Paying guarantees work will be done, not that the work will be good. Paying per article in fact invites just the opposite. I would be extremely dubious of any articles introduced in this manner, no matter what the university, just as i would of any COI. Being paid to edit is the ultimate in COI. I would advise WMF to stay as far a way from this as possible.
On Jan 7, 2008 2:56 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 19:28 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 07/01/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Just to outline some other quick issues...
Paid editors backed by a Foundation initiative inserts a tiered class of editors, where we haven't had such a thing in the past (debatably).
It doesn't need to. There is no reason for paid editors to have any priority over unpaid ones. In fact, I imagine they would be considered a lower tier and would be monitored more closely that other users by the community.
Who would pay for such a thing, even as a project to support Wikipedia? The money isn't going to WMF, its going to private individuals to insert content of uncertain quality that may not last out the day, let alone forever.
Who determines what type of content gets added? Do they only work on redlinks? Some of them are fairly obscure for general curriculum students. Can they edit articles of the sponsoring institution?
Finally, why would the WMF want to endorse the idea of folks getting paid for editing? Since no monetary reward comes directly from this activity, only by skewing the content to the benefit of the sponsoring institution can an investment be recouped.
It wouldn't be an investment, it would be a charitable donation. What content they work on would be determined by the person paying, I guess, although hopefully they would listen to the community for guidance. As for the quality - it's up to the person paying to make sure the people being paid are suitably qualified, that's why I'm suggesting targeting post-grads.
Nathan, you raised some very important points. I will try and answer them as exact as possible in the early stages of my idea:
Why pay people to contribute? Because it guarantees decent work be done by somebody and offers an incentive. It also supports students to obtain the degrees they are pursuing and therefor helps society in general.
What contents gets added? This depends on many factors. The way I imagine it would be as follows: a student of Economics works on Economics related articles, a student of Philosophy on Philosophy and so on. All other contributions will not be paid for, however I believe they will still be made by the editors in question.
Why the WMF would or even should be interested? Because it will benefit Wikipedia and that is one of the main objectives of the WMF.
Who would sponsor such editors? This is the tricky one. I think the concept of paying editors like it is a job would not work very well, why would it? I think the best idea is to reimburse them for their time spent on working on related articles. I also believe that one of the main objectives would be to gain the support of other charities. For example: The (I will make the names up, any existing names are coincidence) "Society for Chinese History in the US" has an interest in promoting Chinese History, so they could be approached for a donation of say $100 that pays some students of Chinese (History) to extend a certain amount of articles to a point of acceptability. What is the point of acceptability? At least GA quality I would say or a large amount of good start class etc.
The main criteria to be eligble for payment would be that all edits are conform to existing policy and are of the highest quality in the sense that they are well sourced and cited. Language abilities should at least be good (wording can always be changed by other editors).
Does this explain a little bit more of what I am imagining could be the future?
Regards,
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l