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.
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.
Maybe we're trying to use Wikipedia as a dumping ground for all knowledge that can be catalogued without really thinking if there are more appropriate locations for it.
An encyclopedia article is normally about starting points. It's supposed to begin the process of unpacking a concept and introduce some ideas, papers, books and actors, to serve as a vehicle for an in depth reading on the subject.
Edit: to your point about basic information, I think it's going to be difficult finding where to draw the line.
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.
> 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.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pro...
With a title change to
"Wikipedia's EOMA68 Page"
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.
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).
