User:Econterms/COI

I'm exploring to see what standards the Wikipedias can have for statements of conflict of interest. There are some source examples of conflicts of interest statements on user pages and on talk pages. Examples:
 * User:Cullen328
 * User:Sarasays
 * Talk:Solomon_Trujillo (on article talk page)

= Conflict of interest statement by econterms =

I'm committed to writing useful neutrally-voiced text in the Wikipedia that disinterested readers would generally agree are improvements. I don't make edits that relate to financial conflicts of interest but I do have something like intellectual conflicts of interest: strong points of view. In conflicts related to my interests, I recognize that I must let others decide whether that's a problem, as per the best practices relating to conflicts of interest. By acknowledging these conflicts of interest below I give others some information to identify conflict of interests if they think I made the Wikipedia worse. I'm not aware of my conflicts of interest having created any problem on any Wikipedia. I have not been accused of having problematic conflicts of interest. To forestall such issues I wish to define certain conflicts of interest in an standard way.


 * I'm an economist, working for the U.S. government in a statistics bureau, and this means I'm involved with many institutions and statistics, and critiques and defenses of them. I do edit Wikipedia articles on those topics and in the future this may be an official work function of mine.
 * I'm volunteering to guide editors on behalf of Economic History Association, as a professional service.
 * As part of my work I expound on the point of view that open-source technology development (or open-source innovation), is a longstanding phenomenon and very important. Sharing of designs and techniques is a natural way for engineers, tinkerers, and scientists to organize to get something done. Personal and social interests create interpersonal networks and information flows which create technological change in a way that is not especially hierarchical nor particularly linked to capitalism. It can be channeled through hierarchical or capitalist institutions sometimes. The invention of the airplane and the development of open-source software and open content like Wikipedia are among a large class of examples.  Governments can become more efficient by adapting to this; thus I push the creation of Statipedia and similar wikis for scientific and administrative purposes in governments. I wrote a microeconomic model of "networks of tinkerers" and publish on this topic as part of my career.
 * Years ago I created econterms.com, a web site with a glossary of economics. It brought in some revenue but no longer does and I assume it never will again. Some of that content was copied to Wikipedia, mostly by other people.
 * I worked for many years on teams making the Q&A (software) and love it dearly. This work and my coworkers were formative in my experience and I do edit the article about the software and may edit articles about the people.