---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com Date: Mar 7, 2007 3:22 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic conflict... To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com Date: Mar 5, 2007 10:44 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic conflict of interest? To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
There are various techniques in the Internal Revenue Manual that could be employed; for example, reviewing the edit contributions of an employee of a non-profit organization, a reasonable estimate of manhours allocated by that non-profit organization over a given period of time would meet standards of proof to establish income from paid editing, as well as the activities of the employer, not to mention possible conflicts of interest, or violations of Wikipedia's internal policies.
On 3/7/07, Mercenary Wikipedian mercenarywikipedian@hotmail.com wrote:
What does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? There are already policies in place regarding NPOV and NPA, and there are multiple dispute resolution
processes in place to handle serial/chronic non-compliance. What protections does _anyone_ have against defamation on Wikipedia? Well, if they are the subject of an article there is WP:BLP. If they are just an editor and not the subject of the article there is the policy mandating No Personal Attacks. What makes you think these won't work if people are getting paid? Is this an issue of scalability? If so, it seems a little late to be worried about whether or not the idea of Wikipedia is scalable.
MW
The point here is paid employees of a non-profit entity with an agenda evidenced by initiating internal processes of dispute resolution. This is
something not addressed in any policies anywhere. ( 1 ) They are agents of a non-profit entity; ( 2 ) volunteers in dispute have no disclosure as to
whom* they are in dispute with; ( 3 ) the dispute may not be initiated for
the purposes of improving articles or writing an encyclopedia; ( 4 ) what protections do volunteer editors, acting in good faith, have against being targeted and publicly defamed by a non-profit entity with a political agenda?
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None is addressed in current policies. And there is evidence Wikipedia is being used for purposes *other than* writing an encyclopedia, i.e. to target certain individuals and smear their character. The Daniel Brandt episode is one such case. Stephen Kinsella and the Ludwig von Mises Institute is another. The Free Congress Foundation and Paul Weyrich is a target for much questionable content being added, as well as an anonymous editor who identified himself as a professional journalist and friend of Weyrich received a community ban for efforts to instill NPOV & fairness in those two articles.
By contrast, User:Katefan0, aka Kathryn Wolfe of *Scripps Howard* did precisely the samething as Weyrich's friend, admitted a conflict of interest prior to initiating official Wikipedia Dispute Resolution Policy, was promoted to Admin, presented evidence before Arbitrators admitting her conflict of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rangerdude/E...
yet the Arbs used her evidence against an aggrieved party. There are numerous other instances to be cited where a pattern is established that the intent of some parties, acting as agents of others, are using Wikipedia to pursue their own aims and not constructively contribute to the encyclopedia.
On 07/03/07, Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com wrote:
For those wondering, Rob has been banned from English Wikipedia for a long time, and has finally been placed on moderation on wikien-l just a short time ago.
- d.
Hoi, The post by Rob Smith is a rambling affair. It is not clear at all what his argument is. The fact that he has been banned from the English Wikipedia and is currently on moderation on the wikien-l does not help understanding either. It does not help his case to come here in this way.
When I go to the archive, I understand that there is an issue with content for payment where there is a direct relation between the subject of the content and the organisation paying the money, they are the same. This seems to me only slightly less problematic from a situation where someone writes about himself or his organisation.
I do not have a problem with people being paid to write content for our projects; the quality of a paid for article will be quite different from what an average vandal produces, as such it is a relief :). Certainly when it is known what is done by whom and why, there needs not be a problem. Remember, a Wikipedia article is to be encyclopaedic, it is to by NPOV and it is not to be original science. When the work is done for Wikibooks or Wikiversity it can be a teacher working on material that is to be used in class. There are many motivations for paying for content, making it a fundamental problem is imho truly fundamentally flawed.
When paid for content is created, it is best to be open about it as the worst thing that can happen is that good content is binned because of some mob justice. There is also a lot of precedent for publicly known paid for content. In all the instances I know of it was known in advance that this was going to happen
Thanks, GerardM
On 3/8/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/03/07, Rob Smith nobs03@gmail.com wrote:
For those wondering, Rob has been banned from English Wikipedia for a long time, and has finally been placed on moderation on wikien-l just a short time ago.
- d.
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On 3/7/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The post by Rob Smith is a rambling affair. It is not clear at all what his argument is. The fact that he has been banned from the English Wikipedia and is currently on moderation on the wikien-l does not help understanding either. It does not help his case to come here in this way.
I beg to differ with this; the issues are stated clearly in the first posting to this list. There is ample evidence to support what I've stated. It is not arguementative or partisan, and the objective is to give a clear review of how some of the present problems have arose, not to point fingers. The problems can't be spoken about theoretically; some real life situations need to be seen to gain insight.
Two instances as illustrations:
1) Stephan Kinsella, like Brandt, did not become a Wikipedian voluntarily, registered an account to defend himself against questionable content and is the subject of the "Mercy" ruling which is part of WP:BLP. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BLP#_note-0 > A high profile Administrator then used material from David Duke to rebut Kinsella's efforts to defend himself. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute&dif...
2 ) Yesterday in response to a request SlimVirgin privately agreed to remove an inappropriate link to the CODAH website, only to promptly place another link back to the same questionable source in a less visible place. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laird_Wilcox&diff=113130787&am...
These are two examples of high level Administrators using what is by policy questionable sources with a grave potential for severe harm to the subjects in articles of living persons. And in both instances, neither subject can be "linked" to David Duke and/or this organization, or the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODAH).
This pattern of action -- which extends to numerous other living persons -- warrants review. And ArbCom has done nothing to mitigate circumstances such as these even after they have been brought to their attention.
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