[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic conflict...

[GerardM]

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 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 07/03/07, Rob Smith <nobs03 at 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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