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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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
That's not quite how corporations pay for their articles.
Oh sure, that's who I'm talking about. People paid to manipulate wikipedia in the interest of a corporation. /sarcasm
I'm talking about the average wikinerd, who spends his or her spare time compiling huge lists, writing articles on even the most obscure relics from pop culture, and editing every little misspelling and fuck-you they see. The ones with user pages littered with barnstars and embarrassing userboxes detailing their interest in siberian huskies and stamp collecting. Your meat and potatoes wikipedian. They don't do it for money. They do it for the love of wikipedia. They are fucking hardcore!