> On 29 March 2012 09:52, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> I visited WMUK on Tuesday and chatted with Stevie Benton (the new >> media person), Richard Symonds and Daria Cybulska about this topic. >> The approach we could think of that could *work* is pointing out "if >> you're caught with *what other people* think is a COI, your name and >> your client's name are mud." Because in all our experience, even >> sincere PR people seem biologically incapable of understanding COI, >> but will understand generating *bad* PR. >> > > It would certainly be useful to have an agreed "approach" from our side. > What even might work? Our natural sort of starting point would be > FAQ-like, > but that probably doesn't fit the bill. Neither would a simple "set of > instructions", given that COI speaks to intention first. > > I noticed that in the Bell Pottinger meltdown Lord Bell switched from > saying that the PR operatives had not actually broken the law (i.e. > minimalist on professional ethics), to a line that WP was really just too > complicated and fussy about it all. The latter is only convincing in the > absence of figures on the hourly rate being charged for whitewashing. > Almost by definition, service industries thrive on the principle that > they > can charge for doing a good job: we mostly prefer not to cut our own > hair. > > I would guess that there is scope for presenting case studies, abstracted > from real things that have happened onsite. There must be a whole > spectrum > of situations and outcomes by now. Where the punchline is "and the media > had a field day with the story", I think you're quite correct, it becomes > quite convincing that whatever the client was charged was too much. > > Charles
There is an article which started out as Paid editing on Wikipedia and is now Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia It seems to be quite a success judging from the number of links to it. Fred _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l