Talk:Marisa Sterling

Does Wiki User Dawnbazely have a conflict of interest in editing this page?

It is desirable to avoid conflicts of interest (COI) in general, and not just when editing Wikipedia. When I teach students to edit Wikipedia in my Biology courses we carefully go over both the broader topic of ethics and Conflicts of Interest before discussing them in relation to Wikipedia, where the concerns are well described in this quote from the guidelines:

"Why is conflict of interest a problem? On Wikipedia, editors with a conflict of interest who unilaterally add material tend to violate Wikipedia's content and behavioral policies and guidelines. The content they add is typically unsourced or poorly sourced and often violates the neutral point of view policy by being promotional and omitting negative information. They may edit war to retain content that serves their external interest. They may overuse primary sources or non-independent sources, and they may give too much weight to certain ideas."

Here, I am responding in detail to an expression of concern flagged by Onel5969 at 14:04, 24 July 2021 about whether I was violating Wikipedia COI guidelines editing of Marisa Sterling's page. I have thanked this user for their assiduity in raising important COI concerns, because I have a public presence as a scientist in discourses about bias, and inclusion, that has touched on Wikipedia. So I welcome the opportunity to share my perspective.

A few weeks ago, Ms. Sterling's name came up in a professional context that gave me cause to check her public profile at the Professional Engineers of Ontario and on Wikipedia. I found no page, and as I tried to Ms. Sterling P.Eng. to a list of Women In Red since she meets Wikipedia's notability requirements, I discovered that a page had existed for years but was an empty stub. You live and learn about Wikipedia.

Based on what I know of Ms. Sterling's career after she joined the University of Toronto, I decided it was faster for me to add some text relating to her notable achievements that have nothing to do with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion projects that we worked on, together with other professors and students while at York University (see section 4).

1) I declare that am not a paid editor of Wikipedia by Professional Engineers Ontario, Lassonde OR the University of Toronto. This, this particular COI guideline does not apply.

2) I declare that I do not work for University of Toronto. However, I am one of the approximately 660k living alumni of the University of Toronto. Is this as a COI for editing the page of a current employee of this university? Discussion of this is welcome, as it is a question that often comes up at EDI editathons.

3) I am not a Professional Engineer in Ontario. Thus, this is not a source of COI.

4) Does my being a Professor in the Faculty of Science, York University, when Marisa Sterling worked at in the Faculty of Engineering (Lassonde) for four years constitute a COI? Excellent question and opportunity to work through a case study for future students doing my Wikipedia course assignment.

York University "has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, and over 325,000 alumni worldwide." It is a big place that is larger than the City of North Bay, Ontario. COI question: should a person who lives in North Bay, Ontario, refrain from editing the page about their home city?

Fortunately, my situation is clearer than that of North Bay residents: I do not edit York University wikipedia pages, per the Wikipedia COI guidelines, because they have been my employer for 30 years! But, I should add that I am not one of their Public and Media Relations Staff.

At York University, I was not Marisa Sterling's employer, employee or supervisor. I did not influence financial and other decisions that affected her employment and standing. I do not give her references for jobs or vote for her in political elections. Ms. Sterling was one of 7,000 of my colleagues. Her mandate as Assistant Dean in another faculty from mine, was to promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Engineering. This mandate overlapped with my own long-term work relating to policy and practice for supporting Women in STEM, both in my home institution and globally.

The EDI community in Canada is small, so it is inevitable that the paths of community members cross at workshops, conferences and committees. When we have the time, we strive to support each others' events, including Editathons, and we often collaborate on organizing "Mission Driven Events": (please see this COI guide section). Despite this, I avoided including references on Ms. Sterling's page to the Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia Editathons that we co-organized.

In conclusion, I hope that it will be evident to all, that the viewpoint of my contributions to Ms. Sterling's updated page are demonstrably neutral. The points above provide further clarification and context.

One last point, that I will address here, is that I have been concerned in the past, that well-intentioned, hard-working, volunteer Wikpedia editors who have not had the experience of working in academic settings, may risk conflating their collegial working relationships with Wikipedia COI guidelines for family and friends. Friends implies that one socializes in non-work settings. This is NOT usually the case among academic colleagues who, nevertheless, maintain "friendly" professional relationships that are explicitly NOT hierarchical. I found this advice section useful for clarifying some of these grey areas. Dawnbazely (talk) 19:36, 28 July 2021 (UTC)