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

[Andreas Kolbe]

That doesn't follow to me from that wording, Nathan. The English Wikipedia
for example allows socking to enable contributors to contribute to articles
that they would rather not have their real-life name or normal Internet
persona associated with.

User:John Smith is allowed to create an account named
User:ColourfulCharacter to edit those articles. In doing so, he is not
using "the username *of another user* with the intent to deceive".

There is no other user of that name. (The only exception would be if there
were a user called User:ColorfulCharacter, say, and Smith's intent was to
create confusion between the two accounts.)

User:John Smith is using a secondary screen name to obscure the fact that
both accounts are operated by the same person. And that is allowed.

I don't even see that Wiki-PR infringed the letter of that section, as a
normal person would read it. Just like John Smith, they did not use the
name of some other user. They created multiple accounts. There was no other
user whose username they used, or whom they tried to impersonate.


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Nathan,
> >
> > I am unable to find a mention of sockpuppetry in the Terms of Use,
> whether
> > in Section 4 or elsewhere.
> >
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
> >
> > I don't think there could be such a mention, really, given that project
> > policies recognise a number of legitimate uses of socks.
> >
> > A.
> >
> >
> The term isn't used, but the behavior is clearly encompassed by the
> prohibition described in the "Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation
> or Fraud" - specifically "using the username of another user with the
> intent to deceive."
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