Having worked both in publishing, where these conflicts of interest play
out regularly, and in Silicon Valley startups, where PR is a necessary
fact of life, I believe it is a much stronger conflict. Academics and
journalists both have reputations to lose. PR people and other
commercial writers don't, not like academics.
Sure they do, if you are talking about established editors who are banking
on the fact that they have some degree of respect within the community that
allows other to more readily assume good faith about their edits. A paid
editor's ability to render services effectively largely rests upon his good
name. After all, like it or not, many (perhaps most) editors are more
suspicious of significant revisions or new articles by anons than by
established, trusted members of the community.
Journalistic and academic reputations are built on the factual quality
and accuracy of one's work. There are extensive vetting and enforcement
mechanisms in both industries. People in PR and advertising build
reputation on their ability to work without regard to factual accuracy,
or in spite of it. They are professional POV warriors. We adopt their
funding models at our peril.
William
So far as I can tell, no one is talking about the foundation adopting a new
funding model. The question is this: will paid editors be afforded the same
assumption of good faith that are author's whose motives are not so clear? I
am of the opinion that all contributions should be examined on their merits.
No one is arguing for a sudden shift in policy that allows for spamlink
insertions or POV articles. As others have mentioned, assuming good faith
for even paid editors will simply make it more likely that they are
forthcoming about whether they have received/are receiving financial
remuneration for their work on Wikipedia. This will allow other editors to
determine whether the editor is indeed POV-pushing or in fact editing in
good faith.
Something else that others have not mentioned as a possible boon to
Wikipedia can be predicted even if one assumes that the worse-case scenario
comes to pass. Let's assume that paid editors are permitted to operate in
the open (rather than under the radar, as some are surely doing now). Let's
further assume that all of them initially succumb to the urge to be
POV-pushing warriors with little regard for Wikipedia policy/guidelines.
First of all, does anyone doubt that administrators would be any less
willing to ban spammers and POV-pushers in that world than the current one?
Of course they wouldn't, and if anything, editors disclosing that they are
working for Acme Corp. and then proceeding to violate NPOV, RS, or whatever,
would be banned with extreme prejudice because it would be obvious what they
were doing, and their edits would be obviously unconstructive (presumably).
Now, let's assume that there are people out there who would want to do a
Wikipedia edit job for money more than one time in their life. In order to
do this, they would have to be able to show some record of success to
potential customers. This means these paid editors would have to edit within
the bounds of the policies and guidelines for some time in order to show
potential clients that they can write in the WP style and in a manner that
won't get deleted as cruft/spam/etc. Additionally, since people running any
decent-sized company are presumably literate, and presumably would have some
rudimentary idea of what Wikipedia is (say, "the encyclopedia that anyone
can edit"), does anyone really think that they are going to shell out cash
for someone to go in and insert a bunch of spam one time, only to have it
deleted and the admins/community alerted to their nefarious intent?
Instead, what is more likely is that editors who exhibited some degree of
familiarity with/expertise in the WP community would be paid to clean-up
articles of particular interest to the client and then maintain them by,
say, deleting vandalism, false defamatory claims, etc. If the paid editors
did this sort of thing, is that not in keeping with the goals of the
encyclopedia? Are we here to write an encyclopedia, or enforce some
communist ideal of editorial egalitarianism? Wikipedia policy is not
supposed to be emulating anyone's ideal political system, if I read WP:NOT
correctly. That is, there is no reason to have a policy that states that
people must reap equal wages (or non-wages) for equal editing work on
Wikipedia. Some people can and do edit for what might be seen as altruistic
reasons. Some might just want to pretty-up articles that they find useful in
hopes that others will do the same. Who is to say which motive is selfish or
improper? That is, who decides that editing for pay is somehow a morally
inferior motive to editing for Wiki-community glory?
Additionally, assuming that paid editing is or becomes a widespread
phenomenon, you will have people paid by competing firms who moderate each
other when individuals fail to abide by community standards. After all, a
competing firm could rake up some bad press for their rival by producing
evidence of improper, bad faith editing by paid agents of said rival. It
isn't, as some have suggested, simply a matter of a paid leviathan on one
side and poor volunteer wikipedians on the other. I would plead with the
community that WP:AGF not be abandoned simply because some Wikipedians have
anti-capitalist sentiments. Let's judge edits by their content and editors
by their contributions, not by their motive.
Respectfully,
MW
_________________________________________________________________
Play Flexicon: the crossword game that feeds your brain. PLAY now for FREE.
http://zone.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmtagline