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

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2014/1/9 Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj at alk.edu.pl>:
> 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).
>

Yes, but the question is how to enable such a system. If the rules for
paid editors were to be very strict - many paid editors would have
still decide to do it in secrecy anyway, as it would have been simply
easier for them. It might be like with infamous "registered lobbyst"
system in Polish Parliament. Since  "registered lobbyst" system was
enabled 12 years ago in Polish Parliament only 6 people decided to
register, while all other lobbysts still act in secrecy :-)

System in German Wikipedia registers institutional/corporal editors -
who for sure join the Wikipedia in order to support interest of their
institutions/corporations. One can still do it following the Wikipedia
rules - for example remove unsourced bias, keep pages updated, fix
basic facts, such as the name of CEO etc.  And - in the same time one
can still have accounts for doing evil things - sockpuppeting in
disucssions and votes, forcing obvious bias etc...






-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz