The Dennis Brown hypothetical

[Kraken]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... nnis_Brown

https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... 00#p350052

If a Wikipedia editor says they have no intention of complying with the Wikipedia requirement that you should declare any non-trivial investment in a listed company before editing articles relating to that company, because it's none of their business and/or unenforceable, and it's not literal paid editing or even the marketing officer variant paid editing , what do you do?

1. Nothing
2. Topic ban them from listed companies, broadly construed
3. As 2., but widened to include all companies and all relevant policy pages
4. Ban them from Wikipedia

And what do you do if that editor is an Administrator?

If it helps, Dennis Brown does occasionally edit company articles. Including for example taking requests to create pages for companies he thinks are notable but apparently struggled to get noticed by Wikipedia until he created one (in 2008) and then made a personal appeal that his colleagues not rush to judgement and take their time, doing thorough research, when it was proposed for deletion (in 2012).

It worked. [1] The Wikipedians saw the wisdom in conferring notability to a really quite small company for being the sole producer or a product (in the U.S.A). There are obvious flaws in such reasoning and so it may not pass muster today, but it's a fair reflection of how things were viewed on Wikipedia in 2012. It's not suspicious.

No doubt that appeal carried weight because by then, Dennis had been promoted to Administrator (134/31/2) some eight months previously. He proactively sought this role, but that's nothing to be concerned about either. He just might be a very driven individual who just wants to help. He does give that impression, on and off Wikipedia.

But here's the thing. That backdrop to this hypothetical is the Nihonjoe case. Something that has surely rocked the world of Wikipedia. They've always known Wikipedia was vulnerable to manipulation by external forces. But surely the insiders were whiter than white? They'd never lie. They'd never abuse the trust placed in them by the community. Right?

Well yes, they would. And they're very clever about it. And the trust placed in them if they are advanced rights holders is a key part of it. They don't pick hopeless cases. They pick edge cases. They do what they think is right for Wikipedia, because that is their allegedly unbiased opinion. They might be biased, due to having a close financial connection. But that's really not relevant, is it? They're otherwise following all the relevant policies.

Now we know. In the judgement of Wikipedia, Nihonjoe was a paid editor with respect to Aquaveo. Not literally, as far as anyone can tell, but close enough to be a distinction without a difference (but we know he was definitely not their marketing manager). This was paid editing. Not what was belatedly (years after the event) admitted by him to have been an undeclared financial conflict of interest. Actual paid editing. And of course, he has quite a few other undeclared mere conflicts.

The small company producing a unique product got a Wikipedia article. Maybe they were notable and someone else might have created it, maybe they weren't and that's why they didn't. What we do know is they became non-notable as Wikipedia standards got tighter, placing a greater emphasis on non-trivial in depth independent coverage.

Now, I'm not saying the person who contacted Dennis for help in that instance was say, his cousin, or his accountant. And I'm not saying that in return, he was given some equity in that company. A stake sufficient to make him really quite happy if the company continues its trajectory and eventually issues a pubic offering. And I'm definitely not saying there is any bad explanation that Dennis' best efforts to create it "after researching the dog out of it." resulted in a wholly flattering article. That's just what happens when you have a company that isn't controversial and yet isn't notable enough to have attracted truly independent coverage.

But I'm only not saying it because I can't prove it. It is total speculation. That's why I am not even mentioning the company here. Because there's a chance they are entirely innocent and this is better explained by the fact Wikipedia does a poor job of making sure its editors are mindful of how rank stupidity as an entirely unconficted and well meaning editor, can easily be misinterpreted as malfeasance by the apparent beneficiary. Especially once Wikipedia had gone mainstream and lost its starry eyed innocence in the mind of the public. Round about 2008, as it happens. Seigenthaler was as early as 2005, after all.

These hypotheticals are about what things can be made to look like using reasonable assumption/deduction and the literal history of Wikipedia, not what actually happened. Doesn't matter what you can prove. But it certainly helps establish innocence, when there is evidence to that effect. Wikipedia famously not being a court of law. You're not entitled to a presumption of innocence. Only an assumption of good intentions. Something that is necessarily set aside at the first hint of smoke.