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

Thu Jan 9 08:58:04 UTC 2014

Being active on a smaller community I am rather surprised of this 
discussion, which I believe is a privilege that only the biggest version 
can have. Being on a small, we are positive to any editing that improves 
the value and quality. As long it being done within the framework

WMSE actively encourage our old heritage instituion to let their 
employees write articles on runestones etc as part of their paid 
employment. The community is very positive to the publishing companies 
who write excellent articles on the authors they publish books from. We 
accept that most articles of organizations and companies are written by 
persons employed by these. Here we have to work with them to get the 
fluff and promotion out of the articles, but see this as part of getting 
valuable content

We are now also looking into how to get most value of the new techniques 
being introduced, Wikidata, Wikimaps, new mediawiki sw. And here we find 
that we probably have to build up "platforms" of software (templates, 
modules, bots etc) for different subject areas (like geographic entities 
in Sweden, painting etc).  And again being a small community, it is 
quite possible we find we can not develop these technical complicated 
software without help of paid employees, we are just too few volunteers 
with top technical expertise competence

Anders

Dariusz Jemielniak skrev 2014-01-09 09:22:
> 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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>
>