Talk:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network/Best practices for contribution

Purpose of a WiR

Hi everyone. I've boldly started a section on the purpose of a WiR. This is based on the main Wikimedian in residence page and the English Wikipedia's WP:PAID and WP:COI pages. I've added some details to make it more operational. There are some points that I'd like to explain:

• WiRs should generally refrain from editing about their institution, including its key people and its projects. - "Key people and projects" is my addition, in the spirit of not editing about the institution.
• They should also refrain from encouraging others to edit on these topics. - E.g. WiRs should not organize editathons in which they encourage participants to edit on topics for which the WiR and/or the participants have a COI. This is in keeping with the tradition that WiRs do not edit about their institution. This isn't stated anywhere as far as I know, but I think the English Wikipedia community generally believes this.
• Work on these topics should never constitute more than a small aspect of the WiR engagement, and should never be promotional in nature. - This is the difference between WiR work, which is encouraged or at least tolerated, and the practice of conventional "paid editing" which is strongly discouraged. WiR work is fundamentally benevolent, not self-serving in nature.
• WiRs should focus on sharing the factual knowledge of the institution. They should avoid promoting its positions on controversial issues such as politics or religion. - This isn't stated anywhere as far as I know, but I think the English Wikipedia community generally believes this.

Thoughts? Clayoquot (talk) 01:28, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Given I haven't even begun my residency yet, I'm sure I'm not the best person to write it, but I think we should recognise on the page that there are Wikimedians in Residence who are not funded by the institution (like Marco). I will be paid by a grant from a Wikimedia affiliate, with a Memorandum of Understanding with the institution that what I edit is my choice, for the benefit of Wikimedia, and not directed by the institution. I don't think this puts me in exactly the same COI position as if I was paid by the institution to edit but I am not sure how others see it. I have talked to WiRs who won't touch a page about the institution, its component parts, past students or staff etc. And others who will edit all those things but with an open and transparent explanation of what they're doing on a Wikiproject page about their residency.

If we want an example, in my position, I would like to edit articles about medical history in NZ and hold events to improve articles on early doctors, medical inventions, technologies etc. My WiR institution was the only medical school in the country for 100 years though, so I cannot edit any biographies if I rule out working on alumni or staff. Besides adding an explanation of my WiR on my talk page, and linking to the WiR project page, what would this group say about this editing activity, and what measures would this group recommend I take to protect myself from COI claims? DrThneed (talk) 03:16, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I love the Memorandum of Understanding idea. Personally I don't think you're in COI territory given that the relationship between any institution and its alumni and previous staff tends to be remote. Having a Memorandum of Understanding and not being paid by the institution makes your relationship to those individuals even more remote.

We probably can't give a satisfactory answer here to the difficult question of where to draw COI lines - that's a discussion that would have to involve the wider community. What we can do here is say that there's a difference between COI WiR work and non-COI WiR work, and talk about how to approach each type of work. Clayoquot (talk) 01:05, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

COI edits / edit requests

This version suggests that if you have a COI, then you may edit the article directly if you first solicit feedback on the Talk page.

Editing the article directly is not strictly forbidden on the English Wikipedia. However, a best practice is to refrain from making non-trivial edits if you have a COI, even if you have solicited feedback first. Clayoquot (talk) 01:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Breaking up into mini-policy components

I don't think the document has necessarily evolved to that stage yet, but it would probably make sense to break it up into relevant mini-policy components. Then each WiR project can be as clear as possible on which standard mini-policies they are adopting for their particular effort, and give their own reasoning for those choices. Naturally, there is going to be a wide variation in how each WiR project operates in practice, and what might be appropriate in each case. Pharos (talk) 17:51, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

I guess I could see it a bit like descriptive versus prescriptive linguistics, and us developing something like a WREN/Policy kit for content guidelines and WREN/Tool kit for technical advice. Pharos (talk) 15:20, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

The Belfer affair

It looks like a topic ban that the English Wikipedia community placed on one of this page's contributors may have served as a motivating example here. In addition, I'd like to remind people of this prominent example of how WiR's can go seriously awry even when they are paid via the Wikimedia Foundation (or an affiliate) and avoid editing the article about the institution hosting them:

• "Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny": One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity. [...] (coverage in the Signpost, see also followup)
• The Wikimedia Foundation's subsequent Assessment of Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence program concluded e.g. that

it is generally considered inappropriate for Wikipedians-in-Residence to primarily write articles as a core activity of their residency, because of the possibility that their contributions may lean towards being non-neutral in substance or tone. [...] The WMF believes it is a bad practice for those in Wikipedian-in-Residence positions to edit Wikipedia as a core activity of their residency

(and also more generally: In the future, the Wikimedia Foundation will not support or endorse the creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus, regardless of who is initiating or managing the process.)

For that reason, I would caution WiRs against relying on self-serving claims that it is OK to edit articles related to the institution's staff and programmes as long as a WiR is externally funded by a local Wikimedia chapter or a WMF grant and there is a MOU [which] make[s] clear that they are not an employee, but the equivalent of a visiting scholar or an artist in residence. As such, they are free to work on articles that fulfil the agreed purpose of the residency, as approved by the funding agency. Despite his long tenure, sentences like this also leave doubt whether User:Giantflightlessbirds has internalized that the boundaries here are ultimately being set by the editing community and WMF's Terms of Use, rather than by a "funding agency" such as Wikimedia Aotearoa NZ. In any case, his reasoning is in stark contrast with the community+WMF consensus about the Belfer affair.

Lastly, in topics such as this, there are always grey areas and extreme cases where an over-rigid interpretation of COI would seem inadequate - yes, we wouldn't want a well-meaning WiR end up in the village stocks for, say, citing a source which happens to have been coauthored by an academic who once was a visiting fellow at the WiR's hosting institution. However, it would be big a mistake to draft guidelines and best practices primarily with such cases in mind.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:44, 16 November 2025 (UTC)