[Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Goodman]

In my experience, it is simply not correct that people who may be paid
to edit, even for a nonprofit organization,  are unlikely to have a
bias. (Of course, so do the unpaid. COI does not require money , but
money always produces  COI.)

I've seen too many cases of such people adding inappropriate content:
inserting more links to the organization than anyone else would do,
using vague adjectives of praise, using the full name of the company
as often as possible, adding excessive links to internal sources,
trying to mention every possible product and feature and event and
minor corporate milestone, using favorable comments made about them
from non-reliable sources, adding a list of too many executives, using
publications from their company or organization as references
disproportionately in articles, and trying to say things 3 times over,
in the infobox, the lede, and the main article.

These are the ways we pick up their edits now, and will be able to do
so whether or not they declare themselves. I have seen such editors
who do not do this but whom I can identify as paid internal or outside
editing, and I agree with you there should be no objection to such
editing. (I identify from the particular subject concentration, the
trick of style, features in subjects I know something about which are
characteristically seen in their declared PR and advertising -- and,
for external editors, the consistency across different articles. Even
when what they add is appropriate, there can still be a pattern.)

As an easy example of what anyone can identify, are political campaign
biographies.


On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> * Museum Curator: Adding information about artifacts in the collection. This should be fine.
>



-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG