VRCWiki talk:Conflicts of interest

The current COI policy is not very interpretable

I have a concern with the current state of the conflicts of interest policy. The documentation on this policy is both lenient and vague, and I feel like this policy needs to be VRChat-ified and also give examples and what may or may not qualify as a conflict.

For instance:

1. "family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships" should remain in the article, but we could also make room to make it more relatable, and pertinent to VRChat. Maybe instead change this to: "VRChat friends, real friends, development teams that you hold a relationship with; clients, employers, among financial and other relationships"
2. "Some VRChat users may be the only source of information for worlds, avatars, and tools. It is acceptable for those users to contribute this information." opens up a gate for content creators to unconditionally work on their own article. I feel like there should be some, but limited exception to this rule, and would rather have to status quo be something similar to: "If there is uncertainty of information, the presence of misinformation, or misrepresentation contained within in article, the primary source may need to be queried for guidance by an editor." rather than personally allowing a COI to occur.
3. Creation of an article, made directly by the world or avatar's author (or team) should never be allowed, and this would break the "Avoid advertising and use neutral language to maintain a neutral point of view (NPOV)." statement within the policy. Creation of an article is giving the content a platform to promote itself, and writing NPOV as the primary source will almost always be impossible; this will be biased.
4. We should also be linking 'good faith', 'be bold' and 'neutral point of view' policies; I recently added a COI Noticebox, and "See also" heading to this article recently. Let's proofread that too.

Thanks! DAG-XR (talk) 00:30, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I think what's most problematic here is that its a direct copy of Wikipedia's COI page. This should've been changed much earlier to apply to VRCWiki better. Other policies also need significant updates as well for similar reasons I'm noticing. TrixxedHeart (talk) 00:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The primary source not being able to straight up make a page in the Community: namespace and not being able to edit on it goes against one of the core principles of VRChat. VRChat is driven by user generated content and often the only ones able to talk about this sort of content are the ones who made it.

This applies to any community content, however for worlds and avatars specifically you may only be able to have surface level pages made for the top 0.1% most visited worlds + some stragglers edited from others unaffiliated. We would simply lose out on a lot of valuble contributions, if we put a roadblock for people to share their knowledge here.

I also dislike that having to go through a talk page would mean to be at the mercy of someone else. This would just mean that a few select who would bother to write up the page based on talk page input, have control of what gets added by selecting such requests or ignoring it. I would much rather someone passionate enough to engage with the wiki directly.

Further, a stringent COI policy wont stop anyone somewhat dedicated enough from making the article anyway. Ask a friend to make a barebones page for you to edit, ask a friend to copy paste your edit in, use an alt to make the page. The options are readily available. You would never know it happened. Maybe having people go this route would be better after all, at least then the illusion of the ideal editor remains alive.

Instead of going so hard on COI, focus on ensuring community content submitted follows all proper content guidelines: NPOV, Manual of Style, Notability. That way, you cannot just sidestep some COI gate. Regulating COI, like with the recently added "Biased" noticebox is a good way to signal, that there is no need to cheat the system. It also encourages people to share more. This also means, that the wiki can be more transparent, highlighting that the primary source is the only source and more input is needed. Finally this kind of regulation would make anyone sidestepping COI just to avoid a noticebox look silly to the public. A true transparent approach.

Following this I don't think it is feasible to use this wiki as advertising, with the aforementioned content guidelines in play. Although 1 page out of hundreds still has some impact on how much it is seen I guess. Talking about advertising, having a stringent COI would just mean the top 0.1% most visited worlds benefit here, since those would be the ones most likely to have pages in some form anyway.

VRC Staff has also signaled 2 months ago in our maintainer check-in meeting, that they have no problem with a primary source contributing on the Community side of the wiki, to help expand the wiki. I can see why, given their overall plans for this wiki project mid-term. And of course, since no one owns the page, anyone may edit on it as per usual.

I have also previously shared extensive thoughts on the COI draft here a while back. Maebbie (talk) 01:19, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

"The primary source not being able to straight up make a page in the Community: namespace and not being able to edit on it goes against one of the core principles of VRChat. VRChat is driven by user generated content and often the only ones able to talk about this sort of content are the ones who made it."

This is a wiki documenting VRChat not VRChat itself. This is an important distinction to make.

We create articles regarding VRChat's aspects as a platform from an informative and (as much as we can) unbiased perspective. World creators making pages for their own world is directly in violation of bias and puts scrutiny on what can and cannot be trusted on the wiki. Should Wikipedia also allow creators to go willy-nilly creating pages for their own work because in the real world, someone who creates something might be the only one able to make an article about it?

Worlds as a whole were never supposed to be part of the wiki in the first place. Still, it was decided to be included to recognize culturally relevant worlds, the scope of what is considered "culturally relevant" is difficult to pinpoint directly without it being on a case-by-case basis. However, not every world is notable, and not every world needs a page. We should know this already given other community-based VRChat wiki attempts, it often bloats up the categories list with pages that end up being 1-2 paragraphs long, only explaining what's in the world, and that's it.

To put it simply, allowing creators to create pages for their own worlds would likely result in many non-notable, redundant, or low-quality pages, leading to unnecessary bloating. This would dilute the wiki's overall quality and would make it more difficult to find relevant information for readers. We should be striving to prioritize content that is culturally or significantly relevant instead of catering to every single creator. Quality over quantity.

"It also encourages people to share more."

Again, while sharing your creations is an important aspect of VRChat, the wiki is about VRChat, not VRChat itself. People who are not familiar with VRChat will be reading these pages on notable worlds to learn more about them. We are not a repository for sharing and indexing worlds.

"Further, a stringent COI policy wont stop anyone somewhat dedicated enough from making the article anyway."

Suggesting that people will simply bypass and find loopholes in policies does NOT justify making them less stringent. Policy is not about rules or magically stopping every case scenario, but defining ethical editing boundaries.

"Following this I don't think it is feasible to use this wiki as advertising, with the aforementioned content guidelines in play. Although 1 page out of hundreds still has some impact on how much it is seen I guess."

Even if only one page in hundreds of pages could be considered advertising, it sets a precedent. Wikis should not act as promotional tools for individual creators, they are meant to be an informative resource. If any creator is allowed to create a page for their worlds, it becomes difficult to draw a line between valuable and informative contributions and self-promotion.

To restate: We are a wiki providing informative resources about VRChat. Not an index for worlds, not a tool for creators to get their content out there, but to provide informative information regarding VRChat and relevant creations inside VRChat. TrixxedHeart (talk) 20:00, 13 September 2024 (UTC)