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

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> But when a company pays someone to write articles about them, that's
> PR however you slice it.

Yes. Now, suppose we made the following rules:
1. You can't create the article yourself - go through AfC.
2. You have to notify us before you edit the article, and tell us
which editor will be making the changes.
3. We can and will block that editor if we feel that the changes are
not in conformance with our policies.

Would that not reduce the problem?

I'm not necessarily opposed to banning all "PR" editing, but I wonder
if it would be more effective to tolerate it and monitor it, rather
than forcing it "underground".

> It would be nice for companies to fund people just writing stuff. I
> suspect it would take an intermediary so the financial effect of not
> writing nice things about the sponsor would be buffered suitably.

Yeah. And to be honest, I don't think a small amount of COI is that
major a problem. If Microsoft wants to fund someone to thoroughly
document all sorts of parts of Windows that we have scrappy coverage
of - and in the process make themselves look good - well, is that so
bad? For many companies, a well-written, comprehensive, spell-checked,
roughly neutral article about themselves is probably a reward in
itself, regardless of whether it meets their PR goals. Currently, if
there's a really crappy article about a company, it doesn't sound like
there's any real way they can improve it. They can post requests on
the talk page, but if no one follows them up?

> I'm viewing this 'no paid editing' article as another way of phrasing
> existing rules.

WP:COI barely touches on paid editing. What other "existing rules" cover this?

Steve