Hi Jacob,
Thank you for following up.
I wonder what more Legal could to deter bad-faith editors from venturing onto Wikipedia in the first place and engaging in inappropriate activity. Keep in mind how much high-skill volunteer time is diverted into investigating and cleaning up after bad-faith editors that could instead be used to develop new features, train new contributors, or write more content if there were fewer bad actors on the site. My thought is that WMF could take a more proactive deterrent approach by amending the ToU to specify financial compensation (or fines) to be paid to WMF, starting with the first offense, for certain types of bad-faith editing, particularly undisclosed paid editing. I believe that a number of ISPs and web hosts have similar provisions in their terms of use for fines for when the service providers determine that one of their customers is using the providers' services to send junk email or other problematic content. The deterrent effect is important to limit the harm to the integrity of the encyclopedia, and to limit and deter the considerable "theft" of the time of volunteers who investigate and clean up after bad actors. What do you think about that suggestion? If you are not in favor of it, what alternatives would you propose to limit the harms to the encyclopedia and the diversion of community members' time?
Pine
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
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