Hi David,
you say that "A large number of these persons are paid editors / PR -SEO
"consultants" who have worked themselves up to positions of
administrators".
Although there is no clear evidence, there is a lot of mistrust and
suspicion about "paid editing". Since people need to make a living, they
find a way to market their skills, sometimes honestly and other times
dishonestly. Not everybody can combine a job and take positions of
responsibility in the movement without burning out after a while.
However you come to say that the WMF should "purge all rogue editors" and I
consider that it is wrong to consider the WMF as the police of the site. It
is right to have assistance in legal matters when the community requests
it, but it would compromise the autonomy of the movement if the wmf would
take an interventionist role. It would do more damage than good >>
I do advocate for an evolution in the culture of the community, but that
cannot come from external sources, it has to come from volunteers
themselves taking more responsibility, increasing the partnership with the
professional arm of the movement, and creating in the process more trust to
take appropriate action - and there is never a solid definition of what it
constitutes.
When I started the tread I mentioned other volunteership models (like WOOF,
or workaway) that could help create more trust. It is unclear if it could
work for us, or if it would be scalable, but given the state of the
movement perhaps it doesn't hurt so much to try new things and see how it
goes.
Cheers,
Micru
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 2:58 AM, David Emrany <david.emrany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi David,
It would be even nicer if we have more editors editing voluntarily
instead of driving them away.
In the present scenario a University of Minnesota report by Aaron Halfaker
says
"The declining number of editors is not due to the site's inability to
keep longtime editors contributing. Instead it can't keep new editors
from sticking around, due to an abrasive collective of editors and a
system that is crushingly bureaucratic." [1]
English Wikipedia's biggest problem today is its established
syndicates of 90% white male "content creators" and their
self-protecting policies. A large number of these persons are paid
editors / PR -SEO "consultants" who have worked themselves up to
positions of administrators, Arbs, and WMF Trustees and blatantly
misused their positions and lied about their background / Conflicts of
Interest.
I suggest its high time now for the WMF to directly take legal
responsibility for the actions and policies of their (mostly)
anonymous users and what is "hosted" on WMF servers.
I suggest the WMF should immediately institute a regime of verified
identities for its users and administrators across all its projects,
and purge all rogue editors (along with their self serving
so-called""community" policies) who are damaging the credibility of
its projects, including through paid editing.
David
[1]
http://www.businessinsider.in/Wikipedia-Could-Degenerate-If-It-Cant-Fix-Oneā¦
On 2/29/16, David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
James, I think it is very nice to put measures
against paid editing, but
it
would be nicer to put measures to get editors
more free time to edit
voluntarily...
There are not that many suggestions on how to do it, so it could be that
it
cannot be done.
Cheers,
Micru
On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 6:14 AM, James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> With respect to paid promotional editing, I have done a bit work trying
to
> address it. For example I reached out to
Upworks the company behind
Elance
> and Fiverr and they are interested in working
together on this. Have
been
> a
> little distracted and not sure if there is sufficient community or
> foundation support to move forwards.
>
> With respect to using AI to detect paid editing, I spoke with Aaron
> Halfaker about the possibility in Nov 2015. What he needed was datasets
of
confirmed
paid promotional editors. I have sent him some details. If
others
have details that would likely be useful. Things are in the very very
early
stages from what I understand.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
--
Etiamsi omnes, ego non
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>