---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com Date: Mar 7, 2007 3:22 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic conflict... To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com Date: Mar 5, 2007 10:44 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic conflict of interest? To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
There are various techniques in the Internal Revenue Manual that could be employed; for example, reviewing the edit contributions of an employee of a non-profit organization, a reasonable estimate of manhours allocated by that non-profit organization over a given period of time would meet standards of proof to establish income from paid editing, as well as the activities of the employer, not to mention possible conflicts of interest, or violations of Wikipedia's internal policies.
On 3/7/07, Mercenary Wikipedian mercenarywikipedian@hotmail.com wrote:
What does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? There are already policies in place regarding NPOV and NPA, and there are multiple dispute resolution
processes in place to handle serial/chronic non-compliance. What protections does _anyone_ have against defamation on Wikipedia? Well, if they are the subject of an article there is WP:BLP. If they are just an editor and not the subject of the article there is the policy mandating No Personal Attacks. What makes you think these won't work if people are getting paid? Is this an issue of scalability? If so, it seems a little late to be worried about whether or not the idea of Wikipedia is scalable.
MW
The point here is paid employees of a non-profit entity with an agenda evidenced by initiating internal processes of dispute resolution. This is
something not addressed in any policies anywhere. ( 1 ) They are agents of a non-profit entity; ( 2 ) volunteers in dispute have no disclosure as to
whom* they are in dispute with; ( 3 ) the dispute may not be initiated for
the purposes of improving articles or writing an encyclopedia; ( 4 ) what protections do volunteer editors, acting in good faith, have against being targeted and publicly defamed by a non-profit entity with a political agenda?
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None is addressed in current policies. And there is evidence Wikipedia is being used for purposes *other than* writing an encyclopedia, i.e. to target certain individuals and smear their character. The Daniel Brandt episode is one such case. Stephen Kinsella and the Ludwig von Mises Institute is another. The Free Congress Foundation and Paul Weyrich is a target for much questionable content being added, as well as an anonymous editor who identified himself as a professional journalist and friend of Weyrich received a community ban for efforts to instill NPOV & fairness in those two articles.
By contrast, User:Katefan0, aka Kathryn Wolfe of *Scripps Howard* did precisely the samething as Weyrich's friend, admitted a conflict of interest prior to initiating official Wikipedia Dispute Resolution Policy, was promoted to Admin, presented evidence before Arbitrators admitting her conflict of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rangerdude/E...
yet the Arbs used her evidence against an aggrieved party. There are numerous other instances to be cited where a pattern is established that the intent of some parties, acting as agents of others, are using Wikipedia to pursue their own aims and not constructively contribute to the encyclopedia.