Beware: Opening our doors to any level (however well-intentioned) of paid advocacy editing is essentially the same thing as opening our doors to advertising, something the community has always opposed, for very good reasons. Invertzoo (talk) 12:50, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would take paid editing over POV editors any day. The latter are ideologues that cannot be reasoned with and they dominate in many areas of Wikipedia, even beyond those that have been put under sanctions. The former, especially when speaking about those like in the article above, are merely seeking to improve certain Wikipedia articles. And that is something we can all be involved in. SilverserenC 15:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Paid editing, POV... at the end of the day its the editors and admins who end up cleaning up the mess left by either camp. Regardless of which group is judged to be the lesser of two evils for Wikipedia an evil is still an evil, and I say lead us not into temptation, for we can manage on our own. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:22, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Your assumption that they will make a mess is just as valid as me thinking that you will make a mess and therefore I need to patrol your edits. SilverserenC 19:05, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And that will end in reverts of numerous good faith edits, which will result in plenty of blocks. Either way, this conversation aside... After reading the whole article which expressed various view points (including the comments), I came to mixed feelings on the whole subject: On one hand I used to report usernames which were in breach of COI rule. On the other, as I saw one time, someone did updated a share for a company, (I don't remember the username or the company he edited). That user, did however asked permission to only update shares (weather the NYSE or NASDAQ are up or down, by the end of either month or year).--Mishae (talk) 04:22, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I attended one of the sessions at WikiconferenceUSA and was very intrigued by the subject, even more so by the idea that organizations want to edit WP without violating any of its policies (through a 3rd party). I think there needs to be an ongoing forum like an email list to continuously discuss these multiple issues. give voice to the various sides and reveal solutions that have been proposed and implemented. -- kosboot (talk) 06:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to add that Jimbo has made me (and Bearian) co-administrators of the LinkedIn Wikipedia group. I'd say the majority of "real" people there are interested in engaging in WP but would represent a COI, so they have great interest in seeing any outcomes to such discussion. -- kosboot (talk) 13:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The description of PR work related to WP struck me as familiar. It resembles descriptions of the role of a Wikipedian in residence, being as much about educating clients as serving their wishes directly. Of course the institutional environment differs but, as an outsider to both activities, I can see that much of the work is the same. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:44, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed that was brought up at WikiConferenceUSA: If a Wikipedian-in-Residence is at a non-profit organization, then WP has less of a problem. If the organization is for-profit and the WiR is doing the same kind of activity, that is a problem. It was noted at the session that this is hypocritical. -- kosboot (talk) 17:13, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The principle is supposed to be that WIRs are editors who the community trusts not just to do their own editing properly, but to show others how to do their work properly. (I note that I myself am an unpaid WIR at the NYPL; I consider it part of my normal volunteering). DGG ( talk ) 01:00, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The gargantuan PR agencies with the gargantuan (i.e. clearly "notable") clients aren't the problem. It is the burgeoning world of freelancing with the marginal clients that are the problem. That's not to say this initiative is without value — the agencies will be expecting something like action with regards to so-called "bright line" editing requests on talk pages. We'll see how that works... Maybe there will be new methods or structures emerging from the backlog... But the big problem remains unchanged no matter how this turns out for the Big 10 agencies and their Fortune 500 clients... Carrite (talk) 04:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not so sure of the innocence of the major agencies. It was mentioned at the NYC session by the representative of a major firm that they will not themselves edit on WP, on the rationale that they cannot adequately control the work of their employees to assure compliance, but refer their clients instead to another smaller firm that is willing to do this editing, and the representative of that particular smaller firm who was present agreed that they engaged in this. It strikes me as utterly hypocritical. I cannot believe that any responsible firm would knowingly employ people whose work they cannot trust, or that they do not monitor their own staff in the work they do. It rather indicates that they do not want to risk their own reputations in directly doing the work, but are willing to actively help in seeing the work gets done in such a way that they can disclaim their own responsibility. If the industry accepts such practices, how can we expect any of them to honestly follow any rules? DGG ( talk )
