Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob
Jacob and the rest of the legal team.
Many thanks for your clarifications on the "private information" versus "off Wikipedia information" issue.
Also it is excellent to see your willingness to adjudicate on especially controversial cases.
Best James
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 7:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Thanks for this Jacob.
Would you please address Legal's approach to the following scenario: a company advertises Wikipedia editing services for clients, and there is no disclosure of paid editing by an editor employed by or affiliated with the company on Wikipedia. (In other words, a company is obviously not following the Terms of Use).
In my view, this is a situation where I would think that Legal should start a discussion with that company, and if those discussions fail to yield a change in behavior, Legal should then make a public statement indicating this, perhaps on the page you recently posted under a section entitled something like: "Companies that advertise Wikipedia editing services that have no disclosures on Wikipedia". If a company starts to disclose then of course the listing could be modified.
This is something that editors ~could~ do, but as the ToU are issued by the WMF, it would seem more appropriate for WMF to do.
But I am interested to hear Legal's perspective.
Thanks
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
If we had such a list of known bad actors created by the WMF we could than more easily apply the G5 speedy deletion criteria.
It is easier to associate an undisclosed paid editor with the company they are from than with their previous sock accounts.
James
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Jytdog at Wikipedia jytdogtemp1@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for this Jacob.
Would you please address Legal's approach to the following scenario: a company advertises Wikipedia editing services for clients, and there is no disclosure of paid editing by an editor employed by or affiliated with the company on Wikipedia. (In other words, a company is obviously not following the Terms of Use).
In my view, this is a situation where I would think that Legal should start a discussion with that company, and if those discussions fail to yield a change in behavior, Legal should then make a public statement indicating this, perhaps on the page you recently posted under a section entitled something like: "Companies that advertise Wikipedia editing services that have no disclosures on Wikipedia". If a company starts to disclose then of course the listing could be modified.
This is something that editors ~could~ do, but as the ToU are issued by the WMF, it would seem more appropriate for WMF to do.
But I am interested to hear Legal's perspective.
Thanks
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a
longer
statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please
see
our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Okay I have been bold and started a list of the known banned socks of companies involved in undisclosed paid editing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Doc_James/Paid_Editing_Companies
I have also started the discussion of the policy implications of such a list here and will not work further on the list further until the policy discussions are complete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#Socks_of_undisclosed...
Best James
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 6:52 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
If we had such a list of known bad actors created by the WMF we could than more easily apply the G5 speedy deletion criteria.
It is easier to associate an undisclosed paid editor with the company they are from than with their previous sock accounts.
James
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Jytdog at Wikipedia < jytdogtemp1@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this Jacob.
Would you please address Legal's approach to the following scenario: a company advertises Wikipedia editing services for clients, and there is no disclosure of paid editing by an editor employed by or affiliated with the company on Wikipedia. (In other words, a company is obviously not following the Terms of Use).
In my view, this is a situation where I would think that Legal should start a discussion with that company, and if those discussions fail to yield a change in behavior, Legal should then make a public statement indicating this, perhaps on the page you recently posted under a section entitled something like: "Companies that advertise Wikipedia editing services that have no disclosures on Wikipedia". If a company starts to disclose then of course the listing could be modified.
This is something that editors ~could~ do, but as the ToU are issued by the WMF, it would seem more appropriate for WMF to do.
But I am interested to hear Legal's perspective.
Thanks
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a
longer
statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases.
We
tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the
WMF
trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please
see
our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
Perhaps the WMF should drive the paid editing companied out of business by competition? They could try setting up a subsidiary trading company to carry out paid editing in a professional and legally compliant manner. I am sure this could be popular with the community as a way of getting a return on their hard-won skills.
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 2:23 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Okay I have been bold and started a list of the known banned socks of companies involved in undisclosed paid editing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Doc_James/Paid_Editing_Companies
I have also started the discussion of the policy implications of such a list here and will not work further on the list further until the policy discussions are complete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment# Socks_of_undisclosed_paid_WP_editing_companies
Best James
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 6:52 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
If we had such a list of known bad actors created by the WMF we could
than
more easily apply the G5 speedy deletion criteria.
It is easier to associate an undisclosed paid editor with the company
they
are from than with their previous sock accounts.
James
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Jytdog at Wikipedia < jytdogtemp1@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this Jacob.
Would you please address Legal's approach to the following scenario: a company advertises Wikipedia editing services for clients, and there is
no
disclosure of paid editing by an editor employed by or affiliated with
the
company on Wikipedia. (In other words, a company is obviously not following the Terms of Use).
In my view, this is a situation where I would think that Legal should start a discussion with that company, and if those discussions fail to yield a change in behavior, Legal should then make a public statement indicating this, perhaps on the page you recently posted under a section entitled something like: "Companies that advertise Wikipedia editing services
that
have no disclosures on Wikipedia". If a company starts to disclose then of course the listing could be modified.
This is something that editors ~could~ do, but as the ToU are issued by the WMF, it would seem more appropriate for WMF to do.
But I am interested to hear Legal's perspective.
Thanks
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a
longer
statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases.
We
tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and
explain
when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the
WMF
trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing
and
outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident,
please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means,
please
see
our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
`What we actually need is clarity from the en:wp arbcom. They could easily say "yes Legal has advised X but we are stricter", and note that they have already banned users for outing blatant bad faith spammers. GorillaWarfare's commentary on this, both personal and speaking for the arbcom, are probably required at this point.
- d.
On 19 January 2017 at 14:23, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Okay I have been bold and started a list of the known banned socks of companies involved in undisclosed paid editing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Doc_James/Paid_Editing_Companies
I have also started the discussion of the policy implications of such a list here and will not work further on the list further until the policy discussions are complete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#Socks_of_undisclosed...
Best James
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 6:52 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
If we had such a list of known bad actors created by the WMF we could than more easily apply the G5 speedy deletion criteria.
It is easier to associate an undisclosed paid editor with the company they are from than with their previous sock accounts.
James
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:40 PM, Jytdog at Wikipedia < jytdogtemp1@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this Jacob.
Would you please address Legal's approach to the following scenario: a company advertises Wikipedia editing services for clients, and there is no disclosure of paid editing by an editor employed by or affiliated with the company on Wikipedia. (In other words, a company is obviously not following the Terms of Use).
In my view, this is a situation where I would think that Legal should start a discussion with that company, and if those discussions fail to yield a change in behavior, Legal should then make a public statement indicating this, perhaps on the page you recently posted under a section entitled something like: "Companies that advertise Wikipedia editing services that have no disclosures on Wikipedia". If a company starts to disclose then of course the listing could be modified.
This is something that editors ~could~ do, but as the ToU are issued by the WMF, it would seem more appropriate for WMF to do.
But I am interested to hear Legal's perspective.
Thanks
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a
longer
statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases.
We
tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the
WMF
trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please
see
our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Jacob,
Thank you for following up.
I wonder what more Legal could to deter bad-faith editors from venturing onto Wikipedia in the first place and engaging in inappropriate activity. Keep in mind how much high-skill volunteer time is diverted into investigating and cleaning up after bad-faith editors that could instead be used to develop new features, train new contributors, or write more content if there were fewer bad actors on the site. My thought is that WMF could take a more proactive deterrent approach by amending the ToU to specify financial compensation (or fines) to be paid to WMF, starting with the first offense, for certain types of bad-faith editing, particularly undisclosed paid editing. I believe that a number of ISPs and web hosts have similar provisions in their terms of use for fines for when the service providers determine that one of their customers is using the providers' services to send junk email or other problematic content. The deterrent effect is important to limit the harm to the integrity of the encyclopedia, and to limit and deter the considerable "theft" of the time of volunteers who investigate and clean up after bad actors. What do you think about that suggestion? If you are not in favor of it, what alternatives would you propose to limit the harms to the encyclopedia and the diversion of community members' time?
Pine
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_ Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
The Arbitration Committee has just published a response to this statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Re...
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
ArbCom-l mailing list ArbCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
I just want to note that the question i raised here was about what WMF itself was doing about paid editing.
I was unhappy to see so much in that statement about what the community can/should do.
I agree with the Arbcom statement that while it is good that Legal noted that its comments about en-wiki were advisory only, the statement fails to deal adequately with OUTING in en-wiki. The issue is not easy and to be frank the content in the statement about that was disappointingly not carefully thought-through. The objections were very easy to foresee.
I hope legal will revise it.
On Jan 26, 2017, at 2:45 PM, GorillaWarfare gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
The Arbitration Committee has just published a response to this statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Re...
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a longer statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
ArbCom-l mailing list ArbCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
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GorillaWarfare,
Thank you for the statement.
Perhaps you and your colleagues at Arbcom could explain your current efforts against COI editing when evidence of such activity is brought to your attention in private (in alignment with current ENWP Arbcom guidance), and also what more you think could be done to address the problem.
I agree that harassment also is a problem, and I would not condone "false flag" accusations of paid editing as an excuse to effectively dox another editor.
At the same time, it seems to me that our current systems and resources for addressing both COI editing and harassment are insufficient. WMF is working on the harassment issue, both in SuSa and in Community Tech, and that work may have some spillover benefits into the work that attempts to address COI editing. I am wondering if you would agree with my previous comments to the effect that WMF should also take a more active role in pursuing paid editors, and enforcing financial penalties against them as a deterrent against engaging in activity that violates the TOS and sucks up countless hours of high-skill volunteer time in investigations and remediation.
Thanks,
Pine
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 11:45 AM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
The Arbitration Committee has just published a response to this statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard# Response_to_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
As I mentioned in my email earlier this month, we've put together a
longer
statement regarding paid editing and how we see the balance of the communities' role and the role that WMF legal can play in these cases. We tried to address the concerns that people have raised to us, and explain when it's helpful to contact us to assist on a case. Of note, it does explain what actions we can take even in cases that don't involve the WMF trademarks.
You can find it here: Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_
Foundation_statement_on_paid_editing_and_outing>
Best, Jacob --
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please
see
our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
ArbCom-l mailing list ArbCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/arbcom-l
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Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid editing based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to act on them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to legal risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki around six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On 27/01/17 16:59, GorillaWarfare wrote:
Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid editing based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to act on them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to legal risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki around six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare) _______________________________________________
Are these examples of "paid to edit"?
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/create-a-wikipedia-page/31502
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/create-a-classy-wikipedia-page/332166
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/write-and-edit-wikipedia-page/322274
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/write-create-a-wikipedia-page/335913
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/wikipedia-page-writing-service-create-...
Gordo
Following up, this is the conversation I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment/Archive_11
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:59 AM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid editing based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to act on them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to legal risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki around six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
Thanks, Molly. I encouraged people interested in understanding the different views on the topic as it relates to Wikipedia English (and perhaps other wikis) to read this discussion.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Co-founder Kentucky Wikimedians, Co-founder WikiWomen User Group, Co-founder WikiConference North America Board member of Wiki Project Med Foundation, Member of Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:11 PM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Following up, this is the conversation I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment/Archive_11
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:59 AM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid editing based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to act
on
them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to legal risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki
around
six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
If one submits material regarding undisclosed paid editing to arbcom and there is no reply, it is fairly obvious that few cases would continue to be submitted. Expecially when arbcom makes it clear they have no desire to do this follow up.
J
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Molly. I encouraged people interested in understanding the different views on the topic as it relates to Wikipedia English (and perhaps other wikis) to read this discussion.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Co-founder Kentucky Wikimedians, Co-founder WikiWomen User Group, Co-founder WikiConference North America Board member of Wiki Project Med Foundation, Member of Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:11 PM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Following up, this is the conversation I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment/Archive_11
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:59 AM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid
editing
based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to
act
on
them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to legal risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki
around
six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Thanks for the link, GorillaWarfare.
I've heard comments similar to James' from others, indicating that people have lost faith that Arbcom will investigate and take action based on evidence of COI editing submitted in private to Arbcom. If, as you say, Arbcom finds that investigating these reports requires a ton of work and that investigations are prone to error, then it seems to me that we should be looking at addressing this problem in new ways, such as my proposal that WMF become much more active in enforcing the TOS in these kinds of situations and in deterring this kind of misconduct.
Pine
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:26 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
If one submits material regarding undisclosed paid editing to arbcom and there is no reply, it is fairly obvious that few cases would continue to be submitted. Expecially when arbcom makes it clear they have no desire to do this follow up.
J
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks, Molly. I encouraged people interested in understanding the different views on the topic as it relates to Wikipedia English (and perhaps other wikis) to read this discussion.
Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Co-founder Kentucky Wikimedians, Co-founder WikiWomen User Group, Co-founder WikiConference North America Board member of Wiki Project Med Foundation, Member of Simple Annual Plan Grant Committee
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:11 PM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Following up, this is the conversation I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Harassment/Archive_11
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:59 AM, GorillaWarfare < gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
Pine,
We quite rarely receive requests to look into suspicions of paid
editing
based on private information. We have historically been reluctant to
act
on
them for a number of reasons: it's very prone to error, it's often an incredible amount of work, and we open ourselves up personally to
legal
risk by doing so. I believe there was some discussion on this onwiki
around
six months ago, I will try to dig up a link.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I'm bumping this thread because there has been a somewhat high-profile incident of misuse of Wikipedia by a corporate entity.
This is not entirely the same as undisclosed paid editing, but it was certainly a misuse of Wikipedia.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king-google-home-ad-wikip...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&ol...
It seems to me that this kind of behavior, and accompanying waste of Wikimedia volunteers' time, is likely to continue until WMF Legal cracks down and starts making it financially painful for organizations to misuse Wikipedia in all their various creative and inappropriate ways.
A quote from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clever-burger-king-ad-attempts-to-hijack-go...: “Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” a Burger King spokesperson said. I would like for WMF to make Burger King feel that their misuse of WIkipedia was inappropriate and for WMF to hit them where it counts -- in their checkbook -- and with enough force that corporations will decide that messing with Wikipedia is both ethically wrong and financially not worth the risk. WMF needs to change marketers' thinking from the idea that messing with Wikipedia is "an opportunity" to "a big risk." I would like to see WMF Legal get energized about cracking down on these kinds of situations, and I'd be happy to have WMF make an expensive example of Burger King to deter misconduct by others.
Pine
Without getting into the details of the situation, Pine, I'll simply point out that the budget for the legal team of an international corporation like Burger King is going to be significantly larger than the entire budget of the Wikimedia Foundation, and punishing organizations that have figured out a way to trigger a voice-activated software program to obtain information that is likely to come from Wikipedia articles doesn't really seem to be within scope. I do not see why you would advocate spending the WMF's tiny Legal Department budget like this, instead of on copyright reform, or assisting in prosecuting those harassing members of our community, or preventing others from claiming they are directly related to the Wikimedia Foundation or its projects; all of these are entirely on-mission.
There's nothing there to sue them for, anyway - it's open-licensed content that anyone can use in any way they see fit, including for commercial purposes. Indeed, that's exactly what Google does on its own search results, every day, all day - and it's exactly why the Burger King "trick" works, too. They're taking advantage of the Google interface, knowing that it is most likely to search Wikipedia for the information requested. But there's not as much vitriol directed at Google, because after all it was Google bumping Wikipedia up in its search result algorithms that has (in large part) driven the popularity of the Wikipedia projects. There's not even a genuine attribution issue; as I recall, Alexa says "From Wikipedia" at either the beginning or the end of its report.
In other words, I'm hard-pressed to see why you would want the WMF to take legal action against a company that is using Wikipedia as intended. Okay, it's not my favourite way of using it....but this is exactly how it's intended to be used. I regularly see links to Wikipedia articles in mainstream media, not to mention twitter and facebook news reports. Just think if someone says "OK Google, what is Neurocysticercosis?" or "OK Google, who's Charlie Murphy?" to reflect two news stories I learned about today. I got to the Wikipedia articles on both of those subjects by following links in online reports by commercial news outlets.
Risker/Anne
On 13 April 2017 at 00:01, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm bumping this thread because there has been a somewhat high-profile incident of misuse of Wikipedia by a corporate entity.
This is not entirely the same as undisclosed paid editing, but it was certainly a misuse of Wikipedia.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king- google-home-ad-wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff= 773807497&oldid=773585358
It seems to me that this kind of behavior, and accompanying waste of Wikimedia volunteers' time, is likely to continue until WMF Legal cracks down and starts making it financially painful for organizations to misuse Wikipedia in all their various creative and inappropriate ways.
A quote from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clever-burger-king-ad- attempts-to-hijack-google-home-devices-2017-04-12: “Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” a Burger King spokesperson said. I would like for WMF to make Burger King feel that their misuse of WIkipedia was inappropriate and for WMF to hit them where it counts -- in their checkbook -- and with enough force that corporations will decide that messing with Wikipedia is both ethically wrong and financially not worth the risk. WMF needs to change marketers' thinking from the idea that messing with Wikipedia is "an opportunity" to "a big risk." I would like to see WMF Legal get energized about cracking down on these kinds of situations, and I'd be happy to have WMF make an expensive example of Burger King to deter misconduct by others.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Looking at the Burger King case:
I do not have a concern with the ad they created to have Google read the WP article about their product.
My concern is them possibly altering the first sentence of said article. But we now have that under control and it was a fairly innocuous in the grand scheme of undisclosed paid editing.
James
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:46 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Without getting into the details of the situation, Pine, I'll simply point out that the budget for the legal team of an international corporation like Burger King is going to be significantly larger than the entire budget of the Wikimedia Foundation, and punishing organizations that have figured out a way to trigger a voice-activated software program to obtain information that is likely to come from Wikipedia articles doesn't really seem to be within scope. I do not see why you would advocate spending the WMF's tiny Legal Department budget like this, instead of on copyright reform, or assisting in prosecuting those harassing members of our community, or preventing others from claiming they are directly related to the Wikimedia Foundation or its projects; all of these are entirely on-mission.
There's nothing there to sue them for, anyway - it's open-licensed content that anyone can use in any way they see fit, including for commercial purposes. Indeed, that's exactly what Google does on its own search results, every day, all day - and it's exactly why the Burger King "trick" works, too. They're taking advantage of the Google interface, knowing that it is most likely to search Wikipedia for the information requested. But there's not as much vitriol directed at Google, because after all it was Google bumping Wikipedia up in its search result algorithms that has (in large part) driven the popularity of the Wikipedia projects. There's not even a genuine attribution issue; as I recall, Alexa says "From Wikipedia" at either the beginning or the end of its report.
In other words, I'm hard-pressed to see why you would want the WMF to take legal action against a company that is using Wikipedia as intended. Okay, it's not my favourite way of using it....but this is exactly how it's intended to be used. I regularly see links to Wikipedia articles in mainstream media, not to mention twitter and facebook news reports. Just think if someone says "OK Google, what is Neurocysticercosis?" or "OK Google, who's Charlie Murphy?" to reflect two news stories I learned about today. I got to the Wikipedia articles on both of those subjects by following links in online reports by commercial news outlets.
Risker/Anne
On 13 April 2017 at 00:01, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm bumping this thread because there has been a somewhat high-profile incident of misuse of Wikipedia by a corporate entity.
This is not entirely the same as undisclosed paid editing, but it was certainly a misuse of Wikipedia.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king- google-home-ad-wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff= 773807497&oldid=773585358
It seems to me that this kind of behavior, and accompanying waste of Wikimedia volunteers' time, is likely to continue until WMF Legal cracks down and starts making it financially painful for organizations to misuse Wikipedia in all their various creative and inappropriate ways.
A quote from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clever-burger-king-ad- attempts-to-hijack-google-home-devices-2017-04-12: “Burger King saw an opportunity to do something exciting with the
emerging
technology of intelligent personal assistant devices,” a Burger King spokesperson said. I would like for WMF to make Burger King feel that
their
misuse of WIkipedia was inappropriate and for WMF to hit them where it counts -- in their checkbook -- and with enough force that corporations will decide that messing with Wikipedia is both ethically wrong and financially not worth the risk. WMF needs to change marketers' thinking from the idea that messing with Wikipedia is "an opportunity" to "a big risk." I would like to see WMF Legal get energized about cracking down on these kinds of situations, and I'd be happy to have WMF make an expensive example of Burger King to deter misconduct by others.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I tend to think along James' lines more than Risker's.
Responding to Risker:
It seems to me that the key point that you're missing is that Burger King altered Wikipedia content in order to execute this campaign. This wasn't a simple case of an organization reusing existing Wikipedia content; the organization appears to have altered Wikipedia content to suit their purposes regardless of an obvious conflict of interest with Wikipedia's purpose of being an educational resource rather than an advertising platform.
It seems to me that entities of varying sizes -- from a start-up brand that wants to make itself look important by having a Wikipedia article, to large corporations and government officials -- will continue to alter Wikipedia content in ways that are inappropriate and do a disservice to our readers (including advertising, inserting "alternative facts" for medical and political content, and eliminating negative information that certain people and organizations find inconvenient) and cost editors' and administrators' collective time and attention, until there is a financial price that is put on this kind of behavior that is large enough to deter them. I don't see why we should stand idly by as our products' quality and trustworthiness are degraded and our resources are diverted. I'm hoping that WMF's enforcement actions in this domain would more than pay for themselves through financial penalties that WMF extracts from the wrongdoers.
Pine
With respect to Pine's request for more legal support to help deal with undisclosed paid editing issues, to that I strongly agree.
To better address these concerns we need the WMF, communities, and affiliate organizations to collaborate. It is a difficult problem to address.
James
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:09 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I tend to think along James' lines more than Risker's.
Responding to Risker:
It seems to me that the key point that you're missing is that Burger King altered Wikipedia content in order to execute this campaign. This wasn't a simple case of an organization reusing existing Wikipedia content; the organization appears to have altered Wikipedia content to suit their purposes regardless of an obvious conflict of interest with Wikipedia's purpose of being an educational resource rather than an advertising platform.
It seems to me that entities of varying sizes -- from a start-up brand that wants to make itself look important by having a Wikipedia article, to large corporations and government officials -- will continue to alter Wikipedia content in ways that are inappropriate and do a disservice to our readers (including advertising, inserting "alternative facts" for medical and political content, and eliminating negative information that certain people and organizations find inconvenient) and cost editors' and administrators' collective time and attention, until there is a financial price that is put on this kind of behavior that is large enough to deter them. I don't see why we should stand idly by as our products' quality and trustworthiness are degraded and our resources are diverted. I'm hoping that WMF's enforcement actions in this domain would more than pay for themselves through financial penalties that WMF extracts from the wrongdoers.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi there, I agree that we should take action and make it real hard for any corporation financially to achieve this result.
Legal action is one thing, but the first thing to be done is to ensure that all affairs of the type are detected and publicly outed, on the very articles if there is large media coverage. I would be in favor of a banner over the article stating the article has been targeted for promotional purposes by the company.
Maybe we should start a whole independent wikipedia project proposing a « conflict of interest rating » just as wikirating does it for financial markets.
James, I dont believe this can be done at chapter level (at the current state of things) : it must be addressed by the WMF and the communities.
Regards (I’ve just added sourced chunks of the controversies on the French wiki by the way, maybe we could ask the community to do it in every language?)
Nattes à chat
Le 14 avr. 2017 à 07:49, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com a écrit :
With respect to Pine's request for more legal support to help deal with undisclosed paid editing issues, to that I strongly agree.
To better address these concerns we need the WMF, communities, and affiliate organizations to collaborate. It is a difficult problem to address.
James
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:09 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I tend to think along James' lines more than Risker's.
Responding to Risker:
It seems to me that the key point that you're missing is that Burger King altered Wikipedia content in order to execute this campaign. This wasn't a simple case of an organization reusing existing Wikipedia content; the organization appears to have altered Wikipedia content to suit their purposes regardless of an obvious conflict of interest with Wikipedia's purpose of being an educational resource rather than an advertising platform.
It seems to me that entities of varying sizes -- from a start-up brand that wants to make itself look important by having a Wikipedia article, to large corporations and government officials -- will continue to alter Wikipedia content in ways that are inappropriate and do a disservice to our readers (including advertising, inserting "alternative facts" for medical and political content, and eliminating negative information that certain people and organizations find inconvenient) and cost editors' and administrators' collective time and attention, until there is a financial price that is put on this kind of behavior that is large enough to deter them. I don't see why we should stand idly by as our products' quality and trustworthiness are degraded and our resources are diverted. I'm hoping that WMF's enforcement actions in this domain would more than pay for themselves through financial penalties that WMF extracts from the wrongdoers.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I really dont think the Whopper comparison is a good one because the change they made was reasonable and at least more consistent with my understanding of the english language as used here with us having distinct difference between what is a sandwich and what is a burger. The Whopper comment does highlight that the differences in the way in which we all use english is a significant failing of the english wikipedia to address.
We also have many editors who are paid to edit content on wikipedia within their role for a number of organisations not only do we condone it but we actively encourage such editors. I have trouble labelling all corporate editors as dishonest in their work didnt we once assume good faith until we had evidence to the contrary. What makes a glam editor more worthy of that assumption, or any other random editor? Paid editors have the ability to update content regularly and provide additional access to information, images and media that can enhance the encyclopaedic content. I'm sure nobody would complain if a paid editor put the original 1800's recipe for coke or 1980's recipe for new coke on wiki source.
What is being argued against isnt paid editting but rather just the dishonest representation of a subject on wikipedia for a fee by persons who believe they have the skills to avoid detection while manipulating the content. Paid editors who endeavour to act in good faith should be engaged with not beaten about with the same stick we use for dishonest editors who charge a fee. It actually be more effective for WMF to find a way engage a group of trusted, experienced editors to be available to address corporate requests for a fee and take the market away from the dishonest third party brokers of content.
On 14 April 2017 at 15:39, Natacha Rault n.rault@me.com wrote:
Hi there, I agree that we should take action and make it real hard for any corporation financially to achieve this result.
Legal action is one thing, but the first thing to be done is to ensure that all affairs of the type are detected and publicly outed, on the very articles if there is large media coverage. I would be in favor of a banner over the article stating the article has been targeted for promotional purposes by the company.
Maybe we should start a whole independent wikipedia project proposing a « conflict of interest rating » just as wikirating does it for financial markets.
James, I dont believe this can be done at chapter level (at the current state of things) : it must be addressed by the WMF and the communities.
Regards (I’ve just added sourced chunks of the controversies on the French wiki by the way, maybe we could ask the community to do it in every language?)
Nattes à chat
Le 14 avr. 2017 à 07:49, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com a écrit :
With respect to Pine's request for more legal support to help deal with undisclosed paid editing issues, to that I strongly agree.
To better address these concerns we need the WMF, communities, and affiliate organizations to collaborate. It is a difficult problem to address.
James
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:09 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I tend to think along James' lines more than Risker's.
Responding to Risker:
It seems to me that the key point that you're missing is that Burger
King
altered Wikipedia content in order to execute this campaign. This
wasn't a
simple case of an organization reusing existing Wikipedia content; the organization appears to have altered Wikipedia content to suit their purposes regardless of an obvious conflict of interest with Wikipedia's purpose of being an educational resource rather than an advertising platform.
It seems to me that entities of varying sizes -- from a start-up brand
that
wants to make itself look important by having a Wikipedia article, to
large
corporations and government officials -- will continue to alter
Wikipedia
content in ways that are inappropriate and do a disservice to our
readers
(including advertising, inserting "alternative facts" for medical and political content, and eliminating negative information that certain
people
and organizations find inconvenient) and cost editors' and
administrators'
collective time and attention, until there is a financial price that is
put
on this kind of behavior that is large enough to deter them. I don't see why we should stand idly by as our products' quality and trustworthiness are degraded and our resources are diverted. I'm hoping that WMF's enforcement actions in this domain would more than pay for themselves through financial penalties that WMF extracts from the wrongdoers.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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On 13 April 2017 at 05:01, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I would like for WMF to make Burger King feel that their misuse of WIkipedia was inappropriate and for WMF to hit them where it counts -- in their checkbook -- and with enough force that corporations will decide that messing with Wikipedia is both ethically wrong and financially not worth the risk.
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to support our mission, for instance by donating media, or encouraging staff (I'm thinking of these at HQ, rather than low-paid servers) to volunteer their time as editors and photographers.
We could also enlist them to encourage similar-sized corporations to do likewise, and to sign up to ethical editing guidelines.
[CC to Wikimedia Legal legal@wikimedia.org dropped]
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff=773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&oldid=773585358" was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a very flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers", "daily sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we need to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
dj
This advertising campaign is particularly interesting, it appears that this is the first time we can talk about an exploit (as is said in computer security). It has been done once so it can be done again.
What worries me here is that an advertising campaign like this one, mixing TV advertising and content editing on Wikipedia is not a last minute thing, done on the spur of the moment. IMHA, the agency responsible for these ads must have experienced wikipedians working for them. These guys know how the community usually reacts. There is a lot of money involved and they know that they will have to get it right the first time the ads are aired.
This looks like a bait and trick, and we were all fooled by it (by we, I mean the wikipedia community of editors). The bait was the minor grammatical errors in the new introductory sentence. An experienced editor got tricked into correcting these missing spaces and such, and the text itself gets a "stamp of approval", and the edit done by a new account will no longer show up as the last modification done to the article.
These paid edits were made on April 4, the article started to be vandalized one week later, on April 11. But it looks like the campaign did not create the expected buzz because Google reacted quickly (just under 3 hours) and Google Home stopped reading out the Whopper article at the end of the advert.
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test yesterday". We will probably see more of this.
Gabe
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for
the
opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a very flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers", "daily sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we need to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
dj _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 14 April 2017 at 17:39, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test yesterday". We will probably see more of this.
Yes. This is why we need to respond in such a way as to deter companies from trying this ever again.
Cosying up to them is precisely the wrong response.
- d.
Add the information about their behaviour to the article. Just make sure it is accurate, near the top, and gets published somewhere that can be used as a reliable source. Even if this only sticks 50% of the time it is not something they will want to risk. If the foundation is willing to stick their neck out a little they could tag such pages with a notice that they have been found to have been edited in contravention of the terms of use. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 7:31 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
On 14 April 2017 at 17:39, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test yesterday". We will probably see more of this.
Yes. This is why we need to respond in such a way as to deter companies from trying this ever again.
Cosying up to them is precisely the wrong response.
- d.
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I'm just a bit agog at the idea that this article became "advertising" when Burger King made the connection using Google Home. Since its very first edit, it has been an advertisement for this product. It may not have been intended that way, but that is the reality. Now it's almost 4200 words long - probably the longest writing on this single product anywhere outside of the Burger King home offices - and we're pretending that it isn't an ad.
I know it is terribly disillusioning, but an awful lot of our articles are advertisements. There have always been LOTS of paid editors on English Wikipedia. It has never meant that the editor was editing primarily in a promotional manner - in many cases they were facilitating the ability for others to include promotional materials, and I've spotted what in retrospect were obvious paid edits going back to 2001. There are people who I've identified as likely paid editors who were instrumental in our early discussions about notability. There were people who "worked with" external organizations to get access to their commercial repositories of images and information - with huge financial benefits to the owners of those repositories; sometimes this was innocent, with the editors trying to gain access to hard-to-find material, but the end result was the same.
The article is an advertisement. It was one from its first edit (which included product prices) and it is one today. It's good copy, but it's still an ad. I'll guarantee this isn't the first or last time that a paid editor made significant changes to the article. And it's just like thousands and thousands of other articles that turn consumer products into "encyclopedic content". A 300-word discussion of Burger King's most notable product would be appropriate in the main article, or even in a daughter article about Burger King's products. But as it stands, we have literally hundreds of thousands of words about various Burger King products: lists, articles about individual products, summaries, advertising campaigns, etc. These are all advertisements. Don't blame Burger King for leveraging exactly what we're doing ourselves.
Risker/Anne
On 14 April 2017 at 12:39, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
This advertising campaign is particularly interesting, it appears that this is the first time we can talk about an exploit (as is said in computer security). It has been done once so it can be done again.
What worries me here is that an advertising campaign like this one, mixing TV advertising and content editing on Wikipedia is not a last minute thing, done on the spur of the moment. IMHA, the agency responsible for these ads must have experienced wikipedians working for them. These guys know how the community usually reacts. There is a lot of money involved and they know that they will have to get it right the first time the ads are aired.
This looks like a bait and trick, and we were all fooled by it (by we, I mean the wikipedia community of editors). The bait was the minor grammatical errors in the new introductory sentence. An experienced editor got tricked into correcting these missing spaces and such, and the text itself gets a "stamp of approval", and the edit done by a new account will no longer show up as the last modification done to the article.
These paid edits were made on April 4, the article started to be vandalized one week later, on April 11. But it looks like the campaign did not create the expected buzz because Google reacted quickly (just under 3 hours) and Google Home stopped reading out the Whopper article at the end of the advert.
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test yesterday". We will probably see more of this.
Gabe
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or
remove
controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for
the
opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a very flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers",
"daily
sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we
need
to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
dj _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Is it better to think of the problem as paid editing or organized advocacy for persuasion at the expense of accuracy regarding all costs and benefits?
Burger King is a commercial enterprise which makes money by mass production of beef products, which require more water and produce more greenhouse gas per calorie at retail marked-up prices than more frugal and healthy alternatives, but their Wikipedia-focused PR budget is tiny compared to producers of other products which similarly do not have a good cost-benefit ratio in terms of money or productive years of life.
Some of the strongest such abusers of organized advocacy don't spend a lot of money on Wikipedia editors, but they do promote a narrative that anti-science types are suppressing information about them because of Luddite unreasonableness, which causes the many editors who want to defend science and their poorly-perceived conceptions of modernity to come to their defense. But, like Burger King, they often sell products which cost more than their benefits.
Examples beyond beef include: fossil fuels, nuclear power, neonicotinoid pesticides, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Luckily, lab grown beef is likely to soon provide suitable replacements for those who want to eat beef without the environmental, ethical, and some of the health externalities. But will it go the way of the texturized vegetable protein of the 1970s? I recently discussed the solution to the fossil fuels problem on this list. (Sorry I got the name of the King of Saudi Arabia with whom FDR met wrong, but I highly recommend the "history teachers edit" of the BBC "Bitter Lake" documentary on YouTube for those who don't want to watch the whole thing.) Nuclear simply can't compete in the marketplace against renewables. Advocacy organizations are telling the story about the true costs of various pesticides, and those are making their way into MEDRS sources.
But I have no idea if Wikipedia is strong enough to overcome the self-organizing advocacy for greater income inequality, which is a very serious health issue as per unopposed MEDRS sources, but the fake news narrative is being pushed:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/trump-budget-director-wants-hig...
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Centers/LIS/M...
http://talknicer.com/ehip.pdf (full MEDRS-grade, with no substantial opposition in other secondary sources.)
My opinion is that when issues like these impact the Mission, including the extent that we can effectively educate, the Foundation should get involved and do everything they can to set things right. But are these appropriate issues for Legal, or Communications?
Would it help if the Communications team did a blog series on solutions from the last U.S. presidential election prior to 9/11, when Buchanan was Trump's opponent on the far right, taxes were set to be increased on the rich by deficit hawks including Trump, and single payer was Trump's preferred health care plan? Trump has recently signaled a return to his 1999 roots, by demoting Bannon, demanding a superior health care plan instead of backsliding, and
Yes, these are political issues, but they are about issues which directly impact the ability to execute the mission, and are only incidentally about particular candidates. But they are also extremely crucial to restoring our a civil society from the distopia of the use of state power against the rights of individuals, and the abuse of the encyclopedia with organized advocacy for persuasion over accuracy, in persuit of extralegal profits.
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 11:36 AM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just a bit agog at the idea that this article became "advertising" when Burger King made the connection using Google Home. Since its very first edit, it has been an advertisement for this product. It may not have been intended that way, but that is the reality. Now it's almost 4200 words long - probably the longest writing on this single product anywhere outside of the Burger King home offices - and we're pretending that it isn't an ad.
I know it is terribly disillusioning, but an awful lot of our articles are advertisements. There have always been LOTS of paid editors on English Wikipedia. It has never meant that the editor was editing primarily in a promotional manner - in many cases they were facilitating the ability for others to include promotional materials, and I've spotted what in retrospect were obvious paid edits going back to 2001. There are people who I've identified as likely paid editors who were instrumental in our early discussions about notability. There were people who "worked with" external organizations to get access to their commercial repositories of images and information - with huge financial benefits to the owners of those repositories; sometimes this was innocent, with the editors trying to gain access to hard-to-find material, but the end result was the same.
The article is an advertisement. It was one from its first edit (which included product prices) and it is one today. It's good copy, but it's still an ad. I'll guarantee this isn't the first or last time that a paid editor made significant changes to the article. And it's just like thousands and thousands of other articles that turn consumer products into "encyclopedic content". A 300-word discussion of Burger King's most notable product would be appropriate in the main article, or even in a daughter article about Burger King's products. But as it stands, we have literally hundreds of thousands of words about various Burger King products: lists, articles about individual products, summaries, advertising campaigns, etc. These are all advertisements. Don't blame Burger King for leveraging exactly what we're doing ourselves.
Risker/Anne
On 14 April 2017 at 12:39, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
This advertising campaign is particularly interesting, it appears that
this
is the first time we can talk about an exploit (as is said in computer security). It has been done once so it can be done again.
What worries me here is that an advertising campaign like this one,
mixing
TV advertising and content editing on Wikipedia is not a last minute
thing,
done on the spur of the moment. IMHA, the agency responsible for these
ads
must have experienced wikipedians working for them. These guys know how
the
community usually reacts. There is a lot of money involved and they know that they will have to get it right the first time the ads are aired.
This looks like a bait and trick, and we were all fooled by it (by we, I mean the wikipedia community of editors). The bait was the minor grammatical errors in the new introductory sentence. An experienced
editor
got tricked into correcting these missing spaces and such, and the text itself gets a "stamp of approval", and the edit done by a new account
will
no longer show up as the last modification done to the article.
These paid edits were made on April 4, the article started to be
vandalized
one week later, on April 11. But it looks like the campaign did not
create
the expected buzz because Google reacted quickly (just under 3 hours) and Google Home stopped reading out the Whopper article at the end of the advert.
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test
yesterday".
We will probably see more of this.
Gabe
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com
wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or
remove
controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper
for
the
opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a
very
flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers",
"daily
sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we
need
to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
dj _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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P.S. The paragraph ending "instead of backsliding, and" should have been followed by "proposing cuts to the payroll tax."
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 12:54 PM James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Is it better to think of the problem as paid editing or organized advocacy for persuasion at the expense of accuracy regarding all costs and benefits?
Burger King is a commercial enterprise which makes money by mass production of beef products, which require more water and produce more greenhouse gas per calorie at retail marked-up prices than more frugal and healthy alternatives, but their Wikipedia-focused PR budget is tiny compared to producers of other products which similarly do not have a good cost-benefit ratio in terms of money or productive years of life.
Some of the strongest such abusers of organized advocacy don't spend a lot of money on Wikipedia editors, but they do promote a narrative that anti-science types are suppressing information about them because of Luddite unreasonableness, which causes the many editors who want to defend science and their poorly-perceived conceptions of modernity to come to their defense. But, like Burger King, they often sell products which cost more than their benefits.
Examples beyond beef include: fossil fuels, nuclear power, neonicotinoid pesticides, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Luckily, lab grown beef is likely to soon provide suitable replacements for those who want to eat beef without the environmental, ethical, and some of the health externalities. But will it go the way of the texturized vegetable protein of the 1970s? I recently discussed the solution to the fossil fuels problem on this list. (Sorry I got the name of the King of Saudi Arabia with whom FDR met wrong, but I highly recommend the "history teachers edit" of the BBC "Bitter Lake" documentary on YouTube for those who don't want to watch the whole thing.) Nuclear simply can't compete in the marketplace against renewables. Advocacy organizations are telling the story about the true costs of various pesticides, and those are making their way into MEDRS sources.
But I have no idea if Wikipedia is strong enough to overcome the self-organizing advocacy for greater income inequality, which is a very serious health issue as per unopposed MEDRS sources, but the fake news narrative is being pushed:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/trump-budget-director-wants-hig...
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Centers/LIS/M...
http://talknicer.com/ehip.pdf (full MEDRS-grade, with no substantial opposition in other secondary sources.)
My opinion is that when issues like these impact the Mission, including the extent that we can effectively educate, the Foundation should get involved and do everything they can to set things right. But are these appropriate issues for Legal, or Communications?
Would it help if the Communications team did a blog series on solutions from the last U.S. presidential election prior to 9/11, when Buchanan was Trump's opponent on the far right, taxes were set to be increased on the rich by deficit hawks including Trump, and single payer was Trump's preferred health care plan? Trump has recently signaled a return to his 1999 roots, by demoting Bannon, demanding a superior health care plan instead of backsliding, and
Yes, these are political issues, but they are about issues which directly impact the ability to execute the mission, and are only incidentally about particular candidates. But they are also extremely crucial to restoring our a civil society from the distopia of the use of state power against the rights of individuals, and the abuse of the encyclopedia with organized advocacy for persuasion over accuracy, in persuit of extralegal profits.
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 11:36 AM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just a bit agog at the idea that this article became "advertising" when Burger King made the connection using Google Home. Since its very first edit, it has been an advertisement for this product. It may not have been intended that way, but that is the reality. Now it's almost 4200 words long - probably the longest writing on this single product anywhere outside of the Burger King home offices - and we're pretending that it isn't an ad.
I know it is terribly disillusioning, but an awful lot of our articles are advertisements. There have always been LOTS of paid editors on English Wikipedia. It has never meant that the editor was editing primarily in a promotional manner - in many cases they were facilitating the ability for others to include promotional materials, and I've spotted what in retrospect were obvious paid edits going back to 2001. There are people who I've identified as likely paid editors who were instrumental in our early discussions about notability. There were people who "worked with" external organizations to get access to their commercial repositories of images and information - with huge financial benefits to the owners of those repositories; sometimes this was innocent, with the editors trying to gain access to hard-to-find material, but the end result was the same.
The article is an advertisement. It was one from its first edit (which included product prices) and it is one today. It's good copy, but it's still an ad. I'll guarantee this isn't the first or last time that a paid editor made significant changes to the article. And it's just like thousands and thousands of other articles that turn consumer products into "encyclopedic content". A 300-word discussion of Burger King's most notable product would be appropriate in the main article, or even in a daughter article about Burger King's products. But as it stands, we have literally hundreds of thousands of words about various Burger King products: lists, articles about individual products, summaries, advertising campaigns, etc. These are all advertisements. Don't blame Burger King for leveraging exactly what we're doing ourselves.
Risker/Anne
On 14 April 2017 at 12:39, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
This advertising campaign is particularly interesting, it appears that
this
is the first time we can talk about an exploit (as is said in computer security). It has been done once so it can be done again.
What worries me here is that an advertising campaign like this one,
mixing
TV advertising and content editing on Wikipedia is not a last minute
thing,
done on the spur of the moment. IMHA, the agency responsible for these
ads
must have experienced wikipedians working for them. These guys know how
the
community usually reacts. There is a lot of money involved and they know that they will have to get it right the first time the ads are aired.
This looks like a bait and trick, and we were all fooled by it (by we, I mean the wikipedia community of editors). The bait was the minor grammatical errors in the new introductory sentence. An experienced
editor
got tricked into correcting these missing spaces and such, and the text itself gets a "stamp of approval", and the edit done by a new account
will
no longer show up as the last modification done to the article.
These paid edits were made on April 4, the article started to be
vandalized
one week later, on April 11. But it looks like the campaign did not
create
the expected buzz because Google reacted quickly (just under 3 hours)
and
Google Home stopped reading out the Whopper article at the end of the advert.
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test
yesterday".
We will probably see more of this.
Gabe
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com
wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or
remove
controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper
for
the
opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a
very
flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers",
"daily
sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we
need
to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
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As far as I can see the edits are slightly peacocky, but not much worse than an ordinary fanboy might do on a game or music article. The big issue to me is the undisclosed COI, which is unethical. Proving that the edits were paid for does not seem reasonably practicable unless you start off by assuming guilt. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 6:40 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
This advertising campaign is particularly interesting, it appears that this is the first time we can talk about an exploit (as is said in computer security). It has been done once so it can be done again.
What worries me here is that an advertising campaign like this one, mixing TV advertising and content editing on Wikipedia is not a last minute thing, done on the spur of the moment. IMHA, the agency responsible for these ads must have experienced wikipedians working for them. These guys know how the community usually reacts. There is a lot of money involved and they know that they will have to get it right the first time the ads are aired.
This looks like a bait and trick, and we were all fooled by it (by we, I mean the wikipedia community of editors). The bait was the minor grammatical errors in the new introductory sentence. An experienced editor got tricked into correcting these missing spaces and such, and the text itself gets a "stamp of approval", and the edit done by a new account will no longer show up as the last modification done to the article.
These paid edits were made on April 4, the article started to be vandalized one week later, on April 11. But it looks like the campaign did not create the expected buzz because Google reacted quickly (just under 3 hours) and Google Home stopped reading out the Whopper article at the end of the advert.
The damage has been done. Theverge.com claims to have done such a modification on Wikipedia, to quote them "as did we, in a test yesterday". We will probably see more of this.
Gabe
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for
the
opening sentence.
I agree with James on this one. They "described" their product in a very flattering way, unnecessarily introducing marketing jargon ("known as America's favorite", "00% beef with no preservatives", "no fillers", "daily sliced" etc.). It is spam and in the future, near rather than far, we need to start seriously thinking how we can combat such content attacks/hijacking. There are some similarities to our work with anti-harassment, but I hope we'll be able to develop a more dedicated approach to this problem, that the Burger King manifestation is only a single example of.
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James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff=773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&oldid=773585358" was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American public. Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the products of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff=773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&oldid=773585358" was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors-for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American public. Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the products of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&oldid=773585358" was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors -for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogu s-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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Paid editors have been adding content to Wikipedia for a long time. Some of them might even be doing so in accordance with the rules and guidelines, but that is not what makes this case stand out. The PR agency did a total of three edits, and the third one managed to pass under the radar. They deliberately inserted text with minor grammatical errors to bait an editor into fixing it up while at the same time leaving it as an introductory sentence. The TV ad came out one week later. What disturbs me is that Wikipedia is being instrumentalized by these big corporations, and we do not need to debate whether the text is factually exact, if it is sourced, or if it is too peacocky. Most of us are volunteer editors, and we must make sure that we do not have to waste our time rooting out these malicious edits. The PR company wrote the text to make it look like it was put there by some ordinary "grammatically challenged" fanboy. A contributor reverts the edit the first time around, saying rightly that it was too promotional, then fixes up the grammatical errors the second time around. Other contributors would no longer touch the article seeing that a community member is already watching over it. We will have the check out the introductory sentences in hundreds of articles. When somebody asks Google Home "what is xyz..." in their own voice, Google will very obligingly spew out the Wikipedia article. IMHA, that is the real issue here. These paid editors are quite willing to turn Wikipedia into the worlds biggest high-tech distributor of junk mail.
Gabe
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American public. Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the products of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=
773807497&oldid=773585358>"
was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors -for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogu s-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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Gabe highlights the issue
- its not easy to identify a paid editor with one or two edits only - Google home is the service creating the issue - this issue is just that first sentence.
flagged revisions would work here to stop the immediacy but would never guarantee that a good faith tidy up by an editor reviewing and edit would actually identify the problem. Ok a flagged revision bot could do a cursory check and pass all non lead paragraph edits to reduce the backlogs but it still needs a human and one thats skilled to identify paid editors.
To solve the issue maybe we need google to be looking at a cache of an article not the current version, that both works for us in managing this issue and for google in preventing its service being ambushed... We'd have to create a way to for humans to review leads less than x weeks old.
This ambush editing isnt the same as paid editing where all article content is susceptible and should be treated differently, now one has succeeded we can assume others will also try then without even warming up the beans we can be assured that someone will play the negative side of the game as well. ie "Whopper is not as popular as the big mac made fresh on demand at mcdonalds"
On 15 April 2017 at 18:58, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
Paid editors have been adding content to Wikipedia for a long time. Some of them might even be doing so in accordance with the rules and guidelines, but that is not what makes this case stand out. The PR agency did a total of three edits, and the third one managed to pass under the radar. They deliberately inserted text with minor grammatical errors to bait an editor into fixing it up while at the same time leaving it as an introductory sentence. The TV ad came out one week later. What disturbs me is that Wikipedia is being instrumentalized by these big corporations, and we do not need to debate whether the text is factually exact, if it is sourced, or if it is too peacocky. Most of us are volunteer editors, and we must make sure that we do not have to waste our time rooting out these malicious edits. The PR company wrote the text to make it look like it was put there by some ordinary "grammatically challenged" fanboy. A contributor reverts the edit the first time around, saying rightly that it was too promotional, then fixes up the grammatical errors the second time around. Other contributors would no longer touch the article seeing that a community member is already watching over it. We will have the check out the introductory sentences in hundreds of articles. When somebody asks Google Home "what is xyz..." in their own voice, Google will very obligingly spew out the Wikipedia article. IMHA, that is the real issue here. These paid editors are quite willing to turn Wikipedia into the worlds biggest high-tech distributor of junk mail.
Gabe
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American
public.
Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the
products
of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=
773807497&oldid=773585358>"
was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors -for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogu s-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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I take it that the issue here is that a COI editor changed the opening paragraph to be more complimentary of the product, rather than that someone reused content for commercial purposes. To me it is irrelevant whether they were paid or not, it is the quality of the editing that matters, and particularly that they contravened the terms of use by failing to declare COI. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gnangarra Sent: Saturday, 15 April 2017 1:35 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Gabe highlights the issue
- its not easy to identify a paid editor with one or two edits only - Google home is the service creating the issue - this issue is just that first sentence.
flagged revisions would work here to stop the immediacy but would never guarantee that a good faith tidy up by an editor reviewing and edit would actually identify the problem. Ok a flagged revision bot could do a cursory check and pass all non lead paragraph edits to reduce the backlogs but it still needs a human and one thats skilled to identify paid editors.
To solve the issue maybe we need google to be looking at a cache of an article not the current version, that both works for us in managing this issue and for google in preventing its service being ambushed... We'd have to create a way to for humans to review leads less than x weeks old.
This ambush editing isnt the same as paid editing where all article content is susceptible and should be treated differently, now one has succeeded we can assume others will also try then without even warming up the beans we can be assured that someone will play the negative side of the game as well. ie "Whopper is not as popular as the big mac made fresh on demand at mcdonalds"
On 15 April 2017 at 18:58, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
Paid editors have been adding content to Wikipedia for a long time. Some of them might even be doing so in accordance with the rules and guidelines, but that is not what makes this case stand out. The PR agency did a total of three edits, and the third one managed to pass under the radar. They deliberately inserted text with minor grammatical errors to bait an editor into fixing it up while at the same time leaving it as an introductory sentence. The TV ad came out one week later. What disturbs me is that Wikipedia is being instrumentalized by these big corporations, and we do not need to debate whether the text is factually exact, if it is sourced, or if it is too peacocky. Most of us are volunteer editors, and we must make sure that we do not have to waste our time rooting out these malicious edits. The PR company wrote the text to make it look like it was put there by some ordinary "grammatically challenged" fanboy. A contributor reverts the edit the first time around, saying rightly that it was too promotional, then fixes up the grammatical errors the second time around. Other contributors would no longer touch the article seeing that a community member is already watching over it. We will have the check out the introductory sentences in hundreds of articles. When somebody asks Google Home "what is xyz..." in their own voice, Google will very obligingly spew out the Wikipedia article. IMHA, that is the real issue here. These paid editors are quite willing to turn Wikipedia into the worlds biggest high-tech distributor of junk mail.
Gabe
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American
public.
Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the
products
of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&d iff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=
773807497&oldid=773585358>"
was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_w atch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic <https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-edi tors -for-pay/393926/>, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case <http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote- bogu s-business-school-316133.html> were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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Hoi, The more we change our practice in order to be restrictve, the more we focus on corner cases like this one, the more we lose sight on what we aim to achieve.
Our aim is to share in the sum of all knowledge. Giving a burger company or anyone a black eye by negative attention is fine. Getting lawyers involved, great. Changing what we do introduces its own negative consequences. Please do not go there! Thanks, GerardM
Op za 15 apr. 2017 om 15:21 schreef Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net>
I take it that the issue here is that a COI editor changed the opening paragraph to be more complimentary of the product, rather than that someone reused content for commercial purposes. To me it is irrelevant whether they were paid or not, it is the quality of the editing that matters, and particularly that they contravened the terms of use by failing to declare COI. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gnangarra Sent: Saturday, 15 April 2017 1:35 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Gabe highlights the issue
- its not easy to identify a paid editor with one or two edits only
- Google home is the service creating the issue
- this issue is just that first sentence.
flagged revisions would work here to stop the immediacy but would never guarantee that a good faith tidy up by an editor reviewing and edit would actually identify the problem. Ok a flagged revision bot could do a cursory check and pass all non lead paragraph edits to reduce the backlogs but it still needs a human and one thats skilled to identify paid editors.
To solve the issue maybe we need google to be looking at a cache of an article not the current version, that both works for us in managing this issue and for google in preventing its service being ambushed... We'd have to create a way to for humans to review leads less than x weeks old.
This ambush editing isnt the same as paid editing where all article content is susceptible and should be treated differently, now one has succeeded we can assume others will also try then without even warming up the beans we can be assured that someone will play the negative side of the game as well. ie "Whopper is not as popular as the big mac made fresh on demand at mcdonalds"
On 15 April 2017 at 18:58, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
Paid editors have been adding content to Wikipedia for a long time. Some of them might even be doing so in accordance with the rules and guidelines, but that is not what makes this case stand out. The PR agency did a total of three edits, and the third one managed to pass under the radar. They deliberately inserted text with minor grammatical errors to bait an editor into fixing it up while at the same time leaving it as an introductory sentence. The TV ad came out one
week later.
What disturbs me is that Wikipedia is being instrumentalized by these big corporations, and we do not need to debate whether the text is factually exact, if it is sourced, or if it is too peacocky. Most of us are volunteer editors, and we must make sure that we do not have to waste our time rooting out these malicious edits. The PR company wrote the text to make it look like it was put there by some ordinary "grammatically challenged" fanboy. A contributor reverts the edit the first time around, saying rightly that it was too promotional, then fixes up the grammatical errors the second time around. Other contributors would no longer touch the article seeing that a community member is already watching over it. We will have the check out the introductory sentences in hundreds of articles. When somebody asks Google Home "what is xyz..." in their own voice, Google will very obligingly spew out the Wikipedia article. IMHA, that is the real issue here. These paid editors are quite willing to turn Wikipedia into the worlds biggest high-tech distributor
of junk mail.
Gabe
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American
public.
Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the
products
of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other
way?
Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&d iff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=
773807497&oldid=773585358>"
was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_w atch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic <https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-edi tors -for-pay/393926/>, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case <http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote- bogu s-business-school-316133.html> were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a
positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
> A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then > to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2016.0.8012 / Virus Database: 4769/14320 - Release Date: 04/15/17
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Should the Communications team hold a contest asking wikipedians to propose new trademarks for Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods?
Ref.: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/64yf80/labgrown_meat_is_about_t...
On a more serious note, why don't we quantify and balance systemic bias in favor of far more pernicious threats?
I.e., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economics#Tax_cut_claim_in_Fiscal_policy_...
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 12:36 AM Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
So the Americas favorite burger should have been "America's Favorite Burger(tm)". Agreed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of FRED BAUDER Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2017 8:21 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
"The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, " is a problem as it implies that the Whopper is the favorite burger of the American public. Perhaps it is, but that is a trademark, not the result of a survey. The other stuff, "a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun." happens to be factually true and cannot be said of the products of, say, McDonalds where the "fixings" arrive in delivery trucks.
Fred Bauder
On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 08:06:50 +0200 "Peter Southwood" peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
James, Which parts of those statements to you consider factually inaccurate, and which parts do you consider misleading in some other way? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Heilman Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 5:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
Wikipedia is not for sale. We are not simply another advertising venue available to the corporations of the world. We have mechanisms for corporations to suggest changes to our content and it is called the talk page.
Lets look at the changes likely made by Burger King staff in more detail:
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&type=revision&diff= 773836335&oldid=773833110 was added not once but twice. And than was added again following its first removal.
In this edit this sentence "The Whopper, also known as America’s favorite burger, has a flame-[[grilling|grilled]] patty made with 100% beef with no preservatives, no fillers and is topped with daily sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh lettuce, pickles, ketchup and mayo, served on a soft sesame seed bun. Whopper and America’s Favorite Burger are trademarks of Burger King Corporation. <
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whopper&diff=773807497&ol...
" was added.
One of the accounts did not disclosed their relationship to the company in question. And yes this is spam, so they did spam Wikipedia. See [[WP:PEACOCK]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch #Puffery and [[WP:NPOV]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars, the latter of which is pillar number 2.
This is not the first time the marketing department at a multi billion dollar company has tried to adjust our content for the company's / shareholder's gains. A few years back a couple of the heads of marketing at Medtronic https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/wikipedia-editors -for-pay/393926/, along with a number of physicians one of whom they had paid more than a quarter of a million dollars, tried to remove the best available evidence regarding vertebroplasty, a procedure which medicare spent at the time more than a billion dollars a year on. Half a dozen paid editors working together can easily get a majority in many of our decision making processes.
Our readers deserve a Wikipedia which is written independently of the subject mater in question. Our readers have been harmed by undisclosed paid editing in the past. These are individuals typically less savvy and less wealthy than the executives at a large corporation. I am sorry but our readers are the ones that deserve our attention and our protection. We already have the Wifione case http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogu s-business-school-316133.html were Wikipedia was used to promote an unethical Indian university and therefore we played a role in misleading the students who applied. We must do better.
James
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:23 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
but they didnt spam, nor did they introduce any false hoods, or remove controversial content, they just put a description of the Whopper for the opening sentence. As Andy said rather than biting and creating arguments amongst ourselves would it not be better to have used the opportunity to benefit the community in a positive way.
On 14 April 2017 at 18:44, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 April 2017 at 11:38, Andy Mabbett
andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
A far better (and less WP:BITEy) outcome would be to get then to
Pretty sure WP:BITE doesn't apply in the case of deliberate abuse for clear purposes of spamming.
- d.
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-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
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I'm bumping this thread in the hope that there will be official comments from WMF regarding their willingness to take a more assertive legal approach to addressing and deterring promotionalism and other inappropriate changes to Wikipedia content by people and organizations who have conflicts of interest, whether or not those conflicts are disclosed.
Pine
Pine,
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community surrounding promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by the WMF?
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an official response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation unilaterally made decisions in this area. But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion. The views expressed here are valid but the right thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a proper community conversation. We have mechanisms exactly for this kind of thing. Lets actually use them.
Seddon
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 8:29 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I'm bumping this thread in the hope that there will be official comments from WMF regarding their willingness to take a more assertive legal approach to addressing and deterring promotionalism and other inappropriate changes to Wikipedia content by people and organizations who have conflicts of interest, whether or not those conflicts are disclosed.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community surrounding promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by the WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the position that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion, I imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an official response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with only a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate for which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be trivialized.
Pine
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the last quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman#Periodic_survey_prot...
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by the WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the position that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion, I imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an official response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with only a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate for which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid editing is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our community is another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key positions within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the last quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by
the
WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an
official
response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple
venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a
proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I would think this is up to the chapter/affilate organisation, but no harm in getting a more universal collection of opinions. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Sunday, 23 April 2017 10:50 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid editing is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our community is another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key positions within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the last quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by
the
WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an
official
response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple
venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a
proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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We currently have some mean to fight paid editing, terms of services are "easy to violate" thus giving us a straightforward way to take action. But too often I see something like: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16826370 obvious paid editors left totally free to do their job without even attracting some attention on them.
Vito
2017-04-23 13:58 GMT+02:00 Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net:
I would think this is up to the chapter/affilate organisation, but no harm in getting a more universal collection of opinions. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Sunday, 23 April 2017 10:50 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing companies that offer paid editing services
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid editing is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our community is another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key positions within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the last quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by
the
WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an
official
response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple
venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a
proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be
trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I agree wholeheartedly with Vito. Thank you for bringing up this issue. Wikidata is part of the umbrella group of Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia has strict rules governing paid editing (at least in EN), and these rules are not even the same across different language editions. Most of the other projects do not have such rules. Wikimedia Commons, for example. Most of us know what product placement is. Do certain contributors earn their living from it? Why don't these "sister" projects have similar restrictions on paid contributions?
Gabe
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 11:35 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
We currently have some mean to fight paid editing, terms of services are "easy to violate" thus giving us a straightforward way to take action. But too often I see something like: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16826370 obvious paid editors left totally free to do their job without even attracting some attention on them.
Vito
2017-04-23 13:58 GMT+02:00 Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net:
I would think this is up to the chapter/affilate organisation, but no
harm
in getting a more universal collection of opinions. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Sunday, 23 April 2017 10:50 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid editing is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our community is another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key positions within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the last quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by
the
WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board wants to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an
official
response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made. I already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds of participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple
venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a
proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be
trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2016.0.8013 / Virus Database: 4769/14365 - Release Date:
04/23/17
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The terms of use as explained on meta apply to all projects unless an alternative is in place. So sister projects do have similar restrictions on undisclosed paid editing.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use#4._Refraining_from_Certain_Acti...
Different projects of course have varied degrees of enforcement of the TOU. Italian WP did delete the article in question a couple of times https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/AvaTrade
James
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 5:47 AM, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with Vito. Thank you for bringing up this issue. Wikidata is part of the umbrella group of Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia has strict rules governing paid editing (at least in EN), and these rules are not even the same across different language editions. Most of the other projects do not have such rules. Wikimedia Commons, for example. Most of us know what product placement is. Do certain contributors earn their living from it? Why don't these "sister" projects have similar restrictions on paid contributions?
Gabe
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 11:35 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
We currently have some mean to fight paid editing, terms of services are "easy to violate" thus giving us a straightforward way to take action.
But
too often I see something like: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16826370 obvious paid editors left totally free to do their job without even attracting some attention on them.
Vito
2017-04-23 13:58 GMT+02:00 Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.net :
I would think this is up to the chapter/affilate organisation, but no
harm
in getting a more universal collection of opinions. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Sunday, 23 April 2017 10:50 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid
editing
is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our community
is
another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key positions within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the
last
quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community
surrounding
promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or increased action by
the
WMF?
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board
wants
to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might be beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting an
official
response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the most part consisted of about 6 people?
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they can initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be made.
I
already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't dig the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation
unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel, so your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a conversation before actually initiating novel actions.
But please be realistic, this is a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds
of
participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on which tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in multiple
venues.
The views expressed here are valid but the right
thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and have a
proper
community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed guidance that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be
trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=
unsubscribe>
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Considering the purpose of wikidata, it might make sense for it to have somewhat different rules also. Unlike Wikipedia, it is a directory
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 12:56 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
The terms of use as explained on meta apply to all projects unless an alternative is in place. So sister projects do have similar restrictions on undisclosed paid editing.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use#4._Refraining_from_Certain_ Activities
Different projects of course have varied degrees of enforcement of the TOU. Italian WP did delete the article in question a couple of times https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/AvaTrade
James
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 5:47 AM, Gabriel Thullen gabriel@thullen.com wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with Vito. Thank you for bringing up this issue. Wikidata is part of the umbrella group of Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia
has
strict rules governing paid editing (at least in EN), and these rules are not even the same across different language editions. Most of the other projects do not have such rules. Wikimedia Commons, for example. Most of us know what product placement is. Do certain
contributors
earn their living from it? Why don't these "sister" projects have similar restrictions on paid contributions?
Gabe
On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 11:35 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
We currently have some mean to fight paid editing, terms of services
are
"easy to violate" thus giving us a straightforward way to take action.
But
too often I see something like: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/
Q16826370
obvious paid editors left totally free to do their job without even attracting some attention on them.
Vito
2017-04-23 13:58 GMT+02:00 Peter Southwood <
peter.southwood@telkomsa.net
:
I would think this is up to the chapter/affilate organisation, but no
harm
in getting a more universal collection of opinions. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On
Behalf Of Gabriel Thullen Sent: Sunday, 23 April 2017 10:50 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [arbcom-l] Where is WMF with pursuing
companies
that offer paid editing services
I suggest another question, right after your #5. Undisclosed paid
editing
is one thing, dealing with disclosed paid editors within our
community
is
another. You could add the following question: "Asking if we agree to let disclosed paid editors occupy key
positions
within the Wikimedia movement such as chapter board, official chapter spokesperson, affiliate organization board, etc."
On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 6:16 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
I've proposed asking wikimedians at large what they think should be done about paid advocacy editing, as item number 5 on my periodic survey proposal composed of all the unresolved questions over the
last
quarter on this list at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:James_Salsman# Periodic_survey_prototype
On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 2:50 PM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com
wrote:
> > Has there been a recent substantial discussion by the community surrounding > promotional/biased editting paid or otherwise, which had an > outcome resulting in a specific request for assistance or > increased action by
the
> WMF? >
Aside from the conversation on this list, I'm aware of the discussion on Jimbo's talk page. If WMF Legal or the WMF Board
wants
to take the
position
that it would like to see a community RfC or some other such discussion,
I
imagine that such can be arranged, and I can see how that might
be
beneficial. Of course, anyone is free to initiate such an on-wiki discussion.
> > If there hasn't, I do not see grounds for you to be expecting
an
official
> response from Legal to a list whose conversation has for the
most
> part consisted of about 6 people? >
I'm not sure why you would be telling other people to whom they
can
initiate requests and the conditions under which they can be
made.
I
already have a dim view of WMF's customer service; please don't
dig
the hole any deeper.
Many others, I am sure, would rightly complain if the Foundation > unilaterally made decisions in this area.
That is possible if WMF were to do something particularly novel,
so
your sense of caution here is well taken. I would hope that WMF would discuss its plans with the community and have a
conversation
before actually initiating novel actions.
> But please be realistic, this is > a coffee table discussion.
I have mixed views on this. Wikimedia-l is not a quiet back room with
only
a few people around, but it's true that a consensus here among a small number of people who speak up in a particular discussion demonstrates a lower level of consensus than an RfC with hundreds
of
participants. It's not clear to me that there is consensus on
which
tools are appropriate
for
which exact circumstances, and some discussions happen in
multiple
venues.
> The views expressed here are valid but the right > thing to do would be to further the conversation on wiki and
have a
proper
> community conversation.
I don't think that there is a single definition of a "proper" community conversation.
I have no objection to having an on-wiki RfC (and I can see how a sophisticated and well-attended one might produce detailed
guidance
that would be helpful), but neither do I want this thread to be
trivialized.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=
unsubscribe>
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<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=
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mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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