On 1/26/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
I had an off-wiki conversation with someone about a similar issue earlier, so it's interesting that it comes up again here. At the end of the day, shouldn't we worry more about the quality of the contributions in terms of benefit to the encyclopedia (even the poorly written ones) as opposed to who's contributing it?
Yes. Quality of contribution should not be determined by who is contributing. This is not a new stance; this has been a rule of thumb since the first trolls were allowed to stay and continue editing.
If paying someone $100 to add information to a stubby, but necessary, article improves the quality of the encyclopedia, why are we standing in the way?
I don't know. Something about it feeling wrong, driving people from writing about what is important to writing about what is supported by patrons. I do think that edits themselves should be allowed or not based on their quality -- something that would rule out many would-be paid contributions.
SJ