Hi Alexandre, Thanks for reminding me that placing a COI disclosure in an edit summary is okay. I forgot that policy allows that. I would have recommended that your op-ed say something like "Some advice for Olivia Colman: she can edit Wikipedia herself (and provide conflict of interest notifications and links to reliable sources where appropriate), or request an edit by noting the issue on the article's talk page, or send an email to Wikipedia's volunteer response team to request a correction."
In the case of someone who wants to use a potentially nonpublic document like a birth certificate as their reliable source, I think that sending an email to OTRS would be a good option, because the requester can email a copy of the birth certificate to OTRS without needing to make the certificate be public. Alternatively, if a birth certificate is an easily accessible public record of a government that issued it, or someone wants to use other public documents to support their claim, then I think that placing an edit request on the talk page or directly editing the article while including a COI notification and a reference would be good options. I think that reminding people that they can edit the encyclopedia, and post comments on the talk page, are both generally good. But I also want to discourage COI editing of article content, especially when it is undisclosed, and I would not want to discourage people from emailing OTRS. Regards, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 10:08 PM Alexandre Hocquet < [email protected]> wrote: > On 15/02/2019 19:37, Pine W wrote: > > > When I read your article I am concerned about this statement: "Some > advice > > for Olivia Colman: rather than “sending an e-mail to Wikipedia”, she can > > edit Wikipedia herself, like everyone else". That comes across to me as > > encouraging violation of English Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest > guideline > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest>. Can you > > explain why you encouraged directly editing Wikipedia instead of placing > an > > edit request on the talk page or sending an email to OTRS? > > Hey Pine, > Thanks for your comment and careful reading. My piece of advice for > Olivia is suposed to be rhetorical : I doubt she would have to modifiy > herself her own page, as it's been proven that her birthdate was plain > right all along the page history. My point was more to highlight the > fact that a large number of people believe that a supposedly uncorrect > fact on Wikipedia cannot be modified easily and one has to "send an > email". And that journalists that publish this nonsense aren't aware > either of the "anyone can edit" part of Wikipedia (in 2019!). > Now, if a conflict of interest policy prevents you to provide a reliable > secondary source about a factual point such as your own birthdate and > edit Wikipedia accordingly, I find it would be a harsh conflict of > interest policy. As a matter of fact WP : COI does not prevent to > directly edit oneself : it suggests (along with your recommandations) to > disclaim it in the edit summary. (And the "dealing with articles about > yourself" link provided by Avery (thanks for that) is also open to that > possibility. I would even find it harsh to argue that such an edit would > "undermine the interests of the encyclopedia". > > > -- > *********************************************** > Alexandre Hocquet > > Université de Lorraine & Archives Henri Poincaré > [email protected] > http://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre-titulaire/alexandre-hocquet > *********************************************** > > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education > _______________________________________________ Education mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
