Wikipedia talk:Paid editing (guideline)/Archive 11

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How To Declare a COI

This proposed guideline currently says "Editors with COIs are strongly encouraged to declare their interests, both on their user pages and on the talk page of any article they edit". This is very broad, and leaves much room for different interpretations. A while ago I tried to get some discussion going on User talk:FT2/Commercial and paid editing regarding this. Perhaps it is an idea to move the convo here. Some areas that could use clearing up:

1. When should you disclose?
2. How should you disclose?
3. What must you disclose?
4. What must you not disclose? (ie: WP:ADVERTISING)
5. What articles must you disclose your COI on?
6. What articles must you not disclose your COI on?
7. What articles may you choose to disclose your COI or not?

etc. Just a start. Thanks.     Eclipsed   (talk)   (code of ethics)     14:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that editors with such a COI are likely to fall into one of two categories:

1. SPAs; they just focus on a particular article or group of articles associated with the subject of their COI;

2. Editors who have a normal range of editing apart from a COI on a particular subject - perhaps somebody who felt their experience could earn a few $ at a paid-editing site, or somebody whose employer says "Hey, you know wikipedia don't you? Could you fix our article..?".

In neither case do I believe that there's a net benefit to mandatory disclosure on article talkpages. In the first case, because the COI is obvious from the edit logs; and in the second case because I think there are demarcation problems between COI and non-COI edits, and because we risk stigmatising a contributor to a hundred pages simply because they had a COI on one page.

Userpages seem to be the place where everybody says "This is me! I'm interested in X, I have a career in Y, I like to do Z". Even people who don't think that they have a COI will often put something on their userpage which gives a clue. So, if we are to hang leper-bells round the necks of people who are getting something in return for wikipedia contributions that are otherwise policy-compliant, the userpage would be a perfect place to hang the bells. Why mandate further declarations elsewhere? bobrayner (talk) 20:39, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A most interesting metaphor, the leper-bells. Another one: The Scarlet C.

One important issue, that I don't see anyone really discussing yet, is the contradiction between COI declares and WP:ADVERTISING policy. Continued COI declarations on article talk pages will, in effect, be promotion and advertising for the commercial entity doing the declare. The more good, includeable pages the commercial entity creates, the more "forced self-promotion" they will be doing.     Eclipsed   (talk)   (code of ethics)     21:02, 30 November 2010 (UTC)