
Earth-friendly EOMA68 Computing Devices - jonny_storm
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/progress-and-events
======
_Codemonkeyism
From reading the entire talk page, for me the author has a limited view on
what has happened.

He asked about COI and got

"As the author of the EOMA-68 standard, and as a co-creator of a crowd-funding
campaign around several implementations of that standard, you have both a
legal interest (as the primary author and copyright holder of the standard)
and an economic interest (as an implementor) in the entities that this article
is about."

as a first answer. Which is what the author didn't like and asked for
'clarifications' holding the opinion that

'do i have an interest in promoting the SUCCESS of EOMA68?" no i do NOT.'

which sounds surreal if you are the co-creator of a standard and run a crowd
campaign for a device based on that standard, irrespective of the device being
and/or standard being open.

The reasonable answer by the Wikipedian is

"Here is a video of you promoting the EOMA-68 initiative. Here is another. And
here is an interview, in which you say, in relation to EOMA-68 and its
implementations, things like, 'Let me tell you a little bit about why I'm
doing this and why people should buy these products.'"

Looks like the author has also a very different view on crowd funding:

"it is a common mistake that a lot of people make. crowdfunding is a gift
economy"

Otherwise read the talk page, it's much more fun than the blog post.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:EOMA68](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:EOMA68)

~~~
grkvlt
Wow. I don't think the EOMA68 author is really the sort of person you want in
charge of an open standard. They also seem somewhat conflicted, beyond WP:COI,
for example, regarding patents he says:

> i'm a SOFTWARE LIBRE DEVELOPER. do you know what that means? it means we
> DON'T LIKE patents!

But on his LinkedIn page we find:

> as a result of my exploration in implementing encryption algorithms on an
> ASP, I also came up with enough new ideas for Aspex to be able to generate
> over six new patents.

To be honest, I don't know what exactly is meant by a 'Software Libre
Developer' anyway, it seems to be a strange way of saying 'Open Source
Software Developer' but with some kind of hidden subtext.

------
sevensor
Good grief. Wikipedia has a problem with pages that can only be evaluated by
experts. They could be perfectly good, or they could be advancing an agenda. I
noticed this with their page on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, which is a
somewhat scammy group decision making technique promoted by a cult-like group
of business consultants. (I've compared it to Scientology -- it has a
charismatic leader and even uses special electronic gizmos to make you feel
like it's more sciency.) It's hard to fix the page because nothing on it is
wrong, exactly. But its sheer length and loving detail, and the utter lack of
criticism or reference to alternatives, makes AHP sound way more legit than it
actually is.

~~~
Bartweiss
I think that even more broadly, Wikipedia is incapable of handling any topic
primarily of interest to a narrow 'interest group'. Those topics have a
limited number of people who are qualified to work on the article, and it's
possible that there will be one who is _qualified, interested, and
unaffiliated_ to do the editing.

At one extreme, the result is what's linked here: unqualified editors produce
inaccurate content, and reject anyone more qualified as having a conflict of
interest. In the worst case, knowing enough to edit competently becomes
_evidence_ of bias, and the chances of producing an accurate article drop to
0.

At the other is the pattern you described. I don't know AHP, but several of
the articles on personality tests suffer from similar-sounding issues. They're
not _wrong_ , but they've very visibly been edited by true believers, and the
tone is bizarrely approving (or, at times, disapproving). You get pieces with
5,000 words of praise, followed by 100 weasel-words of 'Criticism', simply
because the believers cared enough to go dig up sources and write good
content.

I'm not sure there's any good way to break through this dichotomy, since the
problem is a shortage of people qualified to analyze the article.

I do know, though, that it only takes a tiny amount of malfeasance to move the
problem from bad to catastrophic. For instance, the EOMA68 article saw the
hideous sequence of someone _deleting_ sources, then using _unsourced claims_
as grounds for a deletion request. Wikipedia does have some issues with
bullying by senior editors, and in fragile cases like this it can have
enormous consequences.

~~~
sevensor
> In the worst case, knowing enough to edit competently becomes evidence of
> bias, and the chances of producing an accurate article drop to 0.

This is why I haven't edited the AHP page, in fact. I know AHP is an inferior
approach for a host of technical reasons, but the fact that I've drawn that
conclusion means I can't maintain a neutral point of view.

------
bcg1
Original title seems to have been "I’m Supporting the 'Deletion' of the
Wikipedia Page" which is a tragic story of Internet bureaucracy.

~~~
sevensor
I think the original title is more appropriate, even if it doesn't match the
title of the page. Perhaps the link should go to

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-
desktop/updates/pro...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-
desktop/updates/progress-and-events/#wikipedias-eoma68-page)

With a title change to

"Wikipedia's EOMA68 Page"

------
_Codemonkeyism
From reading this I could not find out what was going on.

From what I tried to understand, someone running a crowd funding campaign on a
'EOMA68' device denies he has any conflict of interest with writing a 'EOMA68'
wikipedia page when there is $175k on the line.

Not that I'm a friend in any way on how 'Wikipedians' act.

~~~
bcg1
Author said that if (s)he believed there was a legit conflict of interest,
they would have declared it. They asked Wikipedia folks for clarification,
after which the bureaucrats started some administrative process and proceeded
to edit the page with incorrect facts.

FWIW, the EOMA68 crowd funding campaign is to create a open hardware laptop
that can run entirely with free software, and all of the designs etc are open
source and available to the public (afaik).

