[Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Liam Wyatt]

On 18 November 2010 15:57, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 18 November 2010 10:42, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> > Any one signed up yet?
> > >> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
> > >
> > > I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
> > > http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
> > >
> > > --
> > > Amir E. Aharoni
> > >
> >
> > Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> > break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> > editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> > acceptable, even welcome?
> >
>
> My teeth grate when I think that some people are getting paid to do what so
> many of us do simply for the joy of sharing.  Having said that, I can
> certainly understand why some article subjects have tired of depending on
> our rather inefficient methods of ensuring that articles on notable
> subjects
> are accurate, unbiased, well-sourced and relatively complete.  I have
> increasing difficulty rationalizing the deprecation of "paid" editing when
> a
> goodly number of what are assumed to be "paid-for" articles conform more
> closely to our policies and guidelines than what volunteer editors have
> created - or never got around to creating, for that matter. (I'll note this
> holds true for more than just English Wikipedia, as I have heard reports
> that there's significant bias on other Wikipedias as well.)  Anyone who's
> tried to rebalance an article that gives undue weight to negative issues,
> or
> to remove salacious trivia about a BLP subject, knows how incredibly
> frustrating it can be to bring articles into line with policy.
>
> Risker/Anne


I agree that the concept of "being paid to edit Wikipedia" does not fit well
with the ethos of our movement... That said, I think a lot of the problems
with paid editing in the past (however conceived) have been because the
person doing the paying was trying to game the system and circumvent the
policies of Wikipedia. Things like being commissioned to whitewash a
corporation's article is clearly a violation of the rules - not because it's
paid per se, but because it breaks Conflict of Interest guidelines. On the
other hand, if someone is employed as a subject area professional (e.g.
university professor, museum curator) and their organisation has decided
that improving Wikipedia should be part of their job description then I
suppose that is technically paid editing, but I don't believe that should be
seen as a bad thing. See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coi#Subject_and_culture_sector_professionals

Personally I would like to see discussions about paid editing differentiated
from discussions of COI and Spam because, whilst they often overlap with
negative consequences, it they are not necessarily synonymous.

-Liam

Wittylama.com/blog
Peace, Love & Metadata