User talk:Jimbo Wales

2nd recent article in Entrepreneur magazine promoting paid editing

Last month we discussed the Amy Osmond Cook piece in Entrepreneur, What I Learned When a Wikipedia Troll Deleted My Page". This month, there is another piece promoting paid editing, "Entrepreneurs Are Paying Wikipedia Editors to Create Profile Pages", which we have been discussing at WT:COI here.

Three things.

a) Jimbo, as the more or less official face of Wikipedia to the world, will you please consider talking to the publishers of that magazine?

b) The other thing is that the reporter apparently reached out to a WMF communications person, Samantha Lien. I don't know what Samantha communicated, or how that conversation went, or how well it was reported, but what got into the article was OK but not great. It was this -- people are “'strongly discouraged from editing articles directly about themselves or [about] a subject they’re closely affiliated with,' says Samantha Lien, a Wikimedia Foundation communications manager. 'This is known as editing with a conflict of interest,' she says, and it’s something Wikipedia’s volunteer editors spend a lot of time policing for."

In my view WMF communications people should have a clear and simple message about advocacy editing, including COI and paid editing, that puts it in a context. ~Something~ like:

1. Wikipedia's crazy and beautiful mission is to provide the public with articles that provide accepted knowledge, for free, through a volunteer community of editors. It has succeeded beyond what anybody could have imagined
2. This makes it a target for all kinds of abuse - people wanting to "get the word out" about any number of causes, companies, products, etc. Even universities do it. These people are like industrial polluters who pour waste into rivers. Parts of Wikipedia are like Lake Eerie when it was so polluted that it caught fire. Parts of Wikipedia are very clean and solid.
3. For people who want to get content into WP but don't know how, there are ways to explore whether a topic is appropriate for WP. There is a help desk (WP:Help desk) where they can ask for help, and there are paid editors who at least say that they follow WP's policies and guidelines. (see their statement). There are also paid editors who hide what they do and are like people today who sneak around and dump waste in our national forests.
4. Please don't pollute Wikipedia or support people who do. Volunteers spend a tremendous amount of time cleaning up pollution trying to maintain WP as a useful resource for people who want to learn, and this cleanup takes their time away from building good content.

Something like that. This is perhaps something that the board could discuss with the ED who could then get the communications people on board with the message, so there is a clear and consistent line?

c) Finally, I embedded this in what I wrote above, but I am starting to arrive at a view that we should start pointing to the fact that there are paid editors who at least say that they consistently follow the policies and guidelines. In the absence of information about where people can go for help, the undisclosed paid editing ecosystem just thrives. WMF and the editing community can perhaps starve it by pointing people elsewhere. I am not saying endorse them, but I am saying point to paid editors who follow the Statement. Complicated I know, but the world of paid editors is not going away. Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Please also see this proposal.... Jytdog (talk) 02:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC) (did it myself, per below Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC))

Jimbo doesn't need to step in everytime someone writes a blog post about paid editing. Comms is doing just fine. Sometimes, you present a simple, clear message to reporters and they don't recount it the way you would prefer, or just plain get it wrong. Gamaliel (talk) 02:57, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As I said, I don't know what happened in the interview. What we can do is make sure that WMF communications understands the reality of advocacy editing in WP and is able to put it in context. I had already emailed Samantha to learn about what happened but she is travelling now. Btw I emailed the executive editor of Entrepreneur myself, as I was worried that they are setting up a regular theme and I don't know what jimbo may or may not do. They (happliy) replied right away and said the two articles were just a coincidence. Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia paid editing view the practice negatively. At l;east that's my recollection. It might be useful to keep a record of all those articles someplace, as they appear. Coretheapple (talk) 16:40, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

In an ideal world anyone tempted to pay for article creation would be forced to read Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. Unfortunately that is not possible. But we can promote the observations therein to the press, in hopes that people will pick up on the clue. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:08, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Good point. I certainly agree that proactive p.r. would be a very good idea, rather than the WMF merely responding to press inquiries. Jimbo or some other WMF person should write articles and opeds decrying these paid editing mills and opposing paid editing. Coretheapple (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The idea is that an appeal to high-minded principles like "the integrity of Wikipedia" may fall on deaf ears, whereas an appeal to self interest (i.e., your article can turn around and bite you) often is more effective. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:39, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that self-interest only works in instances in which the subject is marginal and makes a fuss about getting in. If the subject is notable, then it does make sense to either create an article oneself or pay one to do so. There is no inherent disadvantage to hiring paid editors. Paid articles are not flagged for the reader. Still, you're right in principle and Jimbo or whomever can and should make that argument. It's hard for me as a volunteer to get worked up on this subject if the founder - who has a personal stake in the integrity of the project - is not sufficiently moved to speak out often against it,Coretheapple (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

• to risk beating a dead horse, i really think we should start being clear that there are paid editors who follow policies and guidelines, and those who don't, and encourage people to avoid those who don't. Jytdog (talk) 02:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I know from direct interactions that there are promotional editors who follow the terms of use and write acceptable articles. I also know that these are a very small minority of paid editors, and that not all the editors who claim to follow the guideliens actually do soI would strongly object to the WMF or anyone giving the message that paid editing is acceptable, because it is sure to be misinterpreted. DGG ( talk ) 09:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG. There is a fine line between encouraging paid editing, and pointing to people who at least say that they follow PAID, and what I am saying is the latter. We need to move past the discussion about "acceptable" or not - it happens and there is no way that we can stop it, with WP structured as it is. (The conversation about "acceptable" or "bad" is like the alcohol prohibition movement in the US - banning alcohol just promoted the activities of gangsters, right?) One reason I am encouraging formation of a guild or project is to have members of the guild/project police each other and throw out people who don't actually follow PAID. We of course will continue to do what we do, no matter what. Jytdog (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

• While I respect our current consensus, and even clean up some blatant COI spam for which due to its inherent notability I can't argue for deletion, I can't stress enough how much we should not tolerate anyone making money out of the free work our volunteers provide to develop and maintain our legitimate content. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

we do tolerate it, just barely. That is because we cannot ban it, nor could we police a ban. I spend a lot of my time educating paid or otherwise conflicted editors how they can be good members of the community by honoring PAID and COI and the rest of the policies and guidelines, letter and spirit. We do get useful content from such people via their proposed articles and content. We also get way too much awful content added directly to articles by paid or otherwise conflicted editors who don't follow PAID/COI. It is not going away, and we should educate people about the difference between "white hat" and "black hat" paid editors. Jytdog (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: re: "we should not tolerate anyone making money out of the free work our volunteers provide" – Content on most Wikimedia Foundation websites is licensed for redistribution under v3.0 of the Attribution and Share-alike Creative Commons licenses. This content is sourced from contributing volunteers and from resources with few or no copyright restrictions, such as copyleft material and works in the public domain. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License says that anyone is free to share & remix for any purpose, even commercially. Google and others are making money out of the free work our volunteers provide, and there's nothing we can do about it. We release those rights to them every time we click Save changes. wbm1058 (talk) 16:09, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

That's correct as far as it goes. Anybody can use our content for any reason, commercial or otherwise. But there is a huge difference between making money from using our content and making money by producing our content (e.g. by inserting hidden ads). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:08, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Nobody here disagrees with that. That is not the point of discussion. What I'm asking here, is whether we should start distinguishing between editors who say they follow PAID, and those who most definitely do not. In a way that is meaningful and public. This is about doing something different. Jytdog (talk)

The discussions have been based upon a false categorization which is There are either paid editors or unpaid editors. That's like saying there are either employed people or unemployed people, when, in fact, a state of employment is usually quite fluid instead of stagnant. The only real solution to this problem is if every editor refuses to be stuck in either the paid or the unpaid category and, instead, embraces the reality that any and all editors, given the current situation, may be a paid or an unpaid editor any time they feel like it. Then, the policies and rules will be applied equally and no one should really care whether anyone is paid on a particular day at a particular time or not, and the whole issue becomes moot, as it is already in a round about way. Realityornot (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

mmm I cannot agree with that. COI matters and needs to be managed. Having a COI really does change what people do; this is just human nature. Jytdog (talk) 04:46, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, I understand, it just seemed like there was no real solution or anything else to try, but now Count Iblis has come up with an idea, directly below, which at least at first blush, looks like it might be effective in an active and deterrent way. Realityornot (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

We just need to weed out corrupt editors here and that can be done using sting operations. We can create an undercover Wiki-police force who'll pretend to be business owners who want to get favorable wiki-articles written about their businesses. The existence of this operation will be public knowledge, this will serve as a deterrent to not engage with improper paid editing as you won't know if the person you're dealing with is or isn't an undercover agent. Count Iblis (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

My views here are well-known already so I don't have a lot to add. My sense of it is that there is a growing consensus to take a few stronger steps to deal with the issue. The paid shills will scream, of course, but that is of little concern to us. I do think that there is one thing that I could do here, at least for Entrepreneur Magazine, and that is to submit to them a piece explaining why the advice in previous columns is very bad. The problem here is that Entrepreneur is really the perfect place for bad advice to cause us problems - it's a magazine that appeals to ambitious small companies who want to grow and who therefore probably aren't (yet) ready for a Wikipedia article, but who would love to have one.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:31, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Count Iblis's proposal seems worthy of serious consideration, I believe. Realityornot (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

My proposal is a strategy for managing the market overall, by doing what we can internally to promote self regulation by "white hat" paid editors, and communicating to the world at large that there are black hat paid editors who should be avoided and white hat paid editors who (at least say) they follow policy and are community members in good standing. The Count's proposal is a tactic to play whack-a-mole. fwiw it would be probably involve committing fraud (it is one thing for cops to run a "sting" and a different thing for people to con each other), and I doubt that WMF or the editing community per se would formally do it. Jytdog (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Removed edit by the usual banned editor per WP:BANREVERT. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Not a fan. This doesn't pass the ethics smell test to me. If not fraud – which implies certain legal criteria and civil or criminal wrongdoing – it's at least probably against the job boards' own Terms of Service. E.g. Fiverr's ToS states "Sellers must fulfill their orders" and buyer's identity, if discovered, "shall not be used for any purpose whatsoever". Don't think it's a good idea to promote ToS violations at other sites to help enforce our own. Further, if it is in fact fraud, then it is also a WMF ToS violation to elicit it here. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:16, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The Fivrr ToS looks like it is totally incompatible with our ToU where the buyer's identity must be disclosed. In that case nobody who uses Fivrr can do paid editing on Wikipedia. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Count Iblis's proposal above is original and interesting — it might be a way to differentiate between good actors (those who indicate intent to follow NPOV and verifiability) from bad actors (those who just seek to bill a few hours of work for whatever purpose. There is a difference. Ultimately, however, no such sting operation would have teeth because it is such a simple matter to edit around blocks. Until we have some sort of meaningful registration policy and a requirement of sign-in-to-edit, all this concern about paid editing is akin to a dog chasing his tail. Ain't gonna catch it and it ain't going away... Carrite (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
  • This could be also be considered outside this specific context of improper paid editing. In many disputes that sometimes lead to ArbCom cases, we need to judge what the intention of an editor was when he/she edited in a problematic way. This is not always clear and often one gets discussions that escalate the underlying dispute with different editors choosing different sides. The less hard evidence there is to prove that an editor is really guilty, the more such disputes tend to escalate. In some of these cases one can then consider intervening using sting-like actions when complaints are made anonymously to ArbCom, e.g. about harassment on other sites. Count Iblis (talk) 01:37, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I think black and white lines should be drawn. No paid editors, period. Being paid to create/edit articles for small companies that subscribe to Entrepreneur magazine is bad enough, but we also have a situation where large biotech and pharmaceutical companies are paying WP editors for both reputation management and paying to demonize their competition. The line will be crossed if it isn't a hard one. LesVegas (talk) 17:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Jimmy, Thank you very much. Yes, you should write a response to Entrepreneur. Of course you can't do this personally for every publication that advises folks to break our rules, but even one letter would be greatly appreciated. Individual Wikipedians could organize to do this type of thing on a regular basis, but there is some opposition to this from the usual sources. I guess the major question is where and in what form could Wikipedians organize to do this. There are about 5 places we could send similar letters right now. Ultimately, the WMF is best positioned to send such letters. I think they are responding better than they were a few months ago, but a real proactive approach is needed.

Opposition to paid editors inserting hidden ads into articles is certainly growing - not so much in terms of the percentage of editors, since that's always been very high - but in terms of intensity. The abuse by paid editors is also growing and repeating itself as well.

I'll call the repetition Paid recidivism, e.g.

• The Orange Moody extortion scheme is back. We may not have even slowed OM down two years ago. He's still sending the same emails - exactly the same emails - to his victims. I've reported this to the WMF and made sure (with Jytdog) that arb com has received the evidence.
• Bell Pottinger is back - this time in an extremely vicious attack in South Africa against President Jacob Zuma's critics. As far as I can tell Bell Pot didn't technically edit an article, they just wrote all the text, and then told an employee of a Zuma related company to put it into an article, complete with instructions on editing. IMHO just a cynical ruse to avoid our rules. See [1].

So we've still got a lot to do. Fine tuning a few knobs is not going to do it however. I agree with Jytdog that an overall strategy is needed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:36, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Guild of paid editors notion

• note also posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Guild_or_WikiProject_of_paid_editors

I have been thinking about language, and I don't much like the "white hat" and "black hat" language. I think maybe "paid editors in good standing" and "other paid editors" (meaning ones who have been banned or don't follow policy). Not as catchy but "paid editor in good standing" at least doesn't make us represent something that we cannot know is true. But if someone is following PAID some, and has not been indeffed, they are a "paid editor in good standing". We can say that.

I want to ask - at a high and initial level, does anybody here oppose the formation of something like a "guild of paid editors" by paid editors, to do the self regulation thing? There is some interest in doing that at the Talk page of the "Statement" and if this balloon is not getting terminally shot down here, I want to go to work doing what I can to help them plan and form it, and then at some point bringing it to a more community-wide forum to get validation of the model before it would actually launch.... So just checking for "blockers" (to use the dev terminology) at this very initial starting point. Obviously the details will matter. Jytdog (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to shoot this down. I'm not totally against it. It could work as part of a larger strategy. But I'm very, very leery of establishing an "approved list" of paid editors. Part of the larger strategy might involve the WMF signing a simple agreement with any paid editor who applies. It could require proper identification of the company with contacts, etc. and a complete list of all paid editing jobs they've done in the last 3 years. Requirements of disclosure on Wiki, following all community rules. An agreement to pay damages in certain cases, with jurisdiction of SF, California courts. In return, the paid editors would get a registration number with the requirement that they place it on all Wiki related correspondence and webpages with text like "We have agreed to follow all Wikipedia rules regarding paid editing. The WMF does not approve or certify paid editing firms. Complaints about our services should be forwarded to the WMF citing this registration number." together with a trademarked symbol.

Presumably, customers would not deal with firms without a registration number, if the WMF got the word out. A minimum quality could be maintained, with penalties for firms that don't follow the rules.

I'm not sure that it would work, but I've seen similar systems work, e.g. for review courses for professional certifications.

The key to any system to work would be accountability (names and contact info), feedback from customers, and review from the community and the WMF. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Am glad you are not opposed! That is meaningful. But please don't mistake what I am proposing for an "approved list". I very much don't want to go there; the reason why I am proposing a self regulation thing is exactly to avoid the kind of heavy infrastructure and obligations you are proposing as well as any actual involvement of the WMF in making it go.

For people to remain in, they would need to follow WP policy and guidelines; nothing more. We will always be able to indef people who violate policy, that would never go away, but the guild members would police themselves, driven by self-interest, as bad apples would taint all of them. If the guild wanted to issue something like a registration or seal, it could do that. Whether that would matter would depend on how well this worked. Jytdog (talk) 00:53, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I am very opposed, particularly with this terminology. In my view, there is no such thing as a "paid editor in good standing". It's a bad practice of which we should remain highly intolerant at every level. If you are a paid advocate or marketing consulting you should not edit any Wikipedia entry where you have a conflict of interest, period, ever. These people are bad actors who should be banned and shamed publicly.

I would be less opposed if we thought about some formal recognition for a "Guild of Talk Page Advocates" - people who get paid to come and talk to the community about suggested changes. We should make it very clear and easy for people to contact us and get help, in order to reduce the incentives.

I would even support the WMF hiring 20 active Wikipedians to work on helping companies and people deal with BLP issues, with an absolute ban on paying for the service. Undermine the market for these scumbags.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

As long as somebody collects the info and it would be reviewable by (some) Wikipedians, and a place for customers to register complaints. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Very good points above from Smallbones and Jimbo. I like the talk page advocates idea but am opposed to the WMF paying money to editors to help companies and people deal with BLP issues. I think there are far better uses that can be funded with that money, and that the "talk page advocates" should be conversant with site policies. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:43, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, I would be happy to talk, if you like. But what you are saying here is exactly what we need to leave behind; again see the example of prohibition in the US. And your language of "scumbag" is ... unfortunate and kind of sloppy. There are paid editors who follow PAID, and who are clueful. There are, well, scummy paid editors, and the goal here is to choke off their market by educating the public, and that means having something to point to that is not "black hat". Jytdog (talk) 19:39, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• I kind of like the "Guild of Paid Editors" idea. The basic premise we have to accept is that volunteer Wikipedians write about what they want, they write about what interests them. While there are doubtlessly a few people fascinated by the doings of contemporary business, demand for those sort of articles by the subjects (who seek validation or representation on one of the internets most ubiquitous information sources) far outstrips editorial supply. There will be paid editing, it is going to happen — the question is whether the damage of self-serving article creation can be effectively mitigated. It is possible to create and maintain articles in accord with NPOV and Verifiability standards, but there is absolutely no question that it is something that must be closely monitored. Driving things underground by playing whak-a-mole with transient paid editing accounts isn't the solution; we need to find a way to normalize (and thereby watch and regulate) the activity; to insure that those who play by the rules in good faith won't be targeted and repressed, so that we can concentrate upon those who don't play by the rules, cleaning up their messes and getting the perpetrators out of town. I see the notion of a "Guild of Paid Editors" as a step in the right direction. Carrite (talk) 04:24, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll go along with that. Provided we introduce a Wikipedia Guild of Maintenance Workers and pay our New Page Reviewers, OTRS agent, Vandalism Patrollers, and Copy Editors $500 per hour for their work. Oh, yes, jolly good ideas! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:36, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I realize that you're engaging in hyperbole, but do you really think paid editors make "$500 an hour"? The common rate is more like $10 to 20/hr. and if one doesn't care too much about the caliber of the output, there are gobs and gobs of people in the developing world willing to work for more like $5/hr. or even less. That disparity aside, WMF is LOADED with cash, they literally can not waste it fast enough, so paying a certain number of people to do unpleasant-but-necessary maintenance or creation work wouldn't be out of the question. I'm not saying I am FOR that, mind you, only that it's not far-fetched and worth pondering. Carrite (talk) 18:07, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I am inclined to oppose the idea of organizing paid editors by way of in house assets; from a WikiProject to a categorization scheme. I am, nevertheless: reasonable, and willing to be convinced otherwise. The burden, however, rests with those who would enjoy such a privilege tough, as yet, I've not seen a request that gave with its asking, a compelling rationale which, I believe, is, necessarily, a requisite first step. It certainly has not been given here; nor even broached, in my opinion.--John Cline (talk) 11:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

User:John Cline it is unclear what "privilege" you see here; I tried to make it clear that there would be no editing privileges associated with this. This would formalize what is already going on with the "Statement" linked above. Btw, the statement was nominated for MfD in the spring, and that was overwhelmingly shot down (MFD is here. The community is not opposed to the Statement and associated activities existing. This would just formalize it further and hopefully make it more functional. Jytdog (talk) 20:05, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, the privilege I spoke of is the privilege to organize a guild on Wikipedia, using Wikipedia assets. My concern is that it would be misconstrued as an institutionally condoned practice, and misused for self-serving gain. I would expect a genuine proposal to allay these concerns upon its outset. My own support would be contingent on it.--John Cline (talk) 22:05, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for answering John. (The "Guild" language is dead and if this is anything it would be a wikiproject). Three answers:

1) In my view the WikiProject is a benefit to us and that is what I am looking at. We want to make a differentiation in the marketplace (that is all around us) between black market paid editors who violate policy, and legit ones. I want to do that to educate consumers that the black market is illegitimate (where the "scumbags" are, to use Jimbo's impolitic language) and that there is a legitimate set of sellers of paid editing service. That benefits us.

2) Paid editors are semi-organized already around the Statement linked above which is hosted on WMF servers in Wikipedia-space This would merely formalize that. (The Statement was put up for MfD and failed to be deleted by a longshot... so that use of Wikipedia-space already has consensus.

3) There would be some reward for paid editors who participate in the WikiProject but that is part of the goal - again we want to drive people away from the black market of undisclosed paid editors and a key part of that is having a clearly defined place where policy-complying paid editors reside here. So yes, customers would be able to find them there. (Same as the Statement does already.) That benefits them. No denying that.Jytdog (talk) 22:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

• just fyi for folks here, so far all the comments the village pump are negative. :( Jytdog (talk) 21:56, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• related, there is a proposal to add a speedy delete criterion for articles created by undisclosed paid editors here. Jytdog (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC) (revised, not redacted Jytdog (talk) 04:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC))

Proposal for WMF to pay editors

• The only compelling rationale that I know of is that our coverage of small businesses and larger but non-famous businesses is relatively limited. I have been thinking lately that a plausible way forward on that would be for the WMF to directly pay Wikipedians to work in those areas. Companies should not financially contribute to this effort at all. The idea is to destroy the market value of these services as a better way to control it than the whack-a-mole, without introducing the horrible idea that it can somehow be OK for people with a conflict of interest to write Wikipedia entries.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:35, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

If the WMF is going to pay Wikipedians to work on any area, then surely there are loads of areas that are more deserving... Why not simply noindex all articles about companies? That would instantly destroy any (perceived) monetary value. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 13:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, let's think this through. What areas would be more deserving, and why? Most areas already have good coverage. I'm sure there are areas which are all three of these things: neglected by volunteers, not the object of pressures from marketers, and also of great interest to readers. I would argue that if there are areas which are neglected by volunteers and of great interest to readers, we could likely get them done with more community organization. What I'm really interested here is in completely destroying the fallacious argument that we have to accept paid shilling because our coverage of companies is not as good as it could be. That path feels to me like attempting to cure an infected finger by stabbing ourselves in the heart. And I think the issue of the purity of motivation (to share knowledge, rather than to market a company) is the heart and soul of Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:44, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, good god jimbo - did you really ask this question????? pretty much EVERYTHING outside of the key interests of well-off, male, technical geeks and western entertainment/film/tv is woefully under-covered and more culturally worthy of being included in an encyclopedia than propaganda for small and medium capitalist organizations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.15.255.227 (talk) 20:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Personally I focus on one specific niche, typofixing. Typofixing is quite boring, and not as "sexy" as for example vandalfighting is. We have loads of software to fight vandalism, but there is almost no software to find and fix typos. I had to write some myself, and the WMF refused to fund it. The software allows me to fix over 2000 typos in less than 24 hours. I am not claiming to know much about all the other areas, but I imagine that there are people in a similar situation to mine. An RfC asking: "If the WMF hires some Wikipedians to work on some areas, which areas should that be?" seems to be a good idea, and I don't think "articles about companies" would be high up that list. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Not quite sure what you are suggesting here. What do you think would be high up that list?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Let's have the RfC and find out. I hope stuff to counter our systemic bias. Paying people to write about female scientists from third world countries sounds like a good idea to me, but maybe I am too idealistic. We are doing fine with our coverage of "white" males from rich countries (people like you and I); maybe we can use money to encourage people to write about subjects other than that. I assume you are familiar with WP:BOGOF, we are already sponsoring paid articles about companies. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 14:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's premature for an RfC. I really like your example: female scientists from third world countries.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, it is a good idea to think and talk about this for a while. Of course funding topic area A does not mean we cannot fund topic area B; we can do both. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 21:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• If WMF wants to pay editors, that would be great. It is a separate issue from influencing the market external to WP where people or companies who want articles connect with freelancers and PR companies. As long as this remains "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", there are going to be paid editors. And the world is teeming, and the demand is always going to outstrip a curated supply. But this proposal could maybe put a small dent in the demand. Jytdog (talk) 20:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• I'm not opposed to this, but if this happens, I think the annual fundraising banner needs to allow people to specify whether they are donating to fund editors, or to fund the operations of the WMF and hosting expenses. Power~enwiki (talk) 21:54, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I am opposed to the WMF paying editors to create articles on businesses. If anything the WMF should be paying editors to clean-up all the ad filled articles on businesses that we have now. One question that would have to be clearly answered before paying to create business articles is "what type of businesses do we want to be covered in articles?" Let me propose a very simple to define group for the US. All actively traded stocks, that is the Wilshire 5000 component stocks. Due to mergers, companies going private, and other changes in the market there are only 3,618 stocks in the "5000" index. My educated guess is that these companies account for well over half of the US non-farm, non-government economy (whether measured by employment, sales, corporate profits, exports or any other reasonable measure). Add in well-known private companies like Cargill, or Koch Petroleum and maybe you can get to 5,000 businesses that we should definitely be covering. Extrapolating worldwide, we might need 20,000 - 25,000 total articles for a similar coverage of business. We already have something close to 50,000, though admittedly not all the ones we want are included now.

The problem with going much beyond 25,000 companies is that the rest of the companies are relatively tiny. Add another 100,000 companies and our coverage in terms of employment, sales, etc. might only increase by another 5%. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

If price = 0, how much will be demanded?

My point, of course, is that increasing the number of companies we can cover is a fool's game. Right now we don't really have any limit, so we're all over the place with very tiny companies - like a coffee truck in NYC, or a one store donut shop (with jalapeños) near Dallas, an online lingerie seamstress near Oxford (1 "employee" - the owner), lots of very new companies that just want free ads, some tech startups that may have had one round of financing. All sorts of companies that can fake 3 local newspaper articles, but no news source would ever notice when they go bankrupt or otherwise disappear. With that kind of open invitation we can get millions of companies wanting ads - and hiring 20 or 200 or 2000 editors is not going to keep up with the demand. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:34, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• One can also consider a system where points are awarded to editors based on their contributions, contributing in assigned target areas that need improvement will earn you more points. These points can then be redeemed for money or for other purposes. Editors who want to see certain articles improved can themselves award points from their own account. Editors can then donate points collectively to a WikiProject (a chosen participant in that WikiProject then gets the points), these points will then be used to improve certain articles that the WikiProject participants have flagged for improvement. Editors who are found to have misbehaved will lose any points earned by their problematic edits. Bots won't earn points. An example of a point based system is StackExchange. Here you get points based on answers to questions, but the points are not worth any money. But this already motivates people to write good contributions. People who ask questions can award extra bonus points that will be subtracted from their account. Count Iblis (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I like this idea. Right now our rewards for most editors are all intrinsic but this might work in concert. We should consider what kind of compensation would be compatible with the spirit of a volunteer-driven community. It might be stronger if the community got a vote on who is eligible – to prevent malicious gaming, and to promote preservation of community values. I'll discuss at the Wiknic today and see what other folks think. What I'd just discussed with another person was a similar idea, like a tangible but token gift from WMF to the "editor of the month" or something like. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I want to pick up on what User:Kudpung wrote about in the subsection above. Probably the single biggest thing that the WMF could do to help, would be to finally give the NPP people the software tools that they have been asking for for years, instead of unilaterally not doing what the a strong RfC called for. This has to do with dealing with adequately patrolling the torrent of new pages that come in, which is serious labor (the hard work of maintaining WP, which the WMF never talks about). Paying people to work NPP might be useful but I don't want to speak for the volunteers who do that work. Jytdog (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The worst thing was getting gratuitous emails from the WMF telling me to lay off. And just look at the absurd claims of 'secrecy' below. If I got a 2p point for every hour I've spent on NPP issues, I'd be able to afford to go to Montreal and talk to the people that matter. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:13, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with Smallbones that paying editors to create articles on small business is not a good idea. I think it's a terrible idea. Let's assume arguendo that small businesses are a neglected subject. I don't believe they are, but let's assume that. If so, why single out them for attention? Are there no other subjects that are worthy of such support - assuming that paying editors for any kind of article creation is a good idea? I would suggest that, if indeed the subject matter is neglected, it is that small businesses tend not to be sufficiently notable. This is the same reason why so many are a subject of paid editing that why up being speedily deleted. If a business is interesting enough to draw attention in reliable sources, surely our millions of unpaid volunteers will eventually get around to it. The same goes for physicians, musicians, mountain ranges, streets, veterinary medications, varieties of wallpaper, brands of wax paper, etc. etc. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• One other thing to consider. Notability is not temporary. That being the case, what about small businesses that no longer exist but obtained reliable sourcing when they did? If we are to pay editors to write about "living" businesses, aren't we engaged in recentism? Many defunct historical businesses are very interesting. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:18, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I don't really like the idea of WMF paying editors, because it is a slippery slope. The thing that made WP beautiful was its primitive volunteerism and community can-do attitude — and if you ask me the worst thing that has happened is the multimillions of dollars flowing into San Francisco and the cancerous growth of a professional bureaucracy, which sees itself as apart from and superior to the volunteer core. Turning the volunteer core into paid staff would be the final step in this degeneration, and from there the alluring world of paid advertising is but one short step. THAT SAID, there is a clear supply-and-demand problem with Business articles, and the market-based solution (paid editing) in its current form has clear problems in terms of the quality of the output — which frequently violates NPOV, for starters, and leads to a proliferation of garbage pages about seriously unworthy business entities. I wonder if the old "reward board" model might work. A company could post its offer ON WIKI, and those responding would have to do so transparently — their work could be easily checked. That strikes me as a better solution than the off-wiki freelance marketplace. Carrite (talk) 18:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• I am also opposed to paying editors. We have some research looking at the effect of pay on involvement. Specifically there is evidence looked at institutions paying people to donated blood versus requesting voluntary donations. The conclusion was "markets in blood ‘repres[s] the expression of altruism"[2] What I would love to see is the Community Tech Team double or tripled in size. Volunteers could become a lot more productive with some more simple tech tools. Things like a bot that notifies Wiki Projects when images used on the pages within the project are put up for deletion[3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:37, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment IMO our first major effort should be to better document all the organizations that are actively in breach of our terms of use. I have done some of this here. We need to clearly notify the wider world about those who are not in good standing. We also need a group of functionaries to help enforce socking done for paid editing. When a brand new account creates a promotional article in their first couple of edits about a borderline notable topic and the article is perfectly formatted, that should be enough justification for a CU to dig up their other accounts. We should also consider holding IP data for blocked accounts that are related to undisclosed paid editing longer. If we make it harder to do paid editing in breach of our terms of use hopefully new paid editors will than follow the rules. The problem is that nearly all long term paid editors have a string of blocked socks. Are we going to give the likes of Kohs and Woods a legitimate way to return to good standing? Most paid editors are actively trying to take advantage of what we do for their own and their clients personal gain. These are not collaborations we generally want to foster, especially when we have lots of organizations that share our goals such as universities and other NGOs interested in working with us. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:01, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Taking the liberty of speaking for Kohs: (1) He is SanFranBanned and has no path back no matter what we decide to do about paid editing; (2) He's doubtlessly still going to be editing here anyway, because he will never be bullied into submission; and he edits in accord with NPOV and Verifiability, which means his work is not problematic and not apt to be even spotted; (3) He showed his financials on this page previously and revealed what I've known for a long time — that he's a very, very small scale paid editor. So don't make him out to be a bogieman or a reason for not being able to make rational the paid editing environment. He's not the problem. Never was really. Carrite (talk) 06:45, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I did not mean to make either one of them out as a bogieman. My point was simply that most undisclosed paid editors already have a large number of blocked socks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I've had experience here and elsewhere of combining volunteers and paid staff, it doesn't have to involve as much angst as it has in this movement. When you mix professional and volunteer staff it is really important that the professional staff do the things that the volunteers want to have happen but aren't volunteering to do. So a fact checking team going through old uncited content, checking its veracity and adding cites where they can, correcting errors and removing material they can't verify or that turns out to be copyvio, that could be fairly uncontentious, especially if they produced some stats on the quality of the material they were working on and identified editors who had been making stuff up. It would also help if the people doing that work were earning a living wage in an economically disadvantaged part of the world - so few if any of our volunteer editors were feeling jealous or resentful of them. Better still make their workload something the volunteers can decide - articles that Wikiprojects have identified as important but low quality, or poorly cited rarely edited articles with high readership. ϢereSpielChequers 08:09, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

As i said above I generally don't like editors being paid by the WMF, especially not for creating business articles. But here is one task that I could see being done by WMF paid editors: cleanup of old, rotten, seldom-viewed, seldom-edited, short substubs. We have lots of these - let's say 1 million articles on en:Wiki (give me an operational definition and I'll try to give you a better estimate). Let's say for now that "old substubs" are defined as "less than 5 pageviews per day, smaller than 2 full paragraphs, 0 or 1 inline citations, less than 5 incoming links from other articles, no substantive edits for the last 3 years, and an ORES score indicating a probability of being a stub of greater than 70%." There's almost certainly over 250,000 of these, and a pro computer programmer could generate the list quite easily. Who's going to clean these up? Probably not 1,000 volunteers, each doing 1per weekday for 50 weeks (ie a full year job), But how about paying $4 each to classify them into "keep - it's actually useful" (as I guess 10% of them might be), "merge - even if it's only 2 lines into a related article" (60%), "prod - nobody's interested in this" (25%), and "delete with extreme prejudice" (5%). It would only cost $1 million. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:50, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Why start with rarely viewed ones? I'd have thought the more widely read ones would be more of a priority. ϢereSpielChequers 15:26, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Short answer: Almost everybody can agree that these articles don't add much of anything to Wikipedia and probably detract from it. We've got to start somewhere. We've got a bunch of merde filling up more than half of the basement of our 2 story house. We've grown accustomed to the stink (which greatly reduces our reputation), but once we dig in and see the size of the problem, we'll likely finish the job.

Longer answer: Before running into Wikipedia, I thought editing was mainly about removing the bad parts of the text, removing bad articles, generally tightening up things to put a more concentrated concise message into a limited space. Since e really don't have a limited space, most people have forgotten about the benefits of being concise, of not having extra moving parts in the machine that don't do anything other than require maintenance. Being concise not only saves us time, it shows respect for our readers by saving them time. Sooner of later somebody has t dive in and clean it up, but it's not likely to be our usual volunteer editors. Would you try to help clean these Augean stables as a volunteer?

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:24, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Seems unfeasible to me. The more we interfere with the editorial process, the more likely we are to loose our safe harbor protections. I don't think WMF would be willing to take that risk. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:23, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment A solution for which there is no problem. The "demand" in the supply and demand equation is from subjects, not editors. Which is sad. My heart aches. But, lamentable as it is, not many people other than the subjects care about most small companies, especially the ones that are borderline notability --the ones that are most frequent subjects of paid editors. This is not an unusual situation. There are a lot of subjects that nobody cares about. Editors step in and write articles about those gaps in the encyclopedia, thereby giving them whatever limited benefits there are from writing Wikipedia articles. A new editor may "make his bones" easier by writing about small companies than he might about writing about Trump or Putin. And yes, as has been pointed out, there are a gazillion things the WMF can throw away money on that make more sense from the Wikipedia volunteer standpoint than making small business owners happy. But I haven't come to the most important reason this idea makes no sense --- it wouldn't put a dent in the problem. There are millions of small businesses out there. Unless you hire thousands of editors to write hundreds of articles each, you won't do much good and subjects will continue to demand articles about themselves and their businesses. Coretheapple (talk) 17:25, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales:: It seems silly to put WMF money into this when there's clearly commercial money desperately trying to go there. Perhaps a better use of WMF dollars would be to set up a review board of experienced WP editors, and pay them to manage a noticeboard or similar project where commercial interests could openly and transparently offer contracts to Wikipedians, and/or get whatever help they need. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 01:14, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't really understand the logic of your argument. "Corporate money is desperately trying to subvert the values of Wikipedia and turn it into a marketing platform, therefore the WMF should not spend money to remove the incentives to do that." Right.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:06, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

No. I think the main thing holding back coverage of companies is that business articles are prone to deletion. They might be called boring, no "assertion" of notability, etc. And we know that the top-level spammers like Orangemoody advertise being able to get an article about your company killed unless you pay. This plays right into my prejudice that deletionists are generally less trustworthy than positive contributors, but to be sure, the positive contributors are also dubious - the Main Page continues to allot Square Enix, a single obscure company, one top billing article (usually about its Final Fantasy products) every 180 days. Anyone who sees this should assume that the corruption in Wikipedia runs broad and deep, and is likely to take claims seriously either by editors who claim to be able to push articles or to get them rubbed out.

Particularly, the question comes up how WMF would decide who to hire. I'm thinking it should be someone who loves to write articles about businesses, yet someone whose articles somehow get deleted much less often than those of other editors... preferably someone who has the discretion to avoid listing the Orangemoody experience on his resume. But in any case, I'm thinking the best candidate for the job is the absolute last you should ever want.

I think there is an alternative for paying editors that would work much better. Allow any editor to sign up for a program where he makes some small sum, perhaps $1 a day, for every day that he does a significant amount of editing. Put absolutely no standards on how this editing is done; but of course if he is blocked or banned he cannot edit. (Socially, you can nudge Third World editors unfamiliar with some Western cultural biases in the right direction with some helpful advice -- it's never a beautiful village, it's a scenic tourist destination; the former sounds too Paki and will get the entire article deleted) The potential net outlay is around $10000 x 365 = $3.7 million, small change for WMF and I bet 80% of the editors can be persuaded to donate it all back rather than go through the aggravation and identification implicit in accepting payment; they'll still feel like big shots for making a large donation! But a billion people around the world live on $1 a day, and their countries are very poorly covered. Wnt (talk) 01:20, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I said this years ago, PR firms and paid editors operate on Wikipedia anyway. As long as it's an open resource there's nothing you can do about it. If people were paid to edit articles on businesses by WMF and not let these people have any say in their entries then you'd likely greatly improve the neutrality of the site and directly counteract a lot of the paid editing that goes on. Jimbo seems to finally seeing this. If not paying money directly to people to edit, WMF could try running contests to write/rewrite business articles and give decent Amazon voucher rewards etc. The latter might be the best solution as a lot of articles can be improved through contests and there's a chance for editors to earn something decent. Jimbo, if you offered Amazon voucher incentives to people such as myself to run contests to overhaul and protect our business articles from outside interests and give out Amazon voucher rewards to the hardest working people you'd start to see a big difference I think. Amazon vouchers work well as it's not direct "paid" editing plus it maximizes the chances of editors buying books to further write content on here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

An even worse idea. Wikipedia should not be endorsing a corporation with special benefits, it should not be endorsing a corporate monopoly no matter how much it seems like de facto law, and it sure as all the hounds of hell should not directly entwine itself with a corporate publishing monopoly. Wnt (talk) 22:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

That's right. Joe's Pizza gets a WMF-paid article; that alone is quite a feather in its cap. Not by a volunteer. A Wikipedia-authored article! Frank's Pizza across town will want the same. So does every other major restaurant in the community. But Joe has more wide-awake PR so it gets its name in the papers more, so there are more so-called "reliable sources" like the Podunk Gazette. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 00:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Question about articles about rapes of underage girls

Hello, Jimbo. I would like to know your and WMF's position on interpretation of the WP:BLP rule as applied to articles about rapes of underage girls. I mean WP:AVOIDVICTIM: "Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization." 08 October 2014 article about rape of underage girl in Novosibirsk was deleted from the Russian Wikipedia. Nevertheless deletion of article about another rape of underage girl - Rape of 16-years old Diana Shurygina - is still being discussed since 5 April 2017. At first the article had been deleted on 12 April 2017 by Lingveno, but later Lingveno's decision was disputed and the article was recreated. The disput has not yet a result and the article is on the Russian Wikipedia now. Thanks for comment. Кадош (talk) 18:16, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I quickly read the article and it is unfortunately a fairly unremarkable case. The court's original sentence of the young man looked pretty harsh, but is now reduced to 3 years in a penal colony. What is really remarkable about the case is that the girl went on national TV and discussed the case using her real name. She is now being attacked for that. The ruWiki article does prolong the victimization. She was a minor when raped, and a minor when she went on TV. She wasn't at fault for the rape and, as a minor, should have been shielded by others from making the TV appearance. She's just not at fault. If the case, which is causing some controversy in Russia, could be discussed without using her name or otherwise identifying her then perhaps it need not be deleted, but I don't think that is an option now.

Of course I do not speak for Jimmy.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:33, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

When a person waives their right to anonymity, it can be hard to get it back again. The US media regularly names the woman in the Roman Polanski sexual abuse case. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is stricter than some parts of the media about naming people unless it is really necessary. The question is whether this case meets WP:GNG; if it does, then it isn't very practical to hide the name of the victim by calling her by her initials or similar, because it would be in the sourcing anyway. The article title is problematic and would be flagged as such on the English language Wikipedia.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 04:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I note, in passing, that the victim in the Polanski case has given several media interviews long after reaching the age of majority. A fifty-something-year-old woman relinquishing her anonymity is a very different situation from a minor attempting to do the same. (What constitutes 'acceptable' treatment of rape victims by the media has changed somewhat over the last four decades, as well.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:52, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

It probably wasn't the best of ideas for the woman in the Russian case to waive her anonymity. I've seen similar cases in the UK, but usually in the tabloids because the mainstream media is wary about doing this. "Giving your side of the story" can have long term consequences.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 04:59, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

One has to wonder whether the assumptions behind this kind of privacy rule are still valid today, or a relic from another time. Gone are the days when a girl who lost her virginity before marriage would be considered "ruined" or "damaged goods". Now, many rape victims, such as Emma Sulkowicz, want to come forward and be heard. Do we want to perpetuate the idea that a rape victim has something to hide or be ashamed of? There is no law that I know of in any jurisdiction, except maybe where Sharia law is in effect, saying that a 16-year-old can't go on TV and tell her story. 172.56.36.107 (talk) 12:15, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll just point out that Emma Sulkowicz was 19 years old when the alleged rape occurred and 21 when she came forward for a newspaper interview. The newspaper did not then publish any names AFAIK, not Sulkowicz's, not the man's, not any of the 3 other women who came forward. An adult who wishes to discuss being raped is a very different matter from a 17 year old - her parents and the TV producers should have known better. Manhattan is also very different from Ulyanovsk. *Perhaps* in some places it would make sense for parents to consider allowing their minor daughter to come forward publicly, but Ulyanovsk, far from metropolitan Russian, is not that place. The validity of WP:AVOIDVICTIM in the context of sexual assault can certainly be discussed, but I'd try to get extensive input from women and let them decide. Frankly, I'd think they would want to make it stricter, more against using the victim's name. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

So what about the minors who publicly come out as gay or transgender and talk about how they were bullied in school? Do you think that might in some cases have an effect on their futures, given that not everyone is open-minded about such matters? Just like how the girl didn't choose to be raped, they didn't choose their orientation or gender, nor did they choose to be bullied. But since they were bullied, they wanted to make their voices heard. And they wanted to tell their story directly rather than through their parents because who knows, maybe their parents aren't LGBTQ-friendly. The victim has a unique perspective and feeling heard could provide closure and healing rather than furthering her victimization. Also, in cases like Tinker v. Des Moines, the free speech rights of minors were upheld; it was recognized that they have a role to play too in the public discourse. 172.56.36.107 (talk) 23:50, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there is any easy formula to decide these cases, but there are some broad principles which may be in tension at times. There are two positions that I think are clearly wrong: (a) never publish the name of any victim of an underagge sexual assault versus (b) always publish the name of any victim of an underage sexual assault if it can be found in any reliable source. In some cases, for example where an adult comes forward in a very public manner with a clear intention that their name be known, in order to raise public awareness of the issue, and the name is being reported reliably in lots of sources, then obviously it is fine to include it. In other cases, for example when the name of a minor victim is found out by a tabloid or other low quality source that nevertheless would be accepted in some limited cases by us as a reliable source, and where most reliable sources are declining to print the name, then we should not. The more fundamental principle behind all this is to be respectful of human dignity and to take into account as a real factor the wishes of the person involved, insofar as those can be determined.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:45, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Another underage girl that was raped in Moscow, committed suicide attempt after internet hounding: [4]. That is why I suppose that the rule WP:AVOIDVICTIM must be interpretated as strictly as possible when it comes to rapes of underage girls. I suppose that Wikipedia in such cases must not join the mass-media's choir because most mass-media are commercial organizations that earn money with publications about such stories. But Wikipedia is a non-commercial project and it does not need in earning money on publications that may cause suicides and moral suffering - first of all I mean articles about rapes of underage girls. The girls do not understand all consequences of public discussion of their cases, so if even an underage girl and her stupid parents agree to take part in a TV show devoted to her rape, it does not mean that Wikipedia has to publish a "neutral" article about the rape. Wikipedia will get enough money even if it does not contain articles about rapes of underage girls. Кадош (talk) 19:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have articles for money; it has articles because people want to take down what is known about something and share their research. An article would not exist if people were not interested in understanding the event. And those people consult the sources on their own. The same newspaper you cite about the suicide printed [5] what Google translates as a comment about a video of the encounter, "I must admit that the student does not particularly resist and herself almost drags the guys." Presumably the video of the encounter and a possibly misogynistic response to a perceived false rape charge had something to do with the hounding. To be sure, bullying is not to be condoned -- but Wikipedia should document it nonetheless. There is a popular idea nowadays that suicide is the golden road by which any angry teenager can truly show them all, have everyone who was harassing them prosecuted and ruin their lives, get sympathy from all over the world. I don't think that is a healthy response because it promotes more suicides. I mean, I bear this girl no ill will, but I am equally unmoved to any sort of compassion that would involve censoring people from sharing news references and neutral summaries with one another. If you want to be compassionate, document the details of how she was hounded, and what people propose to do about such cases. Wnt (talk) 22:18, 20 July 2017 (UTC) P.S. Today's featured article, Murder of Dwayne Jones, looks like a good example of one of these articles done well. Wnt (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

We've created a monster

Wikipedia is growing in size, and I believe is growing in reputation. This sounds great, but in my opinion, we have created a monster, and we are not taking serious steps to address the problem.

In the early years, it was kind of neat to have an article about a person or an organization in Wikipedia. That's not the case today — it isn't viewed as "nice", it is viewed as "required". It may be easy to say as an editor that "your requirements are not our requirements", but fighting this may be like fighting the tide. We've all seen the growth of COI editing and paid editing. Many editors are involved in many initiatives to stem that tide, but I don't think we are spending any time addressing the underlying problem.

Yes, we tell people they can drop the name of a potentially notable individual or organization in our requested articles list, but it is my opinion that this may constitute cruel advice. I don't want to hold out this essay as gospel, but the numbers there are good enough to make a general point. If there really are something like 100 million potential articles meeting our notability standards, we currently have just over 5 million articles and we are adding a quarter million per year. Even if we assume a fourfold factor, and assume we can add 1 million new articles per year, that means about 95 years until we catch up (ignoring new subjects!), which mean it's we should tell people that when they add their item to the requested articles list that they should expect to wait 40 years or so. Does anybody disagree that this is not an option that will set well with individuals and organizations who qualify as notable but do not yet have an article?

If you spend any time at the help desk, with the teahouse, or especially OTRS, you see this every day. I deal with multiple tickets at OTRS every day where I have to explain that the person writing to us has a conflict of interest and should not be writing the article. To oversimplify (and paraphrase) a common response, they will say "okay, I get it, we aren't supposed to write the article, but we need to have the article so what do we do?". I can't bear to tell them to add their organization name to the requested article lists because it is my belief that it will be many years before that turns into an article. There was a time we might have been able to get away with "no, you don't need the article", but that's a hard message to deliver today.

As a community, I think we should discuss how to address this problem. (This place may not be the best place to fully flesh out such a discussion, but I'm hoping I'll reach people who are interested in solving it).--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:51, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• The way to solve this problem is to hold articles to a higher standard as we have started to do by reading WP:N in the light of WP:CORPDEPTH: most companies aren't notable enough for a Wikipedia page. We're not a directory and the standard response by these editors are that they aren't promoting, just letting people know information about themselves. That's not our purpose. Yelp, LinkedIn and the YellowPages serve that purpose. We don't. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Sphilbrick, you seem to be misreading the numbers in that essay. 100 million are estimated total potential articles, not about people or organizations. There is no estimate at all of how many notable businesses there are, and the estimate of notable people (1/1000???) is very, very fuzzy; I would not be surprised if it's off by two orders of magnitude. And for articles not about people or organizations, there is much less conflict of interest. If someone wants to write an article about the disease they have, the town they live in, the comet they study, or the chemical reaction that they teach about, that's much less of a COI problem. Not saying there isn't a problem with the organizations and businesses that want to promote themselves, mind, just that it's not as intractable as you seem to be proposing. --GRuban (talk) 20:34, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Not so far off as you might think. The requests aren't just for articles about people and organizations, they inlcude requests for articles about places, and events, and bands and concepts. Plus, if my denominator is wrong (100 million) my numerator (250K created per year) is wrong, as the count creation is all articles, not just articles about individuals and organizations. Please feel free to refine the numbers, but unless I missed something fundamental, I think it is still true that the median time to creation of requested articles is years, not months. Months is acceptable, years is a problem.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I think what is generally agreed is that there are notable people and organizations for whom we don't have articles at all, or don't have good articles, and that this gives rise to opportunities for unscrupulous people to promote COI editing, as well as giving rise to sadness on the part of people who would like to be covered, who probably should be covered, but who are faced with choices that aren't very palatable. Whether S Philbrick has the exact estimates of numbers right, I think it's a legitimate point about which there is general consensus.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not as pessimistic as the OP (whilst sharing his frustration). We have not created a monster. We simply just find ourselves in the position that most organizations have, when dealing with a three horned dilemma! However hard we try to avoid getting gored by two of the horns -a third- is always going to be there to get us. Maybe Heisenberg's uncertainty principle makes this clear as to why it is so very difficult for all us editors to see the whole picture, all at once and at the same time. Currently, I too am aware that we are getting gored increasingly by COI. Yet organisations that develop staying power constantly evolve. Just like in physicists that repeat experiments time and time again, we now have sufficient editorial history to see the patterns and modus operandi of detrimental COI activity. If need is the mother if invention – let us focus on that need to evolve in order to retain our primary remit which is to bring encyclopedic knowledge to all and not become a trade directory full of paid advertorials. Aspro (talk) 00:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)