On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 00:37:03 +1100, "Steve
Bennett"
<stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know if that's all true (the one
or two articles I looked at
of his were objectively much better than the void that had existed
before them), but in any case, bad edits are bad edits - regardless of
whether anyone was paid to make them. The question is, do good edits
become bad edits just because they were paid for?
Hmmm. No, I think the question is, can we assume that paid edits are
good edits. If there is a paid editor, what we actually have to do is
shadow them to check for subtle bias - if I were paid to write an
article I would not be 100% confident I could write without subtle
bias, especially if sources were spoonfed. How do we know that the
sources have not been carefully selected to present a desired
perspective? It would be rather naive to believe they had not been so
selected, in fact.
But that's true of everyone---not just people who are paid. Anyone who
has held office for a political party, for example, whether or not they
are currently being paid... any computer scientist who has been involved
in a major dispute within her field... etc, etc. The general solution
we use is to assume good faith, unless evidence warrants otherwise---not
to ban all Democrats from editing politics-related articles.
-Mark