[WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

[Jim]

On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Dabljuh wrote:
> > On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400
> > Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> (stuff)
> >>
> > So what is the agreement?
> >
> He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
> by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
> understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
> own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
> site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
> Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
> the merits of the articles.


>From what I understand on another thread, MyWikiBiz was committed to
producing neutral articles. And would only do so under the MyWikiBiz
username. I, personally, liked the idea of the edits being entered by
MyWikiBiz - that way they could be tracked openly and checked using the user
contributions feature. Having an anonymous editor input the information into
wikipedia seems more likely to result in articles that are not neutral.

I can see some benefit in that trolls would target articles created by
MyWikiBiz for deletion and other crap - but that seems outweighed by the
benefit that many users would also be able to quickly identify the articles
submitted by MyWikiBiz and would seek to protect wikipedia's reputation and
make sure our policies are followed. They could only do this if there is
transparency in submitting material.

*Is the feeling that being paid to write articles for wikipedia is against
community standards in general.* What if a wikipedian submitted a grant to a
govt agency or non-profit to edit/contribute x amount of information to
articles around a specific topic? I can see this as being a huge benefit to
wikipedia and to our goal to preserve knowledge by creating a high-quality
comprehensive encyclopedia.

For example, I could see the following as having great benefit:
http://www.foodsovereignty.org issues a grant to write on locating water
sources, low-water agriculture, high temperature yields, etc.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/ issues a grant to write on alternative energy
sources -
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/default.cfm issues a grant to write on a specific
list of endangered animals
...
of course there could be harm as well
http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ issues a grant to make sure specific information is
deleted from articles on nuclear power and to promote non-proliferation
http://www.ispu.us/pages/reports/2855/articleDetailPB.html issues a grant to
influence the articles on islam, christianity, etc.

For all these open acknowledgement of the finanicial relationship and
transparency is a better protection for our neutralilty standards, IMHO.

Jim