Slashdot Mirror
Should Wikipedians Edit Stories For Pay?
Hugh Pickens writes "The Register reports that a longtime Wikipedia admin has been caught offering to edit the online encyclopedia in exchange for cash. Someone noticed a post to an online job marketplace where he was advertising his services: 'Besides technical writing, I also am an accomplished senior Wikipedia administrator with several featured articles to my name,' read the post, which has since been changed. 'If you need a good profile on Wikipedia, I can help you out there too through my rich experience.' Wikipedia promptly opened a discussion page to try to reach consensus on the community view of 'paid editing.' So far opinion seems to be divided between those who say it's ok as long as full disclosure is made and 'edits are compliant with WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:BLP, WP:N,' and others who believe that paid editing automatically creates a conflict of interest. Back in 2006, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales shot down a company known as MyWikiBiz, which promised that you could 'author your legacy on the Internet.' The company subsequently had to reinvent itself with no reference to Wikipedia. 'It is not ok with me that anyone ever set up a service selling their services as a Wikipedia editor, administrator, bureaucrat, etc., I will personally block any cases that I am shown,' wrote Wales."
for positive arguments on the consensus reaching page? I need a well-written, convincing opinion advocating in favor of market forces.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Just like Wikipedia discourages people to make edits of a person's own article for themselves, this should also be discouraged. Once you receive money for edits you've made, you're no longer an uninterested third party and have a biased voice. There's no way to enforce this so Wikipedia will have to just continue accepting/rejecting edits based inherently on the edit and what bias it itself may hold.
My work here is dung.
Wikipedia has grown to be the biggest encyclopedia in the world without paying anybody. I don't see why they should start now. We all contribute to Wikipedia and expect nothing in return. That's how we pay for the articles - with our kindness.
Copyright. Yeah. That would work. You could keep other people from diluting your work by using the protection afforded by copyright laws. That would be great. Thank goodness that we have copyright! That way, people who want to protect the integrity of their work have the legal authority to do so!
TELL THE WIKITRUTH
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
How many people would support The Church of Scientology paying people to edit and publish stories on Wikipedia?
Still not clear enough?
How many people would support The Church of Scientology paying a Wikipedia ADMIN to edit and publish stories on Wikipedia?
Copyright. Yeah. That would work. You could keep other people from diluting your work by using the protection afforded by copyright laws. That would be great. Thank goodness that we have copyright! That way, people who want to protect the integrity of their work have the legal authority to do so!
You mean do copyright right? Rather than copyright-as-an-anti-distribution tool?
Anybody want my mod points?
Youtubes demise? Deleting full episodes, editing comments, deleting controversial videos and muting personal videos.
Wikipedia? Going from a user generated non bias global collaborative encyclopedia to just an encyclopedia.
Once these companies get big enough, the always revert back to standard business models. This however is always completely against what made them so good to begin with, youtube became famous for the very content they now destroy, and pay people to seek out.
Next in line? Google......
They all sell out.
There's an excellent analysis by user Ha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Paid_Editing#Statement_by_Ha.21 who shows that versions made for pay are generally PR puff pieces at best. He's expanded that to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ha!/paid_editing_adverts which drives the point home even further. Allowing paid editing would be the death of anything resembling neutrality. There are serious problems with neutrality already, but this would kill it completely.
Brittanica pays its editors and authors after all. I think if you pay someone to edit articles, it ought to be fine, as long as they are about subjects in which you have no vested interest. Ethically, there wouldn't be a problem there, although there might be some technical issues in actually making sure that that is the case.
I mean, if someone's a good writer/researcher, and someone else wants to sponsor them (pay their bills so they can concentrate on writing/researching), what would be wrong with that?
... can we pay certain people not to edit it?
Have gnu, will travel.
I think there are two types of paid editors, one as an image improver, the other as writing good articles. For example, an "image improver" would be one who goes to a company's page and changes earning reports to make the company seem profitable. Or someone who carefully edits information on the latest politician involved in a scandal. Those type of things should be expressly banned. On the other hand there are some who can focus on writing good articles. For example, an author of, say a band might hire someone to add in more things about the band, particularly if they aren't that well-known yet, things that are verifiable yet add things to the article such as home towns, personal info, discography, etc. Things that if written correctly would not be objectionable.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Only if wikipeida were a paid-subscription site.
It doesnt make sense to me take ad revenue from the site to pay every jackass that changes "there" to "their"
Do you really believe that a company would hire a Wikipedia admin to wedge an article about said company onto Wikipedia because said company was looking for a NEUTRAL point of view?
Is that because there just aren't enough decent writers out there? Or that those other decent writers want way too much money?
Or is it because those companies believe that an admin would have the best chance of getting a biased story posted?
Copyright is not an "anti-distribution tool". It's an anti-unauthorized-unpaid-distribution tool. Don't bring your propaganda here.
Every single time I post, I get paid. Mod points increase the amount. It's awesome and increases the quality of my contributions here. Why some discussions I get dozens of posts and rake in the dough!
(Sssh, don't tell Cmdr Taco!)
Seems to me that if a paid writer edited a page and it conformed to community standards (notariety, neutral POV, sourced, etc.), there wouldn't be a problem. If the writing didn't conform, then it would get rejected by the community, and the writer would likely not get paid. (And if someone wants to pay somebody to make rejected edits to Wikipedia, that's called a fiscal stimulus.)
There are plenty of ways to have a vested interest besides being directly paid, and Wikipedians have been very successful in finding and correcting egregiously self-serving edits. Why would writers getting paid break the current system?
Painting the hundreds of thousands of editors and millions of readers as "idiots" may be a little extreme. Some wikipedia pages provide an excellent reference. And especially where readers do not pay for the info that they receive I think we need to relax a bit. In terms of value wikipedia is one of the best deals on the Internet.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Wikipedia has a reward board where people can offer cash or other rewards for articles to be created or (usually) improved to a certain standard. There is also a bounty board to offer donations to the Wikimedia Foundation for similar tasks. I have personally given $300 to individuals who have worked to raise furry articles to good article status. I see nothing wrong with this. A good article must, by definition, be neutral, and if it is not on a notable subject, it is very unlikely to achieve the status. Frankly, given the amount of skill and effort it takes to meet the requirements (I've done it myself, I know how tough it is), $50 an article is cheap.
Ever check out the favorite topics and edits of some of the popular wikipedia editors? They have their personal bias's already. Its been biased editing going on since day one. People can say it doesn't happen, but it does. It has a very large group of editors who think alike and push the rules towards their own beliefs and moderate accordingly. They already use the rules to ban or alter topics they have strong opinions about, even though this goes against the rules.
They might as well, just open the flood gates and let what spin offs happen. This is the motto of open source as a whole. As long as the information is free and everyone can add/change articles, let the public do what what they want.
I'd rather see it open to more topics, and less editor heavy handed on people or topics they dont like. Do we really need every simpson episode in full detail articles yet smaller articles are routinely deleted because some biased editors report they are not popular enough?
Wikipedia could be so much, but its bogged down in politics and personal agendas. Might as well open up more, than trying to rule it with an iron fist.
Anytime someone is paid for something there is a slanted "opinion". Pay me enough I'll tell you anything you want to hear, I'll slam any person, or business if the price is right. This is entirely contradictory to the spirit of a wiki.
It looks like the person in question has done exactly that. I can't link straight to the page but here is the author's profile. Click on "Web Content (9)". This will show reviews of his work. He was paid $125 for a project titled "Wikipedia submission for my new product". He even got a rating of 4.9 out of 5.0 for the work. He was paid $150 for another project title "Write our Wikipedia Listing for Our Company".
My bad - he has not received money from Wikimedia ever. Even if he did have a salary, it would be to administer, not to create content.
When I am under contract with a person or corporation to write an article about said person or corporation, I have very, very, very little interest in presenting an "advocacy" position on behalf of that entity. Rather, success is measured in durability within Wikipedia, so my highest priority is...
How do I write (and publish) this article in such a way that it passes WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, and all the other WP:things, while simultaneously NOT DRAWING THE ATTENTION of someone from the WikiHive intent on deleting paid promotional puff pieces?
Guess what? The articles that result are relatively bland, not puff pieces, quite encyclopedic, and (ever since I learned this technique) 100% durable within Wikipedia -- with surprisingly little follow-up maintenance, and likewise lasting appreciation of my clients.
This already happens and inevitably will become more common as Wikipedia's profile rises. WP might as well get out in front of it with policies that make it easier to police and verify.
Currently, PR firms who are hired by companies to raise their profile already add biased, poorly sourced puff pieces to Wikipedia. They are promptly shredded by the community and deleted in nine cases out of ten. They do, however, create a lot of work for Wikipedian volunteers, usually because the PR people in question know websites generally, but nothing about the rules and culture that govern Wikipedia. They also do not generally disclose up front that they have a business relationship with the company they're writing the article about.
There's an argument to be made that there's an advantage to replacing these PR firms with people who are already clued in to Wikipedia's culture and guidelines. They could communicate up front to a client what will and won't fly on WP, and the best way to add verifiable information about the company without running afoul of neutrality and verifiability guidelines. If all these paid editors do on behalf of their employer is add content and provide sources, as long as their work is in accord with policy I don't see a reason to care that they are getting paid.
There are freelance wackos and fanboys that attempt to sabotage or whitewash pages about companies and other institutions as it is. How are paid editors different? At least you could require them to declare their influences. Make stringent requirements about disclosure, and allow paid editors to edit and provide info in talk pages, but not to take any administrative actions on the pages they're paid to edit. Any violation results in a topic ban for that account.
...I suppose on what is really being paid for. Are you paying for someone to spin an article in your favor, or are you simply paying to make sure that the article is well done, well formatted, and grammatically correct. I see no objections to the latter, honestly.
so i will send you the $50 we discussed previously via paypal now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There's not shortage of pages that could use grammar/etc. repair.
Would this be an issue if it were an anonymous contributor?
There is an interesting topic on how one "leading Wikipedia" David Shankbone Miller got paid by the Israeli government and given all sorts of professional advantages, such as introductions famous authors and Shimon Peres, in an attempt to curry favor with the Wikipedia camp.
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=24358
The big joke is what they got back were pictures of pissing goats and dimly lit gay clubs. Probably not the kid of PR Israel thought they were buying.
By all accounts, this guy had had more than one trip out to Israel paid for and yet there is no discussion of this kind of sponsorship. No one is accounting for it. He did stick this one photo up though ...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palestinian_boy_with_toy_guy_in_Nazareth_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
and tried adding the title, "A recent study by Herzogâ(TM)s trauma centre found that 33 per cent of Israeli youth have been affected personally by terrorism, either by being at the scene of an attack or by knowing someone injured or killed by terrorists. Seventy per cent of those surveyed reported increased subjective fear or hopelessness." ... a nice bit of bought "NPOV" and a good reason why it should not be allowed.
It would appear that this particular gun has backfired on his paymasters.
Here's a note about a man who claimed that he was being "paid" by Microsoft to edit Wikipedia articles. He also claimed to be a contributor for OOXML on Wikipedia. His contributions following this article were being dismissed as biased.
There are two parts to this issue. They are (1) "Should Wikipedia offer to pay those who edit articles?" and (2) "Should any Wikipedia contributor get paid for contributing articles?" On (1), Wikipedia's stance is clear, they are not willing to pay anyone to edit articles. They would like to continue with their open model with little or no moderation. On (2) they are merely talking about the quality of the resultant article. They seriously do not have a mechanism to stop a 3rd party Wikimedia contributor from contributing for money or for the sake of love of the subject or for personal bias.
IMHO, Wikipedia must avoid policing any and all editors unless they are on their own Payroll. Their open model has served as a simple mechanism to collect relevant information on a topic which may or may not necessarily be accurate. There have been enough debates that have concluded that Wikipedia cannot be quoted as a citation for serious scientific study due to lack of moderation and verification of sources.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
you would still have donated.. right? sure. sure.
NPOV doesnt mean a lack of critical content, it means viewpoints can be mentioned but not one to the exclusivity of others.
but in general 'fans' of something dont want any critical viewpoints even mentioned. they dont understand NPOV.
so, whatever.
...Those with the most time on their hands.
They always have been.
Just try and outlast, say, a bored housewife with an axe to grind and nothing better to do than grind it.
Or maybe the unemployed aspiring journalist who likes to insert references to himself and his work into half the existing Wikipedia entries.
And then there are the relentlessly self-promoting ego-monsters who believe Wikipedia was created solely for to allow them to finally reveal their greatness and grandeur to the world.
Or the high school kid hellbent on mindless vandalism to impress his little friends, as well as for the sheer pleasure of it.
Those are just a few obvious ones, but there are many others.
Wikipedia is a wonderful concept, but unfortunately it's an utter bitch in reality.
Crap. Reading comprehension, FTW!
I need some caffeine, sixty seconds ago.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I don't see a problem with users being paid to write. All mechanisms to deal with astroturfing, POV pushing and so on are already in place, and, frankly, there are quite enough people willing to do all those things already even without being paid. A few more paid shills won't make things substantially worse, and there may still be those who get paid and actually write good (as far as WP is concerned) articles.
Now admins are another matter. Adminship abuse is harder to point out and prove, and they have much more power, and can consequently deal that much more damage before rooted out. I'd say that being on someone's payroll specifically to deal with WP matters should immediately disqualify one from being an administrator, or applying for that position.
Don't bring your propaganda here.
Gentlemen, you can't spread propaganda in here! This is Slashdot.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Whether the actual person is paid or not is irrelevant. The same reviewing process should take place.
Also, I don't see anything wrong with paying someone to write articles for me. Writing articles is certainly time-consuming work that I'd rather have someone else do than myself, so that I can focus on my job.
An example is if I'm part of some community around a newly created programming language X, and we need to create a good wikipedia page to advertise, demonstrate, etc. our language. The community is busy working on the runtime, what we're actually good at, so hiring someone to do that page for us seems like a good idea.
As long at it is only products, technologies, or something like and not controversial historic stuff there is no such thing as bias anyway.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... then someone with an agenda of their own just comes and edits straight over it?
Unless I'm missing something here, that just seems like a waste.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
If you do not count the biology vs. religion debate, it is difficult to find bias in the hard sciences. Facts are facts and there is no reason why anyone would have a disputed yet irrefutable idea. Maybe science foundations can set up a program that rewards editors whose articles become featured.
I like the idea of Wikipedia contributors getting paid, and I like the idea of the money coming from those who want articles about specific topics created or enriched.
The only downside is the risk of bias. How can you remove that risk?
Quick thought: Anyone can put money, and a target topic, into a kitty. The most funded topics get paid research done on them. The researchers are not told who put the money in the fund. So they don't know if they payer was a supporter or critic.
If someone has an unbiased desire for a more rich Wikipedia, this approach works just fine. If they want a particular spin, there's no data channel for their preference to be communicated.
Just a quick rough thought - how could you make it work better?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Of course. I would be disappointed if an article reached good article status without mentioning such things, as coverage of the topic should be broad. In fact, the very first article concerned, furry convention, had to have coverage of critical response to such events added before it could become a good article.
"wikipedia is already biased and untrustworthy." - Anonymous comment on a random forum.
Heaven forbid we rely on a referenced article that's on Wikipedia. But yes, obviously I'll take your word for it.
And that's different to any other source in existence, how exactly?
Also, the obvious point is to look at whether there's a reference given. The fact that Wikipedia gives references places Wikipedia ahead of the vast majority of sources out there (including virtually all of the media).
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were to pay someone to edit some of the healthcare articles, I probably would be happy with that, but if they edited IT and computing articles, I wouldn't be so happy.
What reason is there to believe that they have any relevant expertise in health care? And if they did, wouldn't that make it a conflict of interest?
I put little credence in anything I read on Wikipedia; all of the articles regarding subjects that I have first hand experience with get something wrong.
11 years ago, I made a mistake editing about.el in XEmacs - I wrote 1998 instead of "present", which Wikipedia had faithfully copied the last time I checked. (checking again) I suppose I should be happy that Wikipedia has deleted my contributions entirely rather than continue to copy that mistake. Good going Wikipedians.
The fact that Wikipedia gives references places Wikipedia ahead of the vast majority of sources out there (including virtually all of the media).
Heh. I find it vastly amusing that one of those media sites does include sources for everything - http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/
(And I trust Rush a lot more than I trust Wikipedia, even if I'm not on the Neocon bandwagon).
Well, one of my paid articles about a pharmaceutical remedy receives over 5,000 page views on Wikipedia per month. I don't know how YOU define "non-notable", but apparently there are over 5,000 people a month search for information on Wikipedia about some of my "crap" that I put there.
This is the sort of idiot response I had to put up with on Wikipedia, and frankly, one of the main reasons I just went underground. I got tired of arguing with teenagers who lack a foundation in logic.