Pete's emphasis on transparency, disclosure and an absolutist approach to conflict of interest brings up an interesting issue. Pete is the only Wikipedian I'm aware of to have developed a full time consulting career centered on the English Wikipedia. His Wiki Strategies company has a fairly robust statement of ethics, including assertions that any editing by either himself or his clients will come attached to a conflict of interest warning. The statement is impressive and laudable, although it does not link to any list of projects or clients that an observer might use to see it in action. Still, a very good start, and Pete rightly encourages other entrepreneurs to adopt his standards.
But despite some searching, I haven't found any overt disclosures of a relationship between any companies and Wiki Strategies, or any detail about which companies or articles Wiki Strategies have had a hand in guiding. I notice that on his Signpost interview Pete links to the Pixetell article as an example of his work; Pete apparently edited that article at least once several years before disclosing that he had (at one time) a "connection" with Ontier/Pixetell. While Pete does say that he "worked with" the company on the article, I don't see where it was made clear that this was in his capacity as a for-profit, paid consultant. The limited disclosure came only after the company was evidently acquired and shut down, and barely 50 edits before he mentions it in the Signpost interview. I'm also a little concerned that Pete created his consulting company in February 2009, prior to his employment by the WMF (which began towards the end of 2009). The announcement of his hiring describes his background in some detail, but does not refer to his consulting business. The consulting business and his employment at the WMF then continued in parallel for two years, and there is no reference on his site, his LinkedIn profile or his userpage that the business was mothballed while he was employed. I don't mean to accuse Pete of doing anything that violated policies on the English Wikipedia, and I'm not aware of any internal policies that might apply. But it does strike me that his userpage is a bit of an advertisement for his business (on it, he links to the Wiki Strategies contact form and invites people to contact him there), and that there is some mystery surrounding the consultancy and its activities. Of course all this serves to support part of Pete's point in his blog post; transparency is tough to successfully mandate, and hardly solves all of the inherent issues surrounding for-profit engagement with Wikimedia content. ~Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
