On 20 February 2014 00:56, HaeB haebwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Sorry, but I think these concerns are overblown.
I do not intend to fill everyone's inbox with a back-and-forth, but I do want to clarify some of my points.
First, IANAL, but an "academic ... who makes their first tentative edit" or other normal newbies will most likely not fall under that provision, unless they are instructed by their employer to make that edit (but then, why would an organization such as an university spend money to pay someone for work in which that person has no experience whatsoever?).
I know that you are familiar with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program, which did exactly what you are suggesting is so bizarre. Yes, many professors over the years have made their first edits as part of their paid work of teaching university courses, and I doubt they were all diligent about disclosure, or that many people minded. And it's not hard to imagine other activities an academic, with a professional mandate to provide public education, could legitimately perform on Wikimedia as part of their day job. The president of the American Historical Association wrote an article saying that historians have a professional obligation to do so. Sue Gardner gave a keynote for the American Library Association suggesting the same thing for librarians. I believe the reason universities and scholars would do this sort of thing and receive compensation for it is that, like an academic's normal day job, it serves the public interest. These are all mainstream and fairly well-understood concepts within the Wikimedia community, even though they entail (non-advocacy) paid editing.
Second, you make it appear like every violation of the TOU is a felony
("outlaw mistakes") and likely to be the target of legal action. In my observation as a longtime editor, the reality is different. As a comparison, the terms of use also forbid copyright infringement and require proper attribution of content. Yet as we all know, newbie mistakes in that area are very common, and even many experienced editors violate [[WP:CWW]] without facing major consequences or lawsuits ;) However, that doesn't mean at all that we should drop these requirements - they help us achieving our goal of building a body of knowledge that can be freely shared and reused.
I appreciate that you think I am overreacting, but you are putting words in my mouth--I clearly understand that a Wikimedia TOU is not a legislative action by the government, and I was only suggesting that the WMF would be making a rule, not a literal law. By dismissing me in that way, you have ignored my real point, which is that the proposed text sets up a situation in which any reasonable, well-intentioned new paid editor is naturally likely to violate the site's TOU. That is not itself a reason not to have such a clause in a TOU, but it does seem like it would contribute to the feeling that Wikipedia is overly rule-bound and unwelcoming to newcomers.
Last, you vehemently object to the text mentioning that people "will
be subject to 'applicable law'(!)". Well, the Foundation doesn't make these laws, and not mentioning them in the TOU doesn't make them go away. They are not mere "stumbling blocks" that WMF can remove in order to make the life of GLAM professionals a bit easier. You should instead complain to the FTC or the other (non-US) legal institutions mentioned in the FAQ about this point.
I did not anywhere advocate for making laws go away, or thinking that this is a TOU's role. Any person is always bound by all applicable laws in anything they do, as you say. The fact that there may be an applicable law does not necessitate making a TOU to state that unless it is constructive in some way to do so.
Instead, the discussions about this topic, even on this mailing list, often see heavy participation by the minority of community members who do, or have done, professional PR work or paid work related to content contribution, often without disclosing it in these discussions.
It doesn't appear anyone described by the above sentence has weighed in here yet (nor did such people dominate the recent "Paid editing v. paid advocacy" thread), unless that is aimed at me. You probably won't be surprised to hear that, from my perspective, these discussions are seem to suffer from the conflation paid advocacy and paid editing in pursuit of Wikimedia's mission. This discussion shows how the proposal promotes that same conflation, except it is all "undisclosed paid editing" that is now the enemy, still with no regard as to whether it is advocacy or not.
The goal in this discussion should not be to say why paid advocacy is bad. That is a given for most people. The point of the discussion is to establish what good this proposal for the TOU would do for Wikimedia's mission, and if it is worth the potential harm.
Dominic