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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.
It's that sort of reasoning that gets us ridiculous laws regarding child porn (like kids sexting eachother being charged as sex offenders). If you imagine the worst possible scum when making laws, you get stupidly over-broad laws.
If a person is skilled at writing, it seems reasonable for that person to make a living at writing. It seems that there is a huge bias against people making a living, although we do celebrate the super-rich.
Of course, if the guy who owns the site makes paid copy against the rules, that's his prerogative because its his site. But this isn't a moral issue -- it's an ownership issue.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.
Which works great right up to the point where someone is actually convicted for something that should never have been a crime to begin with.
How many stupid things did you do as a teenager? I mean little meaningless things -- imagine your life if you got busted for one of the frequent lapses in intelligence that plague teenagers, but instead of some slap on the wrist commensurate with the misdeed, you had to walk around the rest of your life with the equivalent of a scarlet letter, shunned, unable to get good work, and reviled by everyone who assume because of that scarlet letter, that you did something really really nasty. That's an utterly random result that makes people disrespect the law and start thinking revolutionary or counter-cultural ideas. It is in no way an actual deterrent and serves instead to undermine government. If we had a law that said the police can shoot dead every 10th speeder they catch, it might be a deterrent. Enough laws like that though, and you can expect violent resistance.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I honestly don't believe that any contributor posts with a neutral point of view actually. That a person gets paid, just makes their biases more obvious. However, again, it ultimately comes down to whether he's obeying the rules or not, not his lack of neutrality.
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.
Charging children with crimes like these is outrageous. That would be like charging them with copyright violations and slapping them with huge fines for downloading music they did not pay for. Oh, wait...
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
How about the fact that the age of consent is below 18 in most states, meaning that while it's legal for teenagers to engage in all sorts of sexual activity, a girl taking a picture in her underwear can land her in prison for 10 years with a permanent registration as a danger to children?
If you don't see anything wrong with that, you need your vision checked.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
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!
Interestingly, Wikitruth is now frozen, claiming to have won.
Somehow, I think it's true; more and more people understand that you can use Wikipedia at the same time as questioning it. Many people have learned how to question all media (the problems of Wikipedia are the same as those of traditional media, just more obvious). At the same time there's a whole load of anti-wikipedia people who just wanted to destroy. That doesn't seem to have happened.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I honestly don't believe that any contributor posts with a neutral point of view actually.
A NPOV is the author trying to present information in the best interests of the typical reader. The author is human, has incomplete information and so cannot be completely unbiased but nonetheless they make a best effort.
That a person gets paid, just makes their biases more obvious.
A non-NPOV is the author trying to present information in the best interests of the writer. They are trying to manipulate the reader into making irrational judgments based on incomplete and biased information in favour of the writer, not the reader. The author is not making a best effort for the reader at all.
I know which I'd prefer.
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An unobtrusive ad is a non-functional ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
The point of wikipedia is that, as anyone can edit it, the non-neutral point of view is easily fixed by.
On the other hand, if you buy an editor, which is someone who has the power to block edits and has the power of perceived authority given by the common user of wikipedia. That means that if some organization pays an editor to edit someone, that organization is counting on the power granted to that editor to make their piece of propaganda be edit-proof by any common user who sees through the bullshit and takes it upon himself to fix that crap. After all, those organizations are only starting to talk about paying off editors after their less expensive paid astroturfers stopped being efficient.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.