[conspire] Wikpedia & Conflict of Interest (COI)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> Yes, by the time I looked it over it looked like it had been whipped into
> at least pretty reasonable shape.  I'd not gone back to look at source
> materials again, so, couldn't off-the-top of my head say it was 100%
> accurate, or nearly so, but at least going from memory of source materials
> and credible sources, seems now it's probably at least >[>]80%
> accurate/correct.

I'll repeat that it was absolutely not me who fixed the article --
because that would be wrong, so nosiree -- but this person or persons 
made it be just about exactly as accurate and well written as I'd have
managed, and happened to done so in close reliance on almost all of the
primary and secondary sources I'd have used.

Around that time, someone appears to have engaged with a Wikipedia
notable (Rosguill) about the improvement process here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Rosguill#Re-review_request_for_Pan_Am_Flight_799

On July 7th, the notable swapped out his complaint ('tag') about the
article lacking notability and suffering missing sources for one
claiming that it now relied exclusively on primary source and also
needed some secondary or tertiary ones.  Specifically, the notable's
check-in comments on the main article were:

  01:32, 7 July 2019  Rosguill talk contribs   11,259 bytes
  -55  replacing {{notability}} and {{more citations needed}} with 
  {{primary sources}}, additional sources (particularly source #2) 
  have established notability, but most of the content is still 
  cited to primary sources and in some cases borders on WP:SYNTH[1]

The anonymous article-fixer then politely pointed out to Rosguill
that he or she actually already _had_ closely paraphrased two highly
regarded secondary sources for pretty much all of the new article
material -- at which point Rosguill made no further comment but
removed the complaint ('tag').

It's almost as if the Wikipedia notable consistently didn't bother to
look closely at the improvements and lazily assumed they were just
someone talking out of /dev/ass, but in fact some patient and diligent
anonymous contributor had already done a professional job without the
notable registering this fact.

I guess I'm lucky that someone else stepped in and (anonymously) did the
job that I was forbidden to do.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material  This is the problem of someone citing to authoritative
data but then reaching wacky conclusions not supported by that material, 
called 'editorial synthesis of published material'.