A copy of the proposed additional language:
--- Paid contributions without disclosure
These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. To ensure compliance with these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution to any Wikimedia Projects for which you receive compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following:
* a statement on your user page, * a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or * a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.
Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure. For more information, please read our background note on disclosure of paid contributions https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment# paidtoufaq. ---
And a snippet from the Meta-Wiki page:
--- Our Terms of Use already prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. To ensure compliance with these provisions, this amendment provides specific minimum disclosure requirements for paid contributions on the Wikimedia Projects. ---
Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote:
And I'm not sure how to make it better. What value does this even serve the movement? I can't understand from the background information why there is the need to resolve the problem of conflict of interest through a Wikimedia-wide terms of use change, especially such a rigid one, when local policies are already in place. (Or, if they are not in place, perhaps it has more to do with the fact that not all Wikimedia projects even face the same problems of neutrality as Wikipedia.)
My reaction was roughly the same as yours regarding who's proposing this change. It's curious that the Wikimedia Foundation legal team wants to propose this as a Terms of Use change rather than, say, creating or clarifying a Wikimedia Foundation employee policy. This is already being referred to as the Stierch amendment, of course.
MZMcBride