My thought is to require a central list, and anyone who's being paid to edit Wikipedia needs to be registered on that list with username, who's paying them to edit, and the reason that they are being paid to do this.
A couple semi-plausible examples: *[[User:LibraryGuy]] - American Library Association - Adding information about books, adding Association for Library Collections & Technical Services suggested classifications to book articles *[[User:TraderMike]] - New York Stock Exchange - Create articles on NYSE-traded companies that lack them, make sure all company articles contain ticker symbol, update stock-related statistics in articles
Of course, any stated objective that's in conflict with our goals is right out, and they should keep pretty strictly to what they say they're going to do. Editing for pay using any account except those listed on the central page ([[WP:Paid editors]]?) would be strictly prohibited, and it should be made clear that even registered ones still are subject to intense scrutiny: the list would have a link to each of their user contributions, so we can just go down the list of them, checking their contribs, and judge what they're up to.
No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement, and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that takes us.
-- Jake Nelson [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]