Hi Russavia -
I'll copyedit it for clarity later, but I see absolutely no contradiction between what I wrote and what I've said since. Your last email contained a pretty substantial suggestion that doesn't seem to be backed up by anything I've written anywhere. Honestly, from your last email, I'm not entirely certain you actually *read* the statement about paid editing that I have on my talk page. As I say in it, I believe that most collaborations between cultural institutions and Wikipedia are likely to be quite fruitful, that current 'corporate' paid editing should be greeted with a grain of salt, and that most current 'corporate' paid editing is inconsistent. I've said nowhere that all WiR positions result in awesomeness, and have equally said nowhere that all 'corporate' paid editing is bad - just suggested that we approach traditional WiR collaborations with initial good faith because our missions line up quite well most of the time, and approach 'corporate' paid editing with a grain (or ten) of salt because we're much less likely to have congruent mission.
I'd love to see a full report about what happened at Belfer, and I suspect that what happened there falls in to the portion of collaborations with cultural institutions that are *not* quite fruitful. The details I've gathered of what hapened at Belfer suggest that it was significantly more ethical than Wiki-PR or most of the other 'corporate' paid editing I run in to, but certainly suggest that it fell short of what we should aspire to. I know a couple dozen current WMF employees, but so does most of this list - that doesn't really make me part of any 'in-crowd'. If you can explain how you somehow thought that the snippet of my paid editing post you quoted indicated '''in context''' that I support unethical practices on the part of WiR's, please let me know, so I can clarify the wording so no one else encounters the same confusion.
Best, Kevin Gorman
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Kevin, I am intrigued by your comments in relation to Belfer.
Whilst your paid position at Berkeley is a great opportunity, and congrats on that, I can't help but think that you haven't been exactly forthcoming with the media. Or you are in denial about numerous things.
I see at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Kevin_Gorman&oldid=59577... you present your views on paid editing, with an interesting caveat at the bottom:
"Nothing in this section is intended to apply to Wikipedian in Residence-type programs, and similar collaborations between Wikipedia and cultural and educational institutions. I think that our missions match up with cultural institutions quite well, and I think that collaborations between us and them are likely to be quite fruitful."
I, and many in the community, couldn't disagree more. If anything, the ethical standards for a paid Wikipedian-in-Residence are higher than a commercial outfit. The very reputation of the WiR program depends on it.
Unfortunately, the Belfer Wikipedian in Residence was anything but ethical, and since Odder's blog post I have done some research on this, and I am gob-smacked at what I have found. Kevin, you are part of the in-crowd of the WMF, perhaps you could ask them for their report on the Belfer position. It is required for all grants I believe. As someone who is so vocal on the ethics of paid editing (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/wikipedia-editors-locked-in-battl...) you will surely want to see the report. Perhaps it will answer why, in your words, the position, and everything surrounding it, was "so under the radar".
Cheers
Russavia
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:32 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Tomasz is right that Belfer was first... but Belfer was done so under the radar that I actually had never even realized that someone had been hired for the position until I stumbled across Tomasz's blog about it, some time after the initial announcement of my position at Berkeley. I had a conversation about the matter afterwards with Berkeley's news people and with most of the journalists who have contacted me about it since the initial NewsCenter posting, and the general feeling has pretty much been that Belfer's practices were different enough from the norm of what a Wikipedian-in-Residence is that people have been comfortable running the story without a bunch of caveats to explain Belfer. There's also Arild Vågen's previous position at SLU, which is why most places are going with "first US university" rather than "first university."
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