I really wanted to come to this one but it's looking unlikely (spouse's birthday plans take precedence, alas). Some topics that came up on #wikipedia-en-helpers in the last few days seemed really appropriate for this meetup. Maybe this would be a useful topic for discussion: 1. What are some useful ways we could make an end run around paid editing? Someone observed that there are a lot of freelance Wikipedia editing jobs up on Elance.com, e.g. https://www.elance.com/j/wikipedia-page/73318807/ Is there a way we can use that to our advantage? Some ideas that were floated: * Bid for the job, once you've got it, post the name of the page that is being promoted to a list of COI pages for closer monitoring (or even salting). Ethical problems galore! * Maybe more radically: take the job yourself and write the article, with full paid disclosure, on the principle of "if you can't lick 'em, join 'em" -- as long as someone's going to be paid to write this article, we might as well make sure it's someone who can do it right. 2. What's the most effective way to handle situations where an editor has been told by their employer to put a page on Wikipedia, and where the editor's job depends to some degree on their success? The editor is between a rock and a hard place; ideally we would make Wikipedia the bad guy in this situation so that it doesn't backlash on the editor. How best to do that? Hope you all have a good time. Hoping to see you in June! --t. On 5/24/15 4:42 PM, Amanda Rust wrote: