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proposed change

note - I have stuck in the content above the proposal, which I should have done when I proposed it Jytdog (talk) 01:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

A just-closed arbcom case stated in its second principle:

Because Wikipedia is intended to be written from a neutral point of view, it is necessary that conflicts of interest are properly disclosed, and articles or edits by conflicted editors are reasonably available for review by others. Editors are expected to comply with both the purpose and intent of the applicable policies, as well as their literal wording.

As I noted at the Signpost here, we as a community are living our way into what that means, exactly. We do need a way to signal that direct conflicted editing has occurred, which needs review. Readers should also be aware that the content may not be neutral. The actual COI tag does that , and pretty elegantly as well. To remind folks, what it actually says is

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page.

This tag should be accompanied by there being a {{connected contributor}} or {{connected contributor (paid)}} tag placed on the talk page, and ideally something like the note I mentioned above, which says

I've added a conflict of interest tag to this article. This signifies to readers that the article has been extensively edited by someone with a conflict of interest, and is likely to have bias, in the form of missing negative content, overemphasis on "positives", non-neutral language (all of which are violations of the WP:NPOV content policy), and is likely to have unsourced or poorly sourced content, in violation of the WP:VERIFY content policy. It is likely that the content promotes the subject of the article, in violation of the WP:PROMO policy. Independent editors need to review the article and correct it, and then may remove the tag. If you do so, please leave a note here. Thanks.

Below, is aproposed change to the template instructions:

Do not use this tag unless there are likely to be significant or substantial problems with the article's neutrality as a result of the contributor's involvement of a contributor with a disclosed or apparent conflict of interest. Like the other {{POV}} tags, this tag is not meant to be a badge of shame or to "warn the reader" about the identities of the editors, but it is intended, as it states, to alert readers and editors that there "may be" significant problems with the content.

-- Jytdog (talk) 00:55, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

This seems directly contradictory to the intentions of everyone who has collaborated to make the template and document its correct use, so that it assists us in working to build and improve Wikipedia - not last the text highlighted in yellow in the documentation: if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. If you do not start this discussion, then any editor is justified in removing the tag without warning.. For those reasons, and those given above, and lacking any sound reason why any change, much less a relaxation of the highlighted requirement to state what is actually wrong with the article in question, is needed, I oppose this proposal. We don't tag articles because there "may" be a problem, but only when we know there is one. (I assume that, as a Wikimedian in Residence, I'm allowed a say?) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:03, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Your (expected) opposition is noted; i look forward to hearing from others. Jytdog (talk) 01:04, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Your expected noting of my opposition is noted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:08, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Looks like a useful simplification. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:06, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Jytdog is right. I coincidentally came here and noticed the blocked socks on this talk independently. Hindsight on this talk is everything. What we have above are several blocked socks/banned editors who haven't disclosed they have a COI with COI, and basically subverted the discussion and template. I'm shocked, but seen similar before. My understanding is that block evading socks talk contributions can be struck, which would highlight the level of corruption here for readers. (the banned one shouldn't be struck if I understand right)
As for the badge of shame argument, Andy has a fair point, which I've considered the majority view until now. Turns out I was a bit misled though, considering above.
I'm not sure they have to be the same issue...
I for one have always thought the "badge of shame" vs no tag argument was a false dichotomy. I just kept quiet, and carried on using the COI template slightly too much (mia culpa). Disclosure with a template can be made separate from a badge of shame, and serves readers well in several ways - both legally and editorially. Now we know the discussion above and template were subverted, maybe it's time for a fresh look without the cheaters?
"badge of shame" reminds me of Red triangle (Channel 4). Nonsense.
Speaking aloud:
0. WiR must be the role models in this regard, so their input part of the solution, not part of the problem (as opposed to the input from undisclosed COIs, PAIDs and sockfarms which we all agree about)
1. advertorials have disclaimers (they aren't badges of shame, so why do we use that language here - note that advertorials wouldn't be flagged up if the advertisers could edit the rules!)
2. adverts that appear to be content on TV requires flagging
3. product placement doesn't (?), paid reviews do etc
4. We must have a duty to flag up something when in the balance of probability it's COI (not just beyond reasonable doubt, or after disclosure). e.g. extra scrutiny required, even if superficially all seems well. More than just a sitewide legal disclaimer. Surely, that's the right precautionary way. That's for readers, editors and reputation. Ducks are ducks, and if it's more ducky than not, it should be labelled as such. This provides an incentive mechanism for disclosure that we fail to have currently.
5. I'd go the other way - an informational template that's less obtrusive, so not a badge of shame whilst providing reasonable notice of a more likely than not lack of disclosure, which is all COI should be about. For further info, the location of COI tags on the talk can be mentioned. Widefox; talk 02:49, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Rarely addressed is systemic bias: COI isn't just an issue for article content. The advice in COI is toothless - leave it for non-COIs. COI editors are incentivised to ignore that, not disclose and get an article now, and get SEO/Google knowledge graph, and dilute our value. For the project, it is a systemic bias. Once COI articles are created, that leads to multiplying systemic bias (we get new content that almost certainly can be fixed, yes, but it will need fixing, and it biases us towards commercial interests, commercial naming and POV titles, recentism etc), with finite volunteer resource being drawn into identifying and fixing COI (especially PAID) content issues which multiples that bias. WiR are a desirable counter bias. This is not new, "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all." -Hardin 1968, tragedy of the commons was 1833, where he concluded "freedom is the recognition of necessity". Widefox; talk 12:56, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose: First such a change which is a change in purpose needs wider community input per an RfC. Second, any article at any time may lack neutrality; we cannot begin to tag articles because of potential lack of neutrality. A tag then should be accompanied by discussion on the talk stating where the lack of neutrality is, potentially. My major concern is with just what we have here. A Wikimedian in Residence has been harassed on Wikipedia for the job he must do. We as a community support both Wikipedians and Wikimedians in residence and understand they are not being paid to control articles but to make knowledge more available. Jytdog has continued mean spirited attacks and accusations and as his comments indicate has a basic misunderstanding of what a Wikimedian in Residence does and means. Such a template change seems to give an excuse for behavior that allows for ad hominem attacks, and wikihounding a Wikimedian in residence and his work; we don't need that.(Littleolive oil (talk) 15:43, 20 January 2018 (UTC))
@Littleolive oil: You say A Wikimedian in Residence has been harassed on Wikipedia for the job he must do but unless I'm very much mistaken, the edit warring to remove the tag which led to this had nothing whatsoever to do with Andy being a WiR. SmartSE (talk) 16:17, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
And yet it led directly to the proposer of these changes stalking Andy's edits and making this piece of harassment based solely on Andy's disclosed position as a WiR. I do not find that behaviour acceptable. Do you condone it? --RexxS (talk) 16:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
@Smartse: I am dealing with family issues and traveling again in the next day or so so don't have the time to list diffs of the harassment but I invite you to look at Jytdog's edits. This for example,[1] and in particular this, "Like many of the men who make Wikipedia toxic, instead of simply doing the work that the tag is meant to address, Andy chose to storm in and Tear Down That Tag and then make wikilawyering, useless drama, wagging his Ego around. Not good for the encyclopdia or anything, really."(Littleolive oil (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2018 (UTC))
@RexxS: the Joecollier part of the tag is normal, the part listing Andy complicated. Is there a link for COI with WiR? In theory WiR shouldn't need tagging (is that true?) as they should be the role models for this. How that works in practice due to WP:COIBIAS shortcut been removed from current COI page dunno. As for the details of that tag and history between editors I don't know, but the tone of the interactions indicate some resolution between parties desirable. I have to say it takes a brave editor to work in the no man's land of COI. Widefox; talk 12:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@Widefox: The tag was unnecessary and denigrates the work of a WiR. Andy was working as a WiR at History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group ("an academic organisation specialising in recording and publishing the oral history of twentieth and twenty-first century biomedicine") and he used their resources to create and improve articles on notable biomedics. There is no conflict of interest and Joe Collier was certainly not a "client" of Andy's in any sense of the word. The policy is explained at meta:Terms of use/FAQ on paid contributions without disclosure, particlarly "These requirements shouldn't keep teachers, professors, or people working at galleries, libraries, archives, and museums ("GLAM") institutions from making contributions in good faith! If you fall into one of those categories, you are only required to comply with the disclosure provision when you are compensated by your employer or by a client specifically for edits and uploads to a Wikimedia project ... Disclosure is only necessary where compensation has been promised or received in exchange for a particular contribution. A museum employee who is contributing to projects generally without more specific instruction from the museum need not disclose her affiliation with the museum ... a Wikipedian in Residence who is specifically compensated to edit the article about the archive at which they are employed should make a simple disclosure that he is a paid Wikipedian in Residence with the archive." Andy had already gone beyond what was required by being transparent about his editing there, and his reward was to have a template slapped on with a big $ sign baldly stating that Andy had been paid "on behalf of Joe Collier". That is utterly unacceptable, and we need to treat our WiRs with a lot more sensitivity. They are not paid editors. --RexxS (talk) 14:25, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Yup RexxS, I'm here to talk about the template, but I agree with you, that was my reaction too, hence "complicated". I don't have a reason to even check Andy's edit(s), as I've always admired his work, so I haven't. Thanks for the link. In my long post above I made it clear that WiR are trusted and do these things professionally, so my trust is with Andy, and anyone questioning that should do it, as you say, carefully. Widefox; talk 19:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@Littleolive oil: when you say "we cannot begin to tag articles because of potential lack of neutrality", that's the central question isn't it, as the definition of conflict of interest is conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. ... a risk , so if not disclosed before editing we have a conundrum. 1. use COI tag only for disclosure (and we cannot know for certain if an editor has a COI or not, but ducks are ducks), or 2. use COI tag as a cleanup tag for say a POV check/tip of the iceberg . 2. is how it's used currently. We have cleanup and POV check tags already. To restrict COI tag usage to only when additionally also specifying identified content issues, that's more like the cleanup tag, and risks conflating COI with content issues. The "badge of shame" argument conflates impropriety. Widefox; talk 20:16, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@Widefox: Would you please examine the opening paragraph of WP:CLEANUPTAG ("an information page [that] describes the editing community's established practice on some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and customs")? In particular Their purposes are to foster improvement of the encyclopedia by alerting editors to changes that need to be made sets the tone, but the rest is also important, such as Cleanup tags are ... not ... a method of warning readers about an article. ... Avoid "drive-by" tagging. Tags must be accompanied by a comment on the article's talk page explaining the problem and beginning a discussion on how to fix it, or for simpler and more obvious problems, a remark using the reason parameter as shown below. Tagging editors must be willing to follow through with substantive discussion.
The {{COI}} is a cleanup template. There's no doubt about that, and it is one of several listed at WP:TC #Neutrality and factual accuracy. The more specific template {{autobiography}} and the less specific template {{POV}} carry just the same restrictions: no drive-by tagging; start a discussion; not to be used as warning. For all the reasons that we insist on those restrictions on the other cleanup templates, we shouldn't be misusing this template by ignoring what the community deems proper in the use of these sort of tags. --RexxS (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@RexxS: Yes I know. I'm here to talk about the future of the tag. As SarahSV's example, I don't buy that volunteers must have to proofread paid editors work, give exact cleanup instructions on the talk, all under time pressure. That sounds perfect for the paid editor though. There is WP:VOLUNTEER to consider. Opinions gravitate around two poles when dealing with COI/PAID, as I describe in WP:BOGOF which is a lot broader discussion than what the exact usage of the COI tag was historically. Hasn't the COI always been problematic as COI is about the editor, not the edits, running against our fundamentals here? Widefox; talk 21:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@Widefox: I have two underlying concerns with the proposed change:
(i) It removes an existing tag, in use on 12,000 articles, from its purpose of attracting neutral editors to cleanup non-neutral editing caused by conflicted editors. The argument that I don't buy is someone who spots non-neutral content can't start a discussion on the article talk page, if they can't clean it up themselves for whatever reason. That's the absolute minimum required for all cleanup tags. Nobody's asking them to proofread all of the paid editor's work and give exact cleanup instructions. But I'm not willing to see drive-by tagging without any review by the tagger. That can result in a tag that says "There are problems here. Please fix them." leading to another editor wasting time searching for problems that may not exist. We have to accept that it's possible a conflicted editor did not introduce non-neutral material, and consider the effect of the tagger crying wolf will have on that small number of editors willing to do this sort of cleanup work. It's simply counter-productive. It's also against WP:DISCLAIM to turn it into a template "to alert readers ... that there "may be" significant problems with the content." We don't do that.
(ii) If this template can be added to an article merely on suspicion of non-neutral editing, or simply because the tagger decides that an editor is a paid editor, then it will be used as a bludgeon against Wikimedians in Residence, whom the proposer is convinced are paid editors. We don't need that. --RexxS (talk) 22:32, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Unless I'm missing something, the proposal doesn't really change what the instructions say, but it does make them clearer. SarahSV (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
    • @SlimVirgin: The current wording is: "Do not use this tag unless there are significant or substantial problems with the article's neutrality as a result of the contributor's involvement. Like the other {{POV}} tags, this tag is not meant to be a badge of shame or to "warn the reader" about the identities of the editors." (I assume Jytdog proposes to just replace that paragraph with theirs, but they are far from clear on that point). Note that the proposal changes "is" to "are likely to be" in the first sentence - that alone is not a mere clarification, it is a significant change. Another section of the documentation requires the editor applying the tag to promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article, and it is also unclear how one is supposed to do that, if there is only a "likelihood" of that being the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pigsonthewing (talk • contribs)
    • @SlimVirgin: Thank you for fixing my missing sig; would you kindly respond to the associated comment, which I addressed to you? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:01, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
      • If you find that BP is rewriting its own environmental record, you know there are going to be problems, and the point of the tag is to warn the reader. Editors shouldn't feel they have to list the problems before they can use the tag, because that might require a lot of work. If the current wording gives that impression, it's important to change it. The addition of "likely" doesn't mean articles can be tagged for no reason. The current instructions are contradictory: "Use this tag to alert readers that the article may be biased by a conflict of interest ... Do not use this tag unless there are substantial problems with the article's neutrality ..." (bold added). SarahSV (talk) 18:17, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
        • "If you find that BP is rewriting its own environmental record, you know there are going to be problems", Indeed Sarah, but the solution is not to use a cleanup template to warn readers. I agree we need a warning template when that happens, for all the reasons you state, but at the end of the day, somebody has to do the cleanup (if it exists), and if not the editor who notices the issue, then who? There are two issues being confounded here: warning readers that there a grounds to suspect the article is non-neutral; and attracting editors to cleanup problems identified. They are very different things, and we need to keep this template (along with its "No discussion = No tag" requirement) for the latter, or we'll drown the already sinking backlog of articles to cleanup. --RexxS (talk) 18:57, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
          • @RexxS: I'm usually in favour of "no discussion = no tag", but in the case of COI there are two problems. First, cleaning up COI editing can be extremely time-consuming because you often have to start from scratch. With something like BP, it might take months of educating yourself about complex issues. Second, if we say to the unpaid workforce that they're not allowed to flag an article unless they're willing to clean up after paid editors, they will just say "fine, we won't bother", which leaves the reader in the dark. SarahSV (talk) 21:01, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
            • But surely, Sarah, there are a whole range of middle options? I do appreciate the amount of cleanup work that paid editors leave for us, but some unpaid volunteer is going to have to do it. I'm not insisting that the editor who notices contributions from a conflicted editor has to be the one who does the cleanup, but I am suggesting they are in a good position to make a start. If they simply tag on suspicion, where there is a possibility that no problem actually exists, what does that do for editors who spot the tag, and then potentially waste their time looking for problems that are not there? That would be an even quicker way of making sure they say "fine, we won't bother", and we lose them from cleaning up other genuine problems. Tagging on suspicion is a terribly inefficient use of multiple editors' time, so I don't agree that editors should be tagging without identifying at least one concrete issue that should be fixed, even if they don't have time to clean it up themselves. In that case, surely they can at least note that issue on the talk page, so that the next editor doesn't have to duplicate their research before they can make a start. That's what the current documentation encourages, and that's what I feel sure it is best to retain. --RexxS (talk) 21:47, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
        • SarahSV, the language that expanded the purpose of the template to include alerting readers to the mere possibility of an NPOV policy violation was added by Jytdog in 2016. It might be simplest to remove that line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
          • I support reverting that addition (unless, of course, Jytdog can show a discussion leading to project-wide consensus for it). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:24, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
            • SarahSV's example is useful. COI isn't about any specific identified content issue (see "a risk" above). But, I agree practically how it works here it's more workable to combine it with identified content issues. In her example, PAID editors externalise their editing costs in what we all agree takes significant finite volunteer resources (plug my essay WP:BOGOF for the answer). I think this discussion conflates too many issues, but I'm for a fresh look at the template, without conflating WiR or specifics as done here, now that we've uncovered the corruption of COI editors of this. Widefox; talk 20:52, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
          • WhatamIdoing, I agree with that line. Alerting the reader is part of the point of the template (especially given that one of the purposes of Wikipedia is to eliminate the reader–editor distinction). As a reader, if I look up an article about a drug, I want to know if it has been written by the drug company. That template might be the only thing that alerts me. SarahSV (talk) 00:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
            • We've had those conversations off and on for years, and we've never been able to get community consensus for placing reader-facing tags on articles merely to state that the article was definitely edited by paid drug company representatives (to use your example), much less for placing tags on articles when we merely, and therefore perhaps wrongly, suspect that the editor might have had a COI and merely, and therefore perhaps wrongly, suspect that the editor might have introduced biased content. The consensus (in the past; CCC still applies) is that when/if we identify actual content problems, we can fix them or tag them, but the mere suspicion of POV problems based on the contributor's identity isn't enough.
              IMO the main advantage to this rule is that the drug company's reps are put on the same footing as the anti-drug activists (who have no legal duty to be plausibly truthful about their claims, for example). It is also consistent with the principle that we should "focus on the content, not the contributor", which most editors hold as an ideal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
              • Agree WhatamIdoing that there's polarised opinions on dealing with this, but just like SPI, a ducks a duck. I'm not confident that we're on top of COI, as shown at COIN and how many articles are deleted when COI exposed. This should be WP:BOLD not WP:RECKLESS, but unfortunately for WP, it is currently WP:BRAVE. COI guidance being subverted by COI editors indicates that old consensus isn't working. Widefox; talk 16:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose: This proposal will dilute the value of this template in identifying problems, by using it to mark where there is simply a suspicion of a problem. That has never been the intention of these sort of templates and the proposal will damage our efforts to actually kerb genuine non-neutral articles created or amended by paid editors. My detailed reasons are below. --RexxS (talk) 17:52, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Not sure how this proposed change to this template relates to WiRs? Most of the time they do not directly write about the institution itself and thus would not have a COI... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:44, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
      • Indeed James, but see the support vote above from Widefox. You can clearly see how the issues have become conflated within minutes of this proposal being raised. Of course edits by WiRs shouldn't be anything to do with tagging problems caused by paid editors, as I explain below, but not everybody sees the issues in the same way that we do. --RexxS (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
(to RexxS) my long post [2] was writtn before the proposal, which I marked as (ec) into a support vote. If you'd prefer I will refactor to put the bulk before the section to clarify they're unrelated. Widefox; talk 13:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Just a quick note. I posted a proposal for discussion - floating a balloon. This looks like it will need an RfC and I will make it one, in a while. For now there is the opportunity to refine the proposal. If folks have ideas about how to improve the proposal, I am very open to hearing them. For folks who oppose any change in this direction -- well, I get that, and you will have the opportunity to oppose at the RfC. I'll wait a week or so to post the RfC to see if any ideas about refining it arise. Jytdog (talk) 19:31, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
    • In terms of writing an RFC, I think two things should be addressed:
      1. This is a significant change in meaning, User:SlimVirgin's comments notwithstanding. The old meaning is something close to "I have identified at least one fixable problem in the current version of this article, and I'll tell other editors what that is on the talk page, in the hope that some editor will fix it". The new meaning is close to "I'm just guessing that this article (probably about a person/organization/product/music/book/art that I've never heard of) was written by a paid editor, and I'm just guessing that there might be a problem, so let's slap this tag on it". Editors might choose to have this change, but we should admit that it actually is a change, and that there are practical consequences from this change (like not being able to leave a useful note on the talk page about what needs fixing).
      2. It's almost nonsensical to say, in the same sentence, that you're not supposed to "warn the reader" about the COI, but you are supposed to "alert the reader" about the COI. While lawyers for ladder manufacturers can tie themselves up in knots over whether to label each message with either a "warning" or an "alert" icon, in everyday practice, there's no daylight between those two. Either this tag exists for to tell readers something, or it doesn't. WP:NDA has said for the last decade that these tags are not meant to tell readers anything. We tell readers everything that they really need to know via WP:General disclaimer. I think we should stick with that principle, but if we're not going to, then I think we should consider an RFC to change the guideline first, and this template's documentation only later. (That way, the template's documentation will never conflict with the long-standing guideline.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
      • WAID what a crazy misreading. As clarified in an above section, the language about "badge of shame" was added by a person who was trying to protest their edits being challenged because that person made them - it said originally and still says "this tag is not meant to be a badge of shame or to "warn the reader" about the identities of the editors." Do you see what the object of the preposition about is? The added language says " but it is intended, as it states, to alert readers and editors that there "may be" significant problems with the content". Do you see the part that is underlined and bolded? "Content" is not "editor".

        I kept the part about "badge of shame" and editor, because my sense is that there are people who feel (or who worry about other people feeling) hounded about COI stuff and believe that this is important to say. I would just as soon get rid of it, but I didn't want to be overbold. If you think it would fly without that "badge of shame"/editor business, I would be fine with that.

        But it is not self-contradictory. Jytdog (talk) 01:16, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

      • @WhatamIdoing: it was you who added the WP:NDA sentence about clean-up templates and readers in 2016. [3] My understanding of clean-up templates is that part of the point of some of them, and the COI template is one, is precisely to alert both readers and editors, and given that any passing reader could become an editor, we can't proceed as if the distinction is rigid. SarahSV (talk) 00:10, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
        • I agree with User:Slimvirgin. After the Wifione case which appears to have resulted in real harm to a number of readers in India, we should also be warning readers when their is a concern. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:20, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
          • Actually, I think you'll find that the most salient line was added by User:Dbachmann in March 2008.
            I agree that there should be no rigid line between reader and editor – this is why we display these templates to everyone, rather than showing them only to accounts that have previously edited – but the point of all maintenance tags, including this one, is "please click the Edit button and fix it", not "you should trust the contents of this page significantly less than you trust the contents of any other page on this wiki". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedians in Residence

This proposal exposes one of the current problems with the community's relationship with Wikimedians in Residence (WiRs). A lack of clarity about these roles leads to editors opposed to paid editing to treat them as if they were paid editors. They are not. They represent one of the most important and fruitful outreach opportunities for the Wikimedia projects, and one of the richest collaborations available to the sponsoring institution. When we recognise that the University of Oxford has a long-term WiR; that the National Library of Wales has created a permanent post for a WiR; that the University of Edinburgh is actively encouraging other Universities to copy their WiR program; we start to see the extent to which WiRs have an impact.

When we treat WiRs in the same way as we do paid editors, we damage the community in two ways:

  1. There is a negative, chilling effect on WiRs. They are made to feel as if their work is being viewed as nothing more that editing-for-hire, and yet their work barely - if ever - touches on a subject where they have any meaningful potential for conflict of interest. They feel the insinuation that they are not capable of editing neutrally, and they are invariably some of our most experienced editors.
  2. The real problem paid editors who may be insufficiently experienced, or perhaps insufficiently bothered, to meet our concerns about neutrality of editing, now have a weapon. They can hide behind all the good work that WiRs do, by constantly arguing about the impact on WiRs that this measure or that measure, designed to kerb the excesses of paid editing, would have.

We need to make it completely clear that Wikimedians in Residence are not paid editors. If I were a Fellow at a college (a salaried position) and contributed to an article about the college Principal, an eminent professor of nanotechnology, do I automatically have a conflict of interest? No, of course not. Is there a potential for CoI? Yes, of course, but no more so than for any other eminent professor of nanotechnology that I knew personally at another college or institution. These potential conflicts are not correlated to the pay, but to other connections, and we do a disservice to everyone (except the shills) by confounding conflict of interest with conflict of loyalty.

I propose that we commit as a community to ensuring that WiRs are given the same rights and treatment as other normal editors, and that we establish zero tolerance for those that either with intent or carelessly harass these valued contributors. --RexxS (talk) 16:44, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

The discussion about this tag is only marginally related to WiR but RexxxS your post above is all confused.
Here is what the COI guideline currently says, at Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Wikipedians_in_residence,_reward_board:

WiRs must not engage in on-Wikipedia public relations or marketing for their organization, and they should operate within the bounds defined by Core characteristics of a Wikipedian in Residence at Wikimedia Outreach. They must work closely with a Wikipedia project or the general Wikipedia community, and are expected to identify their WiR status on their user page and on talk pages related to their organization when they post there.

And the PAID policy says, at WP:Paid-contribution_disclosure#Wikipedians_in_residence

Wikipedians in residence who are paid must disclose which organization (GLAM or similar) pays them.[1]

Breaking that down and keeping in mind that there are two aspects - disclosure and the need for review:
  • WiRs who are paid, are paid editors. They need to disclose that just like any paid editor. Our PAID policy is clear on that. (no "free pass" about disclosing)
  • When a paid or unpaid WiR writes about the institution hosting them, they have also have a COI, and that needs to be managed like any COI. (relationship disclosed + prior review)
  • When a WiR uses the resources of their host institution to improve articles about other stuff (e.g. the classic example of images from the british museum used to illuminate articles) we do not consider this COI editing and welcome them to edit directly (no need for prior review) This is the case where we give WiR a "pass" from how we normally think about paid editing and COI issues.
WiRs walk a fine line and they need to be careful not to step over into promoting their host organization. A WiR promoting their host organization is a perversion of the WiR program.

References

  1. ^ Terms of use/FAQ on paid contributions without disclosure, Wikimedia Foundation.
--Jytdog (talk) 18:05, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that clarifies considerably the difference between our approach to WiRs. Our policies on WiRs serve to protect both the WiR and the encyclopedia from inadvertent CoI, but you are seeking to expand them beyond their intent. WiRs who are paid are not paid editors, any more than anyone else who receives a salary at work. Contrast that with those who are editors-for-hire, who offer their editing services to whoever will pay them; for them, pleasing their client supersedes improving the encyclopedia, although they may kid themselves it does not. That is emphatically not the case with WiRs. Here's what meta:Terms of use/FAQ on paid contributions without disclosure says:
  • These requirements shouldn't keep teachers, professors, or people working at galleries, libraries, archives, and museums ("GLAM") institutions from making contributions in good faith! If you fall into one of those categories, you are only required to comply with the disclosure provision when you are compensated by your employer or by a client specifically for edits and uploads to a Wikimedia project.
  • The same is true with GLAM employees. Disclosure is only necessary where compensation has been promised or received in exchange for a particular contribution. A museum employee who is contributing to projects generally without more specific instruction from the museum need not disclose her affiliation with the museum. On the other hand, a Wikipedian in Residence who is specifically compensated to edit the article about the archive at which they are employed should make a simple disclosure that he is a paid Wikipedian in Residence with the archive. This would be sufficient disclosure for purposes of requirement.
Note carefully that last statement. WiR's are required to disclose their affiliation with the place where they work, only when editing the article about that institution. But you want not only to require them to disclose when they edit an article of someone associated with their employer, but to tag that article with a "Paid editor" template. That's not how we should be treating our WiRs, nor is there any basis in policy to require it. If a WiR makes an effort to voluntarily disclose that they are editing an article what they may have a second-hand connection with, that should be applauded, not used to stick the opprobrium of "paid editor" on someone who does not meet our definition of such, either by the letter or spirit of our policies and guidelines. --RexxS (talk) 18:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
i think i understand where you are coming from but you are breaking the english language by saying that paid WiRs are not paid. Our policies and guidelines do have some "technical term" usages (like "neutral point of view" which means something very specific and kind of odd here, grounded in stuff deep in the guts of WP where sources have authority, not editors), but "paid" is not one of them. If you are paid to edit WP, you are paid.
Way too many people think "paid editor" = "shill here to screw up WP" and likewise think that "COI" also = "evil". Or they act over-defensively out of some concern that they believe that other people think those things... and a lot of the "smoke" that clouds community discussions, often comes from those "concerns about concerns" kind of argumentation.
Neither paid editing nor COI are inherently bad. They are what they are and we have ways of managing them both.
What is bad, are efforts to thwart our normal processes for managing them.
Sometimes that thwarting isn't really thwarting at all, but is done by people who just don't understand the corrent thing to do, and are happy to do the correct thing when they learn what is correct.
Sometimes that is from people knowing what is correct and doing the wrong thing anyway. That was the heart of the Salvidrim arbcom case. Jytdog (talk) 18:56, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I think some of what you wrote above, is about what is going on currently with regard to Pigsonthewing. That is a very specific thing, that does not belong in this discussion. I will explain on your talk page. Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I think you must understand that as a trustee of WMUK for some years, I've been involved in many decisions to establish Wikimedians in Residence in the UK. These were and are some of our finest editors, and the partners involved included a wide range of hugely respected and prestigious institutions. I personally know many of these Wikimedians, and respect their work and bona fides as editors, so you can see I have my own conflict of loyalty that I have to manage.
I didn't say that "paid WiRs are not paid". I did say that "paid WiRs are not paid editors". I still maintain that is the case almost all of the time. My advice to them has always been "don't edit the article of the institution where you work". Not because that's a requirement, but because it avoids even the appearance of CoI. By and large, WiRs recognise that and are pretty good at managing it - usually confining themselves to factual updates and similar, along with the required disclosure. In my experience, they are far better at it than most GLAM employees that I train, who often want to start by "improving" the article on their place of work.
I will state that I don't think that "paid editor = shill here to screw up WP", nor that "CoI/CoL = evil". Nevertheless, I do think that both "paid editor" and "CoI/CoL" = "huge potential for problematic editing that we could do without". But that's not in sync with the community and I accept that.
I agree with you about the Salvadrim case. It's as if Wikipedia had its own seductive "dark side of the force". What a pity. --RexxS (talk) 19:31, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Yeah the Salv thing was somebody who had a lot of fixed ideas about COI (namely, that concerns about it are a lot of baloney that overly fastiduous people worry about) and thought he wasn't affected by it. That is what the big mea culpa on his userpage was about. Him waking up to the fact that he too is all too human and that his judgement too is affectable.
Thanks for describing your relationship with the WMUK GLAM/WiR programs. I was not aware of your background with that.
On the COI thing generally -- there is probably nobody who edits WP, who doesn't have a COI on some subject here. Most of us just self-manage that for example by not editing where we have a COI; the whole COI management process only comes into play when people edit or behave in ways that demonstrate unmanaged COI. And we of course have it in play as a default for commercial paid editors. And there is a form of it for WiR, who are obligated to disclose at minimum. And I really do believe you when you say that training for WiR urges folks not to edit about the institution. That is managing COI too.
One thing i thought about this morning while doing the dishes was that I am unaware of the background of those programs. Was there some big ruckus at some point over whether those programs are "kosher" or not? People associated with them get so intense about them not being paid or COI or whatever in ways that I find ... well, surprising... and it makes me wonder if there was some huge battle or ugliness in the past that I am not aware of that makes folks react that way. Do you know of any? Jytdog (talk) 22:24, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
"A Wikipedian-in-Residence (WiR) is different from both: a) a paid editor; or b) a project leader or participant, whether or not those in the latter group have an organisational sponsor/champion." There are considerable issues with non-neutrality, paid editing, and COI on Wikipedia but when editors attempt to rewrite our own guides to suit their own notions of what is meant then we must stop. Jytdog you are attempting to rewrite Wikimedia in Wikipedia/Wikimedia by redefining what paid editing means for the Wikimedian in Residence. You are conflating paid editing on a specific article with the more general paid to expand an organization/ library / museum - a role that is supported and endorsed by Wikipedia. And as you followed Andy to his Wikimedia work introducing Wikimedia to this discussion I don't find your comment above about conflating this template with Wikimedian in Residence credible.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC))
Nope - those passages in the PAID policy and COI guideline have been there a long time. I am sorry you are confused on these issues. Too many people are. Jytdog (talk) 19:25, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

But you see it doesn't matter how long paid policy and COI guideline have been in place; the Wikimedia in residence guide has very specific language pertinent specifically to Wikimedian in residence and we can't conflate that with standard COI and paid editing. COI/paid editing and Wikimedian in residence operate under separate regulations. We don't have the right to redefine either. What happens when we start defining Wikipedia and Wikimedia for ourselves is that we risk becoming fanatics and fanatics do not draw editors or create an environment people work in happily. And if people aren't happy they don't stay!(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:55, 20 January 2018 (UTC))

Purpose of maintenance tags

This template is part of the family of general maintenance templates classified as cleanup templates, and we have project-wide consensus on how they are to be used.

The purpose of a cleanup tag is documented as "Template messages may be added to articles needing a cleanup. Their purposes are to foster improvement of the encyclopedia by alerting editors to changes that need to be made. Cleanup tags are meant to be temporary notices that lead to an effort to fix the problem, not a permanent badge of shame to show that you disagree with an article, or a method of warning readers about an article." - Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup

This proposal is dangerous in its effect of subverting the intended purpose of the {{COI}} template, as indicated at Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup #Neutrality and factual accuracy. The template is to be used to alert editors to changes that need to be made. It is not a marker to indicate that the tagger has a suspicion that the content may not be neutral; it is an invitation to other editors to help clean up identified issues. It is already transcluded onto 12,231 pages - for comparison only about 12,000 editors are active enough to be eligible to vote in Steward's elections. That represents a huge backlog of cleanup and yet this proposal asks us to make the template available to use on any article that any tagger thinks might have a CoI. We need this tag to be placed on articles where the problem is identified, not suspected, just as it is for any of the dozens of other cleanup templates that are a call to other editors to take some action. If we require them to first determine whether any action is needed, we are not going to attract many to do the work. I just looked at the 10 articles in the category Category:Wikipedia articles with possible conflicts of interest from January 2008, the month I started editing. Of these, only 3 had any discussion at all on the talk page of any potential CoI, and none had identified any potential problematic text. We have got to stop using this tag as bludgeon to scare off potentially conflicted editor, or to mark the article as "tainted". We need to be sure that it can be easily removed when not applied for its proper purpose - and that is identifying non-neutral content resulting from CoI.

If the proposer wants to ensure that any potentially conflicted editor has their contribution to an article reviewed, then they should do one of two things:

  1. Do the review themselves and leave a note on the talk page spelling out what they found, along with the COI template on the article if non-neutral material has been identified; or
  2. Make a template like this:

Either of those options would be far more useful than hijacking this template, which is already overused, to fit a purpose it was never intended for. We need this template for use in the urgent, egregious cases where violations of neutrality are blatant and in need rapid attention. --RexxS (talk) 17:47, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

That is a pretty good template that I would be happy to use. Conflicted editors tend to use promotional language and poor or no sources; they tend to omit or spin negative things. The content and sourcing is often skewed from NPOV and often fails V.
Reviewing content that arises from conflicted editing takes time -- it involves doing one's own search for sources and reading them, then checking to to be sure that the content accurately summarizes what independent sources say about the subject. A good review is not just about scanning quickly to remove puffery.
The purpose of the disclosure is to draw such a review. With conflicted editors who follow the COI guideline and do AfC or propose changes to existing articles on the talk page, they follow the process to get reviewed, which is great. This tag is for situations where conflicted editors, edit directly and the content already in WP mainspace needs reviewing.
Since there is no gateway -- we are open and anyone can edit -- cases of WP:APPARENTCOI are not uncommon. Those situations need to be handled carefully for sure, and should never be used in any kind of harassing way.
But disclosure leading to careful review, is what happens in scientific publishing every day. Peer reviewers think more carefully about the paper when a COI is disclosed. In RW publishing the disclosure is also on the final published paper, so readers read with the disclosure in mind as well. We don't do that in WP after the review is done, so as editors we have to be really sure we manage the COI and do good reviews, as there is no surface marking left, after the review is actually done. The reviews we do should never be quick and cursory - they need to be careful. The notion that a COI review in WP is quick, is not accurate or helpful. Jytdog (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
The "purpose of maintenance tags" is a good thing to look at, and this template has long seemed to me to be fundamentally not be fit for that purpose since the whole point of it is to comment on the contributor rather than the content. To quote myself from nine years ago, "If the article is {{Nonnotable}}, {{POV}}, {{unbalanced}}, an {{Advert}}, needs {{cleanup}} or {{Unreferenced}}, or whatever, we have plenty of templates to say what the real problem is. But if it's a perfectly fine, NPOV article that just happens to have been written by someone with a potential conflict of interest, what is the point in marking it with a {{COI}} banner?"
Thinking about it again years later, I can see one potential use for this template, but it's not one anyone above seems to be arguing over. If a COI editor has edited many articles, it might make sense to apply a template like this as part of the process of going through all those articles to clean them up. I still don't see any reason to be applying a banner that says the article "might" need cleaning up to a single article. Anomie⚔ 20:29, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
The point of the tag is content. Please do read what it says. Conflicted editors tend to write content that is promotional, unsourced or badly sourced, and omits or spins negative things. The tag is specifically addressed to warn people about that kind of content. Jytdog (talk) 22:27, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I did read the tag. It says in bold "A major contributor to this article", i.e. it's focused on a person rather than on content. In non-bold, it says "It may require cleanup". Not "it does require cleanup", just "may". Does it actually require cleanup? Then use {{POV}} or another tag that says for sure it requires work and specifically why. Does it not after all? Then don't tag. Anomie⚔ 16:39, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
You appear to be heading toward an effort to delete this template. That has been tried and failed and if you try today it is even more likely to fail.
It is widely accepted in the community that conflicted editors tend to create warped content. This tag helps manage such content issues.
Every major publishing institution manages COI. This is part of how we manage it. The community is very, very unlikely to move backward on this issue. Jytdog (talk) 19:09, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Just because the vocal minority of editors who want to keep the template as a reader warning, "badge of shame", or a "maybe cleanup" out-!voted the vocal minority of editors who wanted to delete it at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 March 12#Template:COI doesn't remove the fact that this template is, fundamentally, about the contributor rather than the content.
The one thing I agree with you on, though, is that it's unlikely that a new discussion at this time would result in deletion. There are enough editors here who're willing to IAR in favor of this template as a weapon to use against COI (and particularly paid) editors, and most of the discussion seems to be about how often it should be allowed to be wielded. Anomie⚔ 17:23, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, Anomie is right that this is fundamentally about the position the editor was in. To avoid the false dichotomy of either "badge of shame" or superfluous, what about a "badge of further scrutiny" (is prudent)? There is a may inherent in COI, I disagree with Jytdog, we either embrace or deny that reality. We need to shift this debate onto loftier goals of incentivising COI editors to disclose. COI is only about disclosure, as conflicted editors are allowed to edit, and their edits don't have to be bad. That's in theory. Widefox; talk 18:23, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Or, not a badge, but needing a "COI check". ie criteria before removing the tag, similar to at {{POV check}}. Widefox; talk 19:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Editors with a significant COI should be suggesting significant changes via the talk page rather than editing articles directly.
When they do not follow this guidance a COI tag until a proper review of their edits is carried out is justified.
Might be useful to change the "strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly" to "are not to edit affected articles directly" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
@Widefox: What would be the difference between a "COI check" and {{POV check}}, besides that the template would presumably be shaming the contributor rather than focusing on the content? Anomie⚔ 15:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
@Anomie: Good question, badly presented:
If we can all avoid terms like "presumably shaming" that would help, as a "presumption of bad faith" is literally a WP:AGF violation, so let's refrain from that language and thinking, and agree that this tag is no different to any other tag in that respect - it should never be abused, and we do have protections generally for drive-by and disruptive editors, none of which is specific to this tag. It's a red-herring.
Disclosing COI is actually a positive, not a negative. It's a sign of process maturity. I agree a tag fundamentally about the editor not the edit is different here. Last time I checked, COI was a systemic, pervasive problem. The only solution with Ahn at COIN was a block, which I proposed and it was unanimous.
As there's a valid, logical, good faith reasoning presented here backed by solid, independent, well known economic foundation reasoned at WP:BOGOF, I think details of who/what/where/when/why of a tag can be sorted. To answer your question, I'm sure if there is a will, there's a way. COI isn't POV. Widefox; talk 16:14, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
I see that instead of answering my question, you began with a nitpick over wording and then went off on a tangent. Anomie⚔ 18:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Others can decide if it is a loaded question with AGF being in the five pillars WP:5P4, or a "nitpick". Ignoring the presumption of bad faith usage, the answer is we seem to have a lack of guidance on dealing with COI - there's WP:Conflict of interest/draft#Detecting problematic conflicts of interest, and WP:COIBIAS the large section removed from COI#COIBIAS. In contrast we have WP:SIGNS, WP:SPI, WP:CRY (the latter part of CRY has "Astroturfing PR firms" which I presume all of us would mark as COI) and crucially Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. Do you want to delete the tag, as Jytdog asserted? Widefox; talk 01:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Put another way, if COI and POV were the same, why do we have WP:NPOVN and WP:COIN? Wouldn't it be odd to have either without its tag? Widefox; talk 16:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
I didn't say that COI and POV are the same. I asked you what the difference would be between a "COI check" template and {{POV check}}, other than that "COI check" would presumably focus on the contributor rather than the content. The fact that maintenance templates should focus on content rather than contributors doesn't apply to WP:NPOVN and WP:COIN, since they're noticeboards rather than maintenance templates. Anomie⚔ 18:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
(answered above). That's restating another loaded question due to the presumption of an invalid maintenance template (about the editor != about the edits). It exists. My point being that they're both valid and different. I agree the COI tag is an outlier maintenance tag, but it's not my position that due to it being an outlier that it is either invalid or doesn't have utility. Your questions indicate that's your view. It may be useful in more than one way. (From a strict maintenance template perspective, maybe it should only be temporary until the content issues have been found, IDK). The bigger issue is our credibility. A COI tag is a tip of the iceberg maintenance template for the serious content issues that aren't as visible (e.g. astroturfing PR), why are we worrying about the tip of the iceberg when the article is sunk by content issues? I agree that goes both ways. Worth spotting tips of icebergs though. Widefox; talk 01:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Widefox, I think that User:Anomie has a point. From the POV of the editor (not reader) who is trying to clean up a tagged article, do you/should you do anything significantly different for a COI check versus a POV check? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing agree it's a good question. It speaks to exactly what I'm saying here - why don't we have more documentation for the answer (apart from what I linked to above) and the doc sentence Use this tag to alert readers that the article may be biased by a conflict of interest, and to request help with an article that is biased or has other serious problems as a direct result of the editing done by the subject of the article or by a person with a close connection to the subject (e.g., public relations employees). Widefox; talk 19:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
The sentence you quote was added relatively recently, without discussion, and the POV in it (as evidenced by this page) is not universally held in the community (and has been explicitly rejected in past discussions). So that is rather weak "documentation". Also, it's not really relevant to the question of what to do if you are the editor who received that "request [to] help with an article that is biased or has other serious problems", rather than the editor who wants to add the tag.
So, what do you personally do if you see such a tag?
I've been thinking it over, and I'm not sure, but I think I'd overall do the same thing with a POV and a COI tag. Maybe with a COI tag I'd look more at recent editors (or the very first) than I would with a POV tag, but that might actually be a worse idea than just checking the talk page, looking at a few independent sources, and trying to figure out what needs improving (regardless of which tag was added). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Break 1

User:WhatamIdoing I'm quoting it, but I've never edited it. Let's see the history...hmm...I may be one of few editors on this talk that hasn't edited it! Thank you for editing it WhatamIdoing. More guidance on handling COI would be useful, agree? I don't agree with your edit here though [4] If you do not start this discussion, then any editor is justified in removing the tag without warning. (emphasis own) 1. consensus is editors with a COI should make edit suggestions on the talk rather than edit the articles directly per WP:COI, it's not appropriate to allow editors with a COI to 2. remove a COI tag, and 3. PAID editors are not legally allowed to edit at all per WP:ToU without 0. disclosure, wouldn't you agree? "justified" can be replaced by "not legally allowed" in that specific case! 4. COI is different to POV and {{POV check}}. May I say, for that specific case, as we are not legally allowed to water down the ToU, so I don't consider the current wording of the doc without a single mention of the ToU or disclosure requirements as complying with the letter and spirit of the ToU. Those aspects must be added, irrespective of if the contested wording quoted stays.

Normal edit consensus building on the doc has been subverted by blocked socks and banned editors who've not disclosed they have a COI about changing the COI guidance COI and PAID editors require COI disclosure in all places including talk, docs, policy and guidelines but that did not happen.... User:KDS4444 [5] [6] [7] User:Insomesia [8] [9] [10]
Answer: further scrutiny. In some cases I get the editors blocked, and the articles deleted at COIN. I see it as personal preference (and on the merits of the case) for new articles whether to WP:BOGOF#Internalise bias by deleting/userifying or WP:BOGOF#Subsidise bias by fixing. I consider both views good faith. WP:COI does tell editors with a COI best to leave creation to editors without a COI.
(an aside about when it's helpful to scrutinise the editor and not solely their edits) Yesterday I got two hoaxes deleted Attenborough Island, Blackwater Islands, where the articles were poor leading me to the creator's history (User:AquaPigg) of creating OR/bogus articles, so their edits needed further scrutiny, including reading and invalidating every one of the sources and articles and seeing if there's a connection with the source creation and the WP article. It's time-consuming. Some editors game the system, and what we need there is more scrutiny. That hoaxer removed the maintenance tag [11] and that removal went unnoticed.) Widefox; talk 14:12, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

yes the change to "any other editor may remove this tag" is an invitation for conflicted editors to get themselves in trouble. Not really wise..."and unconflicted editor or the like would be more helpful. Jytdog (talk)
Good point. I've fixed that.
I'm really not too worried about the history of the /doc page. Firstly, WP:Nobody reads the directions; secondly, any of us could easily have reverted them (and did, in some cases). As an example of that, I've just removed the language about "Use this to warn the readers". Just like "any editor" didn't quite line up with the WP:COI guideline (and so needed to be fixed), an encouragement to use this tag to warn readers conflicted with the WP:NDA guideline (and so also needed to be fixed). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
Good work WhatamIdoing. Although I don't agree with this edit [12] "request help from other editors" instead of "may be biased". It was better before per fundamentals of COI and maintenance template, rather than more like WP:HELPDESK. "may be biased" can be qualified by saying it needs further scrutiny to clear the "may" (e.g. POV, promo, overuse of primaries etc). Nobody reads the template doc(s) is a truism, both this and {{Autobiography}} hasn't had proper scrutiny and they both currently need COI tags themselves!
I suggest we're missing an essay to counter WP:CRY (often there's a matching pair of essays) or jump straight to guidance page. Widefox; talk 21:37, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
The purpose of all maintenance templates, including this one, is to request help from other editors. When you encounter a problem, your options are, in practice:
  1. fixing it yourself;
  2. asking other editors to help you fix it (includes tagging the article and leaving a note on the article's talk page, a relevant WikiProject's talk page, a noticeboard, etc.)
  3. doing nothing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that's taken as read (what applies to all templates need not be repeated in this). The more we talk about what applies to all tags, the less we talk about the specifics for this tag. I don't agree we water down this tag towards being a generic help tag. We should avoid a COI homeopathy version of {{Requires attention}}. Widefox; talk 21:19, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
That's really not a good change; and indeed is totally unncessary. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:53, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
If Paid Paul has a significant COI on an article, and he removes the "might be biased because COI (which risks unconscious bias)" tag from it, the result is likely to be avoidable drama. Therefore, I think it is advisable that people with a COI not remove that tag. Do you actually think that they should remove that tag, based upon their own COI-affected judgment that there is no bias? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy Mabbett I don't agree with your undo of this here [13]. Do you have more reasoning than "not good" and "unnecessary" when there's several supporters above. There's several arguments above which you haven't addressed, and I ask you to reconsider (including ToU part) and self-revert. Even if you don't agree, let's agree here first and at least cover the ToU which must be covered. Widefox; talk 19:56, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Our BLP policy allows people with a CoI to remove BLP violations from the articles about them. If someone fails to meet the - quite basic - requirement that: if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article, then it should be moved, ASAP. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:13, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
The convoluted argument is now getting yet more convoluted; it has also gotten no traction here, not with regard to the earlier bit that the tag can be a BLP violation, nor what you are saying now, about it being OK for the article subject to remove the COI tag under the COI exceptions for addressing vandalism or BLP violations. Jytdog (talk) 21:32, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
COI tag is not used exclusively for BLPs, so that argument does not even generally apply to this tag. Additionally, the concept that somehow COI is a BLP violation is a non-sequitur needs reasoning (as the case has not been made for a causal connection). Widefox; talk 00:03, 28 January 2018 (UTC) reworded Widefox; talk 00:18, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
You could use a COI tag in a way that would not be consistent with the idea of BLP, since many readers will probably interpret it as "Joe Film paid someone to make this articles sound more favorable about him".
Andy, would you be willing to compromise on saying something like "Under normal circumstances, people with a COI", maybe with a link to a short list of the usual exceptions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
The problem with wording like "anybody can remove this tag, except editors with a COI" is that it's an open invitation to edit war over the tag, because the tagger will revert its removal and claim that the editor who removed it has a COI. Anybody can claim another editor has a COI to bolster their position in a dispute, and as far as I can tell there are no consequences for such bad faith assumptions. The point is that the defect in the tagging – the lack of discussion – is independent of the editor who removes the tag because of that defect; removing it is the correct action, if we want to enforce the principle that all cleanup tags require talk-page discussion. As we already agree, conflicted editors ought not to be editing the article as far as possible, so we don't need another change to wording just to make that point. If you really feel that that it's important to include a reminder in the wording, then you should consider the wording "without a proven conflict of interest", which ought to cover the caution for conflicted editors without creating another bludgeon for drive-by taggers to use. If taggers want the tag to stay, then they must do at least the minimum work of starting a talk-page discussion, not simply edit-war tags back in. --RexxS (talk) 11:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
"the concept that somehow COI is a BLP violation is a non-sequitur" Indeed. But since no one has claimed that "COI is a BLP violation", it's also a straw man. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
@Andy: that's not making progress: you need to be clear just what you think the straw man is. @Widefox: if you read carefully, you'll see that Andy wasn't claiming that COI was a BLP violation. He was making the comparison with BLP violations, which are to be removed regardless of who the removing editor is - even if they are the subject of the violation. By analogy he argues that a defective COI tag could be removed by anybody, even the allegedly conflicted editor. It's ok to disagree with the analogy, but he wants you to explain why it's ok for the subject of a BLP violation to remove the faulty content, but the analogous case with COI should not apply in the same way. Does that make more sense to you now? --RexxS (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Er, yes Doug, that's why I quoted the statement which is a straw man. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you User:WhatamIdoing and RexxS for trying to reason it more. Andy I've struck my shorthand "non-sequitur" wording, replacing it with "needs reasoning as the case has not been made for a causal connection". If it's an analogy per RexxS that could be why, if placing a COI tag causes a BLP violation then that's serious and we need to detail that. Even then, we shouldn't let that tail wag the dog as BLPs are only a subset of articles for the tag (if Andy was referring to BLPs). We all agree BLP trumps COI, as does OUTING. The causal link with OUTING is clear. (aside about OUTING: even then, for instance {{autobiography}}, I've pointed out below that the current doc is logically flawed about OUTING as the wording of the tag (rather than its name) includes editors who are not the subject, so using that tag cannot specifically OUT any account as the subject.)
While I agree with the concern voiced by WhatamIdoing that some readers/editors may interpret it, we're assuming and the tag isn't specific about who (what/where/when/why) but WP:COIEDIT does touch on real world consequences for COI editors others may add information that would otherwise remain little known. ... The media has several times drawn attention to companies that engage in COI editing on Wikipedia (see Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia), which has led to embarrassment for the organization concerned. so let's not blame the messenger, but if we can separate bad-faith usage (elsewhere) that would help. Would the doc linking to that consensus WP:COIEDIT be enough?
"We all agree BLP trumps COI" Not so - elsewhere on this page, it is asserted (quite wrongly, of course) that "The BLP policy isn't relevant to article cleanup". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
User talk:Jytdog do you agree that BLP trumps COI?
Andy it's the circumstance(s) when BLP trumps COI that would be useful to know. Widefox; talk 15:25, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jytdog: (failed ping above) Widefox; talk 23:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, Jytdog has had plenty of chance to respond to this, and hasn't, so I think it reasonable to assume he stands by his "BLP policy isn't relevant to article cleanup" claim. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:46, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. That's for both no reply from Jytdog, but more importantly the relevance of it - I've yet to see any firm argument made for a circumstance when BLP must trump COI. Widefox; talk 04:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
RexxS is right that we want to avoid creating an upper hand in disputes. I think that's more than a potential for misuse argument, as undisclosed COI editors may contest there too. The tag needs to balance the tradeoff with much of our guidelines and spirit, specifically ad hominem/OWN and BITE, and arguably the current right privilege of COI editors to edit. They all need guarding, but why have we so much doc on when not to use, and so little on when to use. There's a balance/weight issue, with too much emphasis on worst case/bad faith/editor dispute usage, rather than correct usage with ducks.
TLDR How about a compromise by just directing editors with a COI to follow WP:COIEDIT, does this wording work for everyone? If you do not start this discussion, then any editor without a conflict of interest is justified in removing the tag without warning, and those with a COI should follow WP:COIEDIT and are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly. I would personally consider any tagger that adds {{connected}} to the talk has done the logical minimum for the tag, but will leave that for now.Widefox; talk 00:18, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
No thank you. Since the clause in question only applies when the required talk page discussion has not been started, no limit to who may remove such an inappropriately placed tag is necessary. The way to prevent involved editors from removing the tag is for the person placing it to open a talk page discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy I agree, for inappropriate tagging. These are two separate concerns, so rather that attempting to resolve them now, would it be acceptable for all if we just list them separately? i.e. 1. drive-by tagging 2. WP:COIEDIT/WP:ToU for 1. wording taken from {{POV}} Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag should discuss concerns on the talk page, where possible pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies. In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what issue has been caused by an editor with a COI, the tag may be removed by any editor.
Editors with a COI should follow WP:COIEDIT. Widefox; talk 15:13, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
"I agree, for inappropriate tagging." Excellent. Tagging (with this template) is inappropriate if it fails to meet the requirement that: if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. The current wording handles this adequately. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy I was aiming to reach a compromise to move forward, so are you happy with this new wording or not? Widefox; talk 23:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Not, as should be abundantly clear from my previous comments. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
If would help if you reason your argument about the current proposal, or propose an alternative per consensus building. Widefox; talk 15:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I have already said "Since the clause in question only applies when the required talk page discussion has not been started, no limit to who may remove such an inappropriately placed tag is necessary." Why are you now asking me to draft such a limit? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:16, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy The clause in question isn't changed Andy, so I'm not. WP:COIEDIT applies here whether we link it or not. As COIEDIT doesn't stop editors with a COI from removing templates with that clause, there is absolutely no change to this clause, and no new limit. This is possibly more clear in the version at the bottom of this page, which attempts to include Jytdog's concerns. Widefox; talk 14:04, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy, you keep saying that this only applies if a single objective circumstance is true, but that's just not true. It may be that this part of this particular sentence only mentions the one circumstance, but the ===When to remove=== section lists three separate circumstances that warrant removal. IMO we need to look at the big picture. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
The current wording is "if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. If you do not start this discussion, then any editor is justified in removing the tag without warning.". The disputed edit would change that to "if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. If you do not start this discussion, then any editor without a conflict of interest is justified in removing the tag without warning.". Neither has three separate circumstances. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
The current wording has been corrupted by COI editors so less weight should be put on it (see above). The proposed wording has an additional one Andy. Agree with the sentiment of WhatamIdoing. Doc, WP:COIEDIT and WP:ToU is the order of trumping - they apply to all edits. Both say that COI editors may edit articles. The proposed wording just states what already applies here, with wording from POV, and COIEDIT. It's a start. I agree with WhatamIdoing that it won't be the end. Widefox; talk 15:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
"convoluted"? "no traction"? I'm still not clear what part of the entirely unambiguous if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article you're not understanding. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
User:RexxS, I'd be happy with your qualification about a "proven" COI.
Andy, I think that whether or not a discussion has been started is objective. However, the sentence in question currently gives three situations that warrant removal:
  1. the problem is resolved,
  2. the problem is not explained on the article's talk page, and/or
  3. no current attempts to resolve the problem can be found.
I agree with you that #2 is reasonably objective. But I think that a COI-affected editor should avoid the subjective #1 entirely (perhaps with an exception for cases in which all of that COI-affected editor's edits have been reverted), and should act with caution and patience around #3.
Another approach would be to say that "any editor" can do this, but to follow it with links to COIEDIT and/or a warning that COI-affected editors should expect drama if their opponents notice them removing it (not in those words, of course). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing I fundamentally disagree with the need to invoke any new wording like "proven" when the consensus is already at WP:COIEDIT and we can use that - did you see my compromise above (TLDR)? It already has * you should not act as a reviewer of affected article(s) at AfC, new pages patrol or elsewhere; Widefox; talk 09:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
And there's the nub of the argument. Without any safeguard for innocent editors, a tagger won't worry about nuances on linked pages; they will just insist on their right to revert the tag's removal because they claim the editor has a COI. Not acceptable. --RexxS (talk) 13:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Widefox, the "just follow COIEDIT" approach is too simplistic. There are two possible situations here: (1) I correctly identify Paul Paid as having a COI, and (2) I incorrectly guess that Frank Fan has a COI, when he doesn't. In situation #1, Paul Paid should certainly follow COIEDIT. But in situation #2, Frank Fan should not – and then what am I supposed to do, when Frank Fan removes the inappropriate tag? Run to ANI and create a lot of drama because Fan didn't follow a guideline that didn't apply to him? (Remember that I'm invincibly convinced that Fan has a COI, because I believe that nobody without a COI would write anything positive about anything or anyone.)
If we set the rule as involving something like a "proven" COI, then I'm less likely to take my mere guesses about either of these editors to ANI. Instead, I'm likely to try other mechanisms available to me (such as: a {{POV}} tag, cleaning up the article myself, starting an RFC on the article content, maybe a trip to COIN, maybe other options in the dispute resolutions system). If my personal guess is law, though (at least until enough people show up to outvote me), then I could end up edit warring over the tag with a falsely accused editor. And if we say, "Yeah, but the rule is 'just follow COIEDIT'", then that's a perfectly fine rule, but the entire source of the problem is that Fan doesn't have a COI at all, but I am wrongly insisting that he does. And with new editors, in particular, we unfortunately can't assume that they can make any sense at all out of the talk page system, so a failure to discuss the accusation is not actually proof that the person has a COI.
IMO we want to be saying two somewhat different things in the /doc page: to the tagging editor, remember that you might be wrong; and to the accused editor, if the other guy's correct, then you need to learn and follow some specific rules (including, but not limited to, those about disclosing your status as a paid editor, if applicable), and if he's not, you might want to figure out if the article fully complies with WP:NPOV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing I agree it's too simplistic. It's an attempt to band-aid this for now by restating the current consensus, and defer resolving the competing issues with proper essay/guideline later once the heat that triggered this has dissipated. Widefox; talk 01:02, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
RexxS "proven" is a strong word and a high bar in an anonymous environment. Even a self-disclosed COI is not "proven", which would set a bar at uncontentious. Widefox; talk 13:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Widefox: yes "proven" is a strong word, but necessary if we are to avoid misuse that would cause problems for innocent editors. Of course a self-disclosed COI is proven – a self-disclosure is surely the commonest piece of evidence. I can't believe you are suggesting that somebody who discloses a COI would then remove a tag, claiming their COI was "not proven". That simply would not happen. --RexxS (talk) 17:29, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Well Doug...such ludicrous wikilawyering is common at COIN yes! For example in the last month, a now blocked editor claimed they're not editing with a COI. As in, present tense, as in literally as they write that sentence. For years that one also claimed disclosure wasn't needed on non article space, so they drafted without disclosure and got other editors to move them. There wasn't even a loophole to exploit there, and they did it for years despite it being pointed out. If we know there's a gap between "proven" and "disclosed" and "disclosed" is just as good, best to use that. Widefox; talk 20:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing There's more than just two possible situations. There's a whole cast of characters in the middle... Hello Socking Sam, (sock)Farmer Fred, SPA Sue, undisclosed-PAID Paige, undisclosed-COI Colin, (the COI editor acknowledges they have a connection but claims they only edit neutrally) In-denial Imogen, (refusing to disclose by wikilawyering e.g. WP:PAIDTALK...) Didn't-inhale Dylan, Talker Tim, (claims that it's industry standard to manage all their clients pages [14]) Standardpractice Stan, Undisclosed Ursula, Upwork Uri, PR Pat, MEATy Matt, DUCKy Derek, with the spotlight on Drive-by Dan. Widefox; talk 13:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Break 2

Perhaps we could make an exception for BLP. Something like: "This tag may be removed by editors who do not have a conflict of interest at the article in question after the problem is resolved ... On biographies of living persons, any editor (whether conflicted or not) may remove the tag, unless there is an active discussion about the COI issues on the talk page or consensus that the tag should remain."

RexxS, is there an additional technical solution? For example, could these tags be dated on BLPs so that a bot would remove them after (say) three months? Then anyone wanting to retain it would have to restore it, reset the clock and re-start the discussion? SarahSV (talk) 14:05, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Slimvirgin, we get a lot of editing on BLP articles that demonstrates apparent COI. Tagging the article with a COI tag if the person doesn't respond to an inquiry about their connection with the subject, is, for me at least, a gentle next step in order to get the person's attention. Making it "OK" for them to remove the tag just provides a pathway for people to escalate the problematic behavior. I do not agree with the stretching of BLP in various ways, that is being made here. Jytdog (talk) 14:42, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
If you want to avoid that "pathway", then all you have to do is abide by the requirement in the template's documentation: if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article. Under what circumstances do you envisage that that would not be possible? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:13, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
This bit of discussion is about whether "anyone" should be able to remove the tag - the content you removed here, here, and here. Jytdog (talk) 15:53, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I think you will find it is also about your claim of "a pathway for people to escalate the problematic behavior". I wonder whether you might now answer my question: "Under what circumstances do you envisage that that would not be possible for a person placing the tag to abide by the requirement in the template's documentation: if you place this tag, you should promptly start a discussion on the article's talk page to explain what is non-neutral about the article"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
RexxS does the proposed wording (above) at "Andy I agree, for inappropriate tagging" work for you? I don't care if we link to WP:COIEDIT or include parts/all, whatever is more agreeable - it's swings and roundabouts. In practice, editors with a COI often remove maintenance tags - normal consensus applies which is the ultimate, overriding gold-plated protection. Widefox; talk 23:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Andy, you keep missing the bigger picture. Removing the tag is not just about a failure to start a discussion. If that were true, then the tag would be required to remain forever, so long as a discussion was started at some point. We need to address all the circumstances in which the tag can and should be removed: when the problem has been resolved, when the concern was misplaced, when nobody's interested in solving the problem – and, yes, when nobody can figure out what the problem is, because the editor didn't explain it on the talk page, too, but not just that one circumstance.
SarahSV, your bot idea is technically feasible. It could, in fact, be done with any POV-related tag, on the grounds that few discussions remain active past 30 days (much less 90), and the requirement is an active effort to discuss or otherwise solve the problem (not just having left a single comment at some point in the past). However, I tend to doubt that we'd get consensus to run a mindless bot for this. Editors usually want good judgment involved in these decisions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Agree with WhatamIdoing. The letter (and spirit) of the doc here is still trumped by the bigger picture and tempered by the letter and spirit of WP:COI that already applies here, despite being missing from the doc. When I created what I considered an important article VisualEditor, I compromised on some minor wording suggested by WhatamIdoing who had a COI. I only mention it now as I'm sure I could have handled it better - we should be able to overcome these minor internal things without losing sight of the bigger picture. We all have valid points, but now's the time to see action from all sides to attempt a compromise and move on, please. Widefox; talk 00:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
No, I am not "missing the bigger picture". please do not attempt to dismiss my disagreeing with you as a failure to understand. The disputed edit is entirely about what happens when there is a failure to start a discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:50, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@Sarah: Yes a bot could remove old tags if there were agreement on an expiry date. Have you looked at Category:Wikipedia articles with possible conflicts of interest, though? There are tags going back to 2007 and the backlog has grown from 8,314 in 2014 to 12,239 today. The tag just doesn't attract enough editors to do the cleanup, and that's another pressing reason not to liberalise its use even further. I mean what is the point of trying to make it easier to keep tags on articles when they don't get cleaned up anyway most of the time? If we insisted on "no discussion = no tag", by my estimation we could remove 80% of that backlog in one go. --RexxS (talk) 17:42, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
@RexxS, WhatamIdoing, and Pigsonthewing: I think Andy has a point about long-term tags on BLPs being an arguable BLP violation. For example, Susan Muaddi Darraj, the Arab-American writer, has been tagged since October 2011. And yes, there are backlogs because it really isn't fair to expect unpaid volunteers to do this work. That's one of the big problems with COI/paid editing: if we object, we're expected to clean up, thereby (often) producing a better page for COI/paid editors for free. (There are possible solutions to this, but they've always been poo-pooed.) In my view, having a robot remove tags from the BLPs after a certain period would at least reduce the problem. SarahSV (talk) 18:17, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, Sarah, I'm understanding better what's concerning you. The last thing I want is for paid editors to produce any old load of poorly-written, barely-notable hagiography, in the firm expectation that an unpaid volunteer will come along and fix it all for them. That's not on. I'm wondering if the answer when COI editing has created identifiable concerns is to note the concern on talk and then move it into draft space? Perhaps we need yet another template saying "This article contains COI problems, noted on the talk page, and should not be restored to article space until they are fixed." Of course, that would put an increased burden on AfC, and the article could languish there for months – but maybe it's better than having it languish in mainspace when real issues have been identified. I guess anything like that ought to be tested at Village Pump. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 18:43, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
RexxS, I think that's a good idea. An argument against it is that it simply moves the problem, and it will leave good-faith BLP subjects asking what we expect of them. But it's almost always faster to show than tell, so again it puts the onus on volunteers to fix it or spend time explaining. What we really need are one of two things: (a) a way for volunteers to earn money fixing these articles (I have made suggestions about this in the past, all rejected immediately) or (b) for the WMF to start making clear to the public that we're not Facebook and not everyone can have a page. Until then we're stuck with this problem. I do think your idea is worth a try. SarahSV (talk) 19:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Sarah I wholeheartedly agree something should be done long-term, involving changing the incentives. To try to understand the BLP concern, would it be mitigated if a bot converted stale COI tags on BLPs that have no discussion to {{Requires attention}} or a similar tag? Agree with RexxS and James about taking articles out of article space, which is a way of internalizing the externality in WP:BOGOF. Widefox; talk 21:00, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

The issue goes wider than just this single template; I've just found {{Undisclosed paid}}:

which appears on 673 articles, many of which (like Ruhama Avraham (where it has been in place for over four months); Bert Hölldobler; Simon Rex (five months); Terry Nelson (political consultant); Vince Ratti) are BLPs; and on none of those I've randomly checked (including all the given example) has a talk page discussion offering any evidence to support its use been opened. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh so an editor who regularly takes money to edit WP and edit wars on behalf of commercial paid editors, is now campaigning to thwart our efforts to manage COI. This is going to get interesting indeed. Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I have already asked you, more than once in recent days, to cease your ad hominem attacks. But if your "efforts to manage COI" mean dropping negative commentary on articles about living people, and leaving it there for several months, with no attempt to explain or justify - much less substantiate - that negative commentary, then yes, I do intend to "thwart" such abuse, as we have a foundation-mandated policy prohibiting it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:15, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I am describing your behavior. You are the one campaigning to help corruption proliferate and go unreviewed. Tags get removed when content gets checked and fixed. If independent editors have no urgent interest in doing that, then the tags linger. There are tags that have been on articles for years and years. Jytdog (talk) 20:31, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
So you not only respond with another ad hominem attack, but also one that is blatantly dishonest. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:35, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes we have a significant problem with undisclosed paid editors. We also have 1,000s of blocked accounts and 10,000s of deleted articles as a results of efforts by PR firms to fill Wikipedia full of advertising for their client. Last time I checked we do not allow advertisements and we are working to create an indepedent knowledge source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm saddened that, as not just an admin, but also a WMF board member, you have not commented on the egregious ad hominem attacks in this section. You also fail to address the issue I raised, namely that of unsubstantiated allegations on BLP articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:10, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Note that nothing in that template's documentation actually requires starting a discussion; what is requested is placing template {{Connected contributor (paid)}} on the talk page, with a link verifying the insinuated connection. In my spot sample of ten-ish instances, that had been done about half the time (I overlooked it in my one use of the template so far, fixing which made me notice this discussion). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:29, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

So, only half of those you found do not even comply with the template's meagre requirements; and the other half do, but still leave the allegation unsubstantiated on the BLP's talk page with just a vague link to something that may or may not explain it. Does that satisfy the requirements of our BLP policy? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
The BLP policy isn't relevant to article cleanup. Also discussion about use of a tag is usually brought up at the tag's actual talk page, which is here: Template talk:Undisclosed paid.
Yes there should be a tag or discussion at the Talk page. That is what people should do. There is always more cleanup to do, including cleaning up after people starting to cleanup. Why are you not helping fix that by adding those tags or discussions, since you do seem to care about this a lot? (Please don't run around just stripping the tags; people generally put them on for good reason, and with a little good faith effort it is not at all hard to figure out) I will put some time into that this week.
And all of that (tagging and justifying tags) is preliminary to doing the real work of carefully reviewing the content. So much work to do, always. Jytdog (talk) 15:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Generally (and not specific to any editor/edits) agree with James and Elmidae, when placing a COI tag, putting a Connected template on the talk is surely the logical minimum a volunteer should do. Of course, this is the disclosure that the paid editor or editor with a COI has failed to do, which is the the burden we should be incentivising here, very different to any other tag as it's about the editor not the edit. I agree with the sentiment that a volunteer doing more would be helpful, possibly more workable, so that should be strongly encouraged. Widefox; talk 16:57, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
"The BLP policy isn't relevant to article cleanup." The BLP policy is, strangely enough, relevant to BLPs. If article cleanup impacts BLPs, then it unequivocally falls within the purview of the BLP policy. Anyone who thinks the BLP policy "isn't relevant" to what they do on Wikipedia has no business touching BLPs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Another option

Another option would be to hide the entire article until the issues have been dealt with like we do for copyright infringement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes James, that's the sort of commonsense conclusion I came to out of despair of the scale of the problem. It puts the burden back on COIs to disclose and bear the edit costs of fixing their own stuff, per WP:BOGOF to prevent tragedy of the commons. I'm very unhappy about asking volunteers to run the gauntlet of COI currently, and WP:DEADLINE detailing content issues. Wrong way, go back! Either editors have a solution to the problem, or they're happy with how COI has been subverted above, and pervasive in scale. Widefox; talk 19:16, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Another option would be to simple move all these articles back to draft space when detected. But that would only be useful for those exclusively edited by undisclosed paid editors. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Yup. Has anyone noticed how the no man's land of editors addressing COI has become not just subverted above, but a minefield without a map? e.g. {{Autobiography}} actually says Do not use this tag when doing so would reveal the identity of a pseudonymous Wikipedia user. Violating the privacy of users by revealing their real names or other personal information can result in an indefinite block.. Do we use "COI" tag instead, it doesn't say. Widefox; talk 19:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes I would use the "COI" tag instead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 Done Map around that mine added [15]. Widefox; talk 20:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Still, the actual text of the template does not refer exclusively to the subject being the editor with a COI This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited by the subject or by someone connected to the subject (emphasis own). So that is actually as specific as a COI tag! So how could using it ever reveal the subject's account any more than using the COI tag?! It's illogical. The wording in the doc is a hidden mine. OUTING yes, but autobiography vs COI tag no - the presumption is against the editor just for using the tag. I think I see a pattern. Hmm, let's check the edit history... User:KDS4444 (indef banned) edited it in [16] , so again...COI has been corrupted. Shocking - the pattern not the instance. We are using COI guidance subverted by editors with a COI! Widefox; talk 22:13, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Hum good point. Aggressive clean up may be required. Some poople with a COI are trying to change the rules to their personal financial benefit :-( Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:07, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, aggressive cleanup is not only required – little weight should be put on an old, corrupted consensus – there's no return to status quo ante.
This template is as simple as we want it to be - use this template to mark articles that need further scrutiny. The minimum of directing other editors to which articles, and which edits via editors on the talk. It really is that simple. Widefox; talk 01:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely not. If you want a template to mark articles that need further scrutiny, then create one. This is not that template: it's a cleanup template and used to mark articles that are in need of cleanup. I'm disappointed that experienced editors such as yourselves should confuse "scrutiny" with "cleanup". They are simply not the same thing. --RexxS (talk) 17:50, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes RexxS "It really is that simple" is just for the editor aspect - necessary but, as you say, not sufficient. My comment should be understood together with my other comments (e.g. 2. is how it's used currently risk), including thinking aloud (for discussing expanding the doc, not discussing changing usage). I think it was an attempt to highlight the editor aspect of the scope. Do you agree it's a tip-of-the-iceberg cleanup that requires further scrutiny? Edits and editors are within scope of this tag, and it should not be used without both aspects, agree? The "cleanup" also can't be separated from the additional "scrutiny" required? Else the other content issue tags would be sufficient and this redundant. If it were exclusively about content or editor it wouldn't be worded as it is, or used as it is. In practice, just highlighting which editors have COIs saves time by focussing scrutiny, (that's my experience, which is why my personal take is that's the theoretical minimum we should demand when placing the tag, but the practical minimum we should ask for is a serious content issue to safeguard drive-by). Any cleanup involves additional scrutiny review where additional content issues are likely to be uncovered and should not be done by a conflicted editor. We can't fully embrace/ignore/isolate 1. editor -> 2. "may" in COI -> 3. edits. A content cleanup tip-of-the-iceberg tag. We need better doc for this first, before anything new. Quite often, after scrutiny at COIN etc, the articles are deleted as failing notability, promotion, and editors blocked sock, meat, block evasion. Both is right. Widefox; talk 18:57, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Of course the cleanup and scrutiny can be separated. That's obvious to anyone who's done this work. Checking whether an article that's been edited by a recognised paid editor has issues is one job. It may turn up problems or it might not. That's the scrutiny. Do you see that much? If there are no problems, we don't need any tags, agreed? If there are problems, then the person who has invested time in identifying the problems can either fix them (if they have time) or leave a message on the talk page itemising the problems for others to fix. Fixing the identified problems is the cleanup; I hope you can see that. The cleanup may require multiple editors and possibly considerable time, so we use a cleanup tag, not as a warning to readers, nor as a notice that the article has been scrutinised, but as an invitation to other editors to come and help with the cleanup. That's it, the whole story, nothing missing. Scrutiny is one thing; cleanup another. There is a category of cleanup templates that includes this one, and they all share the same requirement: no discussion = no tag. This cleanup tag has a defined purpose and we have it for a reason; you should not be trying to change it into something else. --RexxS (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
YMMV maybe we have different experiences - I've done this work - a quick search gives me >30 24 COIN archive hits. I just don't agree with you that I could have always followed such a strict scrutiny->cleanup order on all cases as there may be steps where I don't have all the info upfront. Often iterative rather than two step waterfall model. I've worked on many that haven't disclosed upfront Doug, some going to COIN, then SPI, ANI etc. for sock / meat discovery, sockfarms, dragging disclosures, wikilaywering. Yes I've floated many perspectives here, with the purpose of fixing and improving documentation after noticing corruption by COIs which is how I arrived here (not related to any editor or article). I don't consider that my proposed wording compromise a) or b) below changes the purpose at all, we can agree to differ. Widefox; talk 13:00, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
I get 24 hits in the COIN archives when I search for your name, and more when I search for mine. Being someone who "does this work" doesn't give either of us license to impose our views on the entire community. Any editor could be affected by the rules we set for using this template, so every editor's view is worth considering. We need rules that work for everyone, not rules that make life simple for COIN regulars and hard for other editors (e.g., falsely accused editors and editors who want to clean up alleged COI messes but can't figure out what the problem is).
That said, I think that it's better to talk about the content of the page than about the contributor who put it there. Yes, some of the people who edited the docs for this template were later discovered to have some problems. That is also true for the COI guideline itself, and pretty much every significant policy. But "he's a bad person" is not the same thing as "that change didn't (more or less) represent consensus at that time". I happened to have seen most of those changes when they were made, and they didn't strike me as unusual. (I did revert most of the changes by the guy who thought that the point of the template was to warn readers, but I reverted them because it seemed inconsistent with our other guidelines and previous discussions, not because I thought he was a bad person. The fact that he was indeffed for edit warring and disruption three months later is irrelevant.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:34, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing My YMMV point was solely in reply to RexxS's That's obvious to anyone who's done this work, which I see as an argument from authority, so not helpful. I recall reading 34 but you rightly correct me (struck), thanks. Full disclosure: Widefox: 24 + 1 non-archived, WhatamIdoing: 26, RexxS: 2 . I agree with you, and RexxS's input is vital, as CLUE rather than LOCALCONSENSUS "done this work" matters. The wider input here is why I changed my position on clause 2./3. from a new restriction on COIs to keeping as is. I'm not sure if RexxS has recognised that my position has changed. It's in black and white at "b)" and somewhat "a)" (his/someone else's suggestion which is more restrictive than my position changed to, ironically). Widefox; talk 15:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

OTRS data

note, i made this a separate section Jytdog (talk) 19:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Outta sheer curiosity, do we receive a number of complaints by BLP subjects about COI or Paid contributor tags on articles? Summoning Sphilbrick, seeing as they have often reported issues identified by OTRS to the village pumps. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:03, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

thanks that is an interesting question. data is useful. Jytdog (talk) 17:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
It's a fair question. I'd like to find a better way of getting a decent answer.
Anecdotally, I can say I see such requests occasionally but not all that common. However, that's an acceptable answer. I don't ever recall seeing a complaint about a paid editor tag, but keep in mind at this time I'm talking about tickets I looked at personally and I only look at a subset of tickets.
I believe I've seen people concerned about the COI tag but what I remember is similar, although not exactly the same thing, is a complaint about a tag saying that this article is primarily written by a single editor, or this article may have been edited by someone close to the subject. I hate those requests because I have trouble thinking of good answer other than wait a few years until a number of other editors have weighed in and we can reach a point where the tag can justifiably be removed. That's not much of an answer.
I tried a more formal way to answer your question. I did a search on all tickets sent into info-EN in the last week containing "COI". Unfortunately, while I got a handful, in every case it was because the response included a link to our COI advice. Not a single one included a question from the customer about COI. A week's worth of tickets isn't enough to address conclusions, but I was just testing, and now I see I have to figure out how to do research on just the customer text not the response text. At the moment I don't know to do that.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:11, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Remarkably few, from my past experience as an OTRS agent, and those normally fomr people who had a blatant COI. Guy (Help!) 22:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Very very few.~ Winged BladesGodric 08:05, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Removal of unjustified COI tags: findings at ANI

Jytdog's recent attempt, at WP:ANI, to have me removed from this conversation failed, predictably.

It is worth noting the comments by the uninvolved closing administrator, which include:

Removing tags is fine, re-adding them is also fine but, per the template's instructions and long-standing practice, only if (a) the removal was clearly abusive or (b) there is genuine evidence to underpin the tag, in the form of a specific post on Talk describing the issue at hand

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:30, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Removing tags without fixing the underlying issue is not "fine". Restoring copyright infringement and unreffed BLP material such as you did here is also not fine.
By the way the close also says tags can be restored "if the removal was clearly abusive" and IMO your mass removal of tags from articles in which a COI exists is "pointy" / "abusive" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:34, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Given your behaviour so far in this matter, James, I'm sure you'll understand why I don't consider your opinion as having much significance, especially in relation to those of uninvolved editors who show more regard for abiding by long-standing consensus and respecting BLP subjects. But let's ask the closing admin User:JzG what he meant by "abusive". I'll also note that an attempt to overturn the close also failed, and was withdrawn by Jytdog. And as I pointed out on the talk page of the Epstein piece (where you have yet to respond), the material you removed included multiple citations. You made no mention in your removal edit summary of copyright issues, only the spurious "unreferenced" claim that you repeat here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Oh FFS, everybody I like seems to hate everybody else I like today.
Andy: I was not saying the tags are unjustified, I was only saying that there is a lack of consensus over how this should be handled and what specifically constitutes COI in these cases. You already know that removal is contentious, so the best course is to collect up a list and run an RfC of some sort to discuss whether they are justified.
You are in exactly the same place as Jytdog here: you have a binary view that the tags are unjustified, he has a binary view that they are. The two views are opinions, not objective fact, and we actually don't know what consensus is on this.
Carrying on like you currently are, you're going to run out of friends quite quickly. You've been there before and nobody wants to see it again. So please stop picking fights with good people and work out a way forward that doesn't involve butting heads. Guy (Help!) 11:02, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Eh? Where did I say you had said they were unjustified? The difference between my view and Jytdog's is that mine is - as you yourself noted - "per the template's instructions and long-standing practice". You were asked to explain wheat you meant by "abusive". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:00, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Connected editors frequently copy and paste from other peices without clear copyright release. The clue is that the text occurs with strange sentence breaks that are added by copy and pasting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:02, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
And they frequently don't. Like I said "You made no mention in your removal edit summary of copyright issues". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:35, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Well said Guy. Andy Nobody here wants to watch two good guys in a death grip over WP:BIKESHED. The accusations on both sides add up to just ... POINTY. Why BIKESHED? Nothing new can be advanced here as this is a template doc, it's not guideline or policy per WP:TDOC Editors should defer to official policies or guidelines when template documentation pages are inconsistent with established community standards and principles.. It's not even strictly managed like CSDs or PRODs. The doc just needs bringing in line with WP:COI/WP:COIEDIT, WP:ToU, WP:PAID and {{POV}} doc, and arguably stripping incorrectly placed (but not incorrect) tags needs balancing against maintenance tags - do not remove unless you address the issue or explain why. You've yet to make the BLP argument despite multiple requests. I'm not going to ask again. BLP is moot per the content guideline which trumps this doc and arguably BLP - WP:NODISCLAIMERS#Why disclaimers should not be used The lack of the disclaimer on certain pages as opposed to others might open Wikipedia to lawsuits. More explicitly, the lack or presence of one is not a legal issue. Per that, whatever your argument is, its moot, and its in your own interest to strike all BLP mentions to clear the appearance of WP:CRYBLP, despite good intentions. Two compromises are on the table "a)" or "b)". Now would be a good time for both sides to start giving the impression they're aiming to reach a compromise. Widefox; talk 14:47, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
NODISCLAIMERS says nothing about BLPs, but even if it did, could not trump WP:BLP - nor, indeed, WMF policy on BLPs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:59, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
That's digging deeper with WP:CRYBLP Andy. The issue with an argument you have not made, is that it can't be countered. It's chilling, which you said you didn't want. Widefox; talk 15:38, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I fear the "argument I have not made" is one you are imagining; I've laid put my arguments quite clearly (most recently, IIRC in my post time-stamped 15:46, 9 February); including in discussion elsewhere which you yourself have linked to. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:57, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
That diff 15:46, 9 February is you quoting another editor's argument. Additionally, what someone else said about your argument is hearsay. I stand by an argument you have not made. It is indefensible to WP:CRYBLP WP:CRYCOI from either side to gain an upper hand. Agree? Where did you rest your case? It seems to have fallen over! Widefox; talk 18:10, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) Doug, WhatamIdoing, and I are the only editors here who've expressed positive sentiment for a compromise. Others may come along if any of us three stop caring about the BIKESHED, but Guy is spot on. Widefox; talk 16:00, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
That depends on what you mean by a compromise. For instance, WhatamIdoing asked above "I'm wondering whether a practical compromise would look like explicitly allowing editors who (allegedly or actually) have a COI to remove unexplained tags, and also explicitly disallowing editors who (actually) have a COI to remove it under any other circumstance. Could you live with that?" I'm in favour of that practical compromise - which is what I have been arguing for all along - so you can add me to the list. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:44, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
OK, great Andy. I see light at the end of the tunnel. I presume you are flexible on wording as long as the logic is completely unchanged, so presumably User:WhatamIdoing can be free if they want to reword it for the doc? For instance, if a more practical definition of the words "allegedly" and "actually" is useful, so "actually" "declared and/or consensus".
So it is smooth for both sides can I get you both to agree to... 1. Any future allegations of BLP violations to do with this tag should be taken up at BLPN to prevent CRYBLP upper hand with tags on BLPs? e.g. there will be no BLP defence for 3RR in future for edit warring over the tag on BLPs unless via BLPN. In return for 2. Any future COI allegations to do with this edit warring over the tag should be taken up at COIN to prevent CRYCOI upper hand with tags in general e.g. there will be no 3RR defence in future for edit warring over the tags where there's a lack of consensus over an editor having COI.
User:Jytdog, do you agree to the same? Widefox; talk 19:53, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure how you've extrapolated what I wrote above to mean "Any future allegations of BLP violations to do with this tag..." but that's not what I wrote and not what I meant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:04, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your note Widefox. I've stepped away from this discussion. Jytdog (talk) 20:09, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I had a couple of (ec) so my final version wasn't saved and is now discarded as moot. Widefox; talk 20:29, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
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