My Wikipedia Policy

I'm not sure that Scoble has the right idea about pledging not to edit their own Wikpedia page.  Wired News' latest celebrity flap points out:

In fact, Wikipedia's own guidelines caution against editing your own bio as it "can open the door to rather immature behavior and loss of dignity."

It's actually a proposed policy or guideline, and one I would vote against.  I do think it is good advice, what you could call media training, to consider that:

• When you participate on your own page, you open yourself up to debate
• What edits you make could come back to haunt you
• Don't be an idiot, or it could go on your semi-permanent record

However, several reasons come to mind for why people should edit their own pages:

• You probably have a lot of expertise about yourself and a copy of your resume
• If enough attention is given to your page, your bias will be countered
• The policy would be near impossible to enforce
• It would be easy to obey the policy, but skirt the intent, by getting your friends to edit for you

At the very least, make the practice of watching your page and use your best judgement.  For the record, I added some facts a while ago to my Wikipedia page, we will see if they remain.

See Also: Tim Bray

Comments

[vanderwal]

I have left my bio on wikipedia alone, even as it is now quite out of date, but I think the page does point to my personal site's about page. The main reason given to me by others is edits, no matter by whom, can bring the existence of the page into question as it shows up in recent changes.

My general frustration with Wikipedia over a certain term's mis-definition, (the reason somebody added me to Wikipedia) has probably kept me from touching my own entry. It was finally nice to meet Jimmy Wales in person as I have now separated the bright person from my issues with Wikipedia.

[Yalto]

I think the one thing that anyone editing their own page should do is say who they are - i.e., not edit anonymously. I've personally been in situations where people have been "caught", ala Currygate, trying to edit their page while pretending to be "unbiased". I've also been involved with cases where people send their assistants, friends, etc to edit. It just gets embarassing when they are "caught", and it really hurts the credibility of the edits they have been tring to make, no matter how legitimate.

If you want to edit your own page, go ahead. Just say who you are so everyone knows.

[Seb]

Another idea is to just leave input in the /Talk page for other editors to integrate.