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

Fri Jan 10 12:34:32 UTC 2014

Hi everyone,

I'll try to elaborate on this topic :)

First of all, in 2011 in Haifa I did a first talk about companies and
Wikipedia. I did that because I was making a "study" (emphasis on the
" as I'm not keen to say it's a study and more of a detailed
observation) of the state of the articles of the top 40 french
companies.

During that talk I explained how I believe companies could help us
improve our projects. I won't get too much into that as, since then,
the debate evolved from "companies editing Wikipedia" to "Paid editing
is evil".

This year at Wikimania I gave two talks about this very topic, one
about how third party organizations can help us and the second on a
framework to have editing.

Of course, as usual, some people were "against it".

But how can we, as a community, be against "paid editing" on one hand
when on the other hand we seek "paid editing" from GLAMs, researchers
from state organizations, etc.

The question whether we allow, or not, paid editing is non-existent.
Paid editing is allowed, we already allowed it, we even support it;

Now, the question about "paid advocacy". Again, one of our core
principle is NPOV. We don't want people to push their POV. Whether
they're paid or not, is not relevant.

So, to me, the "paid foobar" question is not the one in debate here.
The one we're actually debating about is "do we want for profit
organization to edit Wikipedia".

So yes, paid organizations have an interest in editing Wikipedia, but
just as much as GLAMs have an interest in editing our projects. In
fact, when Wikimedian meets GLAMs one of the key arguments is "look at
(pick past project that got great coverage such as the bundesarchives,
British Museum, etc)". We show them they have an interest in
committing resources, both financial and human, to improve Wikimedia
projects.

So the "they have an interest in editing" isn't an argument in the
end, as, of course a lot of editors have an interest in editing. And
we're using it. When we think or work on how researchers valorize
their edits in their cursus, those researchers have an interest in
editing Wikipedia.

So, really what is that people working for a company have that makes
it so we have to ban them to edit? If we already have people paid to
edit, if we have people with interests (henceforth some sort of COI),
what do they have the others don't?

Now, why do I strongly believe we should encourage companies to edit Wikipedia.

First of all, as I said some years ago I evaluated the quality of
company articles on the French Wikipedia. Most of them were crap.
Either outdated, incomplete or with wrong information, all those
articles were poor; And we're talking about the top 40 french
companies, such as Orange, L'Oréal, Renault, BNP, etc.

The volunteer community isn't keen to improve and maintain those
articles. Companies are willing to do it. So we prefer to have poor
articles instead of good ones because there's a risk companies will
act wrongfully (I hope I'm not the only one to see the irony in this
situation where we prefer to ban editors because there's a risk
they'll do wrong. We should do that for all the projects, Close them
to editing because there's a risk people will do wrong.).

Adapting our projects to provide a framework where companies can
easily fit in and edit as a direct consequence, improve the quality of
their articles.

Companies that have the resources to commit to such things are,
usually, big and sometimes old company. Imagine that in a few year,
being involved with the Wikimedia projects is so natural for those
companies that they release their archives on the Wikimedia Projects.
What archives do you ask?

Orange, for example, is the former organization in charge of the
french telecom. They managed telephone for a very long time and have a
long history in R&D. Their archives must be astounding. Containing
documents, pictures and videos about telecomunication that should be
awesome. That are part of our history.
Right now, those archives are dusting in some building. And in few
years they might disappear.
Our stance, being so opposed to companies making the first step
(editing) prevent companies to go the next step, release. And in fact,
indirectly, we're preventing knowledge to be freed. Awesome.

Lastly, those companies have huge R&D budgets and employ thousands of
researchers and engineers. Imagine a company that employs 1 000
researchers. And imagine that company to do 2 things:
1/ that a company, as part of its CSR politic, says they commit 1 day
per year per researcher to improve one article. And to provide to
those researchers a one day training session about Wikipedia. This
means 1 000 days of editing from specialized researchers and 1 000
researchers evangelized and trained to edit.
2/ that this company would commit 0.0001% of it's R&D global budget to
open a Q&A desk so wikimedians could ask their researchers for
bibliography or proof reading articles

Those things are not wild dreams, they could definitely happen
(especially when you see how much money is spent in CSR actions). But
we, as a community, refuse to tap into this.

I'll stop here, my email is already quiet long, but by "baning" any
"paid foobar" we are actually preventing the improvement of
corporations related articles, destroying potential free knowledge and
refusing to train and advocate about Wikipedia to thousand of people
at a time.

When I see the strategy of the movement, how much we need to get new
editors and how poorly we do in some fields, I'm shocked by how easily
we ban those possibilities to happen. And for what reason? Because
they're for-profit companies.

Best,

PS: a short matrix of what we, as a community, we allow/disallow from
reality and from discussions. If you can't see the problem there...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/editing_matrix
--
Christophe

On 10 January 2014 00:52, Erlend Bjørtvedt <erlend at wikimedia.no> wrote:
> I agree with you, Dariusz.
>
> We have discussed this at length in the community, and at Wikipedia Academy
> in Oslo in december.
>
> There is minimal support of a ban of paid editing. One thing is the fact
> that we have both Wikipedians in Residence and editing scholarships with
> GLAM institutions. It is naive to believe that cultural institutions like
> museums, etc, are not commercial. I am myself among those receiving USD
> 1.500 from the Directorate of Cultural Heritage to write about 19th century
> trappers' huts at Spitsbergen. Commercial? Probably not. Paid editing?
> Definitely.
>
> The debate among admins and at the Academy last month, revealed more or
> less consensus along several lines of thought.
>
> 1) A ban of paid editing is illusionary and impractible, and will just
> force paid editors "underground"
> 2) A ban will deprive us of invaluable expertise on a wide array of
> subjects that would otherwise not be covered
> 3) Guidelines and 5 pillars take presedence over COI anyway, judge people
> by what they do, and not who they are.
> 4) In-house employee editing is not only tolerated, but quite common at
> no-wiki.
> 5) The line runs at paid advocacy = third-party for-pay editing for a
> commercial customer, or for-pay POV editing.
>
> During the discussion, it appeared that a large proportion of the admins
> and bureaucrats who joined the discussion, had edited the articles about
> their employers. Most were aware of the COI potential involved, but
> asserted being able to write  objectively even about an employer.
>
> Cheers,
> Erlend Bjørtvedt
> Norway
>
>
> 2014/1/9 Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj at alk.edu.pl>
>
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > 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,
>>
>>
>> oh, but there will ALWAYS be those lurking in the shadows. However,
>> currently we frown upon edits which are according to the rules just as much
>> as upon those which cross the line. I think it would be good to make and
>> explicit, ostensive bright line, like Jimbo suggested - I just think the
>> line should be elsewhere.
>>
>> Paid editing, when done according to the rules, and when subjected to
>> transparent community control, is definitely better than a system in which
>> paid editors are, in fact, motivated NOT TO reveal their affiliations.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> dariusz "pundit"
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *Erlend Bjørtvedt*
> Nestleder, Wikimedia Norge
> Vice chairman, Wikimedia Norway
> Mob: +47 - 9225 9227
>  http://no.wikimedia.org <http://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/About_us>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>