Wikipedia:Paid editing (guideline)

Note: This page is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline. It is an attempt to summarize existing policies and guidelines that relate to the general topic of paid editing.

Paid editing, or editing Wikipedia articles in return for material reward or compensation, raises a number of concerns. Although there may be some forms of compensation which are generally acceptable, there are other forms which are seen by many editors as unacceptable.

Background

Paid editing is a topic that continues to be the subject of many strongly divided discussions, particularly an extensive Requests for comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Paid editing in June 2009. Some users support forbidding paid editing altogether, based on the belief that it invites biased contributions and creates more work for the project than it saves. Other users feel that some forms of paid editing have always taken place and remain acceptable if the contributions align with policies and guidelines on content and contributing. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has previously blocked editors, and stated his support for blocking editors who set up an editing service. He added that editors wishing to do so should instead freely license their work and publish it elsewhere allowing Wikipedia editors to use it if they desired.

Wikipedia utilizes WP:Consensus to build content and maintain the project. Disrupting the consensus processes including policy and deletion discussions is prohibited. Advocacy and conflict of interest editing against consensus is also prohibited. Editing in this manner may result in blocks or banning from Wikipedia.

Advocacy and conflict of interest

Any form of advocacy is forbidden by WP:NPOV. Paid advocacy, which is any contribution or edit to Wikipedia content that advocates for your employer's point of view, or is likely to benefit your employer's business interests, is considered to be an especially egregious form of advocacy. Significant information and widely held opinions that are documented in reliable sources that are contrary to your employer's point of view or business interests must be included.

Wales also stated that he felt paid advocates should contribute to articles on the article talkpages.

The guideline on conflicts of interest (COI) must be observed at all times. Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest. When someone is being compensated, the integrity of the work, including the likelihood the content remains neutral toward those who are doing the compensating, is reasonably considered to be compromised.

Advice

If you are engaging in paid editing or dealing with what might be considered a paid editing situation, please keep the following advice in mind:

• Paid editors are encouraged to create a user account on Wikipedia, and retain this over time, even if not all their editing is received positively. This helps you to build an accurate reputation, and helps other editors to scrutinize your contributions overall.
• All content is edited mercilessly, sometimes very quickly. Make sure your employer(s) understand this in advance. If you create an article that is not in compliance with Wikipedia's policies on notability and reliable sourcing it will likely be deleted. Do not game the system to prevent this.
• Do not copy material verbatim from an employer's website or publications, unless they have donated the material as described at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. Simply telling you that you can use it is not sufficient to comply with Wikipedia's legal requirements. You can use those as self-published sources if you attribute them accurately.
• Do not submit to Wikipedia any newly written materials that are a work for hire with copyright owned by the person or company paying you, unless that copyright owner has specifically granted permission for the material under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and that grant is confirmed through the OTRS process. This issue can apply to independent contractors, as well as to employees, and the legal issue will also vary by jurisdiction.

If you are uncertain about whether your contribution is appropriate, you can begin by creating the article as a user subpage. To do this, visit your user page and then add to the URL a slash ("/") followed by the name of the subpage. You can then request feedback on your subpage from more experienced users before using the "Move" feature to move it to its correct title.

See also

• Boilerplate request for permission
• Closeted, referring to editors who remain in the closet as being a paid editor
• Confirmation of permission
• Copyright issues - undigested talk on this topic
• Copyright owners who submitted their own work to Wikipedia
• Copyrights
• Countering systemic bias
• Economic inequality

External links

• Wikimediafoundation.org fundraising