Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky (Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
[2] Just searching for this online led to ads from dozens of services. The first 10 below seem to be clones of the same service (perhaps run by the same farm) Elite Wiki Writers Wiki Curators Wiki Genies Wikipedia Legends Wiki Page Writing Wiki Page Creator WikiProfs Wiki Specialist LLC Wiki Writers Workshop Wikipedia Publisher Wikipedia Services 360 Ghostwriting Contentfly Otter PR Premium Content Writing ReputationX Upwork
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
[2] Just searching for this online led to ads from dozens of services. The first 10 below seem to be clones of the same service (perhaps run by the same farm) Elite Wiki Writers Wiki Curators Wiki Genies Wikipedia Legends Wiki Page Writing Wiki Page Creator WikiProfs Wiki Specialist LLC Wiki Writers Workshop Wikipedia Publisher Wikipedia Services 360 Ghostwriting Contentfly Otter PR Premium Content Writing ReputationX Upwork
Given that it’s completely trivial to make new pseudonymous accounts how would you propose even remotely accurate data collection to measure paid editing?
If we are worried about the impact of paid editors on the integrity of content, we are much better served investing even more in efforts to dramatically strengthen our volunteer community’s ability to defend the projects. That means better software to help each editor do more, making it fun, easy and welcoming for new contributors, and fighting the attrition in admins and other functionaries. If our volunteer community was larger and healthier, the threat of paid interference would be less scary.
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 7:20 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
[2] Just searching for this online led to ads from dozens of services. The first 10 below seem to be clones of the same service (perhaps run by the same farm) Elite Wiki Writers Wiki Curators Wiki Genies Wikipedia Legends Wiki Page Writing Wiki Page Creator WikiProfs Wiki Specialist LLC Wiki Writers Workshop Wikipedia Publisher Wikipedia Services 360 Ghostwriting Contentfly Otter PR Premium Content Writing ReputationX Upwork
-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi Steven :) Good points. I agree with Adam that this is a major energy and enthusiasm drain for eitors.
As to how we could start with data collection:
* Monitor the market. a) Work with groups that are in the market and completely transparent about their work to maintain a sense of rates and volume b) Search general contracting sites, general search engines, and specific reputation brokers for new options; maintain a catalog c) Spot-check and commission work. As with Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann's show - he spent under 500 Euros and identified two networks of UPE.
* Build better tools for tracking and countering undisclosed paid editing a) Tracking: automated scoring, as with ORES b) Countering: As you say: tools to help people coordinate work, making it more fun and collaborative to take on UPE. Especially for often-targeted categories -- politicians + companies.. b) Both: Focus on tools for detecting large farms over time, and cleaning up the mess left by a farm.
You're right about community size being a defense. But only for a time -- the growing demand for this actively subverts community members. Olaf was one! So we also need to think of ways to reduce and divert that demand into constructive channels.
SJ
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 11:11 PM Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Given that it’s completely trivial to make new pseudonymous accounts how would you propose even remotely accurate data collection to measure paid editing?
If we are worried about the impact of paid editors on the integrity of content, we are much better served investing even more in efforts to dramatically strengthen our volunteer community’s ability to defend the projects. That means better software to help each editor do more, making it fun, easy and welcoming for new contributors, and fighting the attrition in admins and other functionaries. If our volunteer community was larger and healthier, the threat of paid interference would be less scary.
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 7:20 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
You might want to discuss this topic at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiproject:Antispam
This page is watched by many people working against UPE in various projects. Many are familiar with large-scale UPE operations. Some of us already work with tools for automated and semi-automated detection. So it might be more fruitful to discuss it with contributors experienced in that area.
Best,
Mario
On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 7:22 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Steven :) Good points. I agree with Adam that this is a major energy and enthusiasm drain for eitors.
As to how we could start with data collection:
- Monitor the market. a) Work with groups that are in the market and completely transparent
about their work to maintain a sense of rates and volume b) Search general contracting sites, general search engines, and specific reputation brokers for new options; maintain a catalog c) Spot-check and commission work. As with Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann's show - he spent under 500 Euros and identified two networks of UPE.
- Build better tools for tracking and countering undisclosed paid editing
a) Tracking: automated scoring, as with ORES b) Countering: As you say: tools to help people coordinate work, making it more fun and collaborative to take on UPE. Especially for often-targeted categories -- politicians + companies.. b) Both: Focus on tools for detecting large farms over time, and cleaning up the mess left by a farm.
You're right about community size being a defense. But only for a time -- the growing demand for this actively subverts community members. Olaf was one! So we also need to think of ways to reduce and divert that demand into constructive channels.
SJ
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 11:11 PM Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Given that it’s completely trivial to make new pseudonymous accounts how would you propose even remotely accurate data collection to measure paid editing?
If we are worried about the impact of paid editors on the integrity of content, we are much better served investing even more in efforts to dramatically strengthen our volunteer community’s ability to defend the projects. That means better software to help each editor do more, making it fun, easy and welcoming for new contributors, and fighting the attrition in admins and other functionaries. If our volunteer community was larger and healthier, the threat of paid interference would be less scary.
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 7:20 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Thank you Mario! I'll ask further there. S
On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 4:29 PM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
You might want to discuss this topic at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiproject:Antispam
This page is watched by many people working against UPE in various projects. Many are familiar with large-scale UPE operations. Some of us already work with tools for automated and semi-automated detection. So it might be more fruitful to discuss it with contributors experienced in that area.
Best,
Mario
On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 7:22 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Steven :) Good points. I agree with Adam that this is a major energy and enthusiasm drain for eitors.
As to how we could start with data collection:
- Monitor the market. a) Work with groups that are in the market and completely transparent
about their work to maintain a sense of rates and volume b) Search general contracting sites, general search engines, and specific reputation brokers for new options; maintain a catalog c) Spot-check and commission work. As with Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann's show - he spent under 500 Euros and identified two networks of UPE.
- Build better tools for tracking and countering undisclosed paid editing
a) Tracking: automated scoring, as with ORES b) Countering: As you say: tools to help people coordinate work, making it more fun and collaborative to take on UPE. Especially for often-targeted categories -- politicians + companies.. b) Both: Focus on tools for detecting large farms over time, and cleaning up the mess left by a farm.
You're right about community size being a defense. But only for a time -- the growing demand for this actively subverts community members. Olaf was one! So we also need to think of ways to reduce and divert that demand into constructive channels.
SJ
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 11:11 PM Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Given that it’s completely trivial to make new pseudonymous accounts how would you propose even remotely accurate data collection to measure paid editing?
If we are worried about the impact of paid editors on the integrity of content, we are much better served investing even more in efforts to dramatically strengthen our volunteer community’s ability to defend the projects. That means better software to help each editor do more, making it fun, easy and welcoming for new contributors, and fighting the attrition in admins and other functionaries. If our volunteer community was larger and healthier, the threat of paid interference would be less scary.
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 7:20 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi SJ,
Just passing along a link shared @Waltercolor during another discussion about paid editing, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Mois_anti-pub
I completely agree that we need more ways to identify and reverse undisclosed paid editing. For a moment, the WMF's Scoring Platform team was hoping to build an automated model trained on known promotional editing—we suspected that it had stereotypical grammar and other flaws that make it possible to find using this approach. Personally, I think that increasing visibility of paid editing might be helpful, "sunshine" or the threat of showing up in the newspaper might make it feel riskier for clients to decide to pay for these services.
In response to Steven's point, we should certainly make general improvements to the editing experience but note that fighting paid editing *is* one of these improvements. Interactions with paid editors and their socks can be exhausting and unrewarding.
-[[mw:User:Adamw]]
On Wed 8. Sep 2021 at 04:20, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Aha -- I was pointed to en:wp's List of paid editing companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies. (thanks!) This is a great resource and deserves to be better linked. The page is semi-active - 4 additions in the last month, including the Olaf case. I've cleaned it up a bit and linked it to the German page. This really needs some automated scripting and tracking, at the scale of ORES...
Is there any routine analysis / stats compiled of edits associated with these orgs, or of their activity online?
On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Jan Böhmermann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann published an amazing expose on political WP editing in Germany; it gets good around 15 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsTaKwyAzI&t=900s. In the video he exposed the workings of a paid editing farm run (by Olaf Kosinsky ( Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30108329; CheckUser discussion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/Verdachtsf%C3%A4lle/Olaf_Kosinsky ; archived PR-services site https://web.archive.org/web/20210416110100/https://kosinsky.eu/), an excellent long-time editor with over 3 million edits.
*We need to distinguish paid editing from general COI editing*. Paid editing is COI editing by professionals, who have strong external incentives to persist, no leeway in the outcome they are aiming for, experience in doing this in dozens of cases, and may have colleagues who can drop in as 'uninvolved' editors to forge consensus or social proof.[1]
This is one of our great recurring challenges, siphoning off both our reputation and our community. There are many things we can do about paid editing, starting with maintaining *paid-editing metrics and a dashboard* of known and estimated paid editing. We can estimate its prevalence by the availabiity of services online[2]; and look for patterns of such editing on wiki. Even with large error margins, this would be a step above simply waiting for outbreaks to be discovered and reacting to the visible bits of the iceberg.
What sort of metrics like this do we have already? Who is working on such things? Since the above video came out, de:wp started a table of WP editing services https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Umgang_mit_bezahltem_Schreiben/F%C3%A4lle#Wikipedia-Web-Agenturen_auf_dem_Markt. It currently includes an initial dozen examples, with no estimate of activity (the 1 account known to be associated with each is in most cases blocked; but most have active websites soliciting work) This would be useful in all languages.
SJ
[1] as Melmann wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_167#Limiting_the_scope_of_COI_edit_requests recently: "*in my experience, **all the most difficult edits are WP:PAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PAID**. Most non-paid COI comes from a place of desire to make things better, and often can be relatively easily guided towards a better place... [or] it is relatively easy to use existing enforcement mechanisms to to correct and ultimately control their behaviours. PR professionals, on the other hand, are subtle and sometimes downright deceptive, and it takes lots of effort to check their edits when most of the time you lack context and expertise and you really have to research in depth to see their edits for what they really are. I think that one of the fundamental mistakes of the current policy is lumping paid editors with general COI editing as paid editors are fundamentally playing on a different level in terms of PR expertise and incentives*"
[2] Just searching for this online led to ads from dozens of services. The first 10 below seem to be clones of the same service (perhaps run by the same farm) Elite Wiki Writers Wiki Curators Wiki Genies Wikipedia Legends Wiki Page Writing Wiki Page Creator WikiProfs Wiki Specialist LLC Wiki Writers Workshop Wikipedia Publisher Wikipedia Services 360 Ghostwriting Contentfly Otter PR Premium Content Writing ReputationX Upwork
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