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Wikidata:Requests for comment/Conflict of Interest

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by Rschen7754


THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
While the proposal may be good advice to follow, there is no consensus to make it a Wikidata policy. --Rschen7754 03:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Data in Wikidata can be biased: by omitting specific statements or publishing only selected statements, Wikidata item pages can paint an incomplete and biased picture of the underlying topic. On the other hand, since Wikidata does not allow for natural language, a lot of nuance and opportunity for bias goes away.

This means, that editing Wikidata does not require rules as strict as those for Wikipedia, but still does require rules. The following is a suggestion:

  1. As per the general Wikimedia Terms of Use, paid editing has to be disclosed - either on the User page of the contributor, or the talk page of the item.
  2. Conflict of Interest is broader than paid contribution: e.g. editing the item of your favorite band, about yourself, your friends or rivals, your home town, can all lead to edits with a Conflict of Interest. Such editing in Wikidata is not frowned upon in general, but can indeed be quite helpful: who else but those with a strong interest in a topic would be editing the topic? The following guidelines describe a few behaviors you should be careful about, though.
  3. Be careful when / Refrain from creating an item when you have a COI. Be sure to follow the notability criteria, and do not try to bend them. When in doubt, don't do it. If you create an item, and someone suggests to delete it, refrain from engaging in the discussion.
  4. Do not edit-war over an item when you have a COI. You can make a disclosure on the talk page, add references supporting your point of view, but do not keep editing the same few statements of the topic.
  5. Do not delete statements which are unflattering or even untrue, but have a strong reference, on a topic where you have a COI. Remember that Wikidata is about verifiability, not truth - if there is a very strong source for a statement, don't just remove it. Again, you can disclose your COI and suggest the deletion on the talk page, but do not do it yourself.
  6. If you are an authority on an item (or a set of item), e.g. acting as their agent, or a company looking for the Wikidata items about their products (movies, cars, songs, etc.), you are allowed and indeed encouraged to keep the data about this item up-to-date and the coverage complete (e.g. box office, awards, cast, official Website, etc.). If you are an authority, you can also use your own website as a reference for the statements that you keep up-to-date or complete.
  7. Do not use Wikidata as a venue for original publication or as the primary storage of your data. You should always publish the data under your control in an appropriate venue. This publication can at the same time be used as a source for the statements in Wikidata.
  8. Note that labels and descriptions are slightly more sensitive for COI. Try to be as neutral as possible when editing them. Instead of saying "amazing break-through author of number one thrillers", write just "Swedish author". And if someone changes it to a bland description, do not go and revert it back to your more interesting one. The task of labels and descriptions are identification, not advertisement.

In general: use common sense and keep to the Wikidata policies re Notability and Verifiability.

Discussion

[edit]
Latest comment: 10 years ago21 comments15 people in discussion
  • Have we been experiencing problems that would warrant the formation of this policy? I think WD:UCS has been enough in this area, with the fundamental question "are you here to help build a machine-readable knowledge base?". If the answer is no, then the user is either a vandal or spammer acting in bad faith, or someone with a conflict of interest (while not necessarily acting in bad faith). Edit warring of any kind was already prohibited by Wikidata:Requests for comment/User conduct policies.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
I wanted to explicitly resolve this problem before it appears - once it appears, I expect emotions to fly high, etc. If there is no need to turn this into a policy because it already flows from existing policies - which would be great - then we can just state that this is the common understanding for the situation of possible CoIs and point to the relevant policies. Did I make any sense? --Denny (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
I general I don't usually support preemptive policies. All our existing policies were the result of potential need for them as indicated by recent events. Given the existing terms of use section I don't think we need to write our own guidelines down because they're essentially identical barring consensus otherwise.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:05, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

This seems to be guidance only. Is there any component that you were seeing as policy? I would think that what this fits within is a principle of editing of Wikidata, where there are components of guidance that relate to CoI. I saw this as many of the statements are not specific to CoI, and are covered under good editing practice, such that a CoI is bad application of the practice that should not exist.

FWIWI dislike policies for policies sake, especially "DON'T" policies and would think that the principles and practice that we expect are better.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:56, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I am not a huge fan of policies, and if this would be a mere guideline, I would be OK with this. I have no wish to increase the number of policies, especially since most of what is said follows from other policies anyway. --Denny (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

As a newcomer point 3 has tripped me up with my first inclusion. As a company owner/founder I am an authority on that company, probably the best person to include basic facts about that company. Point 6 allows me to keep the data updated and correct but under (3) not apparently to add that company into WD (based on the fact I'm trying to get that page re-included after deletion) Refrain from creating an item when you have a COI . In some respects to this newcomer I also find point 3 the part refrain from engaging in the discussion if someone suggests a deletion, harsh. This seems to portray a feel of you get one try to get it right whereas it may be beneficial to allow input from the authority so that WD has better quality data which in turn benefits the wider linked data community. Mutualadvantage (talk) 22:48, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, this was meant to be a bit harsh. The guidelines are meant to recognize that you would be the perfect authority for a lot of information about your company, but definitively not on the question if you should be included in the first place. No one wants to discuss that question with someone who has an obvious COI. If the community decides that your company is notable enough for Wikidata, it will be included, and you can keep an eye on the data afterwards and keep it up to date, and everything is perfect. But no, don't create it in the first place, and no, don't make prolonged discussions. If you ask me, if someone with a COI starts arguing for an inclusion, I immediately lean even stronger towards removing it. --Denny (talk) 23:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
  • "Refrain from creating an item when you have a COI." may be better with an "except when it already exists as a Wikipedia page, etc." Even if a COI editor is not the best judge of whether a subject should be included, if a supported community has already made the inclusion judgment (and if this community generally respects the judgments of supported communities), it seems that a COI editor could reflect that judgment by creating an item here. Does that make sense? – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Well, I can spam a page to 100 wikis, and while 90 of them will delete it, 10 have no admins to delete it... is that what we want to promote? --Rschen7754 16:57, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Arguably, that's what happened here: Memoria Pichilemina (Q16738068) was created on several Wikipedias, survived only on two (for whatever reasons), whereas it was deleted on the relevant ones (especially Spanish). Further, this lead to Diego Grez (Q15304738), which is now covered by structural reasons due to the Memoria Pichilemina (Q16738068) - and both items as well as the connected articles have all been created by Diego Grez (Q15304738). That's a novel vector for self-promotion we did not have open previously, and it would be good to have a conversation about this somehow. --Denny (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
      • @Denny: Your arguments are entirely incorrect and biased. An article about Memoria/Memoria Pichilemina has only been written on three Wikipedias: English, Scots and Russian. No article on Memoria has ever been written on the Spanish Wikipedia. The English one was deleted after an AfD. As for the self-promotion claim, tell me how could potentially benefit me self promoting on Wikidata or Wikipedia, especially since these articles are not written in Spanish, the language of my country... --Diego Grez (talk) 20:43, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
    • There's always go with the wordier "except when it already exists as a Wikipedia page, etc. that was created by someone other than you or which has existed for x days".  ;) – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:24, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
  • "Refrain from creating an item when you have a COI" could (or could be used to) prevent a Wikipedian in Residence (I am one) from creating items abut their host institution. This would be very counter-productive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm not convinced that this is needed, per Jasper. I am quite happy with using common sense and respecting the Foundation's policy. Ajraddatz (talk) 23:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Use common sense. It's not about your connection to the subject, it's about the way you write about the subject. --AmaryllisGardener talk 21:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
  • A COI-policy is mainly useful for them who need a big hammer to nail users with. Such policies have for example been used against people working for chapters and wmf, and I do not think we need more of that. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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