Actually we also get bookspam. The classic version of this is an IP turns up at a watchlist making one edit to an article to add an item to the references section. Check the IP history and it makes one edit each to a lot of different articles, each adding a book reference but not building the article. All the books come from the same publishing house. Check the WHOIS...surprise, surprise...
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 1:32 AM, Sam Kornsmoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Andrew Grayandrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
wrote:
2009/6/10 AGK wikiagk@googlemail.com:
In practice, however, it would be exceedingly rare for that type of
editing
to not be problematic to some degree; the nature of the business world
is
such that paid editing would almost certainly not adhere to Wikipedia's
NPOV
policies. Consider this: if a client commissions a Wikipedia article's creation, would the client be satisfied with an article that did not
reflect
a stance that was at least a smidgen flattering? I wouldn't imagine so.
On
that basis, I think a blanket discouragement from editing for payment
to be
the most sensible approach to the issue.
This only really applies to one type of paid editing, doesn't it? Commercial or quasi-commercial, ones where the client has a definite stake in the "message" of the article.
You can easily have paid editing where this isn't the case at all - an educational group, for example, which pays people to produce content about a specific field without presupposing the tone of that content. In many cases, it may just be that the topic is one where it's hard to put the "sponsor's" slant in - mathematics, for example, would be a lot more resilient than alternative medicines!
We've already had a very limited form of this - the project on Commons which pays for the creation of images - and there's no doubt that, if done carefully, this could be extended to article-writing without the danger of producing editorial slant in the end product. This is pretty much the traditional encyclopedia model, in fact - paid generalist or specialist editors, who may well bring their own prejudices to the text but aren't expected to comply with the "central editorial slant" on each.
I agree entirely paid editing can be a bad thing - but so can unpaid editing for a topic you hold dear. Likewise, both can be forces for good. I'm not sure it's wise to completely throw away the opportunity for a powerful tool which we haven't used much yet, due to short-term fears about commercial interests.
(In short: regulate, sure. Don't forbid; it'll bite us in the long run.)
These are all excellent points.
I would like to see the guideline state something along the lines of "You are not required to state that you are being paid to edit. However, if it is later discovered that you have been doing so and you did not state this openly, people will be very suspicious about your motivations. If you are open, honest and neutral, people are more likely to trust you."
Also, I would like to see the end of COIN and direct its traffic to the NPOV noticeboard -- it is highly misleading to suggest that the conflict of interests is the problem; it is the lack of neutrality that is the problem.
My points, from a post I prepared yesterday (which I may post on-wiki at some point):
*One point I don't think has been raised is that paid editing mostly focuses on living people and contemporary organisations. I can't actually think of examples of paid editing that don't involve biographies of living people ([[WP:BLP]]) or corporate companies ([[WP:CORP]]), plus a side-serving of political and non-corporate organisations (e.g. non-governmental organisations and charities) and I'm sure that is an important point, but maybe someone else could articulate that? What I'm thinking here is that editing on 'academic' topics such as history and science (if you ignore paid attempts to push fringe points of view - such as crackpot, pseudo and fringe history and science), is largely done either by academics or volunteer amateurs with interests. The editing on living people articles and corporations (and music groups) is largely done by fans (volunteers) or paid editors. But the editing on long-dead people (I've created several articles on 19th-century scientists) and organisations (think 19th-century independence movements, such as [[Hellenoglosso Xenodocheio]]). I'm not saying that paid editing is impossible in such situations, but it does seem that *corporate* and *contemporary* paid editing is mostly limited to certain areas.
*The final point is that no-one seems to have mentioned the model of having paid editing done outside Wikipedia under a compatible license, and then filtered in through a vetting process (with strict disclosure of amount of money, the authors, and the WP accounts, if any) and suffrage restrictions in place). It is ironic, considering the history of that sort of editing in the past, but I think that is a viable model that should be considered as an alternative to in-house paid editing.
*Actually, that's not the final thing. The final point I wanted to make was about paid corporate editing versus individual wealthy individuals paying for specific requests, versus philanthropists providing "editorial support" in general (if I had the money, I'd pay into a fund to support volunteer Wikipedia editors who needed the money - goodness knows how they would distribute it though), versus charities and other non-corporate groups paying, versus academic funding and grants, versus completely altruistic, gratis volunteer editing. I think that covers the whole spectrum.
Carcharoth
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l