Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC/DC Statehood and Home Rule edit-a-thon

Notability and conflicts of interest

I'm concerned that this edit-a-thon encouraged editors to write articles about subjects which do not meet notability guidelines, particularly for the various lobbying and activist groups pushing for DC statehood, which need to meet our more stringent WP:ORGCRITE. While some effort was made to identify sources on the edit-a-thon's main page, the collected sources for at least the subjects I have reviewed fall short of meeting the relevant guidelines. I'm further concerned that some of the participants may be directly affiliated with this groups, which raises WP:COI concerns. Please be more mindful of these relevant guidelines if organizing future similar edit-a-thons, as failure to do so ends up wasting a lot of people's time and energy. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:44, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

@Rosguill: At every WMDC event, our professional facilitator discusses the COI rules with attendees and specifically discourages them from editing or creating articles where they have a COI. Our facilitator also discusses notability and sourcing requirements. Our presentation materials are posted on Wikimedia Commons. Gamaliel (talk) 18:31, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Got it, thanks Gamaliel. One thing that I'm noticing in reviewing recent Meetup and Wiki Ed articles (different programs, but with similar frameworks) is that there seems to be a bit of a blind spot around our more stringent notability guidelines for organizations and companies. My guess is that facilitators are instructing people with only GNG in mind, and participants turn around and apply those principles to organization/company articles without realizing that most of the sources they're using do not meet WP:ORGCRITE standards. We should probably either provide more detailed guidance around these topics, or steer people away from writing new articles about them as their first forays into article writing. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:18, 29 November 2022 (UTC)