[Wikimedia-l] Paid editing v. paid advocacy (editing)

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

I totally agree with MZMcBride and Erik. It also depends and what the money
go for. If somebody is paid to bend the rules or use their privileged role,
it is an obvious problem. If somebody is paid a compensation for the costs
incurred in collecting materials (as sometimes is the case with scanners,
photos, etc.), it obviously isn't. And the area between is grey and
undefined.

As you possibly know, I believe that outright forbidding all paid editing
results in a situation when people still do it, but in secrecy. This is not
good for us, as it increases the amount of work needed to eradicate such
edits.

I think that we should allow paid edits under certain conditions (although
obviously not allow paid advocacy), when all encyclopedic standards are
fulfilled, but require full transparency and disclosure, to allow better
tracking and evaluation of such edits. I also believe that transparency and
disclosure of even potential COI is crucial (and unfortunately impossible
under current rules).

best,

dariusz "pundit"


On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 8:57 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 6:22 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>
> (Responding just on the general issue, not on the specific case.)
>
> > Paid editing is not the same as paid advocacy (editing). This is a very
> > important point.
>
> I agree it's an important distinction. I personally think it could be
> worthwhile to think about a separate non-profit organization which
> receives payments and manages contracts to systematically expand
> Wikipedia coverage, with payment entirely or largely decoupled from
> specific articles (at most coupled to specific domains) and the
> organization's policies being developed transparently in partnership
> with the community. I suspect such an org could receive significant
> grants and public support in its own right.
>
> Supporting free content isn't evil - there's stuff like
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1699256938/the-vanamo-online-game-museum
> which is totally awesome. It's COI and disclosure issues that raise
> red flags, and more significant violations of policies that sometimes
> go along with that.
>
> It's been suggested many times through the years that WMF should
> directly pay editors in some way. I don't think that's a good idea,
> though I would like to see more grants in support of expenses related
> to article writing (there are quite a few programs around that
> already, many of them chapter-run).
>
> *dims lights, stirs logs in fireplace*
>
> Back in the early years, I had a little statement on my userpage
> encouraging people to donate money to me if they liked my work and
> wanted me to do more on Wikipedia. (Nobody took me up on it, of
> course. Cheap bastards.) This was at a time when a lot of us online
> community nerds were thinking about donation-based funding models for
> communities. PayPal was just becoming a really big deal back then,
> because it suddenly made these early community funding experiments
> possible. Blender, Penny Arcade, Kuro5hin and others were among the
> true pioneers of what's now called crowdfunding.
>
> Axel Boldt deserves credit for this experiment:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiMoney . I still have a
> WikiMoney bank balance of ψ18. Maybe I can convert it to a
> cryptocurrency one day. :)
>
> I'd love to see more experiments that are conducted in full awareness
> of the ethical issues involved, both with funding models for free
> content, and with other incentive structures. WikiMoney was actually
> quite popular for a short while, considering how much of a pain it was
> to actually administer!
>
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
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-- 

__________________________
dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
profesor zarządzania
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl