Possible Conflict of Interest Involving a Wikipedia Director and Gibraltarpedia

Wikipedia's inner workings are as opaque as those of any other bureaucratic organization, despite most of the decisions and discussions being public. Unless you're in the inner circle, you're going to have a hard time understanding what's going on, let alone do something about it.

It's surprising then that few abuses happen or, at least, few are heard about. For all its convoluted ways, Wikipedia's method is working, most of the time.

Not always though, a potential conflict of interest shines light on the problem with a small inner circle of people calling the shots for the entire site.

One trustee of the UK branch of the Wikimedia Foundation is caught in a potential conflict of interests over the use of the Did You Know feature on the homepage.

Last month, the feature had 17 entries about Gibraltar, something new every two or three days, the only other topic besides the Olympics to get more than one entry.

That may not be that surprising if you remember the Gibraltarpedia project, which is designed to encourage more Wikipedia entries on the small country and stimulate local tourism by placing QR codes next to interesting landmarks.

Those QR codes lead to the Wikipedia page for the place in the visitor's native language. So far so good, but Gibraltarpedia is not affiliated with Wikipedia in any way, despite the program being pushed by a couple of members of the UK branch of the Wikimedia Foundation.

In fact, Gibraltar is paying Roger Bamkin, the Wikimedia UK director responsible for all the Did You Know entries.

The case is not entirely clear-cut and the discussion is still ongoing, but it doesn't look good. On the other hand, the fact that Wikipedia is handling this internally is a good sign.

For what it's worth, Jimmy Wales, who doesn't have a big leadership role at the foundation at the moment, believes there is a big problem if indeed someone is getting paid by a group, even a country, which then gets more attention on Wikipedia.

"I don't know enough of the facts in this particular case to be able to comment specifically. However, if the facts turn out to be as stated, then the honorable thing for anyone with a conflict of interest driving them to act on behalf of a client in the manner I discussed above is resign from the board of Wikimedia UK, or resign from the job with the client. Anything else raises the appearance of impropriety at a minimum," Wales said.

Via: Possible Conflict of Interest Involving a Wikipedia Director and Gibraltarpedia