[WikiEN-l] Almeda University paying for positive Wikipedia edits

[Oldak Quill]

On 10/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> Note in particular the endless self-justification in the Almeda
> approach. I think that will undermine any attempt to find clever rules
> that allow paid editing where there is even the slightest possibility of
> conflict of interest. I'm sure any of us could rewrite that job
> description to make full use of Wikipedia jargon. And if somebody's
> income depends on them not getting the essential meaning behind our
> words, they may be able to keep it up for quite a while.

One problem I have with this kind of paid editing is that those who
can afford to pay will have more NPOV, better written articles. Do we
want the quality of parts of Wikipedia to be determined by who's
paying for what?

Other than that, I think an institution paying for vandalism revision
and nothing else, is fair enough. What's the difference between them
paying a Wikipedian to do it or paying a secretary to do it? The
former is more transparent.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that paying someone to take a look at
an article occassionally will make much difference. Our anti-vandalism
mechanisms are quite robust.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)