I see several issues/concerns re sponsoring pages.
Firstly it is a form of advertising, even if we don't name the sponsor on
the page (and there will be pressure to do so) then we will have headlines
along the lines of car maker x launches new "peregrine" car - sponsors
Wikipedia page on Peregine Falcon. A large enough part of the community
don't want to accept advertising, such a large part that any advertising
however disguised as "sponsorship" is going to be more trouble than its
worth.
Secondly there is the argument that sponsorship could help by funding the
buying of sources. We already have microgrants available to help here, why
do we also need sponsorship?
Thirdly there is the vexed issue of paid editing, here the important thing
is to avoid COI. At Wikimania in Gdansk Google's charity arm presented a
relatively uncontentious program they had run to translate medical articles
from English into various South Asian languages.
Fourthly you can expect news stories along the lines of "travel company Y
stops sponsoring Wikipedia articles on resorts X and Z, starts sponsoring
articles on resorts A and B as it moves out of Country Q and expands offer
in Country C".
My concern if you approach these via sponsorship is that you then have to
have a whole new bureaucracy around who is an acceptable sponsor, and
whoever seeks to control that has an impossible task as the sponsors may
not disclose their plans in advance (hypothetical example, a computer game
manufacturer known for science fiction themed games sponsors some unrelated
articles re Roman history and the Magonid dynasty, they then get a lot of
free publicity as the games press correctly speculates that they are going
to launch a "swords and sandals" type game based on the Punic Wars.
So in my opinion best to not allow sponsorship of articles.
WSC
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:04:35 -0700
From: Mono <monomium(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] "Adopt a page"
Message-ID:
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CAD6tHrU9DQS4bykOFq6gniwEC3d2UZN1Bj1b2KCOm+MvvsRwFg(a)mail.gmail.com>
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How so?
On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 5:58 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com
wrote:
On Mar 30, 2013 12:55 AM, "Mono"
<monomium(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, but it might be nice if we could let people pay trusted editors to
improve articles (without a COI and with a NPOV) that normally wouldn't
get
attention.
Would that be nice? I think that would be very harmful...
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 02:08:45 +0100
From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] "Adopt a page"
Message-ID:
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DH1H5o1iJfu4++YtNcg(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On Mar 30, 2013 1:04 AM, "Mono" <monomium(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How so?
It would be completely against our culture. Wikipedia is a volunteer
written encyclopedia.
You would end up with a two-tier system of paid editors and unpaid editors.
There would inevitably be a lot of conflict between those groups. The whole
concept would be extremely divisive.
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 01:29:33 +0000
From: Thomas Morton <morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] "Adopt a page"
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It's a weird dichotomy.
I've spent several hundred quid on source material for my current topic
area. I could easily have spent several grand.
Paid editing is a major issue, because it conflicts with our culture
But if someone were able to buy my sources then it would be of huge
benefit.
And, controversially, if someone could fund me one day a week to write
these articles I could likely expand from one GA per month to covering this
entire field in GAs in a year.
Without that it will take me a good five years
I've come recently to see that funding article work is not inherently an
awful thing. But it needs to be done with extreme care to protect our
ideals and neutrality. And that is a HARD problem.
Tom
On Saturday, March 30, 2013, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On Mar 30, 2013 1:04 AM, "Mono"
<monomium(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>>
wrote:
How so?
It would be completely against our culture. Wikipedia is a volunteer
written encyclopedia.
You would end up with a two-tier system of paid editors and unpaid
editors.
There would inevitably be a lot of conflict
between those groups. The
whole
concept would be extremely divisive.
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Message: 7
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:23:22 +0200
From: Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] "Adopt a page"
Message-ID:
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Guys, I think you're reading more into it than it is. When you're adopting
an animal you don't get to decide what and how much it gets to eat.
Similarly adopting a wiki page wouldn't mean you pay for having a say on
the content. At the bottom end of the reward scale you could get a badge
you could put on YOUR website, without having your name on Wikipedia at
all.
I'm not necessarely in favour of this idea but i wanted to see if it's been
discussed before. I guess that if it has, people havebeen confusing this
idea with paid editing.