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]]