On 18 November 2010 15:57, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 18 November 2010 10:42, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
Any one signed up yet? http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
-- Amir E. Aharoni
Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines acceptable, even welcome?
My teeth grate when I think that some people are getting paid to do what so many of us do simply for the joy of sharing. Having said that, I can certainly understand why some article subjects have tired of depending on our rather inefficient methods of ensuring that articles on notable subjects are accurate, unbiased, well-sourced and relatively complete. I have increasing difficulty rationalizing the deprecation of "paid" editing when a goodly number of what are assumed to be "paid-for" articles conform more closely to our policies and guidelines than what volunteer editors have created - or never got around to creating, for that matter. (I'll note this holds true for more than just English Wikipedia, as I have heard reports that there's significant bias on other Wikipedias as well.) Anyone who's tried to rebalance an article that gives undue weight to negative issues, or to remove salacious trivia about a BLP subject, knows how incredibly frustrating it can be to bring articles into line with policy.
Risker/Anne
I agree that the concept of "being paid to edit Wikipedia" does not fit well with the ethos of our movement... That said, I think a lot of the problems with paid editing in the past (however conceived) have been because the person doing the paying was trying to game the system and circumvent the policies of Wikipedia. Things like being commissioned to whitewash a corporation's article is clearly a violation of the rules - not because it's paid per se, but because it breaks Conflict of Interest guidelines. On the other hand, if someone is employed as a subject area professional (e.g. university professor, museum curator) and their organisation has decided that improving Wikipedia should be part of their job description then I suppose that is technically paid editing, but I don't believe that should be seen as a bad thing. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coi#Subject_and_culture_sector_profes...
Personally I would like to see discussions about paid editing differentiated from discussions of COI and Spam because, whilst they often overlap with negative consequences, it they are not necessarily synonymous.
-Liam
Wittylama.com/blog Peace, Love & Metadata