[WikiEN-l] The current purges in English Wikipedia (...and my personal case)

[Nathan]

The moral panic on this subject is irrational. Folks are scandalized
(scandalized!) by the very thought of people being paid to add articles to
Wikipedia because they might have a conflict of interest. Rspeer notes that
we've got along perfectly well with volunteers so far, presumably implying
that volunteers are purely altruistic and few if any articles have been
created by editors with a conflict. On the contrary, my guess is quite a few
articles about individuals and companies of mid-level fame were created by
fans, friends, associates, employees, etc. Perhaps a deep review with
WikiScanner will allow us to identify some of these suspect articles, and
delete them because they were created with impure motives.

There is a good debate to be had about paid editing, the reward board,
content created with a conflict of interest, etc. The entanglement of money
and article content is inevitable given the "free to edit" structure of
Wikipedia. Banning it sends it underground, we're better off regulating it.
Unfortunately the discussions (not just the RfC, but the various deletion
debates and noticeboard threads) are often hijacked by puritans whose
instinct is to block first and discuss second. The block on Desiphral and
the attempted deletion of an entire Wikimedia project is just the latest
example.

Nathan