On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 00:37:03 +1100, "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Yes. Gregory Kohs also thought it was fine to edit for pay, we banned him because lots of people disagreed, he was arrogant about it, which drove off those who might otherwise have agreed and a review of his edits showed that they were largely PR pieces or directory entries, not serious attempts at creating neutral articles.
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.
I have no doubt that many employees of companies edit their company's articles. Most of these edits are not really COI, since they are not editing *as representatives of the company* or being paid to edit.
They're also probably not neutral. Does it matter? If not, would it matter if they were paid to make them?
I don't know. Companies have disgruntled employees and enthusiastic evangelists. Would it matter if they were paid to write? Yes, because only the evangelists would be paid.
Actually I have no problem in principle with people occasionally editing an article where they have some minor conflict of interest,
Me neither.
but edits by the marketing or PR people tend to be uncritical and problematic, and being paid for editing specified content is certainly
Yes, about as bad as people writing about their own religion, home town, favourite basketball team, singer or painter. If only that problem was confined to professional editors, Wikipedia would be much better off.
No, worse. I live in Reading, Berkshire. I feel no particular loyalty to the town, it's just a place where I live. What if Reading paid me to edit their Wikipedia article? Would I write that it's a boring drug-riddled self-obsessed town with a terrible shopping centre and extortionate house prices, or would I write something a little more flattering?
incompatible with Wikipedia's ethos - you have a situation where the company will necessarily demand or expect a certain tone of editing; would they pay up cheerfully if during your researches you found and included a fact which reflected badly on them? Too many problems down that road, I think.
Is anyone suggesting that the Wikimedia foundation take money from companies and edit on their behalf? If a company pays someone, such as an employee, to edit an article on their behalf, then that's an issue between them. Our issue is to keep all articles NPOV, whether they were written on commission or not.
No articles should be written on commission. I believe Jimbo Has Spoken on that issue.
Guy (JzG)