On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru>
wrote:
- Possibly POV will be compromised in paid articles.
- Unhealthy situation within the editing community. In
the debates with
WMF staff when we disagreed, I always felt awkward, because they were paid
arguing with me, and would do it until they convince me or I give up, and I
was doing this in my free time, and got tired very quickly. I also had very
unpleasant experiences interacting with some chapter people whose only goal
was to keep their position. They did not care about the quality,
efficiency, anything, only about their personal good. And if somebody
defends their personal good, you know, thy usually win, and the quality
loses. Now, imagine there is a content dispute between a user who is paid
(and is afraid to lose the salary) and a user who is unpaid and have to do
the same for free - I am sure a paid user will be way more persistent.
​Yaroslav, we already have a lot of paid editors on the English Wikipedia.
Some are
Wikimedians in residence, and this has always been regarded as
okay, though I believe they're expected not to edit articles about the
institution that employs them.
But we also have a lot of paid PR editing and obvious COI problems because
of that, as well as the problems you highlight (e.g. the paid editor being
more persistent).
Introducing the Foundation as a broker between organizations that want
articles and editors who want to write them would not solve all the
problems you highlight, but it would remove the COI aspect. So my thinking
was that it would be better than the current situation.
Sarah​