On 8/1/12 1:51 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Yann Forget, 01/08/2012 13:13:
I have suggested some basic rules about this on the French WP, but not only they were blankly rejected, but I was barred from mentioning the whole subject. The first step against CoI is making the editors conscious that, because of their profession, background, culture, etc., they may have a bias on a subject.
We regularly discuss this in the Italian community about the so called subject matter experts, reegularly coming to the conclusion that we surely make it clear that their opinions/original research is not welcome (it regularly gets deleted), the question is whether thay can find a way to contribute or they're unrecoverable.
I think it can work well, if the Wikipedia manages to develop a core of "expert" editors in an area who also understand Wikipedia norms, and can spread that culture. On the English Wikipedia this works reasonably well in some of the scientific and mathematical areas, where most of the involved academics understand that they need to cite third-party reliable sources for statements (increasingly true in the history editing as well, I believe). On the other hand, there is still some CoI that goes on now and then, with people writing articles to promote their own findings (or even an article on their lab, university, or themselves).
-Mark