Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Consumer Democracy

The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The proposed WikiProject was not created; only one interested editor

UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:23, 6 September 2019 (UTC) [reply]

Introduction

Nowadays, economic power is more important and stronger than politic power in some aspects. Fortunately, society has the capacity to elect the economic power. This election, however, works differently than the classic ballot voting used in politic elections. The method to vote in our “economic democracy” is consumption.

One of the pillars of democracy is information: electorate must know who are they voting to or, in this case, consumers must know who are they buying at. It is important to know the policy of a company in terms of labour rights, sustainability, ethics, etc. because when we buy its product, we approve its terms.

The main problem is that consumers do not have time to deeply investigate every company related to every product they buy. The information is usually hard to find and, in some cases, hard to trust since there are many interests involved. Here is the point and here is where an economically independent source as Wikipedia could be a solution.

Project description

The idea of this project is to implement a standardized rating table with different categories (ethics, transparency, sustainability…) in the companies’ Wikipedia pages. These rates will serve as a reference for consumers who want to be more responsible.

I truly believe this could raise society awareness and make a change.

Here are described some ideas about how I think the project should be. These steps and all their details are 100% flexible and open to debate.

Guidelines stablishment

The first step of the project would be to elaborate specific guidelines to rate every important aspect of a company. For example, lets imagine a fictional company called “Pineapple”. An important aspect we want to evaluate would be ethics and we want to rate it with a scale that goes from 10 to -10. Imagine that we certainly know that Pineapple is evading its taxes with tax engineering. But we also know that Pineapple has made a donation to rebuild Notre Dame. Here we must decide how to calculate how important is each fact to the ethics rating.

- Should it be as simple as “evading taxes = ethics -2” and “donations = ethics +1”?

- Should we take in count how much is evading and how much is donating to adjust the rates?

- Should we make two new aspects called “tax evading” and “donations” which are independent from “ethics”?

There are many decisions to take.

Rates implementation

The second step would be the design and implementation of a table which will contain the rates. I had in mind to place it in the right column that many Wikipedia pages have with already standardized information for each topic (see the illustration on the right).

Rates evaluation

The last step would be the hardest: Wikipedians must investigate and elaborate the rates. This job must be done according to the previously established guidelines. Information must be contrasted with trustable references.

Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?: I didn't find any similar project in a preliminary search, so I guess there are no existing groups working on it.

Support

All Wikipedians are welcome

Buenatecla (talk · contribs) 20:55, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

First of all, I would appreciate some advices about how to promote this project, since many Wikipedians are needed and I have never done something like this before.

@Buenatecla: thanks you so much for your interest and contributions, but I think this rating system, while admirable, is not part of Wikipedia's being an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is fundamentally a collection of what other sources have said about its subjects. We do not create subjective content, such as company ratings, ourselves (though Wikipedia articles often provide direct links to that external content). Please see WP:NOT or more information on this, and if you have any further questions please respond here or on my talk page. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or at the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.