[Wikimedia-l] WMF employee writing articles for $300

[Nathan]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:52 AM, Russavia <russavia.wikipedia at gmail.com>wrote:

> Yes, Nathan, please let us cut the bullshit, for I have a pretty low
> tolerance for it, and I am happy to call you out on it.
>
> You are right, I don't see anywhere in Odder's blog or in my posts on this
> list that Sarah is being accused of sock puppetry. I don't know why you are
> making this totally irrelevation correlation, or is this you simply trying
> to run interference? (Very poorly I might add, but certainly a better
> attempt than Gerard). I suggest that you re-read the cease and desist
> letter (
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/19/wikimedia-foundation-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-to-wikipr/
> )
> at the very top of page 2 you can see in pretty plain English that the WMF
> has invoked Section 4 of the Terms of Use, in which the WMF makes veiled
> legal threats of fraud, misrepresentation, etc. It is showing severe
> naivety on your part if you think the Wiki-PR case was built around a farm
> of sockpuppets; that was merely the catalyst for the anti-paid editing
> crowd to really sink their teeth into the situation -- that should surely
> be evident from Sue's press release.


You must not have read the actual cease and desist letter. I understand,
it's several paragraphs, and that level of investigatory work is too
burdensome when you are racing to cause maximum drama. To quote a part of
the relevant portion "This practice, known as sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry,
is expressly prohibited by Wikipedia's Terms of Use." This is supported by
the actual text of section 4 of the Terms of Use, which mention
sockpuppetry but do not mention paid editing.

So the bullshit, to return to the point, is you accusing Sarah of violating
the Terms of Use. Even if she did write an article for $300, she did not
violate the ToU. Your claim otherwise is meant to be incendiary, and is at
a minimum ignorant but much more likely simply dishonest. Your support of
Wiki-PR, a group that did indisputably break the ToU and caused hundreds of
hours worth of clean up work, proves that whatever motivates you in this
thread it certainly isn't the benefit of the Wikimedia movement or any
legitimate part of it.