[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment fundamentally a problematic conflict of interests?

[Mercenary Wikipedian]

For those who didn't care to follow the link, the cited Dilbert cartoon goes 
as follows:

Writer: "I hope you don't expect me to write a favorable article about your 
company just because you bought me drinks."

Dogbert: "No, I expect you to publish my press release and act like you 
wrote it."

Dogbert: "You can work or you can get drunk, but the pay is exactly the 
same."

That is all very cute, but one ought to remember that what we are talking 
about here is a publishing medium where someone's credibility is _entirely_ 
dependent on the community's perceptions of their work. If, by community 
standards, an editor is making contributions that are unconstructive (i.e. 
against policy), there is no defense. Vandals, POV-pushers, and the like can 
and are rebuked, temporarily blocked, or banned.

As I mentioned before, a paid Wikipedian is basically capitalizing on his or 
her established trust in the community. Any switch to abusive edits that 
fail to follow policy will quickly lose him his accumulated social equity 
and thus hurt his bottom line. On the other hand, someone who is paid to 
write a new article about a truly notable topic or to clean-up an existing, 
sub-par article is both working towards making Wikipedia better and would be 
satisfying the client's demand. Surely the members of this list would not 
argue that business (or charitable) interests and Wikipedia interests can 
_never_ coincide, right? Where they _do_ coincide, why not let them 
subsidize the expansion/improvement of the encyclopedia?

Assuming that the status quo (one that is hostile to sponsored work) is 
maintained, how does this better enable editors to critically examine 
contributors than an open system? Are such restrictions about punishing 
those who would dare to profit from something that they love (Wikipedia), or 
are they about making it easier to review questionable contributions? I 
would say that the latter is what we should be going for, and full 
disclosure, not persecution, is what will enable that.

As WP:AUTO suggests, it is _difficult_ but _not_impossible_ for individuals 
to write about themselves in a neutral fashion. In my paid work, I am 
certainly aware that my clients might want to aggrandize their reputation, 
but I always work from my own sources. That is, when I take a job, I start 
from scratch, just like I would with any other topic that I was researching 
for Wikipedia. I google them, review the results for notable sources that 
seem useful, and I start working on the article, eventually finding enough 
sources to construct something that answers the questions that the initial 
research raised in my mind. I always include any notable criticisms that I 
can find, and this raises some clients' eyebrows. Their reactions are easily 
answered, though. I just tell them, "Look, I am willing to write something 
that conforms to Wikipedia policy and accurately represents the verifiable 
information available about your organization, all in a neatly formatted 
article. That is what makes my services valuable, because that means the 
article won't get immediately deleted as spam."

If companies want to hire POV warriors or spammers, by all means let's 
announce to the world that those companies are assailing the great resource 
that is Wikipedia. Such news would surely be viewed in the same light as if 
they had hired vandals to go spray-paint a competitor's office with nasty 
comments. I doubt most companies would care to generate such publicity. So 
long as paid contributors stick to notable, verifiable information, cite 
their sources, and maintain an NPOV while using the encyclopedic voice, 
though, I don't understand what the problem is.

MW


>Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 20:24:46 +0000
>From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally
>	problematic	conflict of interests?
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070222.html
>(spotted by Anthere)
>- d.

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