Since the can of worms has been opened... In my opinion, which ironically is probably similar to Greg Kohs', having any stance on paid editing of Wikipedia is pointless. Most large companies and organizations are already paying people to edit Wikipedia (albeit quietly). The ones we know about and complain about are the companies that are too small to do it in-house and try to outsource it. Any policy we enact is going to be ignored by the people doing it quietly and will only affect the people doing it publicly (like Kohs). The only way we can be effective in this regard is to strengthen our COI, NPOV, OR, and V policies to minimize misuse of Wikipedia (paid or not). That said, I still believe that Kohs has gone far beyond being a useful critic. Yes, he has points that are worth discussion, but that doesn't mean we have to overlook his disruptive behavior. He clearly has an axe to grind and intends to grind it. We don't have to facilitate that. Ryan Kaldari On 10/22/10 2:04 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:

It is not so much that they cannot be detected, after all their editing has purpose and they are usually both aggressive and persistent. However, adequate demonstration of such patterns of activity to other administrators, or ultimately, to a committee is not trivial. The essential clue is that they have a strong point of view about something that no ordinary person would be exercised about, some company or product with public relations deficits. Ultimately, pursuit of any but the most clumsy is hard thankless work. Beating on the clumsy, is, of course, a necessary task if only to correct bad editing. Fred

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 23:57, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: I had, actually, good experiences with PR agencies. Last two years I had contact with a couple of them. I was explaining to them how to write articles which would stay on Wikipedia. For free, while there were soft pressure to take money. They are usually much more reasonable than ordinary POV-pushers. They want to do their job and nothing more. It is our interest to have them as editors and to know that they are editing. They are doing useful job. At last, they are contributing their knowledge to the free knowledge pool. As Ryan said, many companies are doing that already. Some of them are doing that in-house, some of them are doing that via PR companies. Just the smallest ones are doing that at market. And it is not just about companies, but about politicians and various state structures. So, the question is not do we want that, as it will be no matter do we want, but how to incorporate them in the best interest of our projects. Explaining to them what the rules are,. what is acceptable and what is not -- should be our first priority in this area. If we stay where we are, at the top of informational sources on Internet, I think that we would have more and more PR departments and agencies as our editors. And the best way is to build an efficient framework for such environment. I don't know how it should look exactly, but I think that we are already doing a good job, as we are not making witch hunts against them. The most of our editors are not core ones and the most of them have some interest to edit Wikimedia projects. Interest could be a passion, "showing the truth", self-promotion, but it could be money, too. And we don't want to push away our editors. I think that the field for professional Wikipedians are exactly PR departments and agencies. And I prefer much more to see two or more professionals who are arguing by using facts, than two or more amateur POV-pushers whose best argument are personal attacks.

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 00:02, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Someone working for the company that makes Lipitor would try to stop mainstream media sources being used in the article, because it's the media that has been pointing out problems with these drugs. And that's exactly what happens on these articles, but it's unfortunately Wikipedians who are doing it. Their motives are good -- to keep out nonsense -- but the effect is to turn those articles into something the manufacturers and their PR people would be very happy with. Look at our article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atorvastatin There is criticism, no mention of how much money the drug is making for the company, no mention of how widespread and unquestioned the prescription of these drugs is. And I know from experience at another statin article that it would be very difficult to add this material. Some examples of the criticism available in the media, which you almost certainly won't find on Wikipedia: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/4974840/Wonder-drug-that-stole-my-memory.… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/5257744/Statins-life-saving-wonder-drugs-… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/expathealth/4204363/The-worrying-wonder-d… http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2498489.stm Sarah

A survey of doctors in the United States showed that about 50% at least occasionally look at Wikipedia while about 5% edit at least a little. Doctors, it turns out, are just smart, grown-up college students who need information in a convenient accessible format. So, it turns out, we're in the business. We had a long discussion about not giving detailed information about appropriate doses of drugs, information that patients might rely on to their detriment. We are not experts in medicine, what we do is summarize the findings of experts. The difficulty with that is that only brief abstracts of most research are available to most of us. Fred

A stupid PR agency would do just that. A good one , writing for any medium, would try to make sure that positive sources are also included, that the presentation was balanced., and that is was factual, not tabloid hysteria and exaggeration. A really good one that understands Wikipedia would for an article like this do it on the talk p, in order to avoid the likely criticism that would follow no matter how good the edits might be. On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 3:02 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

I added a section on memory loss to that article, and used the source you cited as well as a Wall Street Journal article. I don't much care for the Telegraph myself, and didn't use it. In fact it was an anecdotal account of a single person. Now, let's see if anyone shows up to remove this black mark... And observe how they go about it. Fred

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 08:02, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: What I find to be easy to explain to any reasonable PR person is to read the rules and not to go outside of them. The vast majority of PR needs in relation to Wikipedia (and some other Wikimedia projects, most notably Wikinews) is visibility, not PR crisis management. shouldn't and can't be used for spreading false information and POV in any way. Usually, I tell them to send to me the text and then I mark problematic parts. Sometimes, texts need just basic redaction, sometimes they are PR junk. But, at the end, they are usually much better than regular articles at Wikipedia: those texts have sources for every claim. Yes, I had one negative experience, but I had five or more good. Note that PR agencies (and freelancers) are the most useful (not PR departments of various companies). After one set of explanations, they learn how to do it next time, for another client. It is already regular practice that PR courses are covering marketing on Wikipedia as important part of online PR. The courses are not giving the most of necessary details for editing Wikipedia, but they explain importance of Wikipedia in contemporary PR. I would like to see a couple of PR agencies dealing exclusively and openly with Wikimedia projects, as contractors of other companies and PR agencies. They would learn our rules and they would be the filter for PR junk and unreasonable wishes of companies inside of the PR crisis. Not so strictly speaking, it is highly likely that a random inhabitant of Iceland is in COI with texts related to Iceland. 300.000 of monoethnic inhabitants don't give much of diversity. Strictly speaking, any adherent of Anglicanism, any member of Democratic Party of USA and any inhabitant of Serbia are in COI if articles are about Anglican Church, DP and Serbia, respectively. I think that COI should be redefined. It is better to have them visible. It is our consistency which matters. COI exists disclosed or not.