Talk:List of political editing incidents on Wikipedia

This article was nominated for deletion on 3 November 2022. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Should this article exist separately?[edit]

Should this article exist separately, or be a redirect to Reliability of Wikipedia? I originally redirected it, as a new stub, to Reliability of Wikipedia, for being a POV fork. This version seems to me to be a reasonable spinoff. I've reverted the latest redirect to enable discussion of the article's separate existence. Please don't redirect again before discussing here. (As for the rating above, it's clearly no longer a stub, but I'm not sure how best to change these things.) Bishonen | tålk 07:35, 21 October 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Start, I guess. Since it recently... started. El_C 08:12, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I've asked for a review at WP:WPWP/ASSESS. François Robere (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, at this point, if still contested, redirecting should be decided at WP:AFD. Same as any other outcome: keep, delete, merge, etc. El_C 08:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a good topic and a reasonable place to add things, such as Larry Sanger's concerns of political bias on Wikipedia, which have been covered by media and confirm the topic's notability. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:19, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My question is same as before - what content belongs here rather than the articles we already have? Are we just spinning off a portion of COI on Wikipedia under a new name? Volunteer Marek 14:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, the lede summarizes the article. First sentence is fine. But the second sentence is unsourced and doesn’t actually summarize anything. Volunteer Marek 14:19, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FR, can you show me where in [1] WP:COIPOLITICAL it says that “political editing can be seen as a type of conflict of interest editing”? That whole policy paragraph is about editing by political insiders (which would indeed be COI in most cases) not about “political editing”. Here’s the entire policy quoted for your convenience: Activities regarded by insiders as simply "getting the word out" may appear promotional or propagandistic to the outside world. If you edit articles while involved with campaigns in the same area, you may have a conflict of interest. Political candidates and their staff should not edit articles about themselves, their supporters, or their opponents. Government employees should not edit articles about their agencies, government, political party, political opponents, or controversial political topics. Volunteer Marek 16:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the problem? WP:COI explicitly mentions political affiliation as a type of COI, so "can be seen" sits well with it. François Robere (talk) 17:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the descriptive title of this page, one would assume that "political editing" is simply an editing driven by a personal political bias, not a COI. Therefore, I think this page could be merged to Ideological bias on Wikipedia. However, if the intention here was to focus on COI editing, then it should be either merged to Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia or be renamed to Political conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. If the latter, then I should say that most of the content in existing page Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia is very much political. I do not think one can clearly separate the "politics" from business in this case. Politics is usually a business, and all large businesses are involved in politics. My very best wishes (talk) 22:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- That's a very narrow view of politics. There are several kinds of political actors whose organization and purpose is not at all "business-like", some of which depend on a volunteer "workforce". This is very different from business operations whose sole responsibility is to their registered shareholders, for which I've been considering another WP:SPINOFF: Commercial editing on Wikipedia - which would take the bulk of examples from Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#Incidents. Together they can form a very simple taxonomy of COI editing, instead of putting everything in one long, eclectic article. François Robere (talk) 09:51, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - To the contrary, I am saying that politics is omnipresent. As our page defines, this "is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status." Every corporation, even Wikimedia Foundation is involved in politics. For example, most of the section Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia#2010s is related to politics. Separating politics and big commerce is very difficult if at all possible. My very best wishes (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    - That's very true, but notice the most common use of the term - including in that article - has to do with government, so insofar as Wikimedia is not engaged with government (eg. by lobbying, donations, participation in parliamentary committees...), we should be able to make that distinction in a way that makes sense to an average reader. François Robere (talk) 10:23, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The general problem here is that "political editing" is badly defined. It seems you want this to be about "political editing by people with a conflict of interest" but then it should say that explicitly. And this is different from "political manipulation" which would be something like "political editing by people with a conflict of interest who are attempting to hide that conflict of interest". These are all different things. Volunteer Marek 14:23, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's the role of the lead to provide the reader with a "concise explanation of the scope of the page" (MOS:LEADELEMENTS); the title need only be "recognizable... natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles" (MOS:AT). I think the current one ticks all the boxes, but I'm open to other suggestions. François Robere (talk) 17:03, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Bishonen, Volunteer Marek, and My very best wishes: See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political editing on Wikipedia. Not pinging those who have already seen the AfD. Wareon (talk) 12:57, 4 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Examples[edit]

Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#WikiScanner and Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia#Miscellaneous seem to have quite a few examples which would fit this page. I haven't checked to see if they have been included already. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks. François Robere (talk) 10:30, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

India and Pakistan[edit]

I don't have any sources on hand atm, but there may be something WP-good to add involving these countries. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:49, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]