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Wikipedia Forcing Editors To Disclose If They're Paid
mpicpp sends word that the Wikimedia Foundation is updating its Terms of Use to keep track of editors who are paid for the changes they make. This follows last fall's discovery that a small industry had arisen around public relations firms running Wikipedia editing campaigns for paying clients. The Foundation now says, "If you are paid to edit, you will need to disclose your paid editing to comply with the new Terms of Use. You need to add your affiliation to your edit summary, user page, or talk page, to fairly disclose your perspective. ... Specific policies on individual Wikimedia projects, or relevant laws in your country (such as those prohibiting fraudulent advertising), may require further disclosure or prohibit paid advocacy editing altogether." They add, "undisclosed paid advocacy editing is a black hat practice that can threaten the trust of Wikimedia’s volunteers and readers."
Transparent loot
While breeze they shoot
Seems as big a win
As visible chin
Burma Shave
(break failure)
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
That'll put a stop to it.
Also, criminals are asked to kindly inform local law enforcement before committing their next crime.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Are you being paid to first-post nonsense?
It's a good idea, but how can it be enforced? And what about those who are affiliated with a particular company or government but not necessarily paid to make edits?
I doubt that paid editors are a problem compared to the volunteer power tripping crazies that control the majority of Wikipedia.
What are they going to do if you don't comply?
Need we comment further?
And what about Russian or Chinese hordes of biased editors paid by their governments? They plague not only comment section of pretty much any mainstream news website, but also Wikipedia as well. Try for example the WWII article -- it's so full of paeans of praise for the Soviet Union that someone who doesn't know better would take them for heroes who almost single-handedly liberated the world.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I've turned it off 6 times today. Usually I go to slashdot and open links I'm interested in tabs, since yesterday it has decided to randomly switch clicked links to beta, and switching to classic at the bottom drops me to the main page. So I had to close the tabs, find the story I want, and when I'm done, click classic, and repeat. This is ridiculous. When I tried to post this comment under beta, it disappeared after clicking preview perhaps because I don't use javascript for safety reasons. Soylentnews must be amused by their referrer logs at this point.
Good luck! It's like abscam. ANY senator can be bought. They all already are!
Paid editing is exactly what will happen when you don't let companies simply edit their own pages. The community should be strong enough that if the company doesn't edit the page fairly, it is reverted, but instead, they decided to nanny-state the thing and tell companies off for doing so.
Not all companies are going to immediately edit their page from "Pepsi is ranked as the #X most purchased soft drink in the world" to "COKE SUCKS! BUY PEPSI NOW!" and Wikipedia should respect that.
Sorry, I keep forgetting that we've entered the Age of Humorlessness.
Hey editors, when Fall in a sentence refers to the season, it's capitalized.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Paid or not, they are "anyone".
That wikipedia is taken seriously as a source of information still astounds me. When anyone can post and say anything, its no better than asking your friends at the local Bar.
Lookout! Here come the Wikipedia Stooges to mod this down!
"Wikipedia Forcing Editors To Disclose If They're Paid"
That sounds like it was written by a high school kid. A more palatable headline would be:
"Wikipedia Forcing Editors To Disclose Compensation"
Now that sounds like could have been written by a professional (even though the notion is laughable here at slashdot). Pro tip: competence in writing earns you respect, even if you don't give a damn yourself about competence in writing.
That wikipedia is taken seriously as a source of information still astounds me.
It depends entirely on the topic. Want to know about some mathematical concept, it usually works just fine. Some non-controversial historical fact, again, it usually works just fine. Want to know about something that is a politicized issue, good luck, although still possibly a better source than the news shows where many get their info.
Here's a hint: look at the references, they are often an indicator of the quality of the page and a great source of additional information.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The policy still doesn't make clear if an employee of a company always counts as a "paid contributor" if their job duties do not involve Wikipedia and they can expect no payment, recognition, etc. from their employer for their activities. Is that considered a "volunteer edit" or would my mere paycheck make me a "paid contributor"?
We have wars going on all over wikipedia due to different views and beliefs that far outweigh the business and pr companies.
Many non paid editors have very in-depth political viewpoints, and they attack other groups reporting on information in articles they disagree with.
The worst I've seen are the feminists against male rape statistics and anything male related. I can only assume its because colleges promote such a militant viewpoint on feminism it runs over into other areas of sexual statistics and thus becomes political.
I've seen many editors who are members of originations who delete anything that could be considered a counter argument with the established, but can often be incorrect due to education and their circle of influence related to their school or organization.
Another example. An amateur historian who would find common misconceptions and provide articles to show the common viewpoint is not correct by using government links. Many editors that are enrolled in college history courses would remove his work. He finally just used his personal page and put up the corrections so at least they are online. The point was he was correction known flaws taught in higher education with GOVERNMENT backed evidence.
It sickens me, that the truth can be deleted by editors with agendas. I've seen the history re-written due to lack of publications of news and tv reportings that are from the early 80's and older. But we can have entire animated tv show episodes articles with great detail, as thats the level of knowledge as historically important.
This is why we need all magazines and newspapers online also, the history and reporting of opnion is harder to argue when the only source is wikipedia.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, the Soviets were the ones who did most of the killing and dying in the Allies side of the conflict.
Yes, when your Generals are selected for political reliability rather than military competency your army does tend to do quite a bit of the dying. Its not really a metric to boast about.
Also a bit of that dying occurred because the Soviets started the war as an **ally** of the Nazis and Stalin refused to believe reports that the Nazis were about to betray their alliance. Yes, an ally. When you go beyond a public non-aggression pact and secretly agree to both invade Poland and take half the country each you are an ally. The Soviets remained loyal to their ally until they were betrayed.
Hey editors, when Fall in a sentence refers to the season, it's capitalized.
Mod parent way way up! It's absolutely false in this context, so, in the proud Slashdot tradition, it deserves to be modded +5, Informative so that all the nerds can proudly trumpet yet more misinformation to the world!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a "news" forum, not open mic night... maybe.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This is a "news" forum.
News to me..
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
(pushes ColdWetDog offstage)
"I for one would rather first post rubbish for free on slashdot than be paid to edit Wikipedia. That sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant task, certainly on certain subjects".
(braces for impact)
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
agreed
You do realize that the government is a collection of people? Yup, all of my edits show up under a military IP. It's me, I'm not paid to edit shit, mostly to just sit here in case we decide to end civilization.
It sickens me, that the truth can be deleted by editors with agendas. I've seen the history re-written due to lack of publications of news and tv reportings that are from the early 80's and older. But we can have entire animated tv show episodes articles with great detail, as thats the level of knowledge as historically important.
It's not there because it is important, the trivia is there because it's not in dispute and backed up by third party references. Isn't plain facts regardless of seriousness the perfect kind of information to put on Wikipedia? It's far more structured and cohesive than using Google, it rarely shows up unless it's what you're looking for and it's not like the encyclopedia is going to run out of pages or balloon the printing costs. And most importantly, it wouldn't help. Nobody who wants to write about Pokemon characters or GoT plot summaries is going to get into an edit war with paid shills on serious topics, they'd just be over at some fan site instead.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why are paid people allowed to post at all? Shouldn't their mod privileges be revoked when it is discovered they are paid?
Good-bye
Fantastic news.
I mention my Wikipedia activities in the "Other interests" section of my CV but I'm always worried that employers will misinterpret it as an offer to polish their image. With this rule change, if an employer does ask me to "Hey, since you know how this wiki thing works, can you correct some stuff?" I can say that I could but I'd have to declare it as being paid work.
That'll make them less interested, so I'm less likely to get put in that situation to begin with.
(Some other comments rubbished the idea because it won't get 100% compliance but they're missing the point. Improvement is improvement.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Once again, Wikipedia proves that they don't know how the internet works. Hey Wikipedia, slashmydots is my name in real life as well.
The policy should be: if you're paid to write, get the fuck out!
I'm not going to dig through the history of every article, and follow link to the authors, to check whether it is a paid shill.
I love it when grammar Nazi's eat crow. :D
Are you being paid to first-post nonsense?
Yes.
The first few posts of any article are by far the most influential. It's a valuable piece of screen real estate, and whoever gets it can frame the following discussion.
A lot of the Social Media Management (SMM) toolkits include automatic posting scripts that load offtopic but amusing snippets as soon as the article opens. These postings can then be responded to by other sockpuppet accounts if the later submitters start discussions that need to be managed. If the snippets are inoffensive enough not to attract too many downmods, the sockpuppets team can discreetly continue to promote them into visibility, and in any event, their follow up framing postings will be ontopic, (though offthread) and can be positively modded into visibility directly without attracting too much metamod attention,
http://www.voloper.com/documen...
With so many editors breaking the rules already, what makes Wikipedia think suddenly everyone is going to turn honest and report their "earnings"? This announcement is just propaganda, nothing more.
The problem isnt plan facts, its the missing facts editors delete. And the issue are not what facts are deleted, its the reasons behind the deletions.
Take politics, the theme now is to direct the narative in news. This is what is being done in articles, its not facts, its a view of the facts from a group with interests. This is the reason they dont want paid editors, they change the narative.
One mans terrrorist is another mans freedom fighter. Its the narative.