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

[Lionel Allorge]

Hi,

> 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.
...
> 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!

I agree with you that the Wikimedia Foundation is not in the best position to 
pay people to produce Free content. But there are many fields where it would 
useful to pay people to produce Free (as in freedom) content.

For exemple, we could have a Free news website with paid journalists that 
could get to places forbiden to amateurs like in press conferences or get 
interviews with celebrities.

We could have a Free photography agency that could send professionals to take 
pictures and videos all over the world, especially where amateurs won't be 
allowed like in war zones.

We could have a publishing company that would pay specialists to write Free 
books about subjects where we lack tertiary sources. It would be a great way 
not to antagonize renowned scientists who might get bitten if they edit 
Wikipedia directly.

Those Free texts, pictures, videos, etc. could then be used by the Wikimedia 
projects by amateurs.

Best regards.

-- 
Lionel Allorge
April : http://www.april.org
Lune Rouge : http://www.lunerouge.org
Wikimedia France : http://wikimedia.fr