said earlier, this could be considered a baseline definition of an intractable COI (the current second sentence, I'm not sure about the first). It doesn't have to be all things to all people. I think it's a solid starting point for conversations on further issues, a way to introduce the Wikipedia community to the professional vocabulary of COI. Gigs (talk) 03:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Back to "Intractable COI" - the Public Relations Society of America presents Advocacy as the first of its core values

"PRSA Member Statement of Professional Values [2]

"This statement presents the core values of PRSA members and, more broadly, of the public relations profession. These values provide the foundation for the Member Code of Ethics and set the industry standard for the professional practice of public relations....

"ADVOCACY

"We serve the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for those we represent. We provide a voice in the marketplace of ideas, facts, and viewpoints to aid informed public debate."

And the second core value makes it clear that they are bound to the goal advancing their employers interests.

"HONESTY

"We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public."

You have to conclude that the are contractually and ethically required to be advocates (and practice advocacy) for their employers. If they have voluntarily taken on those obligations, there is no way they can refrain from advocacy on Wikipedia, if they edit here. But perhaps you're waiting for something that says "but you are allowed to edit Wikipedia without advocating your employer's POV." Nope. They do mention Wikipedia directly in another context.

Professional Standards Advisory PS-8 (October 2008) DECEPTIVE ONLINE PRACTICES AND MISREPRESENTATION OF ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS [3]

under

"EXAMPLES OF IMPROPER PRACTICES

• A competitor’s staff intentionally enters incorrect or misleading information about their own products or their competitor’s product on a popular on-line encyclopedia.

• A public relations firm is hired to post favorable comments on Wikipedia about a number of clients. She poses as a neutral, third-party to post the comments."

The folks who write the PR profession's ethical code and presume to represent the industry as a whole, recognize that they are advocates and require that they disclose their employers. PR folks in other countries are similar including the Brits - who require the bright-line rule - and the Canadians. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:25, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Yep. I think we should restore the word "ethical" to the copy above. Codes of ethics that require advocacy that are incompatible with being neutral seem to me to be more common than contractual obligations. I'm going to drop the first sentence as well, without prejudice to something similar to it existing elsewhere.

• "If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation, contractual or ethical, that, if fulfilled, would prevent you from editing in a way compatible with our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you must not directly edit articles or participate in deletion processes related to such a relationship." Gigs (talk) 03:35, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

This is good work. And it does an end run around the current quagmire of many different definitions of wp:coi, by not using or attempting to define the term at this point. Hopefully at this point this is an addition to the guideline rather than a proposed replacement for the definition at the beginning (?) North8000 (talk) 14:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I envision it as a new section titled "Intractable COI" here, and possibly as the basis of a future bright line policy. Gigs (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Draft definitions

These may be helpful starting points:

• conflict of interest - exists when an editor has an outside vested interest (an external relationship) that is likely to lead to edits that violate our core policies, or bias our coverage
• paid editing - the practice of accepting money in exchange for editing Wikipedia, or writing material for Wikipedia, a subset of COI editing
• paid advocacy - receiving payment to promote the interests of a client or employer on Wikipedia, a subset of paid editing
• problematic editing that results from a conflict of interest - (currently "COI editing") the primary thing we are concerned about preventing. Someone think of a shorter phrase or word that makes sense for this.

Gigs (talk) 01:57, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think it's still fairly confusing, but it's shorter now. It has a slightly hostile tone and I think it would be great if we actually encouraged "paid advocates" to donate images under a free license and share their coverage reports in citation templates on the Talk page. Many companies have bias attack pages and mistakenly believe they will be accused of manipulation if they try to address the problem from the Talk page.

In any case, along the discussion of clearer definitions, the paragraph that starts "if either of the following applies to you" - PR people don't understand Wikipedia's perspective in the way we describe this, because most of us are just "doing our jobs" and have no monetary benefit. Instead, I would suggest, "If you are participating on Wikipedia on behalf of an organization or individual with a potential conflict of interest... <include examples>" Corporate 13:48, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a little bit circular, don't you think? Gigs (talk) 14:35, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Definition problem

Some may have noticed that the above definitions have a problem. The problem is what "COI editing" actually means. By COI editing, do we mean editing with a COI, possibly benign, or do we mean problematic editing resulting from said COI? I think this is something that is extremely important to hammer out going forward. Gigs (talk) 14:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

My take on some of the language: Editors with a potential COI should take care to avoid COI editing. COI editing is not "frowned upon" it is forbidden (but often accidental) as a violation of WP:NPOV, because it means putting outside interests before Wikipedia's. However, editors with a potential COI should follow the COI guideline to avoid COI editing. Editors participating "on behalf of an organization or individual with a vested interest in Wikipedia's content" are expected (not encouraged, which is too weak) to avoid directly editing articles. Instead they should.... Corporate 15:42, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I disagree about your definition. A potential COI means there is some factor that may influence your ability to edit the article neutrally, but the conflict has not yet materialized. (Example: CEO of a company, article on company is already positive) An actual conflict of interest occurs when following the influence would result in you changing the article in a way someone without the influence wouldn't. (Example: The article says very negative things about the CEO's company) The NPOV violation occurs when the person with the COI edits an article in a non neutral way. (Example: CEO removes negative statements without an acceptable NPOV justification). Just because someone has a potential or even actual conflict, does not mean they cannot make NPOV compliant edits to the article, even if doing so should be discouraged due to the potential for problems. Monty₈₄₅ 17:28, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Both of you guys are out of line with the common definition used professionally. Here's something from our COI article that quotes the ethical guide for internal auditors:

conflict of interest is a situation in which an internal auditor, who is in a position of trust, has a competing professional or personal interest. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results.

emphasis mine. I think we should endeavor to get our definitions in line with this "real world" usage of the term. It is clear that there is no agreement on what our jargon term "COI editing" really means, from the various discussions I've had with people about this. Some think it applies to inappropriate editing actions, some think it means editing when a conflict of interest exist (but not necessarily in an improper way). We absolutely need to hammer this out. It's critical to get a precise definition here so that we can have constructive conversations instead of talking about different things and misunderstanding each other. Gigs (talk) 19:48, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think your comment is still missing the difference between a potential conflict and an actual conflict. You can have a potential conflict even before you have the competing interest, and some of the commentary is advocating prohibiting editing outright even in that case, which is very expansive. Monty₈₄₅ 20:41, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that's a symptom of people using the term "potential COI" when they really just mean "COI", using the blockquoted definition above. I don't want to keep repeating myself, but this is why it's absolutely critical to make sure we are working from a common set of definitions here. Gigs (talk) 22:34, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree; and would even go so far as saying (not for the first time) that we should consider dropping the term "conflict of interest" altogether, since its meaning seems to generate so much disagreement. We can talk about paid editors, editors with a connection, biased editing, promotional editing, etc.; we can say sensible things about all of these things, without necessarily trying to involve the ambiguous and redundant term "COI" in our exposition. Victor Yus (talk) 11:29, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Structural analysis & summary

The situation identified in the current bolded sentence is "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia," and implicitly includes "and who are doing editing that is dominated by those outside interests". This situation is bad for Wikipedia, and is currently defined as a Wikipedia:COI. This is (and rightly so) different than the common real-world meaning of COI which is a person in power (e.g. government person) who has power/influence over a situation where that have a real world interest where their decision might have financial impact on them personally substantially more than on other members of the public. For example, having a child in school (that would benefit from providing a good education) is not a COI for a school board member, but having substantial ownership in a company that they are deciding to purchase something from is a coi.

Per the above WP:coi definition, a financial interest is not necessarily involved. For example, it might be a person who feels that candidate XXX should righteously get elected and lets that advocacy consideration dominate over the goals of Wikipedia when they edit. Unless an editor decides to declare such information, it is not known to other Wikipedians (except, after a LONG time by their behavior) whether an editor is exhibiting the flaw of letting an outside interest overly influence their editing, nor it is known to other Wikipedians whether they have a situation (such as paid editing or being an advocate for the election of a candidate) which would tend to indicate a higher or very high likelihood (higher / very high "risk") of them exhibiting wp:coi behavior. This has sometimes been called a "potential coi" or a "high risk of a coi".

We must recognize that an unwilling-to-disclose editor will probably never be "found out" in this respect. Given all of this, what this guideline can and should do is:

• Keep / enhance the above definition, and say that such editing is wrong and not allowed.
• Encourage editors to disclose, including by making sure that they don't get a scarlet letter for disclosing. This enables the guidance and review process by other editors to occur more openly and effectively.
• Set up a process for editors who have disclosed* to edit. Guided by themselves and others.
• Recognize that some editors will not disclose*, including for several legitimate reasons (where such would out themselves, or where they don't want the risk of a scarlet letter) . The policy should give them guidance on how to handle that situation in way that does not require them to disclose themselves.
• After a long time (when overwhelming evidence supplants wp:agf) when a non-disclosed wp:coi becomes evident, it should provide a framework to identify and fix the problem. This would cover a much-needed broader array of situations including articles which are eternal warfare failures because real-world opponents are forever editing the article to further their real-world objectives.

End of structural analysis & summary Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:00, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

*disclose outside interests which reflect a significantly higher risk of COI editing

- - - -

If you're saying some situation is not allowed, then how can you proceed to say that you expect people to disclose such a situation? Presumably you're stumbling over your own terminology, and you mean the disclosure to apply to something different than the prohibition - so if you're using COI for the thing that isn't allowed, then what are you calling the thing that we want people to disclose? Victor Yus (talk) 11:33, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

First, to clarify, the first half of my post is meant to summarize the actual situation, the second half to summarize things that 99% would agree on. So it was not intended to be me proposing anything new. On your question, (only) if you include the implicit "and who are doing editing that is dominated by those outside interests" does it become something that is not allowed. I think that your comment (and those by others) shows that this implicit statement needs to be said explicitly. And, I was vague on "disclose" but what I meant to imply is disclosure of outside interests which reflect a significantly higher risk of COI editing. Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed it with a footnote. North8000 (talk) 11:46, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment of the current situation for the most part. That said, I feel strongly we need to ditch "Wikipedia COI" as a jargon term that means something different than the common definition. I think that we can provide leadership on changing this usage through careful drafting of this guideline. The prior version of the guideline even sometimes used it in the jargon sense, and sometimes in the wider-world sense. This is completely unacceptable. Gigs (talk) 16:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Except the real-world definition is not applicable to Wikipedia, so what then is the alternative to having a wiki-meaning / wiki-definition of the term? — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

I think the definition is applicable, but the normal solution to the problem probably isn't (required disclosure, and complete abstention from all decisions related to the COI). Gigs (talk) 20:29, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Well one crystallizing question on that is: Would you consider editing where unpaid advocacy overrules the goals of Wikipedia to be a wp:coi? If yes, then the WP definition is definitely different than the common definition outside of Wikipedia. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:56, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

My impression is that unpaid advocacy (simple biased editing, like someone editing abortion-related articles so as to promote the ethical viewpoint that that editor personally holds) is not included in what most people on Wikipedia think of as a COI. Unsurprisingly, most people assume that the Wikipedia meaning of the term corresponds to the real-world meaning, and understand and use it as such. It seems sensible to me that, if we are going to use the term at all, we should make it mean what real-world people are going to expect it to mean. Victor Yus (talk) 08:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

COI vs Expert input

I would argue that potential conflicts of interest are more common than accepted. The policy needs to distinguish between (a) a potential COI, and (b) an expert in their field. For example:

• Einstein would be an expert in physics, but would he spin everything he writes in his favour?
• Can a Republican or Democrat write neutrally on their own political party?
• No doubt articles on football teams are written by fans. Neutrally?

I think we have to distinguish between a potential COI, and contents which is actually a COI. The latter should be identified as an inappropriate edit, but it may not be due to a conflict of interest!. --Iantresman (talk) 23:16, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Court ruling of relevance to COI editing

Jayen466 has posted about a German court ruling that has a bearing on this guideline. In brief it says that if someone is paid to add information about a business's products to Wikipedia, the intention is to influence customers, and that is a form of advertising. Moreover, it is a covert form of it and therefore illegal under European trading law. See Jayen's post for more details. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:45, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

But would it be covert if you declare an interest?

What happens if you are merely an employee of the company, so not paid directly and only to edit?

What if you are paid as a scientist, and add information about your field of expertise?

--Iantresman (talk) 18:33, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read everything that Jayen posted yet, but I believe the argument is that, yes, it would be covert even with disclosure because readers can't be expected to read talk pages and user pages to track down that disclosure. I think it's talking about commercial editing only, not expert editing (unless it's commercial). Anything that seeks to make a product look good, or look better than some equivalent product -- where the editor is paid to do it, in whatever capacity -- would count. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Many universities have sponsors and financial interests. An expert in their field is paid by the university. Considering the possible financial interest, and the expert's interest in keeping their job, and ensuring the university reflects in the glory of the expert's work, their is the possibility of an inadvertent conflict of interest. Perhaps all editors should edit under their real name, and list their affiliations? --Iantresman (talk) 19:08, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

It does seem quite important, especially since it is applicable to all of the European Union, e.g. the UK, not just to Germany. In answer to the above questions I'd say employees, PR agents, marketing people - anybody ultimately paid by the company - would be breaking the law (of course I'm not a lawyer). If you are just editing in a field of your expertise, but not paid by the company, it would not seem to apply. A disinterested scientist (not paid by the company) would not be affected, but one paid by the company would be. (I'll repeat that I'm not a lawyer, but it seems straightforward enough).

It was declared to be "covert" even though the editor declared an interest on the talk page. The court ruled that readers wouldn't necessarily see the talk page, so it's still covert. Note that our rules prohibit somebody signing their edits on the article page, so it would seem to be always covert.

If an interested editor just made an edit on the talk page, and disclosed there, and then a disinterested editor, added some of the material to the article page, the ruling would not seem to apply. In other words, Jimbo's bright-line rule would work, direct editing would not.

This ruling is entirely consistent with the UK PR Association's Code of Ethics. In other words, if a firm followed the code of ethics, they wouldn't be violating the law.

In the US, the FTC has similar rules regarding undisclosed "advertising." I'd think there might be a difference (in the US at least), if "advertising" refers just to something the firm pays the broadcaster, newspaper, or website for. In which case, the laws for the US and the UK might be somewhat different. Does anybody know about the law on undisclosed advertising in Canada, Australia, NZ and India? I'd think, just to be fair, we shouldn't be biased toward US firms at the expense of UK firms (and our readers). I'd also guess that this ruling would not apply to US firms if they don't do business in Europe, but would if they did business in Europe, or had an office there.

In short, it brings up lots of legal questions. Would it be possible to ask the UK chapter to look at the legal consequences, or perhaps the WMF could do a general overview. I know that the WMF legal dept. does not offer legal advice directly to Wikipedia editors (only to the WMF, otherwise there would be a COI) but it does sometimes do a general legal overview for editors, without directly giving advice. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

• [4] [5] [6] "“material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed." Don't get hung up on "endorsers" either, the FTC considers "consumer generated media" to be an "endorsement" based on the message that the consumer takes away from it, even if it wasn't an explicit endorsement. So the short answer is, yes, in the US we have poorly enforced regulations that are similar to the ones in the EU. Gigs (talk) 21:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Here's a relevant example case they mention toward the end:

Example 8: An online message board designated for discussions of new music download technology is frequented by MP3 player enthusiasts. They exchange information about new products, utilities, and the functionality of numerous playback devices. Unbeknownst to the message board community, an employee of a leading playback device manufacturer has been posting messages on the discussion board promoting the manufacturer’s product. Knowledge of this poster’s employment likely would affect the weight or credibility of her endorsement. Therefore, the poster should clearly and conspicuously disclose her relationship to the manufacturer to members and readers of the message board.

I think we have a pretty good case to make COI disclosure a hard requirement, to protect Wikipedia from liability. I'm going to invite comment from User:Gbrigham. Gigs (talk) 21:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure, feel free to ask, but let's not go off half-cocked. I see nothing here that suggests any liability at all for Wikipedia or any actual need to change our approach. "Astroturfing for your product is illegal" does not mean "we are required to have a guideline that officially prohibits you from breaking the laws in your country". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the WMF would have little if any legal liability. Ditto for "innocent bystander" editors, though at some point if you see enough of this and know what's going on - i.e. that our readers are being taken advantage of, or that a law is being broken - then there is a clear moral responsibility to do something. Averting your eyes is never an excuse.

We do not need to enforce British law or German law or Thai law, as far as I can tell, but the law in the US and Florida does have some special meaning for us, that might creep in here around the edges. Nobody should take our general lack of legal requirements to mean that we shouldn't do anything, however. Undisclosed advertising is illegal in some places for good reasons, and many of these reasons apply here as well. Pretending that any behavior that we're not required to prevent is acceptable, is simply a non-argument.

We should not condone illegal and immoral behavior, and we can take action to prevent it. Undisclosed advertising is actually already against Wikipedia policies WP:NPOV and WP:NOTADVERTISING, and I think it has to be enforced, especially now that we know it can be illegal. There are also some things in our terms of service that apply. All users agree to the following condition:

• Lawful Behavior – You do not violate copyright or other laws.

and in the more detailed sections "you may not engage in such activities on our sites. These activities include:

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

• Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation;
• With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate;
• Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive; and
• Engaging in fraud.

It's clear that undisclosed advertising is against our rules - if somebody argues that this isn't clear, then we must make it so. The COI guideline is a good place. A strictly enforced policy might be a better place. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's clear at all. The best we have right now is WP:SOAP and the wishy-washy "discouraged" over here. There's significant opposition to what I consider the meager proposal on intractable COI in the section above. When doing new user patrol, if a promotional user has a promotional or company user name they are blocked, usually a soft block. If a promotional user has an acceptable username, then we usually do nothing. If they figure out AfC, the people at AfC often give them advice on how to get their spam accepted, without mentioning that advertising is problematic. Gigs (talk) 16:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It's also not clear to me that "we can take action to prevent it". One of the persistent reasons given for not banning paid editing is that we already know that we cannot take effective action to prevent it. We have no way to know who's getting paid. "Require people to disclose" is really not materially different from "require some paid editors to tell us lies". Checkuser is not magic. There is no way to accurately identify who is an illegal advertiser and who's just an interested user. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I will make a bold suggestion just as food for thought.

• The guideline is intended to provide "good advice"
• It is never "good advice" to suggest doing what is potentially unlawful
• Therefore, community consensus is irrelevant, because it is superceded by the law

For example, if the community felt Gall Pharma's Wiki-editing was acceptable, but the court disagreed, our best advice would be to ignore community consensus and comply with the law.

As a result, when it comes to "paid advocates" we should throw out any attempt to develop consensus and instead focus our efforts on interpreting how astroturfing laws apply to Wikipedia and model our advice after it. Corporate 04:46, 11 November 2012 (UTC) (frequent COI contributor)

I'd like to put a stop to the argument that we can't make any rules on COI because "we already know that we cannot take effective action to prevent it." That argument is simply not true. We cannot prevent all COI or even all undisclosed advertising, but there are many things we can do to prevent much of it.

1. Simply state clear rules so people can follow them. Most people want to follow the rules and they will if we let them know what the rules are.
2. Let corporations know upfront what the rules and the laws are. Corporations cannot afford to be seen blatantly breaking clearly stated rules. They can however lawyer their way around poorly stated rules.
3. Require disclosure of paid editing. Even those people who do not feel compelled to follow the rules, will usually attempt to follow them in the beginning of their editing on Wikipedia, if only to avoid hassles. Once they've declared as paid editors it will be much simpler to determine problems early, before they become major problems. People who don't declare and engage in promotion will become much more obvious than they are now.
4. Let everybody know that it is not just us who are "enforcing the rules." In particular journalists take a pretty high interest in this. If a new editor comes in determined to break the rules and is very careful not to disclose anything, not to give out any hint, it can still be difficult to maintain complete secrecy. But if they get away with it for a couple of years they will run into additional problem maintaining secrecy. Employees come and go, some of whom will be inexperienced or disgruntled. Remembering the complete set of lies they've told just gets more and more difficult. New technology will come along that makes it easier to identify the cheaters. After 5 or 10 years, it is almost inevitable that the cheaters will be discovered, perhaps by prying journalists, or by competitors, by Wikipedia editors who have been pushed around by the cheaters, maybe even by the government. Given the near inevitability of being found out, large corporations will not take this risk.
5. Let admins and the arb com know that they are expected to enforce the rules. These folks have done a terrible job enforcing many of the current rules that apply. These cases may be especially difficult for them to deal with, looking at commercial claims - which likely involves examining content - having few ways to identify editors. But some help as far as disclosure, and a clear statement by the community that this matters, should get them going on reasonable enforcement. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not that different than Google trying to fight black-hat SEO, review sites trying to improve their algorithms to auto-detect spam or the FTC making examples out of certain cases. The war is never won, but each organization does everything they can to stem the tide. Corporate 18:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

To back up to WhatamIdoing's comment: We can know. Technically we can't know whether someone is socking, but we manage to find out in many cases. There is behavioral evidence in cases of covert paid advocacy that is often far easier to detect than socking, and far more certain. I don't want to give away all my secrets here but we can talk in private if you'd like. Gigs (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I've added a section about the court ruling here. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:42, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Link to WP:SELFPUBLISH

I think that the the link to WP:SELFPUB in Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Citing_yourself should be replaced by WP:SELFPUBLISH, because it gives an overview of using self-published material both as sources on themselves and for other purposes, rather than only the former. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, go for it. Gigs (talk) 16:35, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:17, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite

I was just curious if the re-write effort was winding down. I'm taking a look at the new guideline, but I think it still needs a lot of work.

The image section for example is paining me: While Commons prefers full resolution media, reduced resolution images are acceptable when the copyright owner is unwilling to freely license a full quality image.

The whole section could be trimmed down to something like: Those with a potential conflict of interest are encouraged to upload good-quality digital media files that are appropriately licensed for Wikipedia and helpful in improving our coverage of the subject. For more information, follow the instructions at Commons. In some cases, the addition of digital media files to an article may be a non-controversial edit that editors with a conflict of interest can make directly, however editors should exercise common sense and rely on Talk pages when images may be controversial or promotional. Corporate 16:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I replaced it with an edited version based on your suggestion. We shouldn't try to summarize all the copyright rules here. Gigs (talk) 03:01, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

External constraints

The section on the German court case is quite good. Notice that it does not say "Wikipedia prohibits", but rather gives information about "The EU prohibits". I'll recommend that the material discussed above as "Intractable COI" be included in a similar manner all in one section called, perhaps, External constraints, with subsections on EU law, FTC regulations, the UK PR association ethical rules, the US PR association ethical rules. Even if Wikipedia does not specifically prohibit all the things that various countries or organizations make illegal or declare unethical, there is no reason that we should not let potential COI editors know about these rules. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The legal repercussions apply exclusively to "intractable COI," so a merge seems like a clear choice. The current might be a bit long, starts edging on legal interpretations and is focused on specific countries. The case in Germany is a very specific scenario and the truth is we can't be sure how the law might apply in every case or in every country. I would just say vaguely that direct editing "may" violate astroturfing laws in your country. Something like this:

"Editors should avoid directly editing articles on behalf of an employer or client with a potential conflict of interest. This includes marketing, public relations and search engine marketing professionals, as well as Wikipedia consultants, lawyers or volunteers at non-profit advocacy groups. Our readers have an expectation that Wikipedia's content not only complies with our content policies, but also represents the judgement of impartial volunteers. Those who ignore this advice may be at risk of legal and criminal repercussions for violating astroturfing laws in their country. Additionally, this routinely results in humiliation in the media and may violate the code of ethics for professional associations. Wikipedians are often upset when they discover an editor that made non-neutral edits without disclosing their affiliation. Instead, they should submit articles for consideration at Articles for Creation, request changes using {{request edit}}, use Talk pages, the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard and other forums. This guideline should be treated with common sense and editors should make non-controversial edits directly. For urgent issues, those that require privacy, or if other forums have been unsuccessful, consider contacting us."

I realize there's some bad grammar in there, but you get the idea ;-) Corporate 03:39, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Intractable conflicts of interest

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The following is proposed to be inserted as a subsection of "What is conflict of interest?" between "External relationships, and primary and secondary roles" and "Biased editing". This is not intended to be all encompassing of all problematic conflicts of interest, but only to the most serious direct conflicts where someone is bound by a code of ethics or a contractual obligation that are in conflict with neutral editing. This is not about enforcement as much as it is about clear guidance, since we generally don't know what an editor's external relationships are.

This proposal intends to help with several problems:

• Introduce professional COI terminology and concepts to our COI guideline, providing a basis for more nuanced future conversations on the issue
• Provide clear guidance to the subset of editors this may apply to
• Address direct, serious, conflicts of interest, in terms that are both specific, yet encompassing.

This is not intended to provide the final ultimate solution to promotional editing. This is not mutually exclusive with other policies, proposals, and best practices on paid advocacy and paid editing. Such things will still be necessary, since this formulation will not cover all promotional situations, only the ones that create a truly intractable conflict of interest.

—To clarify, this language will be incorporated into the context of the larger guideline and will not replace any of the existing sections. Exceptions for removal of BLP violations, contributions of images, etc, will still apply, and we can make that clear by editing the last line, if necessary.

Intractable conflict of interest (first draft)

If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation, contractual, ethical or otherwise, that, if fulfilled, would impair your ability to edit in a way compatible with our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you must not directly edit articles or participate in deletion processes related to such a relationship.

Examples of obligations that might fall under this section include but are not limited to:

• a lawyer's ethical obligation to advance the interests of his client
• a psychologist's ethical code that requires them to protect test material from public discussion
• a marketing professional's contract with a client that requires them to engage in advocacy for their client, rather than merely publishing factual information

Discussion

• I support this, as the primary drafter. Gigs (talk) 14:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Support Needs tweaks Good idea covering a narrow but important case. Emphasizing the context, this is an addition, not a substitution, and just a subset of the overall topic. But many valid concerns have been raised which could be addressed by tweaking of the wording and examples. North8000 (talk) 14:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC) North8000 (talk) 20:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Two quick concerns. While direct editing is a concern, I'm not sure that the same level of concern should be entered into deletion discussions - that seems a lot stronger than the current COI guideline, and also causes a disconnect in saying that you are encouraged to limit yourself to discussion pages, but can't be involved in one of the most significant discussions. The other regards the ethical obligation - I'm assuming this only related to ethical contractual obligations, not general ethical obligations held towards particular areas of concern. There are times when ethical considerations will come into play when editing, such as with BLPs, but where those are not the result of a contractual obligation. - Bilby (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
  • On your first concern: The prohibition on participation in deletion processes is because deletion processes exert direct control over content. Note that it's "processes", which goes further than just AfD. No matter how much we deny it, AfD is a vote of sorts, and it's entirely possible for a single vote to spoil a "delete" outcome into a "no consensus" outcome, especially in one with few participants. Because a single AfD vote or a CSD/PROD followed up on by an admin who doesn't check carefully can have a radical affect on the contents of the encyclopedia, I think the prohibition is appropriate. We should also consider the case where an administrator has an intractable COI. Generally we trust administrators to do the right thing in such a case, but this is clear guidance that can apply to everyone equally. All that said, I wouldn't be dead-set opposed to removing the mention of deletion processes.
  • On your second concern: The ethical obligation doesn't need to be contractual, but it does need to be the result of an "external relationship". All parts of this need to be considered together. BLP ethical concerns also generally do not impair the ability to edit in a neutral fashion, but even if they did, it wouldn't matter since they aren't the result of an external relationship. Gigs (talk) 15:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I think this is moving in a better direction, and it's much more narrowly tailored than the prior 'paid advocacy' definition. I appreciate this effort very much. My position remains that an outright prohibition on even these individuals never editing articles directly is unlikely to gain consensus, and thus I support that we aim for a more nuanced approach with requires a month of talk page engagement along with full and transparent COI disclosure, with some reasonable timeframe after which an intractable-COI editor can make a change directly provided they give double notification at the talk page and the COI noticeboard. I view this as largely consistent with the current proposal, except it puts some responsibility on us to actually respond to talk page requests. If we do that faithfully, then brightline is upheld. Only if we fail in that duty does brightline technically lapse to ensure that views are never excluded merely because no one bothered to respond to them. Obviously, that is what I have detailed at WP:COI+ and I'm interested in how we can pursue both approaches simultaneously, strengthening our precautions but also providing some leeway to remain reasonable and responsible. I'm less supportive of including deletion requests, because if full disclosure is maintained then those editors views can be contextualized appropriately. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:41, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Notification. I've listed this RfC at WP:CENT and notified the relevant COI wikiprojects or noticeboards and Jimbo's talk page using the following summary. WP:COI RfC: Of interest: An RfC on our COI guideline for editors with an "intractable" conflict of interest. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:06, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Someone with a duty to a client is no more biased than someone who is that client. By the same reasoning used here, shouldn't we also prohibit people from editing anything about themselves directly?Also, this excludes many of the most knowedgeable people (employees and managers of a company often have more knowledge about it than most people and are better equipped to provide evidence). It gets worse when you apply it to BLPs; a parent has an obligation to do things to the benefit of their child just as much as a lawyer to a client. So a parent may not edit a BLP about their child, or participate in a discussion about deleting that BLP. Finally, brightline rules conflict with IAR. You can *never* say "that's the rule, and that's final". Ken Arromdee (talk) 18:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It's not about bias per se, it's about advocacy. Wikipedia's rules don't say we can't be biased - in that case nobody could edit - but they do say we can't advocate. Somebody who has contracted out to advocate where ever possible, it is safe to say, will advocate here and thus break our rules. There also something not being said about "industrial scale" and the equivalent of "sockpuppeting" An employer can hire multiple PR folks, 100s if the issue is important enough, and just swamp our volunteer editors. If one of them is caught, he can hire some more. Hiring a single editor to pretend to be somebody other than you, but still advance your views violates WP:Sock. Hiring many would be industrial scale sockpuppeting. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

• • Agree that the wording should probably be less absolute. But there IS a difference between the case that this proposal covers and the other examples that you made (e.g editing about self, or the company that they work for). The difference is that the person has agreed to engage in advocacy editing on Wikipedia and has an obligation to do so. This is not (necessarily) the case with those other situations that you cited. North8000 (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, this isn't supposed to be all encompassing, but only to address one specific kind of true conflict between interests, where someone has a legal or professional duty that impairs their ability to edit neutrally. I agree that there are exceptions, and this will just be one section in the larger context of this guideline, which does detail the exceptions (uploading pictures, removing obvious libel, etc) Gigs (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

A parent is obliged to put the interests of their child ahead of other considerations. This certainly includes being obliged to do so so by advocacy editing. Just because there isn't a document which lists advocacy editing as a separate line item doesn't mean they don't have the obligation.

Of course you could say "maybe they're an ethical parent who won't do anything whatsoever for their child--they only do things to benefit their child if they not only benefit the child, but are also balanced against other considerations." However, I can postulate an "ethical lawyer" or "ethical psychiatrist" who does the same thing. You can joke about how no lawyers or psychiatrists are ethical, but if you can assume that a parent can be trusted because they won't literally do anything for their child, you have to assume the same of lawyers and clients (and even of some PR people--there's no reason someone can't hire a PR person and tell them "don't do anything I wouldn't do".)

Furthermore, your mention of psychiatrists is odd. It sounds like you're attempting to justify the Rorschach test decision after the fact. I don't think that that should apply here under any circumstances; the psychiatrists were claiming harm to the public, not to someone they had a special duty of care to. Any member of the public is a potential patient. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no "parent's code of ethics" that you have to sign on to to be part of the professional parent's society. We're talking about codes of ethics that create specific duties and obligations, not some vague philosophical idea of ethics. Gigs (talk) 19:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

To your other concern, the APA code of ethics forbids the disclosure of test data or even discussion of the test that would damage its integrity. That sort of thing is incompatible with Wikipedia. Gigs (talk) 19:59, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no "parent's code of ethics", but parents have obligations towards their children which are as strong as the obligations imposed by a written code of ethics. Just because it isn't written and there is no signature doesn't change this.

And the psychiatrists didn't claim that we shouldn't publish the test solely because the code of ethics forbids it. They thought it was a bad idea to publish the test regardless of the code of ethics, but referred to the code of ethics because either 1) they were unfamiliar with Wikipedia and thought it would bolster their existing argument, or 2) because they thought that the code of ethics had reasons behind it and were arguing based on those reasons, but needed to refer to the code itself in the process. Neither of these means that they were prioritizing the code of ethics over Wikipedia considerations.

You're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole in order to retroactively prevent the psychiatrists from making, in a completely separate discussion, arguments that you didn't like. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:53, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Ken, you make many good points. It (including its examples) probably need to be narrowed where the agreement / commitment is advocacy editing of Wikipedia. Maybe we need to include both adjectives, i.e. make it applicable to paid advocacy' editing.North8000 (talk) 20:25, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

That would fundamentally undermine the intent of this, which is about all conflicts of interest that are inherently incompatible with Wikipedia, not just paid advocacy. Not every code of ethics is incompatible with editing neutrally. I looked at an engineer's code of ethics today, and I didn't see anything problematic. Certain professions have codes of ethics that include clauses incompatible with neutral editing, and not all of them are promotional in nature. Gigs (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Ken, nothing in this would have prevented people from making the arguments they made in the Rorschach debates. Talk page participation wouldn't be limited, only direct editing. People with ethical obligations that conflict with neutrality absolutely should be listened to in content debates, since often they will represent a significant point of view that should never be ignored. Gigs (talk) 23:57, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

That's not what I meant. What I meant was that you're trying to retroactively win a past argument (or rather, to win it by more than you did) by changing the rules so that the new rules would have let you win the past argument.

That's bad all by itself, and in this case it's not only bad, it's based on a caricature of the past argument. Psychiatrists back then did not say "it doesn't matter whether doing this is good or bad, but I have to do this because of the ethics code". The ethics code was, at worst, improperly brought up in an argument which at its core, was not about the ethics code. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:04, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't even heavily involved in Rorschach discussions, except at the very end (though I admit my actions did help end the debate once and for all). Rorschach never even crossed my mind when working on this, I only thought of it when I was trying to think of examples of ethical codes that might bind someone to edit in a way contrary to our goals. It's a bad example anyway, since it's not completely clear that the code of ethics would obligate them to edit in a way that conflicts with neutrality. I've removed the example to avoid further distraction from what I believe is an important addition to help refine our discussions on COI. If you review the discussion that lead to this draft, I think you will see that it was a collaborative process (for the bolded part) and a natural conclusion to a lot of editor feedback that indicated we should start using the same terms professionals use when discussing conflict of interest. I've toned down the focus on ethical codes as well, since they are just one way someone might have a conflicting obligation. Gigs (talk) 16:21, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• General support - if somebody has to break the law, or a formal professional code of ethics, in order to edit Wikipedia according to our rules (no advocacy), then I think it is only fair for us to tell him or her not to do it. Must not may be just slightly too strong - unless this was part of a policy. I also think that we might supply an "easy way out" - say "must not, unless". The "unless" could be "you declare the conflict of interest, including your employer, on your user page and the article talk page and explain how the edit is compatible with both your ethical and legal obligations to your employer and our "no advocacy" rules." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The last line is definitely up for discussion if we can get rough consensus for the addition. Gigs (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Very definitely in general agreement - i.e. better than rough consensus on my part. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I can think of hypothetical cases where not only does someone have to break the law to follow Wikipedia rules, they also have to break the law to not edit at all. For instance, someone may think they were harmed by a Wikipedia article and mitigation of damages law requires that they try to edit the article to take out the harmful claim. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:58, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to see a specific example, but would think that a message on the talkpage, or a noticeboard (eg BLPN), or to the WMF would generally cover most mitigation requirements. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a hypothetical.

Also, another problem: if you require that people declare conflicts of interest, you'll end up with a situation where all the good people declare their conflicts and get told "we don't believe you can edit given this conflict, so stay away" while all the bad people will not declare anything and get away with it. Admittedly, that's not far from what we have now, but it doesn't work now and it won't work here either. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:04, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

That's not entirely true. There are some COI-motivated editors that are starting to disclose and operate in the open. User:Corporate Minion, who is a PR person, has been supportive of something like this as well. You are right that people who don't follow the rules aren't going to follow this either. This is meant to be clearer guidance for the people who do want to do the right thing, using terms that aren't laden with Wikipedia jargon, but is instead written using the terms that professionals use when describing conflicts of interest. Gigs (talk) 16:21, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Neutrality is a primary objective on the project. That fact is often overshadowed and becomes problematic in the other processes when it comes to dealing with this specific type of conflict of interest. Intractable COI seems to address that and would appear to fit into the context of the larger guideline.--Hu12 (talk) 22:06, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• General support. I haven't really thought this through, and I'm not at all confident I'd spot problems, but it seems like the right idea. One minor tweak I can think of right now is that you might want to say "comprehensive" or something in there - the psychiatrist might say that he is allowed to cover the topic NPOV, and that taking out material he thinks is unethical doesn't actually skew the NPOV of the article. Of course, having an NPOV article isn't very useful if you don't have an article because someone is bound by convention to oppose its existence. Wnt (talk) 22:16, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• I would throw out something like "obligated to serve the best interest of an organization or individual with a potential conflict of interest." The current language implies it is not in a company's best interest to add neutral, factual information. Corporate 22:31, 31 October 2012 (UTC) (frequent COI editor)
• Oppose I'd really like to see a good policy precluding the more extreme situations with COI, and this is heading in the right direction thanks to some great work. But I'm not comfortable with excluding people with a COI from engaging in AfD discussions, as the ability for all contributors to express their thoughts in an AfD is important, and the opinions of those with a close understanding of the subject may be particularly so. I'm also very uncomfortable with precluding people from being involved in articles because of their professional ethics - it isn't the same sort of obligation as a contractual one, and doesn't raise the same set of flags, and including it here complicates matters and makes the guideline much more difficult to apply. - Bilby (talk) 22:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
  • How is professional ethics not the same sort of obligation as a contractual one? In some cases it's a much stronger obligation. Professional ethical codes are often enforceable, either through a review board that can actually take away your ability to work (such as the case for doctors or lawyers), or ejection from a professional organization or association at the very minimum. Your point regarding AfD is valid, and though I'm not sure I agree with it, I understand that position. I'll have to think about that. Gigs (talk) 23:36, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
    • The ethics issue is a big one, and I'm concerned that if I was to really explore it here it would fall under TL;DR territory pretty quickly. :) In part, I don't really see how the examples apply - acting in the best interests of a client relates to how you represent your client, and doesn't place you under an obligation to act as a spin doctor (doing so would, I think, come into conflict with other aspects of the code of ethics for the profession). It would certainly prevent you from adding material to WP, as would the psychiatrist's example, but I don't see that extending to removing WP material that is sourced and accurate unless there were also legal or broader ethical concerns at play. But I'm also uncomfortable with separating WP editing from ethics - while that isn't the intent, I think we need to have a greater focus on ethics when editing WP, and professional ethics should be a consideration.
    • At any rate, I want to see a guideline that limits or prohibits the worst of the paid editing, so I'd prefer this was focused on contractual obligations first. I suspect you'll find that this would also cover the particular ethical situations you have in mind (such as the lawyer, which would be better seen as a contractual obligation), while avoiding additional complications. - Bilby (talk) 09:37, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• I'll start working on a new draft to address the concerns raised thus far. Stay tuned. Gigs (talk) 23:44, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• General support. I saw this on CENT, and I think the general approach is a good one. One suggestion that I can make would be to add that it is alright to point out factual corrections that need to be made, on the article talk page. (That's similar to what we tell the subjects of BLPs). --Tryptofish (talk) 23:46, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
• Support as a step in the right direction, at least. One of our more persistent problems is users realising too late that it isn't okay to write highly COI-influenced material when we don't really have clear rules against it. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:00, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
• Well for starters the third bullet point could be shorter: "a marketing professional's contract with a client", period.

If I may point out, it is a physical impossibility for a person to edit Wikipedia (including talk pages) as a paid agent and remain eligible to be a member in good standing of their profession, period. I would define (for Americans) as "eligible to be a member in good standing of their profession" to correlate with "eligible to be a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)". The PRSA code of ethics states states "A member shall act in the best interests of the client or employer, even subordinating the member's personal interests". If you don't do that, you can't be in the PRASA (you might be a member, but only because they haven't gotten around to investigating you and expelling you in disgrace, yet). Also, the PRSA ethical guidelines states "Avoid real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest... by avoiding or ending situations that put one's personal or professional interests in conflict with society's interests". Again, if you do that, you're not eligible to be a member in good standing of your profession. You are eligible to be a rogue and an outcast, though.

Well, there's an exception. If you think that the Wikipedia is a net social evil and that "society's interests" are best served by corrupting, disgracing, discrediting, and ultimately destroying the Wikipedia, there there's no conflict. There are public relations professionals who do believe that (Greg Kohs for instance, and probably many others). Similarly, per the earlier bit above regarding "A member shall act in the best interests of the client or employer...", then if you are truly willing to say "Well, these edits will damage the article, make it less fair, less accurate, and less encyclopedic, but that's not my problem, my job here is to advance my client's interests, period" then you are acting ethically per the standards of your profession.

But the problem then is, why should we let you edit here? We don't let Greg Kohs edit here, and we don't let vandals and trolls and other editors who hate the Wikipedia and are here to damage and destroy it to edit. Maybe we should, but I doubt it, and good luck getting that adopted.

I do get the part, implied by the later clauses of the third bullet point, that there are clients falling over themselves to give money to agents under the conditions "Just publish the facts! Even if it makes us look bad! Even if it costs us reputation and business! Even if it drives us to bankruptcy and me to ruin and homelessness! You see, I don't care about any of that! I only care about getting the facts straight!". I'd like to see some of these contracts or meet some of these businessmen (oddly, I haven't yet), but until then, color me skeptical. Because, you know, there are facts and there are facts. Primo de Rivera built good highways and that's a fact, but so what? One man's fact is another man's whitewash is another man's another man's out-of-context attack is another man's cherry-picked nugget is another man's key point is another man's worthless triviality, and [[[John 18:38|what is truth]] anyway? If you find out let me know, but until then let's keep it plain and simple: third bullet point, ""a marketing professional's contract with a client", end of bullet point. Herostratus (talk) 02:41, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

By the above reasoning, you would also have to believe that a marketing professional would be ethically obliged to hack into your computer and if necessary take candy from babies. That's nonsense. The code is obviously saying that you have to put your employer's interests ahead of your own. Nothing about the interests of third parties in there.

I would suggest that you stop saying "the marketer's ethical code should be interpreted in this way" unless you can actually find some more detailed explanation, clearly accepted by marketers, which interprets it that way.

Furthermore, you're ignoring that the employer himself is not subject to the proposed rules. In other words, we do believe that the client will (at least under some circumstances) write the truth even if it hurts his business. If you believe that the client will do that himself, what's so strange about believing that he'll tell his PR guy to do that as well? (And if you don't believe that the client will do that himself, why aren't you suggesting that company owners, lawyers' clients, etc. be subject to the same rules that you are suggesting for PR people and lawyers?) Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, look, the Wikipedia is a special case: it is open to editing. The original assumption was that edits would be made in good faith. Exploiting the structure of the Wikipedia for bad faith editing is very similar to finding a security flaw in the New York Times computer system that allowed you to edit their copy directly, and then doing so for your client's benefit. Doing this to the Times would be illegal and immoral. Doing this to the Wikipedia is only immoral. It can't be illegal because of the way we are set up (we are set up this way for the benefit of humankind, by the way), so you "win". Hooray for you.

It's true that there is "Nothing about the interests of third parties in [the ethics guides]" but that's because normally third parties can look out for their own interests very well. We can't. BUT... if I read you right, and you're saying ""There's nothing about the interests of third parties in [the ethics guides] and therefore I'm not ethically required to concern myself with the integrity of the Wikipedia", then you are violating the Wikipedia's terms of service and since we are a charity which benefits society you are violating the prescription against harming society. Pleased with yourself?

Moving on, if "The client will... write the truth even if it hurts his business" he's gone badly wrong and shouldn't be in business. Unless he's a sole proprietor, this is deliberate malfeasance of his fiduciary obligation to his stockholders -- he has a a legal (and moral) obligation to not hurt his business on purpose -- and he deserves to be removed from his position, and probably sued and perhaps prosecuted.

Corporations are amoral entities. Everyone understands this. They have to be; the system doesn't work if they're not. This is neither good nor bad; it simply is. Non-amoral corporations are at a disadvantage and fail in the long run. (Google tried this for a while -- remember "Don't be evil"? -- but it didn't last and can't.) Amoral corporations bring us many many benefits and I'm not complaining. But these powerful, amoral entities require countervailing powers to keep them in their place. That is why we have commercial laws. That is why we have business regulations. And that is why the New York Times has editors that will throw your press release in the trash, most of the time. But we don't have editors (in that sense) and can't. Exploiting that loophole -- again, a loophole that exists so that we can benefit humankind as a non-profit volunteer-staffed charity -- is frankly beneath contempt.

And I greatly prefer reading clear English text (of the ethics guidelines) and interpreting it using my basic human intelligence to awaiting "some... explanation, clearly accepted by marketers" (emphasis added) for plain English text that is right in front of my nose. I don't need some spin doctor to explain to me how some very clear text doesn't really mean what it plainly says, thank you very much.

By the way, are you a PR person yourself? Because if you are, you shouldn't even be in this discussion. Regardless of whether or not you can edit or influence articles, attempting to influence policy decisions -- to change the governance of the Wikipedia itself, just so that you can have more steak dinners -- is contemptible. By rights I should strike your text (if you are a PR person), but it's probably better to let everyone see how you arrogantly treat us like morons who don't know how the world works, and contemplate a future at your mercy. Herostratus (talk) 08:52, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Only a small number of PR people are actually PRSA members, but it is the closest thing we have to a code of ethics for the field as a whole. What I think is more germane is that the code discourages anything that "corrupt the integrity of channels of public communication." Actually, PR people that try to censor well-sourced negative information should be reported to the PRSA if they are members. However, I've been doing PR for five+ years and didn't know very much about their code of conduct until I worked on the PRSA article. I wouldn't assume PR people follow in spirit, nor that it's realistically enforced except for in highly publicized circumstances. Corporate 15:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose: This is unenforceable and silly. There's also nothing about it that existing guidelines don't already address. If you really feel that strongly about driving out the boogeyman that is the for-profit Wikipedia editor, advocate an outright ban on the practice. That said, don't preclude anyone from commenting on an AfD. Those who are truly here for self-promotion tend to be pretty obvious anyway. Faustus37 (talk) 03:28, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Support. I agree this is a step in the right direction. Some degree of exclusion (not total) from AFD may be necessary due to retaliatory nominations or nominations of articles related to competitors e.g. User:Gigs/Avaya Pushers. MER-C 05:38, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per Faustus37. All of this COI paranoia is just that ... paranoia. It's unproductive and isn't getting us anywhere. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:22, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't like language that establishes one "must not" do something. --Jayron32 12:03, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. I believe I've said enough above that I don't need to repeat it here. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Will you consider the new draft below, if you have not already? Gigs (talk) 16:28, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Support in spirit, though I'd want to tweak the wording a little. For example, all marketing professionals will say they are "merely publishing factual information" or merely removing misleading information, so I'd prefer to see that clause removed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:01, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose No editor who can't "edit in a way compatible with our core mission of unbiased coverage" should be editing ... but no POV editor thinks they're biased (it's the other guy who's biased). Looks nice at first glance, in practice unenforceable, and just something else to argue about. We have existing guidelines which apply to all editors, don't need any special ones for subgroups, including paid ones. Nobody Ent 10:32, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose instruction creep. Even the subject of an article can remove obviously false, defamatory, or vandalistic content from their own article. Therefore, their paid agent may do so as well. Moreover, most marketing contracts don't say "You will promote me". This proposal is chasing the wrong problem. When an editor appears who is tenacious and non-neutral, whether because they are a paid advocate, ideologue, or nut job, the correct response is to ban them. Trying to ascertain motivation is an unnecessary side show. Jehochman ^Talk 13:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
• oppose First, this is justification for personal attacks based on exaggeration of the level of commitment to a cause. For instance, in religious subjects it's generally the case the the most knowledgeable editors are adherents; it's questionable to say that the only people who can edit articles on Catholicism are the irreligious or perhaps adherents of non-Christian religions, because they are perhaps the least likely to have adequate subject knowledge. Second, the "correct" solution for most such conflicted editors under such a rule is greater stealth. Finally, this is setting up a catch-22 for people who have a legitimate obligation to defend their client. If libelous material is put in an article on a person, and the lawyer sees it, is his only recourse going to be to plead on a talk page for its removal, very carefully stepping around any mention of legalities? We need to get these people to play, but to play by the rules. Mangoe (talk) 17:28, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
  • The version below makes it clearer that things like removal of libel (real libel, not just negative information) is allowed. Gigs (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
• Support However how do we define these terms? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:14, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
• Support new draft below. As long as we give carte blanche to editors whose contractual obligations prevent them from upholding our neutral point of view policy, they will place an undue burden on those of us who would support the five pillars. Gobōnobō ^{+ c} 07:28, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
• Support - although in agreement with SV about marketing bit. --Claritas § 16:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

New draft

Changelog:

• Must->Should : To address concerns about being too absolute, especially for a guideline
• Participate in deletion -> initiate deletion processes : To help prevent deletion abuse (especially prod/csd) while not denying a voice in relevant AfDs.
• Removed psychological example: too nuanced of a case to give as a one-line example
• Removed specific mention of ethics in the bold bit, but left an ethical example. Keep in mind it only says they should not edit when the obligation impairs them from editing neutrally Yes, this is a big loophole that you could drive a truck through. This isn't as much about enforcement as it is about enhancing our terminology on COI, providing guidance for good-faith editors, and giving us a foundation to have better discussions in the future.
• Articles->content per good feedback that "articles" is not precise enough.
• Integrated a few changes suggested by Corporate Minion, who actually is a marketing professional, because he was concerned that the current version didn't properly express the intractable COI he believes he has (we need more editors like him).

I feel obligated to point out again, this isn't supposed to be the solution to paid advocacy. It's not intended that way. It's not inspired by any one previous incident here either. This is wording that has been developed over the last few weeks as a way to integrate professional terminology and concepts on COI into the guideline.

Ex post facto proposed changes

These changes were suggested below and will likely be integrated, subject to further discussion and consensus:

• Replace lawyer example with "A lawyer's obligation to zealously advocate for his client."
• Rename section from "Intractable COI" to "Fundamental COI"

---

Intractable conflict of interest

If you have an external relationship that creates a duty or obligation that would impair your ability to edit in a way compatible with our core mission of unbiased coverage, then you should not directly edit content or initiate deletion processes related to such a relationship.

Examples of obligations that might fall under this section include but are not limited to:

• a lawyer's professional code of ethics obligating him to advance the interests of his client
• a marketing professional's obligation to serve a client's best interest

If you believe this applies to you, you can still participate in discussions regarding content related to such a relationship. You may also still edit directly if your edit falls under the exceptions outlined in non-controversial edits below.

• Oppose This seems too creepy. For example, one might say that anyone who has taken an oath of allegiance or pledge of allegiance is thereby putting themselves in the position of supporting their "country, right or wrong". Warden (talk) 10:44, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

• Disclosure I invited some of those previously opposed back for another look at the new draft. If they do not comment we should consider their previous comments to still apply to this new draft. Gigs (talk) 14:06, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment: Just some thoughts here. The words "such a relationship" are somewhat vague. Should it be "articles related to the party to which you owe an obligation"? This may be splitting hairs, but to me a "relationship" refers to the contractual bond between two parties. Articles related to that contractual bond (or other duty, as described) could be a number of things. To use an example, what articles or content relate to a lawyer's relationship with a client? Presumably, articles about the client. But maybe also an article about the law firm that cites its relationship with the client. Let's say Big Company X is represented by Big Lawyer Y. Is Big Lawyer Y forbidden to edit any part of his own article at all (bearing in mind regular COI issues) because it relates to the relationship? On the flip side of this, another possible issue is the use of "should not directly edit articles" that are related to the relationship. This in a sense is too narrow. What about sections of articles related to the relationship? Do those count under the policy? Say Big Lawyer Y edits a section of an article about lawsuits over asbestos exposure in which Big Company X is involved. The article doesn't relate to their contractual relationship, but the section does. --Batard0 (talk) 15:02, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • You make a good point, but I think you are focusing on the wrong word. I'll change "articles" to "content", which should address those cases. Thanks. Gigs (talk) 15:31, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
    • That's a good solution. Support this. --Batard0 (talk) 18:00, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
• I've integrated a few more tweaks based on this feedback and Corporate Minion's very good-faith feedback on my talk page. Gigs (talk) 15:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - considering that I think this whole page is sort of naval gazing and silly as the people who cause the most damage would flat out ignore this page anyway or even wikilawyer their way out of most remedies shy of ArbCom hearings (aka the real problematic users who cause heartburn by staying just barely within the rules but pissing everybody else off in the process), I'm not really caring that much about the minutiae of little things like this. None the less, pointing out that there are some people who have a specific interest to advocate their client's point of view may have problems with other policies like WP:NPOV or even WP:NOT is useful to explain in a neutral manner in and of itself. I would argue that this page as a whole is far too long and really needs to be cut down, but if you want to explain some examples of people who should be refraining from pressing the "save page" button with changes to articles, I'm fine with that. Changing from must to should is useful, although I would even suggest it should be simply stated that behavior of this manner is merely discouraged. Somebody who is determined to edit Wikipedia with a strong POV really won't be prevented from editing in that manner, most especially long-time users who know how to game the system. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: Suggest simplifying to remove convoluted legalese. Example:
  

Edits made based on an implied legal duty or obligation, paid or otherwise, shall be presumed a COI and non-neutral. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 19:39, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Your example is exactly the kind of imprecise terminology that this proposal intends to help address. "Edits" can't be "presumed a COI", unless you are using some jargon definition of "COI". In discussion after discussion, we seem to keep running into problems where people are using the same words to refer to apparently different things. Brevity is a fine goal, but not when you are giving up necessary precision. Gigs (talk) 19:59, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Comment/oppose "a marketing professional's obligation to serve a client's best interest". It is a client's best interest that, if the client is notable according to our rules, there be a NPOV appropriate article about them in WP. The usual problem is when a marketing professional or the client mistakenly thinks their best interest is to have a promotional article here. Our need is to oppose the use of Wikipedia for promotion, regardless of whether done naïvely or in good faith or with a personal or monetary COI. DGG ( talk ) 20:01, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

disagree with DGG. You're certainly entitled to your opinion "It is a client's best interest that, if the client is notable according to our rules, there be a NPOV appropriate article about them in WP," but it is just an opinion that many folks obviously disagree with. You might as well say "It is a client's best interest that advertisers present unbiased information about their products in ads." Based on a lifetime of seeing adverts, I have to say that's just wrong 99.9% of the time, and I think 99.9% of editors here would agree. The businesses, in the end, are the ones who judge their own best interests and from real world evidence we can conclude that they do not value neutrality in their communications with the public as highly as we do. We should assume good faith in following our rules - if we state them clearly - for individuals who come here. But there is no reason to assume that a contractually paid advocate of a business (which can't edit here as a corporate entity - multiperson account) which in no way has agreed to follow our rules, will edit in an NPOV manner. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I have been watching closely, but I'm not sure what to say. Actually, I sort of do. An effort like Gigs's to narrow a new idea to the the most extreme/clear-cut situation is just what what need and should be supported. And so I WANT to support something like this. But I keep thinking that the two proposals have some issues. I think that what's missing is editing in a way that translates into improper editing in Wikipedia, or whether that obligation extends to editing in Wikipedia. Once me and my best friend were paid by our employers to do battle with each other with millions of dollars at stake. We handled it by just separating the two things completely and proceeding based on whatever hat we were wearing at the time. I think it is possible for some people to do the same when we check everything else at the door when we edit Wikipedia. Several times I have, on Wikipedian grounds, butted heads with the people who hold the same POV as me and went to bat for people with the opposite POV as me. If I were a lawyer, I would never enter into any agreement that required me to bribe judges, kill witnesses, or improperly edit Wikipedia....that is not a part of the representation/advocacy deal. So, IMHO, the only real intractable wp:coi is where their agreed-to obligation includes improper/advocacy editing of Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 22:20, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

But when you have a contract or a professional ethical code requiring you to advocate - with proper exclusions to not bribe judges or kill witnesses - but with no exclusion for Wikipedia editing, then you are required to advocate on Wikipedia if you edit here. I keep wanting to add an "easy out" and I think that has to be full disclosure of the employer and a simple statement saying that the editor understands the rule against advocacy here and has specific (perhaps written) permission from the employer not to advocate here. Among other things, this creates an "audit trail." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:41, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not saying there will be no attempt to advertise, and that it cannot sometimes be in the best interest of a business to advertise, or for a cause to engage in promotion. But it will never be in their best interest to do so here. There is a difference between what will be seen as appropriate on a web page and in an encyclopedia. There is a certain degree of overlap between some types of product-based advertising and a NPOV promotion of products, but there is a great deal of advertising that falls outside that range. It is up to us collectively to make sure it is in the best interests of commercial and other organizations to not put the unacceptable material here. The best way is to remove it, and to remove editors who repeatedly add it. Some PR people will learn, but I am under no delusion that all of them will. (by DGG)

• I very much like the idea of having a box that raises the broad question of what COI is, briefly details who really SHOULDN'T be editing on a given topic, and linking to a formally approved guideline definition of "non-controversial edits"... I don't care for the term "Intractable COI". Maybe "Fundamental COI" as an alternative wording? Carrite (talk) 23:20, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • That would be a fine name too. Gigs (talk) 00:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • +1 on the name change. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:56, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Support. This would work. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:02, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment/Oppose: Eh, much better than the previous draft. I still fail to see what this resolves, if anything. Faustus37 (talk) 01:06, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for taking another look. Gigs (talk) 01:25, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Question/Comment I'm still a bit leary about this wording, indeed I am struggling to understand how existing wording is inadequate? Either content is appropriate or inappropriate, and if it is inappropriate, any editor can fix it. We already have wording that tells editors they should avoid editing under a conflict of interest. Why do we need to tell them again? --Jayron32 03:35, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • We have struggled in the past having discussions of COI because of imprecise wording and jargon. This proposes a baseline definition of the most extreme cases of COI that uses wording that is common in professional codes of ethics and discussions of COI. We can address potential redundancy later. I view this as a first step toward maturing our attitude and vocabulary regarding COI by defining it in terms of something other than editing outcomes (while still making it clear that the editing outcome is what we are primarily concerned with). As an endpoint, I agree this doesn't seem like a compelling addition. I think it makes sense as a first step toward refining our conversation on COI though. Gigs (talk) 13:50, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Remove "professional code of ethics" - a professional code of ethics will never never require you to edit Wikipedia for the client. Seriously. Replace with "A lawyer's obligation to zealously advocate for his client." Comment I just want to make clear that a) this isn't a requirement (e.g. you don't have to out yourself) and b) We aren't telling you what your professional responsibilities are (governmental or professional regulations do that) but are reminding you to consider whether such a conflict exists and, if so, whether you can edit Wikipedia fairly in light of it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:56, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

"Never" "Never"? The PR code of ethics quoted above clearly states their #1 ethical priority "ADVOCACY" "We serve the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for those we represent. We provide a voice in the marketplace of ideas, facts, and viewpoints to aid informed public debate." Now this doesn't say that they have to edit Wikipedia (we agree that far), but if they do edit Wikipedia (the only case we're interested in), then they have to be advocates first. Imagine a lawyer writing here - if he knows of reliable sources - "XXX witnessed the murder, and his expected rock-solid testimony is almost sure to convict my client" If the lawyer knows that and has the sources, a neutral edit should include it, but of course he'd be disbarred for that, and maybe be sent to jail (justifiably). Shouldn't we tell people clearly when they can't possibly edit here according to our rules? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:25, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

If they do edit Wikipedia regarding a client, there could be issues. But that's what the change I proposed is meant to address - there's a significant difference between "required to edit wikipedia" and not. The current statement implies that he could be required to edit Wikipedia. I also propose rewording to include the term of art "zealous advocacy". --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:02, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Philosopher, I'd have no problem with changing the example to your wording. I don't want to generate yet another draft at this point, but consider it done as far as I am concerned (can't speak for everyone, but your arguments are sound). You make good points. Thanks for considering this new draft. Gigs (talk) 13:26, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I could support such a draft. (Though I still think the COI page could be cut down to a simple "be careful" warning.) --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 14:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• So now "Intractable COI" is now "Fundamental COI"? I see no point in even adding this section. A COI is a COI. If a lawyer thinks they can get Charles Manson out of jail by editing the article to say that Manson was falsely convicted, and was not even in the state at the time, well that would not last long. I just see this as a solution in search of a problem. If someone has an intractable COI and feels compelled by professional relationship to edit an article, a policy telling them that under no circumstances must they do that is certainly going to have about the affect of a napkin in a hurricane - none. Apteva (talk) 01:47, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
  • It's not about being compelled to edit. It's about being compelled to edit in a non-neutral way if they choose to edit. Gigs (talk) 02:26, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
    • I think "Intractable" is actually better. Editors often ask me to just check my COI at the door and edit away, but when your edits are approved by the legal department six months in advance - that is not a COI you can check at the door. In one case an article presented to Wikipedia had more than 50 people involved, who each had to be educated on Wikipedia's rules, but one single person from that organization has to step forward. What we're talking about is not individuals with a COI that they have the power to put aside, but how to do good, ethical and valuable public relations on Wikipedia as a representative of an organization. Corporate 16:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
      • Thanks for your input on this. I think as a community we fail to grasp the extent of planning and organization that sometimes goes into paid advocacy. Gigs (talk) 17:32, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I think most of my objections still apply:

1. The idea that a marketing professional's code of ethics obliges him to serve the client's best interest regardless of any other considerations seems based on your own interpretation of the marketers' code, not on any evidence that that is how the code is widely understood among marketers. Moreover, someone pointed out above that one such code prohibits things which "corrupt the integrity of channels of public communication", and I could equally well interpret that as meaning that marketers must abide by Wikipedia rules.
2. A marketer, lawyer, or other such person isn't any more biased than the client himself, but we don't propose that the client himself be subject to such restrictions. I happen to think that many of the reasons people edit their own BLPs map to a company employee editing for the company.
3. There are plenty of relationships where one person is obligated to serve the interests of another which seem to be covered by the reasoning in the rule which we obviously don't want to restrict. I already gave the example of a parent and child, for instance.
4. This rule is likely to lead to the ethical editors declaring their conflict of interest and getting hounded away from pages by people who don't believe their claims that they can edit without bias. Meanwhile less ethical editors will just not disclose and get away with it.

Ken Arromdee (talk) 20:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a nuance issue. Lobbyists are advocates and they can do their job ethically and be valuable to politicians, but they still don't write the laws themselves (and for good reason). If PR people could write themselves into the media, The New York Times would be filled with advertorials, but we create compelling, newsy stories journalists want, because we're required to in order to be successful. PRs who edit Wikipedia directly don't have to be neutral to succeed, but those that use Talk pages do. A PR person is obligated to their client or boss to do what is in their best interest. Using Talk pages it's in their best interest to be neutral, using article-space non-disclosed, it is not. However, I do think there is a big civility problem with COI. Civility is also a problem on Wikipedia in general. Corporate 08:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose because this is part of the overall COI policy and does not need to be expanded. Plenty of other good reasons are listed above as well. However, whether the COI is about an article concerning you directly, your organization, someone you represent, or some organization that you represent doesn't matter. You still have COI, and we don't need to single this flavor of it out specially. It's not special. It's just plain and simple COI, so no need to write special rules likely to stir up more problems than it will maybe fix. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 04:56, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
• Supportive in part. I'm mainly weighing in to point out that Ken Arromdee's points just above sound like they were cooked up as talking points by some marketing support group ... of course you shouldn't pass any laws against industrial-scale deception, because the next thing you know, your government will be telling you that you can't tell your child about Santa Claus! None of those arguments hold water, but rather than wasting time in a shouting match, I'd rather wait for the Wikimedia Deutschland report to help us gauge how EU anti-promotionalism law is evolving, so that we can support it. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - I don't think it adds anything necessary to COI guidelines in place, and I think the restriction is too broad in some circumstances. For example, someone may work for a marketing company which has a particular corporate client (which has a Wikipedia page). The corporate client recently hired a new CEO, which has been reported in reliable sources but no one has yet updated the Wikipedia article. The marketing company employee should be able to update this neutral, reliably sourced information unhindered, even though that doesn't fall within the narrow non-controversial edits category (unless having outdated CEO information is construed as a BLP violation; if so it could be different neutral, relevant, reliably sourced information about the company). Rlendog (talk) 19:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
• Comment/Weak Oppose; I think the concerns are brought about by good faith concern about COI edits. However, only because someone MAY have a COI doesn't mean that they cannot contribute with good faith, and neutrally. To assume that an individual editor, or group of editors are not editing neutrally is already assuming bad faith of those editors. This brings to mind something I re-read recently by Kissinger. In it he wrote that all individuals act towards their own best interest, seeing those actions as justified; however, since some individuals interests will sometimes be opposite of other individuals interest, even though both parties may be on opposite sides of an issue, they both believe that they are acting in the best interest of the situation. I believe this is where civil consensus comes into play. We already have concepts in place, and a forum which to reach consensus, in the talk pages of the articles, where discussions can occur, and consensus can be reached. Moreover, consensus is not a majority, and yet it is at the same time not unanimous. Sometimes, there are a group of editors who see the best interest of a subject not to include content that others may find as meeting due weight requirements, with each side believing that they are editing in the best interest of the subject; again, that is where consensus brings about the compromise which leads to the content that will remain. Sometimes, as individual editors, we may not agree with where the majority of editors have come down on in a discussion, or another; and sometimes, given the biases which all editors have (and given that some biases are more prevalent than others), it may feel that one is being constantly being opposed. However, that does not mean that one's efforts are for not. By being a voice of civil disagreement, it may sometimes lead to furthering discussions that may not be had otherwise, and may change others opinions overtime.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 07:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

WP:BRIGHTLINE-type approaches should not be justified on the basis of ABF. On the contrary many PR people would rather blow their brains out than edit Wikipedia, but are under pressure by bosses or clients. In other cases agencies are trying to tell their clients not to edit Wikipedia, but it is difficult for them to do when there is no firm rule.

Any rule, guideline or documentation we create is intended for AGF COIs, because any ABF will ignore our rules anyway. We should not see it as a means of "enforcement" rather than equipping PRs with what they need to get out of bad situations.

Instead of trying to address every exception, we should just point out it's a guideline that is to be treated with common sense.

Corporate 07:52, 7 December 2012 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

• Oppose I do not see the benefit of this. The current guideline is clear that it is the nature of the edit that creates a COI - an editor is not automatically conflicted. Babakathy (talk) 09:49, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Discouraged"

A few weeks ago there was a discussion between Slim, Ocaasi and myself[7] about the language "COI editing is strongly discouraged." Because this is a vague and blanket statement, it may be interpreted to mean that COI editors are discouraged from doing even things that are universally helpful, such as factual corrections, donating images, or bringing attention to blatantly non-NPOV content.

I suggested it would be beneficial to offer more nuanced guidance, where we would establish what is (a) prohibited (b) discouraged (c) comes with cautions and warnings (d) encouraged. CorporateM (Talk) 19:41, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't there is any answer to that other than individual opinions. This whole field has been a Gordion knot with no real progress. I have figured out what the problem is, and am 90% done on figuring out a framework (for work on this) to propose that would allow genuine slow progress. Work in progress at WP:Strategic issues with core policies#Structure needed to resolve clarification of wp:coi North8000 (talk) 20:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I think part of the reason for the stalemate is the obsession with possible exceptions, but there is a reason WP:COI is a guideline, which should be treated with common sense and IAR under rare exceptions.

I would suggest to abandon "conflict of interest" entirely (for PR editors). I have done PR for years and have never told a journalist I had a "conflict of interest" with their readers. Instead we should discuss how to do good (valuable) public relations on Wikipedia. Most journalists will say that good PR is valuable, but they don't accept us as fellow editors or identify us as authors with a COI.

CorporateM (Talk) 21:33, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, not responding to your most recent comment) That said, here's one of those personal opinions. When you come to Wikipedia as an editor, leave your biases at the door. Your job here is to edit solely based on the objectives of Wikipedia. And make all edits accordingly. If you are a forthright person and capable of judging your own capabilities objectively regarding that and capable of doing that, edit on that basis. If you are honest but unable to do that, declare you that you have a potentially conflicting interest, discuss any questionable edits more thoroughly, and edit....this will enable others to handle any issues. If you are a both incapable-of-that and sleazy, you will just edit without declaring such and we can just hope that other Wikipedians will keep you from doing too much damage.

BTW, based on our previous interactions, I know that you are a person that is both in a high-risk-of-coi situation, and a very forthright and principled and intelligent person who wants to help sort this out and do things properly. You would be the prefect person to help us sort this out, and it would be to Wikipedia's benefit to listen much more closely to you and engage you on this topic. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:44, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I think your perspective is more representative of consensus than mine. In my experience, a lot of PRs (including myself) are under tremendous pressure to make intentionally bias edits. A lot of PRs don't want to be here, but they are obligated to do their jobs (so saying "COI Editing is discouraged" is a little silly). Educating them on the Bright Line and astroturfing laws helps ethical PRs push back with their employers/clients.

I prefer not to AGF, which presumes the editor supports our altruistic goals, and instead only presume the editor is "trying to do the right thing" as suggested by the original WP:COI. Most PRs will do the right thing when they know how, but we have to help equip them with the tools they need. PRs are only in a position to be neutral, when we can convince our paymasters that this is the highest ROI approach to Wikipedia. When we tolerate bias astroturf, but troll editors doing decent work, we have the carrot and stick in the wrong places.

Anyways, I'm happy to help any way I can. I have a different take being on both sides of the fence. CorporateM (Talk) 00:45, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the current community view lies, but once upon a time, we made a distinction between "COI editing" (an actual, WP:DIFFable change to a page that favored your real-life self more than it favored building the enyclopedia) and being an editor who had a close connection to the subject. It is something akin to the distinction between being tempted to steal candy from babies and actually doing it, and we only prohibited the bad act, not doing good work while you are under real-world pressure to do bad work.

The last time I was truly au courant with COI, it was a conceptual mess for the community. We do have a few people who believe that all editing by all employees, the subjects of the articles, etc. is inherently evil, even if the editing is just reverting obvious vandalism. We have a few people who believe that paid editing is inevitable and impossible to identify, so we should pretty much give up. And we have a lot of people who like to lob around phrases like conflict of interest in disputes, but who can't even be bothered to read the guideline to find out whether their idea of COI has anything to do with the official guideline (it often doesn't). For example, I've seen someone insist that peer-reviewed medical journal articles can't be used as reliable sources in articles about surgeries, because all the authors are paid professional surgeons who are trying to increase their surgical fees, so only patient websites can be trusted to tell the truth. There is a lot of nonsense going about, and I don't think we'll be able to solve it easily. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

From my perspective the Wikipedia community says "go ahead and edit, as long as you're neutral." This is like telling the company to review their own product on Amazon, but "just write a fair review." Philosophically, it's "the edit that counts," but in practice this isn't a sensible way to go about it. CorporateM (Talk) 14:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and COI contributor)

The truth is that editors, by nature, tend to have some COI simply because they write about things they care about, one way or the other. I edit articles on Christianity and railroading because I am a Christian and because I have a lifelong love of trains. I do write about other random things too (I've created two articles on people mentioned on Shorpy, for instance) but much of my editing is, to some large degree, a labor of love towards the subject of the article. And sometimes, we find ourselves engaged in labors of hate against our enemies. On this level we have to rely on our personal integrity to tell the truth and neither hide our own love's blemishes, nor to play up the faults of those whom we hate. Thus at some level all talk about COI here can only be advice, not direction. We can (and should) advise people not to write articles on themselves, or at their employer's behest, or to edit-for-hire. But the reason for this advice is that these are relationships often strong enough to compromise the integrity of the editor; but in my experience the corrupting power of religious or ethnic or political affiliation is far stronger than that of mere employment, and we cannot very well advise people only to write on subjects they don't care about. Mangoe (talk) 14:37, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

That's true. That's why I proposed a clear definition on the sort of COI that we can't tolerate, recognizing that there's some level of COI with most editors on at least some topics. The proposal met with mixed reactions. Gigs (talk) 14:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Having a point of view, including a strong one such as a religious belief, may lead to POV editing, but that isn't the same thing as having a conflict of interest. A COI has to do with external relationships, as the guideline says: "While editing Wikipedia, an editor's primary role is to be a Wikipedian. Any external relationship (any secondary role) may undermine that primary role, and when it does undermine it, or could reasonably be said to undermine it, that person has a conflict of interest."

That's the only issue this page is concerned about, not POV editing in general. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Not according to the definitions at the top (or to those editors who have said on this talk page they are satisfied with those definitions). They say nothing about relationships - only about what's "important" to a given editor. I agree with you about what this page is really about - but the introduction totally fails to make that clear. Victor Yus (talk) 08:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Victor, I've seen you produce some great writing elsewhere, including leads. Would you be willing to try rewriting this lead to reflect the rest of the page? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) But there are people here who are strongly supportive of the lead as it currently reads, so I guess we'll need to get agreement first. Victor Yus (talk) 10:45, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

SV, based on your edit history, I'd bet you have "a relationship" with an animal rights organization. It "could be said" that this relationship undermines your role as a Wikipedia editor. In fact, I'll bet that it has been said to you, by more than one POV pusher. But you do great work on those articles. Why would we want to declare you to have a COI and discourage one of our best editors from working on the articles that interest her?

The same "could be said" about any person who believes he or she has a relationship with God and wants to work on religion-related articles, any healthcare professional working on medicine-related articles, any mathematician working on maths articles, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Then you would lose your bet, because I don't, not even as a member. I agree that someone being an ordinary member of an animal advocacy group wouldn't necessarily count as a COI (especially when it's one of the large ones), or someone being a member of their local church. It would give them a POV, but that's not the same as a COI. But when the external relationship is one where there are responsibilities to an outside group, or where money is involved, or there is a close personal relationship that triggers feelings of loyalty, then a COI emerges. It emerges when the external relationship makes claims on the editor that challenge the claims of Wikipedia. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

There are a few differences. For starters, most POV pushers won't follow instructions; PR people most often will. Also, it is naive for us to compare the two academically, when we know that intentional bias for money is more offensive than accidental bias. Determining whether the bias is intentional or not is difficult to do. Also, marketing professionals are bound by legal and ethical guidelines that regular bias consumers are not. As well as media risks, perceptions of impropriety and other issues that are unique to that form of COI.

A lot of reviewers on Amazon.com are bias; a lot of professional journalists are bias; but it's different if a marketing professional is bias AND the reader doesn't know the content is coming from them. On the other hand, I do think it's important to note that bias is prolific, company articles are a junk-yard and we should not uphold an extraordinary double-standard to PR editors under a paranoia that their imperfect content will corrupt the site.

I would say something along the lines of "we're professionals; its about time we act like it." That being said, where one is a "professional Wikipedian" all their work should be GA-quality, something I'm still working up to.

Anyways, I actually wrote an essay: How WP:COI would read if I wrote it I just plan to keep it in essay form, but if anyone feels some things are worth borrowing, it's all yours ;-)

CorporateM (Talk) 18:42, 6 February 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

Template proposal

I've initiated an RfC regarding a proposed editnotice or Talk page template for articles about organizations. The template provides instructions to PR participants and has a nice "click here" button, which auto-fills a standardized Request Edit format along with other instructions.

I thought regular participants on this board might be interested in participating in the discussion at: Template:COI editnotice CorporateM (Talk) 18:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

I'll just ask something about this guideline. Say, for example, I decide to create an article about my friend, who happens to be a professional basketball player. However, being familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, I only include information from reliable sources and write it from a neutral point of view. Is this allowed under this guideline? 112.208.40.174 (talk) 00:36, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd advise against it. If he's really that notable, someone else will create the article. Creating the article is a whole other level beyond making a simple correction. Doczilla _STOMP! 02:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

But if the enquirer is familiar with WP policies etc., and is going to act in accordance with them, then why not? The deduction that "X is notable" implies "Someone will create an article about X" doesn't seem to hold in real life (at least in general, I don't know if it holds about basketball players specifically - probably depends what country they play in). Victor Yus (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Combine those two responses and you get the policy: We generally advise against it, and many users who try to make reasonable edits to COI topics have trouble doing so, but such editing is allowed. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 12:26, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with "advise against it" for this case. But I don't agree that such would be against policy. North8000 (talk) 13:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you don't think what would be against policy? – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:48, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

North agrees that there is no policy prohibiting this user from creating this article.

The OP might prefer to use WP:Articles for creation rather than directly creating the article in mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) suggesting that NPOV tags should replace COI tags

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) #Outing and obvious COI. I'm pointing to it here not because of the issue I raised about outing but because editors here might be interested in the arguments that COI tags should not be used because NPOV tags are sufficient. Dougweller (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Covert advertising: 2012 German court ruling

Suggested addition:

"Editors are individually responsible for following the laws in their own jurisdiction(s), as Wikipedia's policies may not match those laws by being either more permissive or prohibitive. The Wikipedia database is stored on servers in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under those local and federal laws. Where one's local laws conflict with Wikipedia's policies, the policies on Wikipedia take precedence for Wikipedia's purposes, but your local laws still apply to you as an individual." (See also the General disclaimer and Legal disclaimer).

Thoughts? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:44, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

You mean that when your local laws conflict with Wikipedia's policies, the policies take precedence for Wikipedia's purposes. Clearly for your own purposes, your local laws take precedence. Also I don't believe being more permissive or prohibitive necessarily leads to what we would call a "conflict". Victor Yus (talk) 17:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I've incorporated your suggestions above. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:53, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not keen on this suggestion. It could be read as "ignore that what you're doing might be illegal in your country; what counts is what the law says in Florida." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

These rulings are indeed interesting and perhaps relevant for German and UK editors; however what the section as written currently does is reference two regional jurisdictions neither of which are not binding on Wikipedia. My point is "Wikipedia follows its own policies, and the laws of the US and Florida; be aware that your local laws may differ and you're responsible for following them, while also noting that Wikipedia's policies do not necessarily match your local laws." When we mention local laws, I think it's necessary to contextualize them with the guidance in those established disclaimers. I recognize this might seem like encouraging editors to act in the more permissive way, but I primarily intend it rather as a statement of fact about laws and jurisdictions insofar as they apply to Wikipedia. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

If we go down this road, also of interest would be the US Federal Trade Commission's guidance: [8] and [9]. Still more the ethical guidelines of the Public Relations Society of America or Chartered Institute of Public Relations' ethical code. Yet, still I suggest caution in providing or even suggesting legal guidance to other editors, or relying on other organizations' rules which are not binding on Wikipedia. Our policies are not legal documents nor are they reviews of jurisdictional law and institutional practice. They reflect Wikipedia policies which may or may not have anything to do with a jurisdiction's legal statutes and court rulings, or a professional association's codes. While these might be informative for forming our policies and guidelines, I am not sure they belong in them. And if we do mention them, then I think we have to construct a representative and global summary of relevant laws and codes, which seems outside the scope of this specific guideline. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd also appreciate renaming the section Jurisdictional rulings and law as it's not just about the German court ruling and implies broader considerations.

Last, I've asked Philippe to comment here about whether or not this guideline has legal implications or considerations and how we should approach that. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:26, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I've never been happy about this section, which leaves me feeling like it's just fine as long as I'm not part of one of the specific countries mentioned. I think it ought to be replaced with a single, very simple sentence that reaffirms the Terms of use, e.g., "In addition to complying with US laws, you should comply with your own country's regulations about advertising". If necessary, we could then link to articles on the legal issues associated with astroturfing or a separate essay that describe the latest legal cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Draft of a more comprehensive version

Note, this is far longer than the current version and still not representative of global practices, nor in any way binding on Wikipedia policies/guidelines... but it is interesting. I strongly question whether selecting single recent cases from a court in Germany or a UK case that involved Twitter and not Wikipedia--or picking only large but not all encompassing PR organizations in the US and UK--makes this a meaningful improvement over the current version. My instinct is that the scope of this discussion primarily belongs in an associated essay; I'm collecting notes at User:Ocaasi/coicode. Comments are welcome. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 00:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Jurisdictional law and professional codes

Local and regional laws

Editors are individually responsible for following the laws, rules, and codes in their own jurisdiction(s) and professions, as Wikipedia's policies may not match, either being more permissive or more prohibitive. The Wikipedia database is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under relevant local and federal United States laws. Where one's local laws conflict with Wikipedia's policies, the policies on Wikipedia take precedence for Wikipedia's purposes, but local laws may still apply to editors as individuals. (See also the General disclaimer and Legal disclaimer).

Some court cases suggest editing by corporate representatives may be a violation of national or regional law. For example, in May 2012 the Munich Oberlandesgericht ruled that if a company or its agents edit Wikipedia with the aim of influencing customers, the edits constitute covert advertising, and as such are a violation of European fair trading law (see the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive). The ruling stated that readers cannot be expected to seek out user and talk pages to find editors' disclosures about their corporate affiliation. The case arose out of a claim against a company by a competitor over edits made to the article Weihrauchpräparat on the German Wikipedia. The judgment can be read here.

In another incident, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK ruled in June 2012 in relation to material about Nike on Twitter. The ASA found that the content of certain tweets from two footballers had been "agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team." Since the tweets were not clearly identified as Nike marketing communications, they were therefore in breach of the ASA's code. "Nike becomes first UK company to have Twitter campaign banned", Sweney, Mike. The Guardian, 20 June 2012. The US Federal Trade Commission's advertising guideline and internet rules also guide against deceptive practices or making promotions or endorsements without disclosure.

Professional ethical codes

Some professional societies such as the Public Relations Society of America in their ethical guidelines of the Public Relations Society of America or the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' in their ethical code require revealing sponsors and not intentionally concealing ones role as representative of a client or employer. The International Association of Business Communicators code requires communication that is ethical, truthful, accurate and fair, that facilitates respect and mutual understanding, that is honest and candid, and that fosters the free flow of essential information in accord with the public interest. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association's code advises promoting an environment of trust between the consumer and marketer through honesty and transparency without manipulation are rejected, with meaningful disclosures of relationships or identities, and disclosure of commercial relationships with marketers; WOMMA also "respects online venues to create and enforces rules as they see fit."

Again, while instructive and perhaps relevant for individual editors, these laws and codes are not binding for Wikipedia unless stated specifically in our policies.

I think this would be fine material for an accompanying essay. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it's sufficient to just say that anonymous corporate participants may be violating marketing regulations that require them to identify the source of their communications, especially on crowd-sourced websites. We don't need to provide them with legal advice or tons of historical context, just a "warning, don't do XYZ, it may be illegal!" CorporateM (Talk) 21:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

COI template

I have initiated a discussion at Village Pump Proposals regarding applying Template:COI editnotice more broadly, in order to provide advice from WP:COI directly onto the article Talk page. Comments, support or opposition is invited. Cheers. CorporateM (Talk) 21:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for Fees Paid to Wikipedia for Rapid Adjudication of Edit Changes

This proposal is one that would need to be considered and acted upon by the Wikipedia board of directors, but I'm posting it here in the hopes that those here will perhaps help start a discussion page (I'm not quite sure how to do that. It's been years since I was active on Wikipedia) and contribute to the discussion to the point that maybe it finally moves up to Jimmy Wales' attention.

This idea occurred to me after reading web articles regarding PR professionals, such as Bell Pottinger Private, who have had discussions with Jimmy Wales about trying to balance transparency with neutrality in the editing process. This led me to theConflict of interest editing on Wikipedia article where I was glad to see there is an active discussion taking place to try to find some better balance of interests.

I was never a paid editor, but as a person with some training and expertise in the controversial area post-abortion syndrome(post-abortion syndrome), I did try to fix some clearly slanted article on the subject several years ago. I respected the need for neutrality and verifiablity, so I took great care to document every edit with citations to peer reviewed medical journal articles. But my effort to bring balance to articles net with adamant resistance from hostile point-of-view pushers who consistently deleted material which conflicted with their POV. This small gang of POV pushers engaged in obstruction and [[10]] until I was eventually driven out.

I understand that there are now some opportunities to appeal edits to "the community" asking volunteers to review or mediate disputes. But this takes time and often more effort in communicating and documenting and arguing than it is worth. Plus, volunteer arbiters may simply bring their own biases to their decisions . . . and any sophisticated political or business group might also have "sleepers" in the volunteer dispute resolution groups who are there precisely to tilt the balance their way from an "objective" volunteer.

So here's my suggestion. It is one that would benefit PR professionals, volunteer editors with expertise in a field, and any editor who believe the balance of an article is being distorted by POV editors who block true and verifiable information and front load articles with POV material.

'Per Piece Paid Editing/Judging From Wikipedia Staff Editor/Judges'

Volunteer Wikipedia editorial mediation and arbitration services are fine. But they can take a long time and may not be fair or objective.

Wikipedia should offer an option for users to pay a fee for a professional editor, on Wikipedia's staff, to review the proposed changes and the basis of information for them, and to enter those those changes in the article with a definitive, official order that the approved edit shall not be changed without the consent of the person who proposed the change (and paid for it's review and verification).

This means a professional PR person with a business, for example, can transparently submit a proposed change to the Wikipedia editor/judge and if accepted, have it immediately and authoratitvely "locked into the article", notifying the other editors (especially those who are POV pushers) to not disrupt the edit.

This solution would (a) provide revenue to Wikipedia, (b) provide a mechanism for rapid correction of untruths or omissions, and (c) provide a mechanism to deliver paid, professional, authorative oversight to contentious articles in a manner that still allows for the articles to evolve but will reduce edit wars.

If the person paying the fee is unhappy with the judgement, they should be allowed to pay a second fee to have the issue examined by a panel of 3-5 of Wikipedia's paid staff--whom, of course, should be chosen based on a variety of different political, religious, and ideological views and all committed to striving toward a fair balance of such views in every article.

People willing to pay for accuracy and balance should be able to help improve Wikipedia without having to battle POV pushers as I did.

This proposal would help corporations with paid PR people to participate in Wikipedia in a transparent and timely way, and it would also help those of us with an interest in controversial subject matters to get timely and definitive decisions on edits knowing who is taking responsibility for the "yea" or "nay" decision rather than being subject to the manipulations "gangs" POV pushers and the intricacies of dealing with volunteer arbiters.

Would someone like to start a page to discuss this proposal?

This post is partially a repost of a comment I postedon this Wikipedia page --Strider ^♫♫ 15:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This can't be done, because there is no way to "lock" a change on to a page. The software doesn't permit it. We can lock the entire page, or none of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

There are several other drawbacks to this proposal, firstly it looks like giving an advantage to the organisation that pays for the change, and however you put in safeguards and layers of attempted neutrality between the editor and the person paying for the edit, that organisation's competitors will probably not accept that edit as neutral. Secondly it adds a hierarchy to the editing process, some editors who were acting on behalf of people who were paying Wikimedia would have more "authority" than other editors - that sort of change doesn't fit well with our culture.. Thirdly it would require the Foundation to get involved in content, and they have studiously avoided doing that. I'm fairly sure there are sound legal reasons why the Foundation doesn't want to start employing editors. ϢereSpielChequers 16:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for additional tag or edit summary best practice

When incorporating information that is sourced to an editor with a declared CoI, the edit summary should indicate clearly that this is the case, and identify the editor in question and ideally, the talk page discussion or userpage that is the upstream source. This should be done even in cases where the incorporated text has been modified. As a general rule, if the sourcing is mostly or completely the same as that proposed by an editor with a CoI, it should be tagged in the edit summary, even if the language changes somewhat.

I have no idea on the technical side how tagging works, but since things like section blanking get a tag placed on them, I wonder whether this can be done in a way that doesnt take up all the allotted space for the edit summary. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 23:44, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

That depends. If you actually mean an editor who's behavior has become a conflict, but we already have a policy about edit summaries and attributing the page it is copied from. This would require a change to merge guidelines and I think the possibility of abuse is pretty high as editors would begin to use it as a manner of making accusations.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Recent addition to lead

Amadscientist, I removed the new words in bold, because a PR employee would not have to be paid specifically to edit WP: "Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view made on their behalf, or at their request with payment received for that service. Their job is simply to work in PR for the company. We know this is an employment situation because the rest of the sentence already makes that clear. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Uhm...no. You are using a PR firm as an example but that is not the only type of paid advocacy. And you didn't remove all the new words. You cherry picked out "with payment for that service" which is what "paid advocacy" is. Just working for a company and editing with a close association is not paid advocacy. The information should be clear that one must actually be paid to be an advocate for the subject. The way you left it anyone who isn't being paid for such work falls under that. That makes no sense.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:08, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I left some of your words; I removed the ones in bold. Working for a company and making edits to the company article that the company requests is what we call a financial COI or paid advocacy. No one in the company has to hand you money specifically for those edits if you're on salary. The next sentence explains the different forms of paid advocacy. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

That's receiving payment for services Slim Virgin. Also, I wonder if you should be making changes to this page, as an argument could be made that you now stand in conflict of interest in this regard.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:24, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, here are the edits. The changes were made to the first sentence:

Lead as it was	Amadscientist's edit	SlimVirgin's partial revert
Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view. It includes, but is not limited to, edits made by public relations firms, companies and nonprofit organizations, and editors paid to edit Wikipedia to improve an individual's or organization's image.	Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view, made on their behalf, or at their request with payment received for that service. It includes, but is not limited to, edits made by public relations firms, companies and nonprofit organizations, and editors paid to edit Wikipedia to improve an individual's or organization's image. [11]	Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view, made on their behalf or at their request. It includes, but is not limited to, edits made by public relations firms, companies and nonprofit organizations, and editors paid to edit Wikipedia to improve an individual's or organization's image. [12]

SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:33, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

As I said, it isn't paid advocacy unless you are receiving a payment for the service.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:06, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

But you could be on salary as a company rep, tasked with defending the company's reputation. The way it was written made it sound as though people had to be paid specifically to make the edits to WP. It's therefore clearer to leave those words out, and simply to say: if you edit for your employer's point of view, on their behalf or at their request (i.e. it's not a hobby that you do in your spare time), then it's part of what we call paid advocacy.

Your other edits did improve the sentence (adding "made on their behalf or at their request"). I'm only arguing that "with payment received for that service" can be misread. Perhaps there's another way to word it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I do appreciate the fact that you did leave the other wording, but I am not sure I am clear about your concerns that "with payment received for that service" could be misread. That seems rather specific, However, I wonder if instead of that wording we could say something along the lines of:

"Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view, made on their behalf, or at their request, receiving payment to make those contributions."

If I understand you correctly, the misreading might be in relation to being paid as an advocate alone and the distinction that the edit here is what is being paid for. Thoughts--Amadscientist (talk) 01:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

That first sentence was added relatively recently (here's an earlier version), so maybe the solution is just to get rid of it. That paragraph would then say (I've tweaked it slightly): "Paid advocacy includes, but is not limited to, edits made by public relations firms, companies, nonprofit organizations, and editors paid to edit Wikipedia, with the aim of improving an individual's or organization's image." Would that work for you? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Why does it take so many words to say "Paid advocacy is advocacy which is paid" ? Rich Farmbrough, 04:11, 24 March 2013 (UTC).

I don't know if I support removing that part of the sentence. Something along those lines is very much needed but it is odd to have all those examples in the lede. I support cutting out: "It includes, but is not limited to, edits made by public relations firms, companies and nonprofit organizations, and editors paid to edit Wikipedia to improve an individual's or organization's image". That is far too wordy. What is needed is a clarification in as simple a wording as possible as Rich says. Maybe even just "'Paid advocacy' is editing for another person or group in which the editor receives compensation in any manner for those contributions." The main issue for me at this point is that we are emphasizing an employer and PR firms in specific and that really seems to it a little confusing. Paid advocacy could be for a political campaign, a feature film, television series, fan site etc., even when not actually employed by a company.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I continue to be puzzled why paid advocacy is considered worse than other forms. Even if we're talking about a commercial product, the company will usually do a better job than the fanboys. It is not a "particularly egregious" form of pov. It's a particular easily recognizable form of POV, just as monetary bribes are the most recognizable form of corruption. I think we are showing our own bias about singling it out: all of us have biases that induce us to advocacy on some subject of concern to us; most of us have organizations whose interests we support; very few of us are in a position to be paid in money for editing. We're making that third group the scapegoats, to ease our consciences about the POV we humans can not escape. DGG ( talk ) 22:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you in spirit but then we also have to take into account the worst case scenario. I do agree that we shouldn't be singling out. That is why I prefer the last prose above that I proposed.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

There is no logical argument regarding the difference that would appeal to the critical thinker. The outcome of both is the same. But it's a generally understood societal norm that it does matter where the bias comes from. For example, we know that many consumers leave bias reviews for a product on Amazon, but we look at it differently if the company is writing the reviews themselves.

As such, I find it appropriate that we treat it differently, but I don't find the propensity for harassment and ABF appropriate. In many cases a PR is more neutral than the average volunteer and are still criticized... CorporateM (Talk) 02:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You're preaching to the choir with me. I am attempting to add or change the prose to not make it appear that we have a policy against companies paying an editor to represent them. We really don't however, I will say that bias and COI are not exactly the same thing. We all have some bias we may not realize. For that reason, for example< I tend to avoid articles that I am extremely interested in, but will edit pages I may feel I can counter other bias.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:19, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I isn't worse, it's just more prominent as a problem, thanks to the likes of Gregory Kohs. Specifically, the Wikipedia community has an aversion to people being paid to edit Wikipedia, which is down to the fact that none of the rest of us are paid to clean up after them - whereas virtually every Wikipedian edits in support of some pet cause. Mine is Robert Hooke. Guy (Help!) 01:53, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

This section isn't working for me, and never has. It produces silly disputes, it puts a scarlet letter on editors that tend to be competent, and it is facially invalid. It says, "Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view."

It's the 'point of view' of every employer I've ever had that theft is bad. If I go edit Embezzlement to say that it's a crime, am I suddenly a "paid advocate"? It's the 'point of view' of every manufacturer and every seller that their products have certain features and do not have other features. If I correct outright, verifiable errors about the products my employer sells, am I suddenly a "paid advocate"? Well, according to this simplistic definition, I am. I think we should just kill it. Money can corrupt people's work, but it cannot corrupt people's work more than the other problems we deal with here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I wrote the definition below a while back, which is 100x better than the current in my opinion. CorporateM (Talk) 14:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

Marketing, financial connection and advocacy
Editors that have a financial connection with the subject of the article, such as an employer or client relationship, are advised to.... In addition to public relations, search engine marketing, reputation management, and Wikipedia consultants, anyone assigned to participate on behalf of an organization or initiative with a potential conflict of interest should follow this advice. This includes editors contributing on behalf of an organized protest, class-action lawsuit, or as a volunteer at a non-profit advocacy group.

CM, I'd be fine with your suggestion too. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

And again

Amadscientist, what is your objection to paid advocacy being described as "editing on behalf of a client or employer to improve their image"? [13] SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:00, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

"To improve their image" isn't always the objective. I've been hired by clients with promotional articles to make it more neutral and improve the quality. Also, many companies assign an execs wife to edit or the CEO/owner edits themselves. I would just stick with "on behalf of" because the circumstances vary too widely to be more specific. Though "client or employer" should be used as an example, since it's the most common. "Assigned by" might work as well. CorporateM (Talk) 13:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying yes to "editing on behalf of a client or employer"? Or do you have another suggestion? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:49, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The current version says this:

Paid advocacy is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for any person or group's point of view, made on their behalf or at their request and receiving compensation in order to improve an individual or organization's image. Advocacy of any sort within articles is prohibited by our policies on neutral point of view and what Wikipedia is not, and paid advocacy is considered to be an especially egregious form of advocacy.

I don't like any of this. First of all, in the first sentence, we're defining "paid advocacy" as something that improves the image, which as CorporateM points out, is not always the case. A person might well engage in "paid advocacy" with the express goal of denigrating the competition rather than improving the employer.

In the second sentence, we're talking about two completely different kinds of 'advocacy'. NOT and NPOV are talking about filling an article with religious proselytizing or puffery about the latest cure for cancer. They're not talking about correcting factual errors. If you're a "paid advocate", your job might be to make sure that the infobox has the current financial information or that the article lists the company's current products. That's 100% acceptable under NPOV and NOT; it is not considered 'advocacy' at all by those policies.

If we're going to define this—and I don't see any need to do so—then let's try something simple, like "Paid advocacy is receiving financial compensation from a person or organization to use Wikipedia to promote the interests of that person or organization". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I like that as well WhatamIdoing.--Amadscientist (talk) 21:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

As we seem to have consensus, and as it's the lead, I'll go ahead and add it. We can always tweak it further if someone objects. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest "financial connection" instead of "receiving compensation" because most PRs do not receive financial reimbursement for Wikipedia participation. They see it as 1% of their job. The description above makes it sound like advocacy is allowed on Talk pages. While it is often done unintentionally, it is not allowed anywhere. I feel it would help me consult clients to do better work if Wikipedia made this clear that Talk page advocacy is not allowed, and it would help some companies stay out of trouble. I would just say "on behalf of or assigned by" an organization with a potential COI (or some other language to distinguish from GLAM). I don't think this is circular, because COI is defined at the top of the guideline and we have common sense, etc. We should list examples, like public relations, non-profit advocacy groups, etc.

I don't necessarily support the term "Paid Advocacy" (for what it's worth). PR people are "paid advocates" in their day-jobs, but when they come here they are expected not to advocate. This delta between the role of a PR person and the expectations Wikipedia has is a significant issue. CorporateM (Talk) 22:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

CM, can you suggest a sentence containing financial connection? At present, we have "Paid advocacy is receiving financial compensation from a person or organization to use Wikipedia to promote the interests of that person or organization." I take your point about people on salaries not being paid directly to edit, but it's a point others aren't taking, so I've given up as I'm not sure it's worth arguing about. But if you can suggest words, that would help. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:12, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Forget financial, just put "personal gain". It could be some soft benefit, not just a financial one. Let's not try to legislate Clue here. Guy (Help!) 00:47, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

CM, I think the point you've made above (and you have made it repeatedly) is a really important one, but people aren't listening -- namely that some of these rules protect the PR people and the company employees too, because it gives them something to point the boss to ("look, I'm not allowed to do that). Wikipedians seem to think that by allowing PR people carte blanche we are doing them a favour, but we're not. We're often not doing their clients a favour either. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The community often has this naive view that PR people are editors just like us, but who happen to work (almost as if by chance) for the company. But most PRs do not enjoy individual autonomy - we are "corporate representatives" in that we communicate on behalf of the corporation. If our comments represented our opinions individually, this would be COI, but when we are guided by authority within the company, this is PR. My views such as this are guided largely by reading up on the FTC's position (which btw, they use "financial connection")

Using the language would be easy enough "Editors with a financial connection to the subject of the article, such as...., are expected/advised/should..." CorporateM (Talk) 22:36, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

This has been discussed at length on Jimbo's talk page and I believe on the Village Pump. University professors are salaried and those universities have an interest in the research and publications made by those salaried employees and we still do not call them advocate editors even when they are writing about the university itself, unless it is an issue where they are compromising the integrity of the article and the project. PR people are editors just like us. Some editors feel that demonizing them is a way to better Wikipedia. Again, we have policies and guidelines that make it clear that just being a representative or a corporate entity alone is not a conflict of interest, but that when one's outside interest becomes more important than the goals of the project, then they are COI.--Amadscientist (talk) 22:55, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

If someone works for the university, I would consider that a "potential COI" (not necessarily an actual one) but I would encourage them to edit. By the same token it's on my To Do list to improve Edelman (firm) though I use to work there many years ago. I would only consider it PR editing if they are assigned to do so by the authority of the organization. This came up in the Reverb Communications case where they were astroturfing the iPhone store. Reverb claimed interns were writing the reviews as individuals based on their personal experiences (which is legal), while the FTC demonstrated they were clearly being instructed to repeat corporate messaging. But I don't mean to demonize my own field at all - far from it. Good PR is useful to journalists and it's useful to us. I just don't like us depicting it as "a journalist with a COI" rather than "a PR person working with journalists" or as volunteer editor replacements, rather than a resource for our editors. CorporateM (Talk) 23:25, 26 March 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

I don't like us depicting editors in any way. Doesn't seem to be our job to me. I feel strongly that the current situation is not the best example of Wikipedia working as it should.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:39, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

My concern with "financial connection" is that it is inappropriately broad. If I buy two shares in Apple, Inc., I have a "financial connection" to the company. I suspect that none of you would consider it problematic for me to edit that article, though. Every employee has a "financial connection" to their employer. For that matter, every taxpayer has a "financial connection" to the government, and every person who donates money to any charity has a "financial connection" to that charity. I don't see any realistic way to use this phrase without it catching far too many people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree, I think your suggestion of "financial compensation" avoids that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:38, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure when this came up but I agree with bothWhatamIdoing and SlimVirgin on this. "Financial compensation" is accurate for this use.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

BP stuff

I don't think it's practical to outlaw making large content contributions with a COI. This is common practice at AfC and often a large body of content is missing. We also can't outlaw undue complaints, because they are valid in a large number of cases.

What we can outlaw is advocacy and micro-management. PR is founded on the principal of establishing the company's point-of-view and creating cogent arguments to persuade independent sources to see things from their perspective, but this behavior is not accepted here. We expects PRs to have a very unnatural role and we should do a better job defining those expectations.

UseTheCommandLine noted somewhere that Wikipedians make a habit of providing feedback and puppetmastering COIs through contentious content, which is the equivalent of a journalist running a corporate-approved story, rather than boldly making the necessary edits. I agree that's something Wikipedians should change. CorporateM (Talk) 19:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC) (PR guy and frequent COI contributor)

I thought good PR consisted of explaining the company;s POV in such a manner that it would be effective and convincing, not in such an excessive manner that the journalists will reject it and the audience laugh at it. The point here is to include the companys perspective, and in the RW also, sometimes this is all that can be hoped for. I think you ought to be able to do it--but perhaps some of your clients are more foolish than I imagine. DGG ( talk ) 22:22, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The intensity of the COI can be measured by the delta between how the company views itself and how they are viewed in secondary sources. It could be argued that good marketing is grounded enough to make this delta relatively small, but marketing is not always done very well. CorporateM (Talk) 00:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

CM, I agree, but it's difficult to change that culture when some Wikipedians are willing to go along with it, or even encourage it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

A culture is difficult to change, but providing some guidance is easy. Something like "Ideally content produced by a PR representative will be used as a first draft and an impartial editor will do a fair amount of independent editing. However, if the PR representative has done a reasonably exhaustive search for an editor with enough interest in the subject to spend time on it, editors are encouraged to consider any content that's an improvement over the current. Editors should not feel obligated to help PRs that do not provide any content of reasonable value; a short and polite decline with an explanation is all that's needed. On the other hand, a PR representative is not expected to learn Wikipedia's rules and processes to point out factual errors or blatant bias caused by the community. If you get involved, consider balancing articles yourself rather than providing feedback and try to avoid making PRs jump through hoops if the error is on our side." (or something else)

CorporateM (Talk) 14:28, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that's the situation we have at the moment. A big company will put together a Wikipedia engagement team. One of them starts rewriting the article via drafts on a user page. Editors arrive (often the same editors) to add the drafts to the article after very brief discussion, and sometimes no discussion. Sometimes editors with objections arrive too, but the default position is that the draft will be added in some form, so the objections are drowned out, and the objectors are made to feel they are being difficult. The drafts often end up being added word for word, because life's too short.

What puzzles me is why some big companies get involved in this. I can understand it when a company is selling something directly to the public; they're willing to risk the embarrassment. But a company like BP isn't in that position. If I were in charge of their PR, I'd advise them not to go within a million miles of those articles, because it's all cost and little or no benefit. I wonder whether someone external to these companies (e.g. a PR company) has been offering advice about Wikipedia engagement, telling companies that it's okay. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

My impression is that they get involved because it's a soft target (low barrier to entry), widely used as reference (high-value), and there are no significant repercussions for getting involved, even if they were to do something skeezy like use a bunch of socks (low downside risk). Further, even when issues like the Gibraltar thing come up, the media coverage seems to paint it as an problem with wikipedia; again, just my impression. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 20:19, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

One of the fundamental founding principles of PR is this idea that the public is a stakeholder. For example, if an oil company has a negative image among constituents, this can effect how politicians make decisions that impact their operations, mining agreements, etc. (I'm not an expert, just postulating). Many organizations have a government relations division and they often try to share their message with constituents. On the other hand, if an article is factually inaccurate, most will want to correct that as a matter of course, without formulating a complex strategic objective.

Large companies are risk-adverse, so they see Wikipedia as extremely high-risk and compared to Twitter and Facebook, the barrier to entry is very high. Additionally, while I think they are wrong, many companies have an irrationally dismissive attitude towards Wikipedia. Often this dismissive attitude is adopted after they tried and failed to write an entry. Someone told me a story about a CMO that said Wikipedia was unimportant - they looked it up and saw he failed to write an entry on himself.

Many astroturfing and front group operations are designed to instill enough doubt to prevent any action. I think pointing blame at Wikipedia is sometimes along these lines. For example, I read somewhere that Bell Pottinger threatened legal action against the publication that busted them after the controversy had settled, but I think they did that because it effectively prevented the anyone from pursuing legal action against them. They painted themselves as victims to create enough confusion to avoid any concrete action - that's effective spin.

But keep in mind, most of us are just pushing product news and trying to get the press to write about us, etc. - not running front groups... CorporateM (Talk) 20:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

@SV: I know why they do it but it's hard to put into words. A couple of years ago I was on the Customer Council of $VENDOR. The article on $VENDOR was crap. I talked to a friend, quite a good friend who I trusted, set up a call, and walked through with them (a) how to provide sources, (b) how to engage with editors and (c) why it was a Really Bad Idea to pile in and edit the article. You can guess what they did. An awful lot of hits on this blog post from $VENDORHOMETOWN] after I pointed them to it. We are used to the concept of there being no deadline. They are not. Either something is OK, or it's not and needs fixing NOW OMG THE SKY IS FALLING 11!!11 ELEVENTY. That's why I like to try to enagage these folks before they pile in, and counsel them to start small. Because you can bet your life that anything where corporate interest intersects Wikipedia will have Cade Metz and Greg Kohs foaming at the mouth in short order, and ten minutes later the WeHateWikipediaButWeWillPretendToBeCriticalFriends.com forums will be along to "help". Do we have a template {{meh}} that we can apply to such debates? Guy (Help!) 00:13, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem at all with companies arriving on talk to fix errors or point out omissions; in fact I've always been grateful for it. But suggesting extensive drafts should be off-limits; if the Wikipedians who check the drafts really are in a position to check them (i.e. they're familiar with the source material being suggested and with the sources not being suggested), it would usually be easy enough for them write the text themselves.

There's a formula now that these companies engage in: arrive very politely on talk, declare their COI, start suggesting drafts, and then begin to take control, asking people to make edits to the drafts in the COI editor's userspace, for example, so that psychologically the default position becomes: "this draft will be added in some form." They're very quick to reply to editors they see as helpful, and very slow to reply to others (or they ignore them entirely). Then they spend weeks if necessary asking someone to add the draft, until someone does. It puts unfair pressure on volunteers, some of whom have said they feel uncomfortable opposing it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:29, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

CM, what you say about companies being risk averse and at the same time dismissive of Wikipedia is very interesting. I've seen both attitudes from the same company on the same page. One large company tried to rewrite parts of its article, but assigned company interns to do it; the writing was so poor you could hardly understand it. It left me wondering: if you don't care, why not leave the page alone, and if you do care, why not do it properly?

I'm wondering if what we see here is the PR industry persuading companies that Wikipedia matters more than it does. For companies that are selling to the public, I can see that WP does matter, but for others I think they would almost always be better just ignoring it. But Wikipedians don't like to admit that (we want to feel influential), and PR companies don't want to admit it (they want to earn money), so the companies, big and powerful as they are, end up being squished by bad advice. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:13, 29 March 2013 (UTC)