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The Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and related projects, explained yesterday that it will establish new rules covering paid editing. The heart of the change is that anyone who is paid to edit the site must "add your affiliation to your edit summary, user page, or talk page, to fairly disclose your perspective," according to Wikimedia's explanation of the change. The organization has also published a FAQ on paid editing.
The changes come after some high-profile commotions over paid editing. In October, Wikipedia deleted more than 250 accounts believed to be connected to a PR firm that was writing articles on the site. In January, the Wikimedia Foundation fired an employee who was accused of taking paid editing gigs. Among the world's most heavily trafficked websites, Wikipedia ranks sixth, according to Alexa. It's the only top website that's owned by a non-profit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19 2014, @01:48AM
I think you're missing the point. This rule codifies a strong community consensus against paid editors. It will not stop all paid edits, but if any paid editors are found out this rule will do two things:
1) Give Wikipedia a clear rule to cite in banning that user & undoing their edits, and
2) Bring public shame to the company that knowingly broken the rules on Wikipedia; the companies paying editors won't be able to hide behind wishy-washy claims that they were simply protecting their brand identity or what-not.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday June 19 2014, @02:35AM
#1 is a good point. But I think #2 requires that Wikipedia maintain a "Wall of Shame", because otherwise it's likely to mostly go unnoticed.
As to the initial spate of jocular comments... yes, exactly how do you plan to enforce this? You might catch some by chance, but it's not like you even have positive IDs on most editors.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by AnythingGoes on Thursday June 19 2014, @04:24AM
And how easy is it to hide any form of payment?
How do you differentiate between a true opinion held by someone against a paid opinion?
Unless you have access to all bank records (in which case, cash is still possible?)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 19 2014, @05:11AM
Yep, that was pretty much my thought... they must have some magic glasses that let them see all this info about every commercial editor.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday June 19 2014, @12:28PM
To be honest, as someone that has been editing Wikipedia (unpaid) since around 2007, I'd much rather see Wales &Â Co. focus on fixing more important issues. Issues like the harmfully vague 'notability' rule being so poorly-worded that it's abused to simultaneously protect trivial junk & remove informational articles, or the problem of editors going on deletion-sprees together to drown out any protest, or the related "7 days"Â rule where the article's gone if there isn't adequate protest. There's also the trouble of people 'guarding' a page to persistently revert any changes they don't like, and the lack of a way for editors to easily work together within Wikipedia to improve an article that needs serious work...and so on.
Article quality has seriously declined in recent years, and from the comments I've been seeing, it's in large part because editors like me hit a breaking point and simply stopped doing anything more than basic spelling/grammar changes or leaving tags. (According to WikiMedia in 2011, the number of active editors at Wikipedia peaked way back in early 2007, and had steadily decreased from there. IÂ doubt the trend has improved much since then.)
What's frustratingly stupid about this is that when a writer accepts a freelance assignment of editing a WPÂ article, a crucial part of the obligation is to ensure it meets high enough standards so it *won't* be removed for bias, and they don't spend time on the article beyond that. Beyond that, whether an article was edited in exchange for money, as a favor to a neighbor, or out of love for a spouse/relative is kind of irrelevant: either it's biased or it's not.
Maybe I'm cynical, but at this point I think Wales & Co. are focusing on high-profile BS like this because it's effortless good PR -- make a few grand statements, toss up a webpage or two, then kick back for the week. :-p After all, trying to fix the site's *real* problems would require a ton of thankless effort over an extended period, and result in at least some bad PR due to being unable to please everybody, which wouldn't be any fun...
(Score: 1) by darkfeline on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:49PM
I understand your sentiment, but the rules are necessary to prevent a management nightmare. Who decides what to keep and what to delete? Who decides whether "Vim is superior to Emacs" is objective or subjective? Obviously, Wikipedia's community (ruling class, privileged editors, etc.) and rules have a lot of room for improvement, but given the general quality, depth, and breadth of information for a free-for-all encyclopedia on the Internet Wild West, I think they're doing a pretty good job so far.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @05:08AM
I recently stopped contributing to WP. I used to have accounts. At some point, it didn't really seem worth the effort anymore. So I started just contributing anonymously. For a while, I would defend edits, and try to add constructive feedback. But, I found one article where I could really help, and the page was "owned" by someone who wouldn't let me make constructive changes, despite my familiarity with the topic. I got into a flamewar with the asshat, and decided I no longer cared about defending my edits against these kind of losers. So, I started just contributing tags, redlinks, and small scale copy-edit changes. That was fine for several years. Now, a new breed of asshat seems to have emerged. The new breed no longer even considers redlinking to be a good faith act if it conflicts with their preconceived vision of how WP is to be "done". I was hunted down for such vile offenses, and I've got to say, it's not any fun any more to try to improve anything. It feels like work, now. So, I'm out.
Now, I'm just waiting for the fork. It'll happen someday. I just hope it's sooner rather than later. I'm hoping for a more decentralized model, though, like a git-based WP.
Cheers!