Wikipedia talk:Paid editing (guideline)

Starting off

As promised on wikien-l, here's a start at a proposal. I'm out of time on this today, but I've managed to get a skeleton with a little flesh in. I have issues with it already, but it's a start. People should edit this as they see fit. And certianly create alternate proposals if you think this one's going in the wrong direction. Thanks, William Pietri 20:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Verification of Payment

Good idea in principle, but I believe a fatal flaw will be in how to verify that an accused user has been paid for their work. I foresee a slippery slope of "crying wolf" from disgruntled editors, providing no real avenue for evidence to permit any type enforcement. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 21:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

It's true that we won't be able to prove it. Of course, that's true with other things, like the WP:COI guideline. The notion is more to provide clarity. For people actually wondering if it's ok, this provides a clear and unambigious answer: don't do it. It won't stop all the paid editing, but it will stop reasonable people (like, say, a certain Microsoft evangelist) from getting the idea that it might be ok. Thanks, William Pietri 21:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

My opinion

Personally, I think this goes to far. Journalists, politicians, academics, and basically anyone who is not a total bum does get paid. Steps are often taken to ensure that the sources of those payments don't shape the conclusions that those people offer, but it is not recieving money per se that is the problem, but rather the undue influence.

I enjoy contributing to Wikipedia. If someone wanted to pay me so I could do so more (and spend less time on earning an income), then I would have no problem with that as long as they didn't ask for control over what I wrote. Same thing with a journalist, they get paid through various channels, but those channels don't directly control what they write. Theoretically advertisers could pull out of a newspaper (or such), but we accept that the journalist writes fairly nonetheless.

Which brings me to my other point. Wikipedians have bias. Everyone does, it is inevitable. If you work with the system in good faith then we have structures in place to seek out and destroy bias. And if you don't operate in good faith then you should be banned, quite regardless of whether or not you are being paid.

Honestly I don't see this as a big issue. I predict that some day, some good faith Wikipedian will start accepting money for their work, the community will see that their efforts are not destroying the place, and most Wikipedians will get over the notion that paid editting is an inherently destructive influence. Dragons flight 21:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a reasonable position, but one I disagree with. Politicians are, in my opinion, a perfect example of why we should forbid paid conflicts of interest. Part of the way journalists avoid problems is by a similar mechanism to what I propose here: they never take payment directly from parties interested in stories, and their employers never take money for coverage of topics related to the funder. (If we want to be funded with advertising, that's fine by me.) I agree that everybody has bias, but when you support bias with money, you get things like salesmen, advertising, and public relations. Those are not good models for Wikipedia to follow. I believe we should, like journalists, forbid paid outside influence. Thanks, William Pietri 21:34, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

How about another analogy. Academics get paid all the time to write reports, papers, and things like encyclopedia entries. Often the person paying has a clear vested interest in the research. For example, a company might commision research into the best way to produce their particular widget at low cost. The key is the person paying needs to care more about getting an honest answer than coming a particular conclusion. That is what ethical research is about. I see no problem with someone being paid to write for Wikipedia, as long as, they weren't trying to disingenuously push a particular POV. So while, I wouldn't want to see a lot of salesman hawking their wares on Wikipedia, I'd have no problem with research grants going to professors who wanted to expand our coverage of marine invertebrates. Dragons flight 21:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Academics have two things that Wikipedia doesn't: a large investment in their professional identities, and institutions whose reputations are based on the activities of their carefully selected professors. And even given that, there are important questions about the quality of, say, pharmaceutical research funded by drug companies. Wikipedia's system is much easier to game. Further, much academic research requires funding to happen. Wikipedia, however, has plenty happening without adding money to the mix. William Pietri 00:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of openness, many major grant making organizations (e.g. NSF) require that recipients spend some minor portion of their time (e.g. 5%) on "education and outreach". I've personally considered listing Wikipedia as such an activity in my own applications. Dragons flight 21:53, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. That could well be a good exception to this rule. How would you phrase it so that a sinister person couldn't game the exception? Thanks, William Pietri 00:55, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Previously discussed at Village Pump (policy) page

I would draw editors attention to discussion Major Ethic Violation in the Village Pump (policy) Archive. The view seems to be that WP:NPOV and WP:ATT would prevent unseemly articles appearing, not the banning of third parties paying for article creation. Does anyone need to copy over this over before it goes to Archive dump? LessHeard vanU 21:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I believe this has been discussed on numerous occasions, even before the above discussion. It seems to me that this would be a redundant policy as compared to WP:NPOV, WP:ATT, and WP:COI. Those three clearly indicate what is and is not advisable, though, yes, they do run into some of the same verification and enforcement issues I refer to above. By and large, people already know it is frowned upon -- particularly more prominent entities. If they are going to disregard existing policy and common sense, then they are going to do it regardless of another policy.

However, I do see some benefit in paid editing: while on the one hand, it is indeed prone to issues with NPOV, ATT, and COI; it can also provide otherwise hard-to-find information on a topic. There may be numerous tidbits of information hidden on computer harddrives or hardcopy literature which only familiar individuals know about. Provided the editor can provide proper references for his or her additions, I could care less whether or not they are paid.

If I was paid by my employer, you can be guaranteed that you will have some high-quality articles on Maryland transportation; but alas, I'm going to stick with the "you get what you pay for" philosophy and tend to those articles whenever I am in the mood. As I see it, this proposed policy really just a fourth add-on to already-repetitive policies.

So there you have my two cents. Er... actually maybe not: giving my two cents might violate WP:COI :P --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 22:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. My conclusion was that it would be very expensive to maintain a biased paid for piece, as the community would edit it according to policy. Non biased and referenced articles are to be welcomed, whatever the source. LessHeard vanU 22:47, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Confusing sentences

Could someone say what this means, please? "The only exception to the general proscription of paid editing is for Wikimedia Foundation employees, who may edit for pay as long as they respect our conflict-of-interest guidelines. If you belong to a corporation wishing to pay editors to work in some area where there is no conflict of interest, please contact the Wikimedia Foundation." Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I assume it means the Foundation can grant you or your company permission to do paid editing... which probably shouldn't be the case if this is a community policy and not a Foundation policy. Angela. 22:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to reword anything. The exception was meant as a combination of a couple of on-list suggestions. One was that, say, the Ford Foundation should be able to give the Wikimedia Foundation a $1 m grant for better coverage on historical topics. The other was that Foundation employees should be generally able to edit in the course of their job duties. But naturally, they'd have to respect COI rules and not, say, write a puff piece on the Wikimedia Foundation. Thanks, William Pietri 23:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. It's kind of confusing the way it's worded. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:17, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Noted. If nobody beats me to it, I'll fix it tomorrow night. Thanks for pointing it out! William Pietri 06:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Barters

I'm not sure there's any reason to add a restriction against bartering. What it Wikipedia were to adopt the MediaWiki ChallengeUser extension? You can see an example here. Two wiki users bet on something (like the result of a sports match) and the loser has to do a task (like write 5 new bios). Are you aiming to prevent that? Angela. 22:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting case! I hadn't heard of that. The hole I was aiming to plug was the exchange of a non-cash good for editing. E.g., You get to eat free at my restaurants if you write some nice Wikipedia articles about each location. I'm not aiming to prevent betting with Wikipedia labor as coin, as long as both sides are betting labor. (Labor against anything else would in theory be a problem, though.) Feel free to add something to make that clear, or let me know if you'd like me to do it. Thanks, William Pietri 23:43, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfair to Honest Editors

One major problem I see is that people already violate the COI very effectively. The worst cases involve paid editors for corporations, and at least one nonprofit industry list talks about how these violators even involve their legal departments.

Contradiction also exists in COI. It goes from saying you should have an interest in the article, not the outcome, to showing interest in the area leads to a belief in a conflict of interest. I think it reminds me of what someone tried to do to the legal system, put it all in a neat package, but it's too much. John Wallace Rich 00:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Ethics rules are always unfair to scrupulously honest people. But they are still necessary. And they protect the honest majority from having their reputation unfairly blackened by the actions of the dishonest.

As to the people currently violating COI (and I'd love to hear more about your examples), the point of this proposed policy is to make crystal clear that paid editing is wrong, wrong, wrong. The current COI guideline is a) a guideline, not policy, and b) nuanced, and therefore open to self-deluding people to interpret in ways that allow edits that we'd rather not have. See Talk:Almeda University#Paying_freelancers_to_revert_this_article_daily for more on how that self-justification works, and as an example of why we need a very clear line. Thanks, William Pietri 00:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

But paid editing isn't wrong; only non-neutral editing is wrong. As a result, this proposed policy blatantly violates one of our more fundamental policies, Wikipedia:Assume good faith. --Delirium 03:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so, and I say that as a huge fan of AGF. To me, AGF is about working together well with people. Even when they are doing something that looks obviously bad to me, I try hard to treat them as if they mean well and just don't know why it's bad. Usually, that's the case. Here we aren't assuming that they are evil, any more than journalists have a strong code of ethics because journalists are shifty people. William Pietri 06:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

William Pietri, are you familiar with the history behind COI? It is a merger of the former vanity guideline and a proposal that was all about paid editing. Look at the top three links on the talk page. We have been over this ground already and all the vaious concerns have lead to the current "nuanced" guideline. If COI needs to be a policy let's have that discussion. If COI needs to be more clear that we discourage paid editing, then let's have that discussion. COI talk is the right place for that talk. Please read the many talk pages we already have on this exact issue. 4.250.168.92 05:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC) (User WAS 4.250)

After discussions on wikien-l, David Gerard suggested I create a page, so I went with that. In retrospect, perhaps I should have gone with your approach, but for now I'd like to maintain this as a separate proposal, as part of the goal is to provide a crystal-clear answer to a single question. But I'm glad to merge it if this fails to develop momentum. Thanks, William Pietri 06:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

A concern

While in theory Jimbo's rule about vested interests ought to work (i.e., they can only edit on Talk pages), in practice it could fail spectacularly & (IMHO) harm Wikipedia inadvertently. I'm thinking of a specific example here: Kami Huyse, a self-identified PR person, asked about adding some material to the article at Talk: Mobile home last November ... & failed to get any response to her post from anyone. (I didn't respond directly because I don't know enough about the issue she raised to intelligently write anything, but I did try to publicize the fact she asked & deserved some kind of response.) In these cases where someone with a conflict of interest -- or could be considered to be paid for their edits -- does post first on a Talk page, but fails to get any response after a week or two, I believe that they ought to be allowed to make their proposed edits.

First, I would argue that there is transparency here: they have admitted their bias in the article. Second, there is the possibility that their edit will improve the article; if it doesn't, we can always revert the edit, which is done in countless other articles every day. Lastly, if no one is willing to raise an objection to their edit -- or even notice that the edit has been made -- perhaps the article isn't notable (to use that dirty word), & their edits aren't harming Wikipedia.

Either we allow some self-serving edits to these articles Wikipedians aren't interested in -- or we accept that some articles will remain below acceptible quality because there aren't enough interested Wikipedians to monitor every article to make Jimbo's rule work. -- llywrch 02:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but this is more a problem for the COI policy than for paid editing isn't it? Most people wanting to edit who have a conflict of interest aren't being paid to edit. Angela. 02:32, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

You are probably right that my concern is off-topic. However, when this issue came up in a very public way not long ago, a surprising number of people appeared to only read five words from all that was written ("Microsoft" "pays" "consultant" "to" "edit") & the resulting response intermingled the "conflict of interest" policy with "paid editting" policy. (Note: I suspect that there might not have been so much noise had another coporation been involved -- say, Oracle -- there might not have been as much outrage.) Like it or not, whenever the issue of an editor being paid for his edits is raised, many people assume that his employer has final say over the content. It'd be good if we could disconnect the two. -- llywrch 19:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

We already allow paid editing

Just a reminder: we already allow, and implicitly condone, paid editing: Wikipedia:Reward board#Money. As I recall, we've had this discussion before, and the consensus was to allow paid editing through the reward board; this seems to allow for the legitimate possibility of paid editing via outside channels as well. Automatically connecting paid editing with COI does not follow, in my view. Journalists are paid for their work, as are the writers of traditional encyclopedias. Obviously, money can be used to promote biased material on Wikipedia, but paid biased editing is the kind that is going to stay illicit anyway; the POV-pushing is the only aspect we should care about, and the only aspect we could have any chance of regulating. Establishing a no-paid-editing rule will prevent the good faith paid editing, but won't stop the really pernicious stuff.--ragesoss 06:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Not convinced

I am perplex at the idea of forbidding edition to those paid to edit. If they are editing in all good faith, what is wrong with it ? One thing that annoys me is that some non profit organisations might interest in paying some people to expand some areas, and that would seem strange to forbid this. An example. Imagine we negociate with a major museum willing to offer us images, old texts, videos etc... on a specific event in the past. They are more likely to put that on wikisource and wikicommons, but it also make sense to improve Wikipedia content by actually using or referring to these sources. When talking of putting on Wikimedia projects perhaps 100 000 images from such a source, the organisation might be interested in paying a person to ensure import and organisation of the content is really done and done in a coherent fasion. Or paying someone to coordinate. A policy forbidding that would prevent such things from happening. Similarly, in the past, some NGO's have chosen to pay some editors to write in a non-developped area (case has been for example to develop an african language, but we could also imagine paying the editors of a specific area so that they develop articles on their geographical area). Would such a system forbid that ? If so, that would be really wrong. What we try to prevent is addition of bad or pov content. Just because you gave your credentials does not mean you will write good and neutral things. Just because you are not paid does not mean you will write good and neutral things. You can be paid and do good things. What does matter ? The final content or the person ?

Anthere 11:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe that there is a simple fix for this: create a Wikipedian's Code of Ethics. This would be optional, but if a Wikipedian promises to abide by its terms (which include such points as "Put Wikipedia's interests above my own" & "Do no harm") then there should be no question about motives if that Wikipedian accepts money for edits. -- llywrch 19:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

First FAQ item

The first FAQ listing is as follows:

Q:"Can I write articles about my employer?"

A: Providing terms of employment does not specify creating Wikipedia articles, and you receive no reward for creating an article, Yes.

Who is going to say what a "reward" is? I think every Wikipedian feels that editing Wikipedia is "rewarding." There is a problem with the idea that editing for money is somehow less noble than editing for other motivations. Why should unpaid POV-pushers and paid POV-pushers be distinguished from one another? Both are equally detrimental to the project when all they do is POV push. However, most experienced Wikipedians will admit that sometimes even a blatantly POV article--composed of both verifiable information and POV assertions--can be brought into compliance with WP:NPOV without entirely starting over from scratch. This means that what we are talking about with paid editing, presumably, is more information being introduced to the encyclopedia. Besides, paid editors worth their wage have some understanding of Wikipedia policy or else they probably wouldn't be hired for the gig very often. Results should talk, not some particular ideological position on the moral status of working for money. Let's follow WP:AGF, making sure to abide by WP:NPOV and WP:ATT. If edits from any editor with any or no affiliation falls outside those bounds let's fix them like we've always done. MW 24.218.222.72 03:08, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I have added an alternate answer to the FAQ, one that I think fits better with the rest of this proposal. Personally, I don't think this is a moral question at all. I work for money, and do it gladly. So does every journalist, but they have strict rules about who can pay them to do their work.

The main difference I see between paid POV pushers and unpaid POV pushers is the difference between telemarketers and a friend who will call you up and talk your ear off. There are plenty of people who will be jerks if they have a financial incentive to be jerks, all the while saying they're "just doing their job". See below for more on that. Thanks, William Pietri 06:18, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

My point is that without supreme ultimate knowledge we cannot know for certain who is being paid. If you forbid paid editing you are just going to have lower quality paid editing that occurs because some or even most of the Wikipedians who are actually interested in following policy will not be taking these jobs, which will then fall to more unscrupulous (and unskilled) types. Do you really think that our thousand admins would somehow forget that they could ban users who persisted in unconstructive edits? MW 208.54.94.7 06:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Conflict with WP:COI

WP:COI#Defending_interests states that,

In a few cases, outside interests coincide with Wikipedia’s interests. An important example is that unsupported defamatory material appearing in articles may be removed at once. Anyone may do this, and should do this, and this guideline applies widely to any unsourced or poorly sourced potentially libelous postings. In this case it is unproblematic to defend the interest of the person or institution involved.

If it is the case, as this guideline (which represents strong community consensus) asserts, that outside interests may coincide with Wikipedia's interests, isn't it foolish to forbid cooperation in these cases? To offer an example, what if a notable living person was upset about unverifiable, repeatedly inserted claims in the article talking about him or her? What if this discontent spurred this notable person to pay for someone experienced with Wikipedia to remove the unsourced claims? I would contend that it is not just acceptable but even desirable that such violations of WP:BLP be removed more quickly? How can such an edit, even if the result of a paid arrangement, be considered negative? Additionally, if we are going to have paid editing--which we already do--would you prefer that the people doing it be faithful Wikipedians who are willing and (assuming this policy doesn't fly) in good conscience able to do this work in accordance with policies and guidelines? Or would you instead prefer endless hordes of unskilled hacks who have no desire to become involved in the community perform these functions? Paid editing can not only in itself make Wikipedia better through the sponsored edits themselves, but it can also help support Wikipedians who want to spend lots of time and effort on the project. MW 208.54.94.7 06:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)