I just got off the phone with MyWikiBiz and reached what I think is a very favorable agreement about this sort of thing.
The big problem with paid editing on wikipedia is NOT that someone is getting paid to write, but rather that this causes a rather obvious conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety. This was my problem, and they immediately saw why this was not in our interest or theirs.
Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia upon their own independent judgment. This will avoid, for MyWikiBiz, a lot of sad fighting with us which is likely to be ugly and unproductive all around.
This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at the same time supporting the creation of high quality NPOV content. I am very pleased with this idea.--~~~~
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
(stuff)
So what is the agreement?
Dabljuh wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
(stuff)
So what is the agreement?
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:38:24 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
So in essence, you talked him out of editing Wikipedia? That is incredible! I understand this was basically his business model
Dabljuh wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:38:24 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
So in essence, you talked him out of editing Wikipedia? That is incredible! I understand this was basically his business model _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
His business model still works if the material he writes get used on Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we approve it first... as far as I understand it.
On 8/9/06, Ed Sanders ejsanders@gmail.com wrote:
His business model still works if the material he writes get used on Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we approve it first... as far as I understand it.
I don't like this middle ground at all. We need to be firmly either *for* or *against* paid editing. If we equivocate as we currently do, then you'll have people figuring out which articles are coming through this process and AfDing them all "because Jimmy said it was a conflict of interest". Either welcome it or ban it - where the hell do we stand right now?
Steve
On 8/11/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
I don't like this middle ground at all. We need to be firmly either *for* or *against* paid editing. If we equivocate as we currently do, then you'll have people figuring out which articles are coming through this process and AfDing them all "because Jimmy said it was a conflict of interest". Either welcome it or ban it - where the hell do we stand right now?
Whats so hard about "we welcome text which is good, no matter who or how it was created and we reject or repair text which is bad."?
For or against paid editing? Paid editing is an orthogonal issue. I wish all of our contributors could be better compensated for their fantastic contributions.
If we can't cope with bias coming from known-interested sources then we have no hope... most biased sources do not announce their intentions.
On 8/11/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Whats so hard about "we welcome text which is good, no matter who or how it was created and we reject or repair text which is bad."?
I thought that *was* our credo - presuming "good" rules out copyright infringement. I would like to hear more of an explanation behind this rejection of apparent "conflict of interest". There's got to be more to this than that. I agree with Jimbo on almost everything he does, so I'm hoping I will end up understanding where he's coming from in acting so swiftly and so strongly in blocking (at first) an editor apparently contributing useful text.
For or against paid editing? Paid editing is an orthogonal issue. I wish all of our contributors could be better compensated for their fantastic contributions.
Yeah!
If we can't cope with bias coming from known-interested sources then we have no hope... most biased sources do not announce their intentions.
Exactly. One of the reasons I found it bizarre to block the US Congress. Much better just to watch it. Then you give people two options: edit openly and responsibly from their real IP address, or find a different IP address and do whatever the hell they want.
Steve
On 8/11/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/9/06, Ed Sanders ejsanders@gmail.com wrote:
His business model still works if the material he writes get used on Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we approve it first... as far as I understand it.
I don't like this middle ground at all. We need to be firmly either *for* or *against* paid editing. If we equivocate as we currently do, then you'll have people figuring out which articles are coming through this process and AfDing them all "because Jimmy said it was a conflict of interest". Either welcome it or ban it - where the hell do we stand right now?
Why do we have to have a clear position? I much prefer a society primarily made of equivocators than ideologues.
I don't see paid editing as necessarily sullying the editing in any way.
There's no need to be anti-capitalist.
On 8/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Why do we have to have a clear position? I much prefer a society primarily made of equivocators than ideologues.
Because a society is not a project.
Steve
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Dabljuh wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
(stuff)
So what is the agreement?
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
From what I understand on another thread, MyWikiBiz was committed to
producing neutral articles. And would only do so under the MyWikiBiz username. I, personally, liked the idea of the edits being entered by MyWikiBiz - that way they could be tracked openly and checked using the user contributions feature. Having an anonymous editor input the information into wikipedia seems more likely to result in articles that are not neutral.
I can see some benefit in that trolls would target articles created by MyWikiBiz for deletion and other crap - but that seems outweighed by the benefit that many users would also be able to quickly identify the articles submitted by MyWikiBiz and would seek to protect wikipedia's reputation and make sure our policies are followed. They could only do this if there is transparency in submitting material.
*Is the feeling that being paid to write articles for wikipedia is against community standards in general.* What if a wikipedian submitted a grant to a govt agency or non-profit to edit/contribute x amount of information to articles around a specific topic? I can see this as being a huge benefit to wikipedia and to our goal to preserve knowledge by creating a high-quality comprehensive encyclopedia.
For example, I could see the following as having great benefit: http://www.foodsovereignty.org issues a grant to write on locating water sources, low-water agriculture, high temperature yields, etc. http://www.eere.energy.gov/ issues a grant to write on alternative energy sources - http://nationalzoo.si.edu/default.cfm issues a grant to write on a specific list of endangered animals ... of course there could be harm as well http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ issues a grant to make sure specific information is deleted from articles on nuclear power and to promote non-proliferation http://www.ispu.us/pages/reports/2855/articleDetailPB.html issues a grant to influence the articles on islam, christianity, etc.
For all these open acknowledgement of the finanicial relationship and transparency is a better protection for our neutralilty standards, IMHO.
Jim
Jim wrote:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Dabljuh wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
(stuff)
So what is the agreement?
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
From what I understand on another thread, MyWikiBiz was committed to
producing neutral articles. And would only do so under the MyWikiBiz username. I, personally, liked the idea of the edits being entered by MyWikiBiz - that way they could be tracked openly and checked using the user contributions feature. Having an anonymous editor input the information into wikipedia seems more likely to result in articles that are not neutral.
I can see some benefit in that trolls would target articles created by MyWikiBiz for deletion and other crap - but that seems outweighed by the benefit that many users would also be able to quickly identify the articles submitted by MyWikiBiz and would seek to protect wikipedia's reputation and make sure our policies are followed. They could only do this if there is transparency in submitting material.
*Is the feeling that being paid to write articles for wikipedia is against community standards in general.* What if a wikipedian submitted a grant to a govt agency or non-profit to edit/contribute x amount of information to articles around a specific topic? I can see this as being a huge benefit to wikipedia and to our goal to preserve knowledge by creating a high-quality comprehensive encyclopedia.
For example, I could see the following as having great benefit: http://www.foodsovereignty.org issues a grant to write on locating water sources, low-water agriculture, high temperature yields, etc. http://www.eere.energy.gov/ issues a grant to write on alternative energy sources - http://nationalzoo.si.edu/default.cfm issues a grant to write on a specific list of endangered animals ... of course there could be harm as well http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ issues a grant to make sure specific information is deleted from articles on nuclear power and to promote non-proliferation http://www.ispu.us/pages/reports/2855/articleDetailPB.html issues a grant to influence the articles on islam, christianity, etc.
For all these open acknowledgement of the finanicial relationship and transparency is a better protection for our neutralilty standards, IMHO.
Jim
I had a very similar thought. The idea that eventually paid academics might be allowed to spend some amount of their compensated time contributing is not unrealistic. Look at all the the programmers that are paid by large corporations to work on open source projects. Thought his is quite a different thing than a company paying someone to write an article about them (which they would probably not want to be paying for if it was not going to benefit them and thus putting NPOV in question). I think the best option for a company that wants an article on wikipedia is to simply request it.
Dalf
On 8/10/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
I had a very similar thought. The idea that eventually paid academics might be allowed to spend some amount of their compensated time contributing is not unrealistic. Look at all the the programmers that are paid by large corporations to work on open source projects.
Heh, nice thought. When you think about it, if an academic's mission is to spread knowledge about some topic, writing a Wikipedia article or two would probably be a lot more effective than writing a book which very few people will ever read.
Thought his is quite a different thing than a company paying someone to write an article about them (which they would probably not want to be paying for if it was not going to benefit them and thus putting NPOV in question). I think the best option for a company that wants an article on wikipedia is to simply request it.
I'd like to think there are a few companies for whom an NPOV description would still be flattering.
Steve
On Aug 10, 2006, at 3:31 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
Heh, nice thought. When you think about it, if an academic's mission is to spread knowledge about some topic, writing a Wikipedia article or two would probably be a lot more effective than writing a book which very few people will ever read.
The problem is that, generally speaking, an academic's mission is to engage in research. Original research, specifically.
-Phil
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Dabljuh wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400 Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
(stuff)
So what is the agreement?
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their own articles as well. He will write articles and post them on his own site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of the merits of the articles.
Hey Jimbo, can you confirm that you tried to unblock MyWikiBiz but had problems with your browser, per [[User talk:MyWikiBiz]]?
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at the same time supporting the creation of high quality NPOV content. I am very pleased with this idea.--~~~~
Damnit, Jimmy, you can't just copy and paste stuff from talk pages to the mailing list. That signature trick doesn't work here .. yet ;-)
Erik
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia upon their own independent judgment.
How will the author attribution and grant of license work?
Anthony
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
The big problem with paid editing on wikipedia is NOT that someone is getting paid to write, but rather that this causes a rather obvious conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety. This was my problem, and they immediately saw why this was not in our interest or theirs.
I'm not sure why conflict of interest is a problem here. When someone sits down to write an article about their own religion, there's a conflict of interest. When they write about circumcision because they were HORRIBLY EMOTIONALLY SCARRED as a baby, there's a conflict of interest. Hell, when they realise that their favourite Pokémon somehow escaped a mention in Wikipedia, we don't expect them to write a neutral, unbiased piece. We might like it, but we don't expect it.
Somehow Wikipedia survives on all of his "conflict of interest", you might even say it thrives on it. Some of our best, most referenced articles come from battles between pro- and anti- groups.
In the case of articles about corporations, what you'd likely find would be this 1 "conflict of interest" editor being brought into line with a dozen or more NPOV warriors. In the long term, would any of MyWikiBiz's clients' articles remain unedited?
Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia upon their own independent judgment. This will avoid, for MyWikiBiz, a
I'm not liking this. Company A pays Company B in order to get Volunteer C to write an article. (Then, Company D sells the results to Sucker E...)
lot of sad fighting with us which is likely to be ugly and unproductive all around.
Could the sad fighting not be avoided by constructive discussion, whereby we conclude that paying people to write Wikipedia articles is in everyone's best interest, and might even improve our reputation, giving us a more "professional" appearance?
This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at
If "independence" means that we don't have anyone with barrows to push, I don't think we are "independent". If being a "volunteer editing body" is now a fundamental aspect of Wikipedia (as opposed to a fact of life of having no money to pay people), then I'm just confused.
Steve