[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic conflict of interests?

[Mercenary Wikipedian]

    Having worked both in publishing, where these conflicts of interest play
    out regularly, and in Silicon Valley startups, where PR is a necessary
    fact of life, I believe it is a much stronger conflict. Academics and
    journalists both have reputations to lose. PR people and other
    commercial writers don't, not like academics.


Sure they do, if you are talking about established editors who are banking 
on the fact that they have some degree of respect within the community that 
allows other to more readily assume good faith about their edits. A paid 
editor's ability to render services effectively largely rests upon his good 
name. After all, like it or not, many (perhaps most) editors are more 
suspicious of significant revisions or new articles by anons than by 
established, trusted members of the community.


    Journalistic and academic reputations are built on the factual quality
    and accuracy of one's work. There are extensive vetting and enforcement
    mechanisms in both industries. People in PR and advertising build
    reputation on their ability to work without regard to factual accuracy,
    or in spite of it. They are professional POV warriors. We adopt their
    funding models at our peril.


    William



So far as I can tell, no one is talking about the foundation adopting a new 
funding model. The question is this: will paid editors be afforded the same 
assumption of good faith that are author's whose motives are not so clear? I 
am of the opinion that all contributions should be examined on their merits. 
No one is arguing for a sudden shift in policy that allows for spamlink 
insertions or POV articles. As others have mentioned, assuming good faith 
for even paid editors will simply make it more likely that they are 
forthcoming about whether they have received/are receiving financial 
remuneration for their work on Wikipedia. This will allow other editors to 
determine whether the editor is indeed POV-pushing or in fact editing in 
good faith.

Something else that others have not mentioned as a possible boon to 
Wikipedia can be predicted even if one assumes that the worse-case scenario 
comes to pass. Let's assume that paid editors are permitted to operate in 
the open (rather than under the radar, as some are surely doing now). Let's 
further assume that all of them initially succumb to the urge to be 
POV-pushing warriors with little regard for Wikipedia policy/guidelines.

First of all, does anyone doubt that administrators would be any less 
willing to ban spammers and POV-pushers in that world than the current one? 
Of course they wouldn't, and if anything, editors disclosing that they are 
working for Acme Corp. and then proceeding to violate NPOV, RS, or whatever, 
would be banned with extreme prejudice because it would be obvious what they 
were doing, and their edits would be obviously unconstructive (presumably).

Now, let's assume that there are people out there who would want to do a 
Wikipedia edit job for money more than one time in their life. In order to 
do this, they would have to be able to show some record of success to 
potential customers. This means these paid editors would have to edit within 
the bounds of the policies and guidelines for some time in order to show 
potential clients that they can write in the WP style and in a manner that 
won't get deleted as cruft/spam/etc. Additionally, since people running any 
decent-sized company are presumably literate, and presumably would have some 
rudimentary idea of what Wikipedia is (say, "the encyclopedia that anyone 
can edit"), does anyone really think that they are going to shell out cash 
for someone to go in and insert a bunch of spam one time, only to have it 
deleted and the admins/community alerted to their nefarious intent?

Instead, what is more likely is that editors who exhibited some degree of 
familiarity with/expertise in the WP community would be paid to clean-up 
articles of particular interest to the client and then maintain them by, 
say, deleting vandalism, false defamatory claims, etc. If the paid editors 
did this sort of thing, is that not in keeping with the goals of the 
encyclopedia? Are we here to write an encyclopedia, or enforce some 
communist ideal of editorial egalitarianism? Wikipedia policy is not 
supposed to be emulating anyone's ideal political system, if I read WP:NOT 
correctly. That is, there is no reason to have a policy that states that 
people must reap equal wages (or non-wages) for equal editing work on 
Wikipedia. Some people can and do edit for what might be seen as altruistic 
reasons. Some might just want to pretty-up articles that they find useful in 
hopes that others will do the same. Who is to say which motive is selfish or 
improper? That is, who decides that editing for pay is somehow a morally 
inferior motive to editing for Wiki-community glory?

Additionally, assuming that paid editing is or becomes a widespread 
phenomenon, you will have people paid by competing firms who moderate each 
other when individuals fail to abide by community standards. After all, a 
competing firm could rake up some bad press for their rival by producing 
evidence of improper, bad faith editing by paid agents of said rival. It 
isn't, as some have suggested, simply a matter of a paid leviathan on one 
side and poor volunteer wikipedians on the other. I would plead with the 
community that WP:AGF not be abandoned simply because some Wikipedians have 
anti-capitalist sentiments. Let's judge edits by their content and editors 
by their contributions, not by their motive.

Respectfully,

MW

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