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Disclosing financial COI in signature

I think it would be good to require an editor with a financial conflict of interest, as defined in this proposal, to disclose that fact in their signature with text that says "(paid)" or "(PAID)", linking to a subpage in their userspace (or a section on their main userpage) that identifies their sponsor(s). This would maximize transparency, so that someone reading a discussion in which that editor participated would be able to weigh that editor's statements and their sponsors' interests accordingly. Thoughts? alanyst 17:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

People may not have a COI about every issue they edit about, so unless it's an SPA we can't ask people to add it to their sigs. I think we need to focus like a laser on producing a very simple policy. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Editors can create alternate accounts, which can be used when they have a conflict of interest (or when they don't). This isn't a bad idea. Coretheapple (talk) 17:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Running with that idea (probably way out of scope), what about a special class of account—which might be an alternate, for those who also edit as volunteers—in which names have a distinctive prefix or suffix (say, “$$$”), and that doesn’t get auto-confirmed? One advantage to the paid editor from using such an account: page-histories would be easier to scan for billing purposes. ;) —Odysseus1479 18:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Another better (imo) option would be to incorporate it into MediaWiki - with a usergroup PR personnel with the userrights no-review This person is unable to automatically review edits to pages protected with Pending Changes PR personnel Edits made by this person are listed in [[Special:PR edits]], maybe others if anyone thinks of them. That way it'd be like PC, have a central place to review edits. ~Charmlet -talk- 23:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
We could insist that they add an "A" for "Advocate" to their sig, and to avoid confusion with the regular part of the sig, it should be in bold, and red.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I have made this proposed change, which prescribes how a financial conflict of interest must be disclosed. (It also makes a small clarification to exclude intangible benefits, such as an expectation of glory in the afterlife or a feeling of gratification for having informed the world of the plight of the lesser bottle-nosed fruit fly, from those that would trigger the FCOI. That sort of advocacy is also generally undesirable but not the problem this proposed policy aims to address.) I immediately reverted it so we could discuss it without giving the appearance of an edit war.

I appreciate SlimVirgin's desire to keep the proposal minimalist and laser-focused, and I've tried to keep my changes in that vein, but I believe it's important to provide a clear way for an editor to conform to the requirements if they have such a conflict of interest. Simply stating that the editor must disclose their COI does not sufficiently set the expectation for how frequently and prominently it should be made.

Regarding SlimVirgin's other point about people not having a COI about every issue they edit about: I agree, but if an editor does have a financial COI then it's better for their signature to disclose that every place they leave a comment, and let the other readers and participants of those discussions determine for themselves whether the COI is relevant to those particular remarks. That way there's no chance of arguing over whether COI should have been disclosed at a particular discussion when it wasn't. alanyst 18:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot that my proposed change also added proposing new articles at AfC alongside making edit requests. I understand this is opposed by some and didn't mean to slide that in without notice. alanyst 19:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No COI witch-hunts please. KonveyorBelt 22:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

  • The problem with requiring disclosure in a signature is that the most important disclosure is linked to mainspace edits. There is no requirement for any editor to ever sign. If we look for disclosures in signatures, we may not look close enough at mainspace edits. The problem with requiring a alternate account with disclosure in the username, well it might work, but be careful that we might be teaching sock puppetry. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Why stop with labels? Why can't we force every paid editor to put in front of their username this: THIS IS A PAID EDITOR. DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING THIS EDITOR SAID SERIOUSLY, HE IS BEING PAID BY A PR FIRM. BEWARE OF COI. IF YOU SEE THIS EDITOR PLEASE BLOCK HIM/HER Would then you be happy? sarcasm of course KonveyorBelt 00:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Perhaps a userbox with the wording, "This user has received [amount] to create articles on Wikipedia" or "This user has created [number] paid articles on Wikipedia"?--Auric talk 15:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I think it is bad idea, as I identify on my Userpage I am working for Moldflow (a software company that develop software for plastic industry) that is now subsidiary of Autodesk. I never edited Moldflow or Autodesk articles but I did a few edits on plastic and CFD-related articles there I might have a borderline COI. The bulk of my edits are on politics, history and culture of Russia as well as general administrative work. Should I really tell every vandal I have warned or blocked that I am doing it on behalf of my employer? I really do not think so Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
    • I believe signature disclosure, strongly enforced, has worked very well on the German Wikipedia. We are muddling in the sands thinking we can just ban paid advocacy at the stroke of a pen: it's not possible. Exposure and control are the sane way to handle this. Tony (talk) 01:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • This all seems to run counter to the general policy to block anyone that has a signature that suggests they are working for an organization or company! To be honest, these editors are declaring their COI in their signature, but get rapidly blocked. If they come back again, it is under an opaque username and no-one is the wiser. Sionk (talk) 14:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
There is little possibility that either disclosing paid advocacy (more on what this means exactly in a moment), or prohibiting paid advocates, can work. There are pragmatic difficulties with detection, and with the mechanics of disclosure, and evasion attempts, and so on. Those are covered reasonably well above. But the more fundamental problem is definitional and methinks inherent. Here is an examle: I work in the food industry, so I cannot edit any articles related to cooking, ingredients, kitchen equipment, farms, restaurants, or of course foods. I use computers, and drive vehicles, for business and pleasure, plus own stock in electronics and automotive firms -- I can edit nothing about those industries. My parents run a brokerage, so I cannot edit any articles about stocks, bonds, forex, t-bills, investing, inflation, hedging, options, mutual funds, monetary policy. My spouse is currently hospitalized with a chronic disease, so I cannot write anything about health, hospitals, medicine. My fully-grown oldest child is running for office, so I cannot write anything about politics, policy, legislation, bureaus, government. My youngest child is graduating from high school and going on to university, so I cannot write anything about education... and they are in a band, so I cannot edit anything about music, lest I badmouth the competition. As a citizen of my nation, I cannot edit articles related to wars; as a citizen of my planet, I cannot edit articles related to the environment, nor the cosmos. WP:COI is just a subset of WP:NPOV, and there is a very fuzzy line between them. Objectivity means the ability to separate oneself from bias; it is essential for scientists, philosophers, and wikipedians. My sig would have 88 words just to explain my *direct* WP:COI, not counting one-hop indirections like my kid's pop band. I realize the proposal is intended to be narrowly tailored to editing for a formal employer, but the slope is a lot more slippery than that... I would say, inherently slippery. Better to admit we have bias, and in some cases (more than might be apparent at first glance as the list above shows) some feasibly-plausible source of financial incentives to push a particular POV. The trick is to resist, not to regulate. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Very interesting take, TexanIP. Carrite (talk) 16:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Adding my voice to others here. Everyone has some sort of COI. I work as an engineer in a reasonably controversial area and you can bet there'd be a stink if someone found I was editing pages related to it. But my employer has never asked me to edit WP and in fact would probably be a bit worried if I was doing so on company time. Do I have a financial COI that I need to declare in my sig? I could certainly benefit financially if WP said nice things about my industry. And everyone is in the same position. Even someone on benefits has a financial COI when editing pages related to welfare policy. Someone who lives on charity handouts has a financial COI when editing pages related to charity funding. For most people, the COI will be very narrow and unrelated to 99% of their edits, so having the COI declared in their sig doesn't help to identify whether their edits are worrying or not GoldenRing (talk) 15:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Totally agreed with GoldenRing above. Editing any useful article will have some direct or indirect financial interest to the editor. I was going to say except vandalism but even vandalism will have some financial interest to some people (e.g., people who are on a mission to say Wikipedia is not a credible source). Passing this as worded will prevent any editing from taking place.—Al12si (talk) 18:21, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

No paid advocacy vs. No Personal Attacks

I find it ironic that this proposal shares its initialism with WP:NPA, which states:

Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Wikipedia. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks do not help make a point; they only hurt the Wikipedia community and deter users from helping to create a good encyclopedia.

The entire focus of this proposal, and indeed all efforts to directly address the problem of edits made by editors with a COI, is of the on the contributor variety rather than on content. This entire approach is arguably a violation of at least the spirit of WP:NPA, if not the actual explicit intent.

I'm serious. The whole idea underlying WP:NPA is to put aside WHO is editing and WHY they are editing, and instead focus on the WHAT of the edit itself as objectively as reasonably possible, and comment on that without regard to WHO made the edit, or WHY they made the edit. Trying to ban or even monitor COI editing ignores WP:NPA and instead encourages a Witch-hunt based on the absurd precepts of Thoughtcrime. It's an initiative that moves WP towards pointless bickering, infighting, and, ultimately, implosion.

The problem of COI editing can never be eliminated. But it can be mitigated to a reasonable level along with all biased editing, by focusing on our content-governing policies and guidelines (notability, sourcing, NPOV, etc.) and enforcing those. Let's keep the eye on the ball folks, building and maintaining an outstanding encyclopedia, rather than get distracted by nonsense like trying to address the problem of COI editing directly. It's never going to work, and, if we try, WP will only suffer.

There is only one WP:NPA, and it's a good one. Let's keep it, and ditch this one. The intent is good, but it's wrong-headed. --B2C 22:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

+1 Very well said. Egregious cases of corporate shills are easily detected and easily dealt with. Anyone who's actually going to edit in a partisan, bad-faith manner isn't going to play by the rules being discussed here, whether we call it an essay, policy, or divine law. I've edited articles on organizations that have employed me. Would it have been better if someone with no connection to one of those organizations made the same edits? I guess, maybe, in some abstract way. I'd like to assume most of us are grownups who are aware of our potential conflicts and behave accordingly. When that doesn't happen, we deal with it. If WP:N, WP:REF, and WP:NPOV are being observed, I don't care who's doing the editing. --BDD (talk) 22:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Godwin. Highly inappropriate comparison. Do not repeat it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Strangely, I think it is an appropriate comparison, because this policy has a potential of a high degree of false positives being used to take a minority group of editors and cast them in extremely negative light with guilt by association. Heck, I've been accused of doing these kind of edits myself simply for starting a new article about a company I thought was interesting. I agree with the parent post of this thread that accusing somebody of paid advocacy when that information isn't volunteered is tantamount to a personal attack on the credibility of the user in question. Just like being called a Jew in Nazi Germany, and the end result by demanding they get banned is almost the same in terms of them being declared "dead to the community". We really need to be much more open and willing to let anybody edit... as is supposedly claimed by this community. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:38, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anything in your post makes Niteshifts statement it in any way comparable or acceptable. It's a form of guilt by association and Reductio ad Hitlerum, and is inherently fallacious reasoning, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Some COIs are easily verifiable, but pointing them out would, unfortunately, constitute outing under current P&Gs. What distinguishes witch hunts from these cases is evidence, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Identifying potential COI is a wide-spread practice in democratic societies, it is not a form of personal attack but it helps to decrease the level of hostility. Currently we treat edits by sockpuppets of banned users quite differently from edits by editors in good standing. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • We have great policies that work pretty well for discussions among editors. Sometimes, people get out of hand, and they will not give it a rest. However paid editors are paid to never give in. They are paid to work through every policy, every medium, every forum to ensure that a lawsuit against their client is not mentioned in the lead of the article, for example. How many volunteers want to spend their time, hours per day, arguing back and forth on the talk page with someone who is paid to never change his or her mind, particularly about topics that are not really that important to the editor? This editor got so frustrated with paid editors he almost stopped editing entirely. Focusing on the contributions, not the contributor is fine, but if the contributions are bad (and they usually are), allowing paid editing condemns volunteers to spending hours arguing with people paid to never change their mind. Paid editing is obnoxious and toxic to a volunteer project. --TeaDrinker (talk) 00:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
    • TeaDrinker (talk · contribs), we have polices to deal with such behavior, regardless of whether the out-of-hand behavior is motivated by payment. A policy or guideline specifically against no paid advocacy is quintessential WP:CREEP. --B2C 18:16, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
      • They are, in the view of this editor, not very effective when dealing with someone who has 8 hours per day to argue and is paid to never change their mind. Many hours have been wasted discussing changed with editors who are perfectly happy to go through the motions of dispute resolution, but will never accept that resolution has occurred. Yes, with persistence, they can be banned or other sanctions imposed, but it takes dozens of hours and does not make for a better encyclopedia. I can think of very little more detrimental to a volunteer project than paying one group of editors to make messes and asking the other group to clean it up for free. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:33, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I could not have put it better. People who are paid eight hours a day to promote a company and/or who have staffers or interns who can spend all day here, have disproportionate time compared to volunteers and therefore disproportionate influence. In such cases where the playing field is not level, it needs an appropriate but definite response to level that field. Second point: The yellow star analogy was grossly inappropriate. We're not Glenn Beck. Let's keep such extreme accusations of Nazi-like behavior out of this discussion, please. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:48, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Is there empirical evidence of the number of paid editors actually working on Wikipedia? Is there any method in place to measure the effects this policy is to regulate? Assuming this is a growing problem of the paid editors tirelessly outpacing the volunteers on edits and gradually shifting the POV of a vast number of articles: Wouldn't the solution be Wikipedia hiring paid watchdogs with the sole intent to patrol for COI and neutrality? Alatari (talk) 10:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
In light of the recent quandries involving two PR companies advertising specifically with respect to Wikipedia as their sole target medium through which to disseminate their PR, the question of empirical evidence would seem to be accounted for.
Why would Wikipedia need to pay people to police paid advocacy when it can be handled through policy measures?--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 11:18, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Can they though? Can the policy measures in place, or this new proposal, actually catch all or a majority of underground black-market paid editors with just a volunteer staff doing the policing? I think many are severely underestimating the sociopaths of the world and the growing financial incentive that created these two PR firms. They are just the beginning and with their failures the next generation of this industry will learn a lesson and their tactics more insidious. Alatari (talk) 00:43, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

CONTEST: worst example of COI editing ever!

So, I wonder. If COI editing is such a serious problem, I wonder if we couldn't have a contest to identify the worst problems ever caused by COI editing. All entries should include:

  1. A summary of what happened, including what the problematic edit/s was/were, how long they were in the article before they were identified, how they were identified as problematic, how they were identified as being the product of COI editing, etc.
  2. Relevant diffs

On your marks, get set, go! --B2C 22:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The very worst would be in articles now deleted. I know of one in particular, an article created by the subject. Being about a living person, I don't think it's wise or necessary to get into this kind of thing. Coretheapple (talk) 22:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
But articles like that one are usually easily dispensed with per notability. Wasn't that the primary basis for deletion in this case? The point is it doesn't matter WHO posted the inappropriate article, or whether that person had a COI. Regardless of WHO or WHY, the WHAT justified deletion. Right? --B2C 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh, here's one that doesn't involve BLPs. I posted it on Jimbo's talk page and am copying it below:

This PR Newswire release re "Obamacare" & Wikipedia just came to my attention. It reads in relevant part:

"The Obamacare debate resulted in a legislative impasse and a government shutdown as both parties pour millions into promoting and defending their position. This time, however, the war of words is not limited to Congress and the news media. One of the new battlegrounds is Wikipedia, where every word in the 13,000-word Obamacare article is bitterly fought over." . . . 'This editorial war on Wikipedia is pretty representative of the high impact Wikipedia profiles now play in forming public opinion about political issues, brands, products, corporations. The stakes are often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so we find ourselves quite busy helping our clients achieve their objective on Wikipedia, while adhering to Wikipedia's notoriously complex rules and practices,' said Alex Konanykhin, CEO of www.WikiExperts.us, the leading Wikipedia visibility agency."

--Coretheapple (talk) 23:09, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

If they really are "adhering to Wikipedia's notoriously complex rules and practices," why is it a problem? If they aren't, isn't that the problem, rather than some money changing hands? --BDD (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
It’s certainly in their interest to make that claim, because it’s the principal basis of their pitch to prospective clients. Their website, to their credit IMO, gives high prominence to WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:NOT, and so on, the message being that they can better ensure our standards are met than clients can do on their own. I also note they guarantee only that their articles will survive for a month, not that the content will reflect the client’s wishes. I don’t mean to downplay the issue of disclosure—about which I saw nothing (in an admittedly brief surf through the site)–but otherwise I found their presentation hard to fault. Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with you, and I’m concerned that accusations of paid editing could become a form of ad hominem that’s perceived to have backing in policy.—Odysseus1479 00:11, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • If their articles will survive for a month? That will not be enough for them If they are deleted, and if the edit history of the paid editor is unavailable, then the client will ask for their money back, will be unlikely to pay again, and will not be recommending the service. If they attempt to keep client money on the basis of an article surviving one month plus one day, then there goes their reputation.

    Having read most others' comments, I am still convinced that paid editing is an issue that can be managed, and that the real problem is undisclosed paid editors using undisclosed disposable accounts, probably one per client, probably with accounts used in successful paid article creation being disclosed in late negotiation for new clients. I suggest a small step, not a knee jerk overreaction, of merely requiring disclosure on each account, under threat of [{WP:CSD#G5]] deletion of all their work, a threat that targets their cash flow.

    When these professional paid editors are disclosed, cataloged, and reviewable, then we can see the extent of the problem. Currently, we are probably suffering an extreme biased view because we catch the worst first. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I doubt any deleted articles will survive a month. I know people who have articles written for school projects deleted in less than 5 minutes for dubious completely bogus notability reasons. Deleted articles have no chance and they cannot count as evidence. (And if this is passed writing/editing Wikipedia articles for school won’t even be allowed. So much for Wikipedia being a “free” encyclopedia…)—Al12si (talk) 18:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Worst I came across IMO was on Brian Engel. The article-subject was a non-notable publicist for oil & gas companies. He had a massive article with 33 citations, but almost everything about the article was misleading. I would rank such deceit as more offensive than just promotional writing, which is often easy to cleanup, or other non-notable articles that are easier to detect. When the article has 33 cites, editors presume it is notable and properly sourced, when it wasn't actually. CorporateM (Talk) 01:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The whole Aaron Klein affair — he set up a sockpuppet account that had been content for a while to simply self-promote himself on his own article. Later, he engaged in what he later called investigative journalism by edit warring Birther material into the main Obama article until he got himself blocked, then he wrote a misleading third person account about the incident as if he did not know who was operating the account, exposing Wikipedia's supposed pro-Obama bias. The story got picked up by the conservative blogosphere and a few major mainstream sources, who encouraged their minions to come to Wikipedia to set things straight. The articles were overwhelmed for days with angry Republican conspiracy theorists, leading indirectly to a lot more sockpuppets, dozens of blocked accounts, and a botched arbitration case. The COI editing had been going on for months; it took a few days for Wikipedia editors and a few real world journalists to piece together what was going on after the news articles. The conservative press denied the whole thing, despite the fact that it's all in the edit records. Sorry, no diffs, the arbcom case ran to megabytes. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • A while back I caught (and identified) an employee of American Apparel trying to whitewash Wikipedia's accounts of the CEO's well-documented sex scandals. I had to remind them what happens when well known people get caught gaming their Wikipedia articles, this was an era where that kind of story was news fodder. That worked. Interestingly, I don't think the proposed policy would have stopped either of these. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Hayford Peirce is a two-page ad for Hayford Peirce.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Ted Cruz might qualify as a case in point here. The single greatest contributor (a Cruz crusader), (one of his/her monikers was "Exclusive Agent") was edit-warring under multiple monikers and IP addresses. Shortly after that person was blocked, a new Wikipedian arose who continually deleted such uncontroversial phrases such as the fact that Canada was Cruz's place of birth and that he was widely seen as bearing some responsible for the 2013 government shutdown. Anyone entering the page to inject a well-documented fact was met with immediate resistance and removal of the material. Despite the fact that one or two editors reversed the new Cruz advocates' revert, the person continually removed the material. A paid political partisan who is engaged in editing as a full time endeavor (particularly working in tandem with his or her own sockpuppet or misguided and passionate supporters) can easily exhaust the average informed person trying to add a few simple facts to the page. In such cases, the whole article is biased. What does one do? You can't prove it but you can smell it. Is it ad hominem to ask about conflicts of interest and if one does, should the editor be required to answer?Scholarlyarticles (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
    • YES, Scholaryarticles (talk · contribs), it is ad hominem to ask about conflicts of interest. The WHO or WHY behind a given edit (or series of edits) should never be relevant. If the WHAT of the edits comply with NPOV, NOTABILITY, WP:IRS, and our other content-related policies and guidelines, then they are fine; if they don't comply, then they need to be reverted or fixed. Our actions to edits should be identical and focused entirely on WHAT regardless of WHO makes the edits and without regard to whether they may be influenced by a COI. --B2C 18:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Here's an article detailing some of the recent paid editing problems. Some time ago, YellowMonkey did an investigation of a known paid-for article, and found that it was clean of notable, documented, negative information about the subject. It has been, and continues to be, a problem. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes, TeaDrinker (talk · contribs), it's an WP:NPOV problem. The fact that that particular NPOV problem is caused by a COI issue is irrelevant - the NPOV problem needs to be addressed just the same anyway. --B2C 18:12, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
      • If we allow one group of editors to cause problems on the project for pay, we can't really expect many volunteers to stick around to clean up those messes for free. We know that money corrupts editorial decisions. We know it causes problems. It was your request that such problems be shown to you, well, quod erat demonstrandum. Of course, if you ask for examples of problematic editing as the consequences of pay, that editing is going to be problematic according to policy, that is what was requested. However we are intelligent people and can deal with causes as well as effects. We can identify, as you have just done, the causative factors behind the problematic edits and make every effort to curtail those factors. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Here are more stories from the Wiki-PR debacle. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:37, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Diploma mills tend to be problematic as a group - often they will remove negative information from their own articles and insert unfounded claims that their credentials are valid. There were a few times Concordia College and University was replaced with laudatory text so that the "college" could then link to WP from outside as "evidence" of the institution's bona fides. (The institution, which claims to be accredited by Liberia and operates from a Caribbean island, is best known for conferring a baccalaureate on Fostoria, Ohio police dog "John I. Rocko"). No need to single out one like this, though, most diploma mills WP:COI edit this way. Pick any in the category and view history... K7L (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Tautology, and a better proposal

Wikipedia:Advocacy is already forbidden, so paid advocacy is by default forbidden. Instead, we need to talk about Wikipedia:Paid editing policy proposal, which would require disclosure of all paid editing, regardless of whether the editing is neutral or not. Jehochman Talk 23:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The Advocacy essay you link to refers to policy that governs content. The actual text of the proposed BrightLine policy is about contributor, not content and seems to do exactly what you are proposing...Jytdog (talk) 10:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't know about Advocacy, as that is an essay, but I was not aware of the paid editing policy proposal. That's a good point. It is more specific and seems like a common-sense way to proceed. I don't understand why that's not being discussed. While it may not be adopted, my feeling is that if Wikipedia want to reject a paid editing policy proposal that would be routine and uncontroversial everywhere else, so be it. Coretheapple (talk) 14:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:ADVOCACY is just an essay, the applicable policy is Wikipedia:NOTADVOCATE#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox_or_means_of_promotion. This bars attempts at promotion, content that fails to adhere to NPOV. (I am completely in favor of mandatory COI identification, by the way, with a provision that those harassing declared COI editors without due cause should face sanctions for their actions.) Carrite (talk) 18:32, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This is an idea that I could get behind (with a bit of modification). Indeed, Wikipedia:NOTADVOCATE is already the governing policy. We don’t need another one. As for COI disclosure, I don’t think mandatory is practical, but strongly encouraging disclosure of financial, scientific, academic, religious, political and nationalist, et. al. COI is a good idea and should be in our COI guideline. I know what Carrite meant by this: with a provision that those harassing declared COI editors without due cause should face sanctions for their actions. but I think there should never be a situation where it is OK (due cause?) to harass an editor who declares a COI. Point blank, we should never sanction harassment of our editors under any circumstance and as Carrite states editors doing so …should face sanctions for their actions. The COI and other appropriate guidelines should be unequivocal about this. We could simplify this Advocacy issue by adopting this approach. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:53, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
There is already an anti-harassment policy, and that is enough. I edit mostly articles about historical controversies, and there are still people willing to refight old battles. I would hate for a Wikipedia policy to explicitly say that "one must not harass an editor who likes to refight old battles." What you are suggesting give a class of editors, in this case paid editors, an excuse to cry "harassment" when there isn't any. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:14, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I am a bit confused by your comments. Indeed we have an anti-harassment policy and a careful reading tells me that any kind of editor harassment should not be tolerated. As you've said, we don't need another policy to say that. Yet with this comment I would hate for a Wikipedia policy to explicitly say that "one must not harass an editor who likes to refight old battles. you imply its OK to harass editors when the situation suits you. Declaring COI (of any sort) has over the years clearly resulted in harassment by other editors. We should encourage declarations of COI so that content contributions can be monitored appropriately, but we shouldn't tolerate any harassment of such editors, no matter how much you might dislike their motivations. As for giving someone an excuse to cry harassment, that's just lame --Mike Cline (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
OK, so leave it in. It won't make any difference no matter what you do. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:22, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Disclosure wording

Multiple User's above have said we can/should "require disclosure." I have therefore cribbed this from Protecting our Neutrality (see google archive here [1]) and modified it for Wikipedia.

On their User page, on subject article talk pages, and when commenting on any conflict of interest related policy/guideline discussion page:

  • Users must disclose the fact that they have received or will receive anything that could be construed as a payment to the User for favorable coverage or for avoiding unfavorable coverage of article subjects the User is working on. This includes money, gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other benefits from individuals or organizations covered (or likely to be covered) by the User in a Wikipedia article.
  • Users must disclose the fact of payment or compensation (not the amount) of any sort from individuals or organizations (including through intermediaries) who are the subject of coverage (positive, negative, or neutral) the User is to provide, edit, prepare or supervise on Wikipedia.
  • The notices given subject to the above must be kept indefinitely in place, even after your work has ended.

Discuss

  • The above seems reasonable. It is enough that we know that they are a paid editor. We can then see from there edits what their bias is. There is no need to specifically identify the editor, or the client. The client will in obvious enough.

    I'm thinking that requiring an alternative account suffixed with "(Paid)", or similar, is a good way to go. I would expect that this suffix should be appended to the persons main wikipedia account. I expect that all half rate paid editors and better have main Wikipedia accounts with substantial mainspace edit history. I expect that the clients are often aware of the multiple account use of the paid editor, at least the more successful alternative accounts.

    Accounts should be linked both ways. I expect that a paid editor may create and article and maintain it during employment, but down the track may choose to maintain the article, their past work, as an ordinary unpaid editor. We should not assume a defined line exists between paid edits and unpaid edits. We should not assume that paid editors are not otherwise ethical Wikipedia volunteers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Marketing guy here as mentioned above. If anyone cares to dig it up, the Federal Trade Commission has some great common sense advice about disclosures. Rather than having prescriptive rules, they say that the disclosure must be "clear and conspicuous". The disclosure's effectiveness is based on whether the average reader (editors in this case) would get its meaning. Smokey is on-target; I contribute about 50% volunteer and 50% COI and I have in some cases maintained articles as a volunteer where any financial incentive was years prior. It is not so easy to separate the two. Also, as I have learned first-hand, any list of COI articles becomes a target list for harassment. I have not seen any COI disclosures that were not sufficient, except those that were not made at all, which I would consider the primary target. On the contrary, sometimes they disclose too much and I want them to get to the point regarding the actual article.CorporateM (Talk) 01:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Excellent point that following the rules about COI identification only makes one a target for harassment. I heard the same thing from a longtime paid COI editor on WPO today. Along with mandatory ID there needs to be an explicit prohibition of harassment of COI editors without due cause. There are some fanatics on this issue and I suspect that a few heads will have to roll... Carrite (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Harassment is already forbidden, but not well-enforced. We should do more to protect editors from harassment project-wide. COIs complain about being harassed, but they are only slightly more likely than any editor to be a target; most volunteers I have talked to have had similar experiences at some point in their editing career. It's just that - if you choose to harass an editor who happens to have a COI, naturally you will focus on that as an obvious hand-hold. Also, the flip side is that PR reps often feel they are being discriminated against, when in actuality their contributions are genuinely problematic, or they are just too tense because they have such a vested interest in the article's content. CorporateM (Talk) 11:43, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd rather drop the "for favorable coverage or for avoiding unfavorable coverage". Any edit, other than the reversion of blatant vandalism, should probably require the editor to have disclosed a financial COI in regard to that article. I'm worried that it will raise defences along the lines of "I was only hired to make sure it was neutral", which might be better avoided. - Bilby (talk) 01:19, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
The intent of the second independent bullet clause is to cover that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC) I have made that more clear. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC) I have also added a third clause about keeping the notice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bright lines

I've just started Wikipedia:Bright lines - which is tackling the same idea, but from the other end of the telescope, so we are looking at the editing results, rather than assuming bad motives of some well meaning professionals. This is simply a quick start to get ideas flowing. I'm off out now, so won't be able to get back to it for a bit. SilkTork ✔Tea time 14:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

We don't even have a consensus for what "banned" means. Blocked or site banned? To all those who encourage PR firm editing: a pox on your pet articles! May the paid editors spin them for you against your will. Doc talk 14:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
"Banned" means WP:BAN. I don't like the idea of a bright-line banning policy. Banning is an extraordinary remedy, similar to outlawry, whereby the community (or ArbCom, or Jimbo) decides that said person shall not contribute to Wikipedia, and all edits by said person shall be reverted on sight. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 14:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
These are the exact opposite of "bright lines". A bright line states incontrovertibly that if you do X, the response shall be Y regardless of the circumstantial nuances. Instead these "bright lines" currently say:
Any user will be banned from the project if, after an appropriate warning,What's appropriate? Just one? they repeatedlyHow many times? Twice? Multiple warnings then? and deliberatelyHow do we distinguish deliberately from accidentally/through ignorance? edit or amend an article to do any one of these:
And so on. These need to be watertight if they are to be proposed as "bright lines" underlying this proposed policy change Jebus989✰ 16:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Any user will be banned from the project if, after an appropriate warning, they repeatedly and deliberately edit or amend an article to do any one of these

So what does this mean? What is an appropriate warning?

Insert false information

If someone mistakenly edits the article with a non reliable source, can he be banned?

  • Inappropriately disparage the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the disparagement
  • Inappropriately praise the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the praise

Same concerns as above.

Remove or suppress reliably sourced information that appropriately balances praise or disparagement in an article

Is cleanup discouraged?

Right now they are not bright lines, rather blurred lines. KonveyorBelt 02:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Let's just get rid of this horrible "bright line" metaphor. Life is grey and this matter is very grey. We need normalization of something that is already covertly happening, and that means mandatory declaration of COI and protection of declared COI accounts from harassment. Carrite (talk) 18:45, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

No paid advocacy and the GLAM Sector

Forgive me if I cannot always be up to speed with all Wiki rubrics but I read this on the project page "Subject-matter experts

Nothing in this policy should be interpreted to mean that subject-matter experts should not contribute to Wikipedia in their area of expertise. Like all other editors, subject-matter experts should simply make sure that their external financial relationships in the field do not interfere with their primary role on Wikipedia."

I really struggle to get my head around this. Wiki seeks great involvement from GLAM organisations. Almost by definition a curator is hired for their expertise in a subject which they are expected to share. One of the most obvious ways to do this is to generate Wiki content. I don't see it as COI. It only becomes COI in my book when the amount of renumeration you received changes because of a wiki entry. So a £20k p/a curator should be able to write for Wiki with no COI as a subject professional. Only if by writing for Wiki his £20k becomes £22k do I think there would be a COI. IMHO we have to allow curators to do what they are good at so long as they do it not for MORE money and they do it impartially without the i word. If we cannot sort this out you will have the paradox that a volunteer curator could edit wiki and a salaried curator should not. Or that a salaried curator should only edit where there is no subject relation to their employer which is nonsense. In hard terms do you want National Railway Museum curators who know about objects in their care to make properly referenced contributions or not? The example could be repeated a 1000 times.

Perhaps by setting my example about the amount of k beside the first quote I can see a route through because do they not amount to the same thing? Welcome the curator's content so long as in all respects it meet's wiki standards and the person does not gain ADDITIONAL finance through what they wrote. Robertforsythe (talk) 16:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I share Robert's concern here. I am personally aware of academics and librarians that are operating with significant grant $$$ to explore SEO strategies to develop greater exposure to digital collections and digital archives owned by major institutions. Such archives are money making machines for most institutions, so exposure is to their existence and content is essential. One of the avenues being undertaking by the researchers is the creation of or modification of Wikipedia articles that contain content from or reference digital archives. The sole purpose of such Wikipedia work is to explore SEO strategies via DBpedia and such for greater exposure of digital collections and archives. Is this paid advocacy? These researchers and librarians are adding content to Wikipedia that as far as my experience goes has always met WP norms, yet they are being paid, via grant $$ to do just that. Will they be banned under this proposal? --Mike Cline (talk) 19:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
GLAM organisations are just as capable of WP:COI as anyone else. They're usually a bit more articulate in what they write, but do we really need half of our Antique Boat Museum article written by User:AntiqueBoatMuseum, a single-purpose account? I suppose the line should be drawn at the point an editor or organisation is writing about itself or its brand of products. Thomas Edison writing about light bulbs in general (or even light bulb jokes) isn't WP:COI but Thomas Edison writing specifically about General Electric light bulbs is. K7L (talk) 00:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Changing the goalposts without actually addressing the problem

This edit changes the goalposts. It does not, however, address the key issue with this proposed policy. It still is all about the contributor, and not the content; it actually worsens things because of the failure to define "subject matter expert". What constitutes a subject matter expert? Does having worked for a specific advocacy position as a volunteer for 20 years make one an SME? Does it require proof of one's scholarly expertise? What if the SME works for a for-profit company instead of in the scholarly sector? Those who remember back to the Essjay controversy, where a longtime administrator claimed certain scholarly credentials, have to realise that absent some sort of verification process which would by necessity require that individuals publicly identify themselves and link to their real-world identity, there is no way to verify credentials or expertise. Let's not start going for policies that result in a cure worse than the disease. Risker (talk) 16:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it just adds more vagueness to an already vague policy, and could still fail to allow scholars to edit in their subject of expertise. If a researcher is funded by grants, increasing awareness of their field may help them get additional grants in the future. And the section still does not make it clear whether such an "external financial relationship" would be okay or not. Even if it isn't intended to do this, the vagueness leaves it open to some abuse. I can easily predict a scenario:
<Expert> writes balanced, well-sourced article
<Crackpot> adds nonsense conspiracy theory to it
<Expert> reverts
<Crackpot> reverts: "Your career is based on people believing your mainstream 'science', I'm trying to make it NPOV, you're violating WP:PAID"
<Crackpot> starts noticeboard threads ad infinitum accusing <Expert> of paid editing
<Expert> realizes he has better things to do with his time and quits.
-- Mr.Z-man 17:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Who is a better expert on the subject of a particular business than the owner/CEO/Marketing guy? Monty845 17:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
That's a typically Wikipedian debasement of the word "expert". Let's head it off by stipulating that "expert" refers to someone with generally recognized scholarly qualifications in a subject area. MastCell Talk 19:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Yet that is not remotely the definition used in Wikipedia Expert--Antiqueight confer 19:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Only kidding a bit here, but I'll venture to say my mechanic understands the working of automobiles at least as well as someone with a P.Eng. Which one would be the expert? Risker (talk) 05:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
If you prefer, we could replace "scholarly qualifications" with "scholarly or technical qualifications". In practice, I doubt that anyone would complain about a mechanic editing automotive articles, regardless of what's written in policy. MastCell Talk 18:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that would help either. The problem is that many COI editors claim to be experts - and probably are - that's why they started a business in x industry; because they understood that industry at an expert level enough to develop a profitable business. We see this all the time at the Skateboarding WikiProject. Those building new companies or releasing new technologies or promoting some new fad are overwhelmingly subject matter "experts" and many would pass even the loosest definition having won competitions or spent x years as sponsored professionals. Academic expertise should be an applicable "out" in "academic" areas like science. But "technical" expertise is something that almost anyone can claim. I couldn't care less if a PhD student writes an article about a particular frog for which his faculty has received research $$. I have a problem when a guy who skated as a pro in the early 90s uses his "expertise" to spam WP with advertising for his new skateboard. Same for "expert" programmers who make that claim to promo their latest non-notable software distro. I would hope that the WP community has enough sense to differentiate between an academic who might be paid to conduct research and then chooses to share some of that research with WP and a promo-spammer who cries "expert" as an excuse to promote a commercial endeavour.
Beyond that, what qualifies as an appropriate area of expertise? Can someone with a Creative Writing degree spam with impunity from an Elance account because they are a "writing expert" in general? What about an MBA who could claim to be an expert on "business, in general" and spam away? Stalwart111 08:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
The answer is application of WP:PROVEIT and the prohibition on original research. It shouldn't make a difference whether a legitimate or self-avowed expert makes an edit on a contentious issue as long as the facts in the edit are traceable to acceptable source material. We already prohibit "facts" from self-published sources, so that CoI is diminished in its significance by proper application of PROVEIT. However, I'd like to support the proposed policy because it removes the issue of legions of paid activists/wonks (whether corporate or political party activists doesn't really matter) swamping WP with unbalanced articles with great reference lists.loupgarous (talk) 21:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
"it removes the issue of legions of paid activists/wonks" How? In other words, kindly PROVEIT, I don't believe it. Paradoctor (talk) 21:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I might have understated the difficulty of identifying who's a paid activist in that last post. But this is just one more tool to deal with a chronic and pervasive problem in Wikipedia - corporately (or activist organization) - employed editors who just type the copy from their press releases verbatim into Wikipedia articles. It doesn't solve every issue, but it could sure help in some cases. You don't throw your hammer away because you can't drill neat little holes with it. You get a drill motor and some bits, and keep your hammer for when you need to drive nails. loupgarous (talk) 03:57, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
There are already two super-effective tools for dealing with that: WP:CSD#G11 and WP:CSD#G12. This wouldn't prevent it from occurring in the first place, which is really the only hole. WilyD 16:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it a hole. It's just the price of business in an open community. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 17:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

A thought experiment on how this proposal will deprecate the outing policy

So, let's say I edit an article on a business, and User:ImPerfect accuses me of obvious bias and accuses me of being a paid editor. Given the fact that I've been around here for a long time, there's a fair chance that everyone will just roll their eyes. But what if it's not me they accuse, but someone who's only been around for a year? Or someone who specialises in editing articles on certain topics that include this business? Or a completely new editor? How do these editors defend themselves when accused of having a financial conflict of interest? And what standard of evidence are we going to require to "let them off"? Will they have to prove, somehow or other, that they don't have a COI? How do they do that? What standard of proof will be required from the accuser?

My concern here is that this policy makes it far, far too easy to launch the accusation based on an edit that someone doesn't agree with (or frankly, that does not agree with the accuser's point of view), and it is nearly impossible to defend against such an accusation. It will encourage sleuthing around off-wiki and actively attempting to link pseudonymous accounts (either by username or IP) to real-world identities, thus essentially washing out our WP:OUTING policy. I can foresee those who want to remove opposition to their editing researching their opponents in other venues and coming up with statements like "Your pension plan owns 500,000 shares of this company! You do so have a conflict!" (For the record: if someone's sleuthing about me, I haven't the funniest notion where my pension plan invests; however, if I successfully ran for any level of government in Canada, I'd have to find out and would have to declare it as part of my financial disclosure. This isn't a far-fetched example.) For the editor accused of COI, there is no way that they can respond without revealing personal information, even if they are completely innocent and are being falsely accused.

This policy is in direct conflict with at least one of our oldest and most strongly defended behavioural policies. Now, there are things to be said in favour of rethinking the outing policy; however, this policy cannot go forward in isolation without a broad community consultation on whether or not we want to retain the outing policy. Risker (talk) 05:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Nicely put. Although I am not greatly in favor of anonymous/pseudonymous editing, I think that is probably a far greater priority for most editors than the few cases of COI, which to be honest seem not to be a major issue. Greglocock (talk) 05:55, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
{ec}Am I missing something or are you implying that a simple accusation made without any grounds or proof would produce a "guilty until proven innocent" situation in the above scenario. Unless there is evidence produced that requires refuting, it would seem that there would be nothing but a baseless accusation that should be subject to WP:HARASSMENT via WP:BOOMERANG. I don't see where a necessity to reveal personal information on the part of someone subject to a falsely accussation would arise.
The main goal of this initiative would appear to aim at keeping everything above board by promoting transparency through necessitating disclosure, while restricting the scope of participation of those with a COI to prevent the occurrence of related problems.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 06:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ubikwit, where's the proof coming from? If an editor hasn't posted onwiki info that suggests a COI, then it's going to have to come from off-wiki sleuthing...or it could just be made up out of thin air, for all we know. But how many users who value what little online privacy they have are really going to say to an accuser, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Nope. They're going to walk away from that article, and quite likely from the project entirely. What would you do if you were confronted with someone accusing you of COI? This is a thought experiment, and I encourage all editors to really think about how they would respond, and how they think the project should deal with such accusations. Risker (talk) 06:19, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
How is anything proven here? I have sympathy with the view that a rule that is hard to enforce is unworkable, but that is not a reason to have no declaration of intent on whether paid advocacy is welcome. While paid editing does not bother some people who believe they would continue contributing regardless, the idea of working alongside paid PR spinners does bother many other volunteers. Having a policy, even if unworkable in many cases, would at least serve to maintain the volunteer ethic. I don't mind battling a POV pusher because there are generally sufficient good editors available to ensure that eventually there will be a good outcome for the encyclopedia. However, if it is established that paid editing is like apple pie, it would be very unproductive to battle a tag team of new editors who are indistinguishable from paid PR hacks. It's like WP:Child protection—essentially no one cares if a pro-pedophilia activist edits Wikipedia (we don't require a declaration from each new editor), but if there are grounds for thinking that someone is such an activist, they will be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 06:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Johnuniq, how are you, personally, going to deal with a COI accusation if this proposal passes? Today, you can shrug your shoulders and ignore it and keep doing what you're doing. If this passes, you will need to address the issue. It's really that simple. So how do you see yourself doing so? Do you support the idea of sleuthing through the internet figuring out who people are and then using that information to attempt to prove COI? Remember, we banned an admin for doing that, but it would not be possible to stop people doing that very thing, and posting it onwiki, if this is passed. Risker (talk) 07:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
How would I deal with it if accused of paid advocacy? I would ask which of my edits gave that appearance, and whether there is any trend in my edits that led to that conclusion. How would I deal with an editor I suspected of paid advocacy? I'd grind my teeth and wonder why I was volunteering to help them. I do not support the idea of indiscriminate sleuthing, nor of outing, but gathering public information as in the recent wikipr case seems desirable in order to gauge what needs to be done. Johnuniq (talk) 08:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Risker, if someone accused me of having a COI I would inquire as to the basis of the accusation. If, by some obtuse definition of what a COI encompasses I was determined to have a COI, I would thenceforth simply declare that I had a COI.
I wouldn't be editing as a PR hack to begin with, so I would simply point to WP:YESPOV and sources if someone complained on the basis of my POV.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 10:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Ah, it's apparent that the editors who've tried this so far have never really been accused of editing in a seriously bad way, and so really don't know what a pain it is to defend oneself. Let's be more specific here in the example.
    • You are accused of paid advocacy because you have edited an article about a company. Your intention was to clean it up and reflect current information. The article was 40 paragraphs long when you started, 18 paragraphs of which were in the "Controversies" section. There was no section about employee relations. You have added a section identifying that the company was ranked in the top 500 employers for the last three years, with links to the respected independent body that made that ranking as well as to a respected business magazine that reported this. You have reduced the "controversies" section to four paragraphs, eliminating anecdotal stories sourced to local news sources but expanding the information on the major controversies by improving references to high quality national-level sources and adding well-referenced information on the company's response to those major controversies. You are accused of paid advocacy.
  • That is a more specific example. Now, how do you defend yourself? Risker (talk) 11:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
    • You can't. No real wikipediot would spend their time making such edits because they are no fun. Ergo, anyone making such edits is very, very likely someone with a more or less direct financial stake in the company. Someone not using his real name (talk) 12:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
      • It feels like Wikipedia:Assume bad faith is also going to become policy. You're saying that if somebody takes an interest that you don't understand, it is then fair to jump to the conclusion that they must be a paid editor. Jehochman Talk 12:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
        • I'm not sure where you've been, Jehochman. This happens now, and has been happening since before I was a regular editor. If the target is a new account (aka "SPA") the response ranges from just reverting them (often with the summary "vandalism") or accused of COI, or blocked/banned/checked for socks. If they're more experienced, the community response is more likely to shrug it off, unless the editor making the accusation is an admin or longer term editor. We have to keep in mind that there's good evidence that experienced editors are also working for some of the "edits for hire" organizations, so the good faith that experience once had may no longer be applicable. See also Mike Cline's story below. Risker (talk) 13:22, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't see much of a scope for changing my initial response, because the second scenario still is based on an unsubstantiated accusation. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused, correct?
Accordingly, if it is simply a case of a POV dispute, that is where the focus should be shifted, and that is the manner in which I would attempt to channel the dispute. Were there an actual COI involved, again, I would disclose it and abide by the pertinent COI policies that were on the books.
Maybe there should be a two tier COI system implemented, one that has discretionary sanctions for hotly contested articles, restring COI editors to Talk pages, and one that simply requires disclosure and allows editing in article space until a problem arises, at which time the discretionary sanctions version could be applied.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 14:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think you might be missing my point, Ubikwit. The way that the COI will be "proven" will be sleuthing for your personal information online and through other dimensions, like calling your boss. Speaking as someone who's been through this or seen it happen to others because of my Arbcom role, I can assure you it is not pleasant, and that pretty much everyone can be found and a way to force an editor off an article (if not the entire project) can be found. This proposal encourages exactly that kind of behaviour; after all, it's based on not publicly disclosing one's COI, so that means going after non-public info to prove one's point. Otherwise, why would we even be bothering? Risker (talk) 17:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how that could possibly be a concern. However, if people are worried about witch hunts, then that can be dealt with by inserting strong language prohibiting such behavior. In the longer version of this proposal there is "no investigations" language that, I think, is pretty strong and which I've just strengthened further, to take this off the table. Coretheapple (talk) 17:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
You realise now that you have made the policy unenforceable and unpoliceable by taking that out. This increasingly is coming across as "Something must be done!!! This is Something!!! Therefore We Must Do It!!!" Creating an unenforceable policy is probably the worst thing we can do. Six months from now when it's identified that an IP from somebody's workplace edited the article on that employer, we'll take an even bigger publicity hit than some people think we're getting now. Risker (talk) 20:55, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Let the policy be unenforceable. It shouldn't be a policy in the first place and it encourages witch hunts at noticeboards. KonveyorBelt 21:00, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
If we can be more than usually cynical for a moment, an unenforceable (or unenforced) policy has an advantage over a non-existent one: whenever there is a media outcry about someone editing an article, we can say "How dare those horrible people violate our policy!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Risker has it right here and I am living proof of the scenario described. When I first started editing WP in early 2007 of course I started editing on what I knew about—Strategic Planning. As any new editor, I was learning the ropes, the rules, and the norms of the community. Unfortunately, because I worked for a company that consulted in the corporate Strategy arena, my edits about a particular strategy process the company used were immediately attacked as COI with some vicious accusations, especially from a new editor perspective. Despite the fact that I openly conceded the COI, I was evil and proving otherwise wasn’t an option. NPOV or Notability of the topics was no longer relevant despite ample evidence to the contrary. [6] and [7]. I survived the encounter, learned some lessons and became an otherwise productive editor and admin in the WP community. Unfortunately for the encyclopedia, six years later, the great majority of the articles related to strategy are pretty poor and will probably remain so as long as any strategy expert (who probably is employed in some way in the strategic planning business) is considered evil, has a COI, and couldn’t possibly contribute anything on strategy that is well sourced, NPOV and notable. This whole proposal validates my assertion that COI clearly trumps NPOV and Notability policy/guidelines. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

My experience was exactly the same when I started editing search engine optimization. After I got sick and tired of being accused of COI and I stopped editing that article. It used to be featured. Now it's a former featured article.. Jehochman Talk 13:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
In that case, it might be a good idea to limit the scope to the Talk pages and use of the {Request edit} template, thereby preventing any hard feelings by eliminating the source of conflict beforehand.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 14:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Isn't that what the evil and manipulative BP rep did? Or so we're told on Jimbo's talk page. Clearly that can't be allowed either because there are too many wikipediots who would fall for it. I think the responsibility for approving COI edits should rest only with Jimbo and perhaps the ArbCom. Someone not using his real name (talk) 15:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh heavens, not ArbCom, ever. Aside from the fact that it's specifically out of scope for Arbcom (we definitively do not deal directly with content), the last thing the committee needs is more work. I speak as someone who's been an arbitrator for 5 years and has been trying to find a way to offload last-chance ban/block appeals for most of that time. And Jimbo, for all of his experience, simply is not available anywhere near enough to do that, and as a WMF Trustee could be perceived to be "approving" edits in a way that could put the WMF's Section 230 immunity at risk.

About 4 years ago, Arbcom tried to create an editorial advisor subcommittee, which was intended to get spun off to be a community-selected group that could review content decisions (kind of the content equivalent of Arbcom), but that got ripped apart pretty quickly. They would be ideal if they existed, but they don't.... I'll try to find some links tonight. Risker (talk) 15:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:ACPD. It was a decent idea which predictably went down in flames at the hands of the community. MastCell Talk 18:24, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I actually think these rules make the kind of concerns raised here either to deal with, because they set forth the narrow circumstances in which COI exists. If you are a former official of XYZ Corp., there is nothing to prohibit your writing about it. In my view, the rules are weak and leave out a lot. Contrary to some of what I've read on this page, they don't sanction vigilantism. Overall I think they are neutral and perhaps even slightly harmful in terms of reducing COI situations, for, yes, they do not cover situations in which a corporate PR person acts as a kind of straw boss, dominating the talk pages of the articles. Yet evidently the idea of any kind of COI prohibition flies in the face of a kind of libertarian ethos prevalent among Wikipedia editors. Coretheapple (talk) 19:42, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ironically, I'd be a lot more concerned about the former official editing than I would be the current PR person. The current PR person usually has more of a professional reputation to maintain, and he knows a misstep can hurt the company. Former official? much more likely to edit in revenge in a manner we might not observe. Risker (talk) 23:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
The "former employee" usually knows where all of the skeletons are buried in any particular enterprise, which is why companies are very eager to discredit any complaints this person makes. K7L (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Bemused by the oppose !voters above who seem to conflate paid editors with experts, I figured it may be worth discussing the differences a bit. In my mind, there is a world of difference between advocates and experts in general and paid advocates. An advocate or expert is someone who is paid for their work that is not connected to Wikipedia. For example, if someone who is paid by "Motherboards-r-us" to solder circuit boards (or whatever it is they do to circuit boards) and then chooses to write about the process on Wikipedia then it is likely that they're going to have a view point about soldering as well as about Motherboards-r-us and that person is, in some sense, an advocate (for or against) the company and an expert on soldering motherboards. But that's ok because he or she is not being rewarded or punished for whatever they write on Wikipedia. On the other hand, someone who is paid by Motherboards-r-us to write either about their company or about soldering is paid for what they end up writing. If they write unfavorably about the company, forget to mention the importance of Motherboards-r-us in their article on circuit board soldering, or give an honestly held but negative opinion about the company, they would likely be out of a job because that's what they're being paid to do.

To me, these are very different animals because of the purpose behind the payment. All of us have opinions and all of us are advocates for those opinions. Some of us have stronger opinions than others but all of us try to shape articles so that they are in concordance with our beliefs, hunt for sources that support what we say, and try to convince others that what we are adding is balanced and neutral. A paid editor is advocating what someone else wants them to push and their livelihood directly depends on how well they push that viewpoint. An unpaid editor is advocating what they personally believe or think to be correct and their livelihood does not directly depend on what they write out here. That is a world of difference. Money changes everything. --regentspark (comment) 13:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. It the lengths that some of the comments go to in order to conflate the two, thereby obfuscating the issue and obstructing progress toward addressing the concerns, is curious.
It could be summed up by stating that the money received by paid advocates to influence the reading public through Wikipedia has a direct impact on their disposition toward the ultimate content of the article in question. Money supersedes reason when one's livelihood is based on producing a text that is first and foremost intended to be persuasive in a PR manner, not informative in an encyclopedic manner.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 14:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Re: "is curious"... indeed! They must be stealth advocates for stealth advocacy! I say Jimbo should ban them forthwith! Or the least he can do is expel the ArbCom members who dare oppose him on this bright idea! Someone not using his real name (talk) 14:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Check this parallel discussion Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Something_that_should_be_changed_for_such_a_discussion:_Disclosure_for_COI_policy_discussions.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 15:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
This kind of distinction is clear only if you don't think about it very much. As a professional astronomer, I'm definitely paid explicitly to inform the public about astronomy - by giving public talks, demonstrations, speaking to reporters, whatnot, which would include things like writing newspaper articles or for Wikipedia. The amount of money made available both by private donors, and the main source of funding, government science agencies (and hell, undergraduate tuition by students enrolled in astronomy/physics programmes) comes directly from public interest in astronomy, generated by things such as quality articles on Wikipedia. When I made this image, I was definitely being paid generally to do so, but, of course, nobody complained because the image is reasonably neutral, and encyclopaedic, and useful (and widely used, even though I didn't add it to a single article). In practice, there's paid editor whose goals align with Wikipedia's, and paid editor whose goals align against Wikipedia's; the problem isn't the person, or whether they're being paid, it's whether they're purpose is to write a neutral encyclopaedia or not. WilyD 14:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I guess the difference between being a paid expert and a promoter. If you were to write about the observatory or whatever it is to work at, then that would be promotion. So would using wikipedia to promote your own book, something some editors have done repeatedly, and, apparently, been banned repeatedly for. It can be a bit of a fuzzy line when, for instance, perhaps someone who is the sole person to recently study a given subject in their book tries to influence the content in our article related to that subject. And, yeah, the rest of you, don't laugh. I know particularly in topics like, for instance, specific religious subjects related to Papua New Guinea and other areas have had reference articles written about them by individuals chosen to do on the basis of their being pretty much the only living academic to have actively studied the subject. In those kinds of areas, it can be a problem. John Carter (talk) 00:57, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Except, of course, that merely writing about where you work doesn't automagically make it promotion. You could easily write that it's a shithole. And sure, if I were to run around promoting my book (I suppose my Ph.D. thesis is a book, of sorts) - it wouldn't be acceptable. But if you were to run around promoting my book, it would be exactly as unacceptable. When I made the image I used as an example, I used data from Murray and Dermott - I'm not Murray (nor Dermott), but if I were, it would still be appropriate for me to use (because Murray & Dermott is an authoritative text). The New Guinean religion isn't a particularly bizarre example; this article leans really heavily on Donald Smith's book, because it's by far the most in depth and authoritative reference on the subject. The article wouldn't be any worse if it was identical, but I was Donald Smith. Promotion is bad, but focussing on paid promotion ignores ~99% of the problem (and really, legitimises it by suggesting it's getting paid that the bad part of promotion, rather than co-opting Wikipedia and working against our goals. WilyD 08:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Don't be absurd as in reductio ad absurdum; reputable publishers don't view any of that as adressable conflict of interest, and neither would Wikipedia. But on the other hand, if YOU view it as a personal conflict of interest, that is your own personal ethics that you have to deal with. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Reputable publishers wouldn't view it as a problematic conflict of interest, nor should Wikipedia. You're absolutely correct. That's half of why this is a terrible policy proposal. WilyD 16:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
That's not what I said. I said, "neither would". It is not generally the case that policies are construed and certainly not enforced as absurdities. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I concur with WilyD. I'm an academic, so engaging with the public is part of my job. I may make edits talking about my own work or colleagues at my institution, because that's the work I know about best. Bondegezou (talk) 12:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

The lines have been blurred and the wording needs careful crafting. I am 100% opposed to sites like WikiPR and the paid editors they recruit. I also think the very notion of banning a university professor from editing his/her field of expertise simply because they are paid to be a professor is absurd: and it's not written like that anyway. Why is there such a gulf in understanding that a PR hired gun is, as was said above, a different animal? Doc talk 05:52, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Quite, Doc9871. There's a distinct line of difference between conventional armies and mercenaries (in theory, at least): the most relevant aspect of which is purported accountability to the world community (through the Hague, for example) according to rules of engagement (blatant murder, torture and state sanctioned assassinations, while flouted of late, come to mind as being considered to be somewhat on the illegal side). We're not going to prevent mercenaries from infiltrating but that is not justification for not bothering to put policy in place to actively state that hired guns are not welcome or, if they are going to contribute, there are policies in place which require them to declare themselves and their position. Being an academic by profession is not the equivalent of being hired to push a specific line regardless of whether you believe it to be accurate or not. Why can't the Wikipedia community be trusted to be able to differentiate? Are we only just smart enough to be able to develop and maintain a detailed encyclopaedic resource yet too thick to be able to make less than subtle judgement calls? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:23, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Counter proposal - mandatory disclosure and simplified sanctions

Rather than outright banning users with financial interests from editing relevant articles, I believe that a better option would be to allow such editing, but put measures into place to make abuse easier to detect and prevent:

  • Editors with financial interests in the field in which they edit with a financial conflict of interest as defined in this proposal, who are editing articles relevant to this conflict of interest should be required to publicly disclose this in some manner decided by the community (e.g. a header/footer/userbox on their user page, something in edit summaries, a technical flag similar to the minor edit flag, etc - I'm not sure what the best approach would be)
  • Editors with a COI should be required to adhere to a 1-revert-rule on relevant articles except for reverting edits which are unquestionably vandalism and should be prohibited from restoring reverted edits altogether. This would be enforcible by any administrator blocking and/or topic banning the user.
  • If there is evidence of abuse any uninvolved administrator may issue a finite, targeted, topic ban of increasing length per violation, similar to current blocks for vandalism. If stronger sanctions are warranted a community discussion at ANI could establish a wider and/or indefinite topic ban.
  • If a user feels an unfair restriction was placed upon them by an individual administrator, they can appeal the topic ban to ANI. Community topic bans could be appealed in the normal manner.

I fully agree that COIs must be declared, but I think there are better alternatives than an outright ban on such edits. --W. D. Graham 16:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

What does "financial interests in the field in which they edit" mean? Does that mean a physician who edits articles about medical topics? An advertiser editing about the magazine or TV station that carries their adverts? A computer programmer who writes about programming topics? A geography student (intending on a career in the field) who edits on geographical topics? A journalist who edits on subjects they get also paid to write about? Who decides on the boundaries, and how are they enforced? This is going to massively increase requirements for people to identify themselves before editing Wikipedia, and many people won't feel comfortable doing this. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, to clarify, I meant by the same definition used in the original proposal - although it might be worth considering extending it to rival organisations. --W. D. Graham 16:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We do have the {{connected contributor}} template that can be (or should be) posted on talk pages. It is superior. E.g., the language of the template is neutral and assumes good faith. It avoids the value-laden the "paid editor" or "paid advocate" phrasing and recognizes that edits are in fact contributions. – S. Rich (talk) 17:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

So, to clarify, your counter proposal is to eliminate Wikipedia:There is no credential policy, and eliminate pseudoanonymity for expert editors (regardless of how non-promotional their edits may be), and instead put in place an enforced credential policy for these editors? I oppose that. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this should not eliminate anonymity even for the COI cases, just a little bit limiting it. If I am an employee of the subject of the article, I do not have to disclose my name and job title but just put (possibly templated notice) on the talk page "I, %username%, has a conflict of interests as an employee of the article's subject" or "I am a contractor receiving money for creating comprehensive article about the subject" or "I know the subject of of the article in real life", etc. I do not think it eliminates anonymity and certainly it does not make an editor an "expert" on the subject - they certainly are still suppose to provide reliable sources and attributions for all their statements. I cannot imagine situation somebody would falsely claim to have a COI but we certainly do not intend verify their claims Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I fail to see how such a policy of even requiring disclosure could happen? I agree that it is in the best interest of those who are editing jointly in some article that you can and indeed should be strongly encouraged to disclose biases (regardless of if it is paid, a part of your political or religious beliefs, or even purely cultural differences from other editors) in the interest of trying to write better articles. Somebody who is cooperative *may* make some disclosure about their biases on a voluntary basis and as a result cooperate to be better. Making demands saying they must disclose any COI is simply unworkable. Heck, changing the playing field and change WP:3RR to become WP:1RR is similarly over the top. Note that I've seen religious differences in some articles turn into holy edit wars that would make paid advocates pale in comparison, so this isn't something strictly dealing with somebody getting paid to edit. If an editor is generally well behaved and cooperating with other users with only some occasional brain farts and hot tempers flaring as an exception rather than a rule, they are just being like other ordinary contributors to Wikipedia and should be treated just like... assuming good faith and all of the rest of the pillars of this community. I certainly don't understand why somebody needs to be treated differently other than as a pattern of bad behavior for that individual editor... aka through ArbCom actions or something similar. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We are talking about real significant COI as been the subject of the article or being a PR contractor for the subject or being an employee of the subject, I think in those case 1RR is quite sensible restriction, if the proposal can have unintended consequences like scientists limiting in their ability to edit science-related articles it should be reworded after we agree in principle Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I once saw that freelancer.com site has a special section for wiki editing. People get paid for planting specific information or removing specific information or for resurrection of deleted articles, etc. On one forum somebody claimed that those offers received numerous resumes from administrators and even bureaucrats. I am terrified from a possibility that some administrator would unsalt an article of marginally notable commercial entity for a bribe, etc. The proposal would still allow people to get money for creating wiki content but gives the community some checks and balances Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that "financial interests" is still way too vague. So a grant-funded researcher will be limited to 1RR against crackpot pseudoscience/conspiracy POV pushers who don't have a "financial interest"? And this still has the problem of focusing on the contributor, not the content. Not to mention, as Robert Horning notes, basically throwing AGF out the window. Mr.Z-man 21:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think I worded the suggestion badly so I've clarified what I meant - I'm not suggesting that the scope of the proposal be expanded in any way, just that the measures taken be reduced. @David, I'm not looking to start a second !vote, just thought an alternative idea might spark some discussion of other options. --W. D. Graham 21:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
You are tweaking the wording but still avoiding how somebody who chooses not to disclose this information would be coerced into making this disclosure, or even how they could be identified independently as having a conflict of interest? The people who volunteer this kind of information are most definitely not the people you need to be worried about (for the most part). If anything, they are usually ignorant of policies but usually teachable and would show a large degree of self-restraint once they have basic standard policies (like WP:FIVE) explained in a sympathetic discussion. In other words, this policy wouldn't even be needed except for people that won't disclose their conflicts of interest, and those users who try to avoid that kind of disclosure would otherwise be hard or impossible to detect except through extraordinary means (like tracing IP address or issuing a subpoena with the backing of a government court or agency to the ISP involved). --Robert Horning (talk) 22:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely right. But the original proposal has exactly the same problem - if they don't disclose the information we've got no way to establish it. By toning it down a few more users might be willing to work within the system. Users who don't disclose will slip through the net either way. --W. D. Graham 23:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think the wording can be adjusted to prevent unintended consequences, we need some community agreement in principle to start working on the idea Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I would support something like this. Having a guideline requiring disclosure and making it harder to edit war would encourage many people to abide by it even if it wasn't possible to detect violations in many cases. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
What is the point of adopting a policy that is unenforceable and is acknowledged as such by the supporters before it is even adopted in the first place? It won't make it harder to start any edit wars, and it would strongly discourage people who should be helping Wikipedia from even being involved in the first place. It sounds like trying to make a rule that is there deliberately to smack somebody down once they've been outed... something that is also currently against policy for a very good reason. --Robert Horning (talk) 05:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I am supporting the idea, I think we need something like it Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Hypothetical (but not really all that hypothetical) situations

In adopting an updated policy or guideline on paid or COI editing, we need to make sure that it addresses the types of situation that frequently come up in this area, and does so in a way that accords with how we want these situations to be handled, and with common sense. Below are some hypothetical situations—but mostly derived from actual situations I am aware of over the years—in which an editor could be accused of having a paid interest or COI. How do we want to address them? Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Example 1:

I am an experienced Wikipedia editor, perhaps an administrator. A friend is an author who has published several novels that are still in print. He does not have a Wikipedia article, and would like to have one. Knowing that I'm active on Wikipedia, he asks me to create an article for him, and gives me information about his background and books to include in the article. There is no question in my mind that the author meets the applicable notability guideline.
May I write the article? Do I have to disclose anything if I do write the article? If my friend offers to take me to dinner to thank me for agreeing to write the article, may I accept?

Example 2:

I work at a university library. The library contains archival and manuscript collections of the personal papers of dozens of historical and literary figures, which are of interest to scholars. Our collections are underutilized, and we would like to have more visitors use them. I want to add a short paragraph to the Wikipedia article of each person whose papers our library holds, mentioning that his or her papers are at our facility and providing a link to the online finding aid. May I do so?

Example 3:

I'm the public relations manager for one of two newspapers in a mid-sized city. The other newspaper has a well-written Wikipedia article, which was created several years ago. My newspaper, which has about the same circulation and level of prominence, does not have an article. The owner wishes it did. What are my options?

Example 4:

I'm the mayor of a small city. I have a Wikipedia article, but it's a couple of years old and seriously out of date. I post on the talkpage asking if someone will update my article, and I provide neutral, verifiable information to update it with, but no one does the updating. May I update it myself? If I'm not supposed to but I do anyway, what happens?

Example 5:

I'm in marketing at a large law firm with an existing article. A famous lawyer joins our firm. Can I edit the article to mention this increase in our ranks? What if I am the famous lawyer myself? A member of the lawyer's family? One of the lawyer's clients?

Discussion of examples

These are interesting hypotheticals, thanks for posing them. My feelings are as follows:
Example 1: I don't see the problem here. Eliminating this kind of conduct just goes too far. The Wiki editor has no financial interest.
Example 2: Same. If there's a problem with this I don't see it.
Example 3: Here, the owner of the newspaper wants to use a paid editor to influence the editorial balance of Wikipedia. No, paid editors should not be allowed to do that. Whether an article appears in Wikipedia, and the amount of attention given to each subject, should not be based upon the desire of the subject to publicize his operation. But there's nothing wrong with the owner appearing on the talk page to make suggestions as to updated content.
Example 4. Very much the same as No. 3, I think. Same solution.
Example 5. Same as 3. The lawyer himself or his family? No. Too close; direct financial interest. Client? I don't see the problem.
--Coretheapple (talk) 20:32, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Your responses to 3 and 4 show how ludicrous the "Champions of an unbiased encyclopedia" are. People like you actively encourage bias and inaccuracy. If two newspapers are notable, they should both have articles, period. I don't care who writes them. If the PR manager writes a non-neutral article, we have a problem, but that deals with a different policy. The same thing goes for the mayor. If the information is outdated, and nobody is willing to correct it, the subject should be allowed to correct it himself if it is neutral and sourced. Ryan Vesey 20:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm OK with throwing out the conflict of interest rules entirely. They're not enforced, and the "community," as I've said before, has its collective head so far up its rectum on this subject that the whole thing is pretty much an exercise in futility. But if Wikipedia is to become, officially, a hotbed of "let's write an article about our beloved company, but cherry-pick our sources so that it seems neutral," we need to provide Wikipedia's readers with an appropriate disclosure visible at the top or bottom of every article. It would need to convey to readers that the article may contain content written in whole or in part by the subject of the article. As we all know, there are businesses out there that make a good living selling such services to the public. Hence I think that we owe to readers, who may not be aware of that, to be cognizant. Don't you agree? Coretheapple (talk) 01:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Some excellent examples. My responses:
  1. Request from a friend - The approach I would take here is to draft the article in a sandbox first, and then ask others to look at it, including the author in question. I would also (asking the author first) disclose that I know the author and that they had asked for the article to be drafted. depending on the subsequent discussion, I would then move the article to mainspace, and/or make changes as needed. Disclosure is probably not required here, but ethically I think it is (this is a matter of personal ethics, rather than Wikipedia policy and guidelines).
  2. Institution employee - This one is simple. Rather than paragraphs in the articles in question, I would explain to the employee that this may give undue weight to that institution and its archives, and that the most that should be added is information in the external links. The account's user pages, and ideally the edit summaries should disclose that the editor is adding information on behalf of an institution. Even more ideally, the institution would in addition use other means to encourage researchers to use their collections, and the researchers would then publish articles and/or books that would then be used as sources for the articles.
  3. PR manager for an organisation - Here, the PR manager needs to be absolutely open at all stages. A key step is to work to make sources available (e.g. good history section on their website, current information pages on their website, locate published histories of their organisation (here, a newspaper), and so on). Then make a request (on or off wiki) for a Wikipedia editor willing to write an article. The article creation or creation request (if submitting through AfC) should disclose both who made the request and the work done to open up and make sources available on the history of the organisation. The job of a PR manager in this case is to get material placed in sources that can then be used for the Wikipedia article. Not to have material placed directly in Wikipedia.
  4. Biography of a living person. Employ a PR manager (or delegate to an employee with that responsibility) and take the approach above (for number 3). The PR person then posts to the talk page first. If no response then edit article but disclose who you are and why you are editing. If you handle your own PR, that is more difficult, but mostly the same approach.
  5. Marketing employee - the marketing employee should ask the company's PR department to deal with this. The famous person should not make the edit. Family member may do so unwittingly, but shouldn't really. Clients? Er, depends how that impacts the client-lawyer relationship.
In practice, of course, all the above does happen (all the time, every day, all across Wikipedia), but ideally the above is what should happen. Being more open and welcoming to those who openly disclose such matters would help. Carcharoth (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that those are good examples, and Cacharoth's suggested approach to each respective situation is sensible.
It seems to me that the WikiExperts scenario is of a different order, however. WikiExperts is attempting to facilitate the injection of corporate money into Wikipedia in a manner that would parallel the unbridled flow of corporate money into American electoral politics with similar results.
Wikipedia is a non-profit, public interest project, and the way I see it, the incursion of undisclosed corporate funding in relation to creating and editing articles associated with a commercial (largely corporate) interest is, by definition, corrosive on the public-interest non-profit status and character of Wikipedia.
That scenario is somewhat outside of the frame of the above-presented more normal examples of a potential COI. It seems to me that mandatory disclosure, at the very least, is necessary to keep the likes of WikiExperts in perpetual check, so to speak, under the watchful eye of those in the community that take an interest in scrutinizing edits made by such entities.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 07:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • If I could add an Example 6 which came up only a few days ago: A previously public facility is obviously notable because of its place as a historical location and as the host location of a number of significant events. However, it was determined that said facility was a drain on the public purse and it was sold off to private interests. The new owners now operate the facility as a commercial venture but the WP article about the facility makes no mention of the sale or the new operation. The new owners notice and would like to update the article with information about the sale, the new venture, some information about renovations to the historic facility since the purchase and a link to the website of the commercial venture that currently operates there (which includes a range of historic photos of the facility provided by the local library). The owners are technical historical restoration "experts" and bought the facility confident that their expertise would allow them to successfully restore it. Should they register an account a go for it? Stalwart111 08:39, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that these are good examples, and it may be useful to include them on guideline pages. My thought is that, in each case, the overriding principal would be that such editors forego all advocacy. It is a fine line, but where there is any question, it is better for a paid/volunteer/unpaid advocate to back down. That would include such editors recusing from controversies, declining to participate in consensus votes, avoiding anything that remotely smacks of PoV-pushing and adhering to WP:Weight to avoid giving undue prominence to details within an article and relying only on WP:RS to avoid pushing views that could be construed as self-interested. Sticking to "Just the facts, ma'am" is unlikely to be a problem, and relying on citations that are removed from any association with the article's subject is going to go far in tamping down advocacy (as is not objecting to other reliably-sourced information that may not fit the PoV or agenda of the article's subject). • Astynax talk 19:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Editors (newbies for example, particularly if they are, say, students doing the editing as a school project and taught by a teacher who do not themself know the editing policies too well) don’t necessarily know what they write will be considered advocacy. Even just insisting on editors to “forego all advocacy” will have unintended consequences.—Al12si (talk) 19:04, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
  • All of the above edits are allowed. Simply provide these explanations when editing and let the masses judge the edits. (We must insist on judging the edits, not the editor!) If there is a stronger doubt, make the disclosure then ask for opinions whether you can proceed with editing. The way to cleanse conflicts of interest is to disclose them, and allow other concerned parties to have the same information that you do. Jehochman Talk 04:43, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
    I suppose it could be summed up as: we don't (usually) care who you are, but we may want to know why you are making these edits and whether any self-interest or interest of others is involved. The range of reasons can be large, but tends to fall into a few large classes (hobbyist, student, academic sector, museum/library sector, advocacy and promotional, PR and corrections). The problem is that those editing for reasons they don't want to disclose will give bland and innocuous reasons such as "I saw a TV documentary/read a book/saw something on holiday and developed an interest in the topic". It boils down to how believable some of the reasons given are. Anyway, one approach to grant-based paid editing would be to have a central body allocating articles for people to work on, and/or approving applications for funding, matching articles to people's interests and skills and resources. No need to reinvent the wheel there. Whether that will ever happen and whether such a community of editors (which to some extent already exists) can work together with unpaid volunteers and unregulated commercially paid editors is another matter. Carcharoth (talk) 05:28, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

This proposal in a nutshell

If you have a COI, never edit yourself, ask others.

This is WP:CREEP. We're a wiki, not a bureaucracy. If edits are against the rules, we revert them. If the editor insists on behaving disruptively, we deal with it. I'd support requiring vandals to submit their edits for approval, though. Paradoctor (talk) 21:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. This is a purely bureaucratic rule that would not prevent COI. Shii (tock) 05:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It is absolutely painful to enter into discussions with paid editors. The problem is not that the edits are clearly against the rules and can be reverted, it is that they are reverted, and then you enter into a month-long "discussion" with someone who is paid to never change their mind, and can spend 8 hours a day replying. Anyone with time on the project can relate to such nonsense, whether or not with paid editors, but anything we can do to cut down on the number of such "discussions" is a step in the right direction. This policy allows volunteers to get on with editing. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:11, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Great description of working with paid editors. However, it also describes a group I've been editing alongside, and none of them have chosen to disclose their reasons for behaving as if a giant company was paying them. It seems to me this proposal as written would only validate non-disclosed COI editing, and push any potential discussion of exactly how to address it even farther from the horizon. petrarchan47tc 17:56, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
On the other hand, it sends a clear signal that companies who sell "image management" on Wikipedia are violating policies. They can not present themselves as legitimate and above board to clients. Any client who buys their service could easily discover that the service is blackhat, and most companies won't deal with blackhat outfits. Some will, so it won't eliminate the problem, but it will lessen it. --TeaDrinker (talk) 04:03, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

A truly terrible idea

An idea based on the American principle of frontier justice, if we can't actually fix a problem, hang whomever we catch. The problem we are insufficiently determined and skilled to fix is that of bad editing, which arises from a variety of sources--so we pick on one identifiable class, people who are often trying, however ineptly, to do what they think they ought to, and put them in a situation where everything them might rightly want to do is made ridiculously difficult.

Making this a policy is much too prescriptive. Some people with such COI can and do edit perfectly properly, and if they do so openly and above-board with a declaration of their COI, they should not only be permitted, but encouraged to do so--as long as they do it properly, and are prepared to take the possible criticism if they don't. I would never encourage a beginner to try it, because the odds of doing it wrong are much too great, and it can be a very uncomfortable experience. Some of the paid editors I know follow the bright line rule even when they needn't--if they want to be cautious that's fine also. And I always suggest it (or even insist on it) for a promotional editor -- paid or unpaid -- whoi is heaving difficulty writing a nonpromotional article.

This rule as proposed would lead to endless quibbling about what counts as "paid" editing, and would inhibit the excellent work of most of the Wikipedians in Residence, forcing people to double check the work of those editors who are already known to be fully responsible.

Anyway, this misses the point that this sort of editing is only mildly harmful, as compared to the direct harm that can be done by advocacy editing for a cause, of which the very worse examples are those done by volunteers., not paid editors. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. Edits which violate Wikipedia's core policies should be removed or improved, regardless of the reasons they were placed there. If I find bad information, I do not care if the editor got paid to introduce it, did so as a vandal, or is trying to change the conversation by giving undue weight to minor sources . . . I do not care because I assume good faith about all editors, so it's more important to just fix the problem and move on. This is entirely like a nanny state and will not change much; knowing the motivation for an edit does not matter one whit. We have policies aplenty to address this.--~TPW 19:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I concur. A terrible idea. Having said that, however, can anyone point to an issue that has arisen because of paid advocacy?--Nowa (talk) 16:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, I agree. I do not think payment is important. What matters is COI. An important point in these discussions: what is COI, exactly? WP:COI tells: "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." Yes, I agree, although this is different from real life definition of COI (there are different guidelines for different organizations). One can easily imagine a situation that an experienced wikipedian was paid to create a page about his favorite uncle or about latest work by his boss (no, this is not me), but he knows the rules and care as much about Wikipeda as about his real life business. Does it mean he has at all any COI? No - according to this definition, because advancing the project is as important to him as anything else. He can easily create a page about his uncle per rules if his uncle fits our notability criteria, or tell his uncle: "no, this is terrible idea, you do not fit our notability rules, and the article will be deleted". Or one can easily imagine another editor who is not paid, acts on his own, but has his own outside interest (a political bias) that is hundred times more important to him than advancing goals of the project... Hence he has huge COI. My very best wishes (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
My very best wishes summed up perfectly the reason this RfC is full of bullshit and add my !vote as a big honking OPPOSE. How has this proposal gotten this far? "I had a discussion at a noticeboard, people hated it, I'll do an RfC!"Camelbinky (talk) 23:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, and that's a great analogy comparing it with wild west lynching/hanging. Not all paid editing is necessarily bad. It is paid "Advocacy" to promote POV or untruths on something or COI presenting a colourful picture of themselves/their business which is damaging but even that may radically differ in what actual harm is causes wikipedia. There is a major difference but the boundary between what is paid editing and what is paid advocacy is rather blurred. Wikipedia has undoubtedly benefited from paid editing. I think this is a rather heavy-handed approach that all paid editing is necessarily evil, and if a rule was passed banning all paid editing it would continue to operate anyway and continue to show us up. It's a situation which needs to be strictly monitored and mitigated, not entirely banned for the sake of it. IMO the growth of wikipedia has been greatly stalled because of the fear and resentment certain members here show towards anything with any possible monetary value and if they organized something which was above board I'm sure less "evil" editing would be going on. In fact I'd argue that being paid to write something, as long as the editing is neutral and within guidelines and meets out notability requirements with reliable sourcing, then there's actually a greater chance that they would produce something of higher quality than they would if unpaid. Why shouldn't editors be rewarded for their work every now and then and why should it matter how the article got there if the article itself doesn't have serious issues? Far more harm is generally done by people with personal/political/racial prejudices who insert disinformation and lies into articles and go undetected.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:30, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

After thinking more about this, I have to tell, yes indeed, no paid advocacy. The issue here is not be paid, but advocacy. This is per WP:SOAP which we have already as policy. Actually, I believe all PR companies and individual propagandists must be forbidden simply per WP:SOAP. This is because their openly stated goal is promotion of their clients. My very best wishes (talk) 15:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the problem is advocacy, and it would be better to attack that problem by streamlining enforcement for both advocacy and COI. As of now, it is a huge and ineffective process to stop advocates and COI warriors. We need to allow for those situations in which a person's (a city official correcting a mistake, an academic contributing knowledge in their field) positive contributions and potential contributions would be torpedoed by a ban. Again, I see lack of effective enforcement as the problem, and I would much rather see policy changes aimed at making that easier and more sure than addition of yet another complication to the already complex, burdensome (to get relief) and rarely enforced no-rules rulebook. • Astynax talk 17:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
    • I agree with DGG. This is a truly terrible proposal. If the issue was merely advocacy, then paid would not be in the title, huh? A simple disclosure policy would work much better for the stated aims of the proposal. Bearian (talk) 17:13, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Begs the question

This policy begs the question: "Why is unpaid advocacy allowed?" Unless there's a good answer to that, I don't see how this can make any sense. WilyD 09:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. Unpaid POV advocacy is just as bad. GregJackP Boomer! 11:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
In fact, unpaid POV advocacy may be the bigger problem. Those who do it are motivated by something stronger than money, or they wouldn't be doing it. Those who vandalize are a subset of unpaid POV advocacy. Not getting paid doesn't seem to slow them down, and they can be persistent.~ Desertroadbob (talk) 11:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I also can see unpaid advocacy as an equally serious problem. There are people who are not employees or hires, yet who do benefit indirectly: e.g., franchisees, licensees, volunteers, and others who receive no direct payments or who get other, non-monetary benefits. Members of non-commercial organizations (clubs, religions, trade associations, political parties, etc.) also tend to often wander into PoV-pushing and battling for their causes. We do actually want to hear and get input from such people, but in my opinion this becomes a problem once they and their compatriots cross the line into dominating or thwarting the forging of editor consensus or challenging reliable sources. They should generally excuse themselves from controversies and recuse themselves from responses on RfCs, consensus votes, etc. • Astynax talk 18:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
The vast majority of edit wars are probably attributable to unpaid advocates. I speak as someone who nearly succumbed to the urge to get into a revert war with another editor who was one of the legion of WP editors sanitizing Wikipedia from unpleasant facts regarding foreign political contributions to and Senatorial nonfeasance of the current occupant of a large white house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. I was a relatively new editor at the time, and on being counselled by a wiser editor that reflexive reverts to an edit aren't vandalism, just slunk away from the conflict. I ought to have found a way to get some balance into the articles; consensus is beautiful when it works, and I've seen it happen even in contentious issues here, even helped make it happen. A modest proposal: require that EVERY edit and revert be documented in the Talk page of an article. It provides a valuable basis for formation of consensus among editors and a means for smoking out CoIs without an inflexible bright-line policy.loupgarous (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I, too, agree that non-paid advocacy is a huge problem, but that is one that Wikipedia has to live with as long as there is a lack of will to enhance and enforce the content policies.
When something like a "WikiExperts" shows up, however, such an entity should be capable of being precluded, by policy, from engaging in editing conducted on the basis of explicitly declared aims to commercialize Wikipedia.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 20:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Unpaid advocacy is a problem, but so is paid advocacy. That fact that this policy does not address the former does not limit its utility in addressing the latter. People who are advocates go through tremendous mental gymnastics to convince themselves they are not biased. I had one paid editor tell me that being paid to edit an article to achieve a particular outcome for a client is not in violation of the COI guideline, because he might have the same opinion himself. He was eventually blocked, but it took months and multiple editors and administrators. This policy is an objective criteria which is hard to get around, and makes Wikipedia better for volunteers. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that by making it objective, it completely distorts the reason for the COI guideline. COI is essentially a supplement to NPOV. We discourage COI editing to maintain neutrality. This proposal is completely divorced from that concept by focusing more on the payment than the advocacy. Mr.Z-man 16:48, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
We know they are not paid for the Pedia's interest. They are paid for something else, and whatever it is they are paid for it's not for the Pedia's interest, since the Pedia does not pay for its interest. In every edit there is one judge of NPOV and that is the User that makes the edit. Sure some others may come along and debate it and even revert it, sometimes, but the edit is made and the judge was paid by an interest that is not the Pedia's. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
A paid editor may be editing in their own interest primarily, but it does not automatically follow that it is not in the project's interest too. If their edits are neutral and sourced, then our interests are aligned. We already have a guideline discouraging COI editing. Why do you think this will work to deter people better than WP:COI? More likely a stronger prohibition will simply drive more underground. Rather than disclosing their COI, they will hide it. They're certainly not going to risk getting fired - we already know their own interests come before WP rules. The idea that we can stop people who are willing to break WP's rules by creating another rule is just silly. Mr.Z-man 21:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
It automatically follows that they have a conflict of interest. The number of people that argue COI is just a guideline, so should be ignored is the reason for a policy. The idea that we can produce Wikipedia by having "rules" is why we have policy, (eg., 'Just so you know, do that, don't do that.') Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
COI does not prohibit editing when you have a conflict of interest. It is only "strongly discouraged." People are going to edit Wikipedia for pay. No amount of rules is going to change that no matter whether we call them guidelines, policies, or anything else. So it makes more sense to regulate it in a way that at least some paid editors will be willing to abide by, rather than prohibit it with virtually no way to enforce it. This will be like Wikipedia's version of the War on drugs - lots of people blocked (likely often with no hard evidence, as getting the evidence is itself against policy), lots of time spent, but no real progress made on reducing paid advocacy. Mr.Z-man 01:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Prohibiting directly people editing for pay might discourage companies from hiring blackhat outfits. Yes, there will still be some, but just because there is still vandalism doesn't mean we can't make it against policy. Making a strong, clear statement that any PR firm that markets itself as creating or maintaining articles on Wikipedia is violating policies on the site. It makes it clear that "paid editors" doesn't just apply to other people, even if you are sure that people don't want to read about the lawsuit against your company as much as they would like to read about the new product line (and thus you're just "improving" the article). It helps assure us volunteers that every measure is taken to ensure we're not going to be volunteering our time to clean grammar on a page that someone else is getting money to maintain. It is not perfect, it is not going to keep out every paid editor, but it is going to do more good than harm. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:01, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, you've hit the nail on the head.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

No one's going to pay anyone to fix your namesake article. So get at it for the sake of "volunteerism". Doc talk 11:49, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Shameless plug for an opposing essay

The essay is at Wikipedia:Don't cry COI. It is an alternate viewpoint to this one and I think is the more sensible of the two. Perhaps if this proposal fails it can be submitted as an opposing proposal.Discuss it here or on its talk page. KonveyorBelt 16:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

As it happens...

I was under the impression that this "proposal" was basically already policy. It may not be stated in its own right, but it is definitely spelled out in several other policies which would often overlap the issue. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is to some extent, although COI is currently just a guideline. I would rather see COI and Edit warring clarified (and COI elevated to Policy) rather than throwing in something that will make policy more difficult for editors to grasp. The real problem is enforcement. Paid and unpaid advocates in pushing their agendas have run roughshod over constructive editors and even admins. They have more resources to throw into edit warring, and constructive editors and admins often throw in the towel rather than commit the time and energy required to resist motivated PoV-pushers. As has already been stated above, part of the solution is to insist that edits ONLY summarize and are cited to reliable sources. Material that is not cited to reliable sources may already be removed (though edit warriors continually reinsert), and where edits are supported by weak sources, better reliable (and independent) references should always carry the day—but I think the frustration behind this proposal is that summarizing what reliable sources say is ignored or resisted by editors with an agenda (whether paid or not) and enforcement is time-consuming and often ineffective. I would rather see the "bright line" drawn at resistance to accepting edits based in reliable, independent sources; with guidelines for enforcement when warriors choose to ignore our encyclopedic purpose of summarizing what reliable sources say. Paid and unpaid advocates can make and likely have contributed constructive input, but it is when they cross into PoV-pushing that they become a problem. I believe it would be better to focus on the behavior, even when it is disguised/subtle but persistent, and better enforcement. • Astynax talk 08:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
It sounds like we are basically in agreement. Rather than write a new policy, we should clarify and enforce existing policies that already spell out the point. Let's see how many others agree with us. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Bad Idea, Many Technical Articles are better for the knowledge of people involved in the tech article's creation

Bad Idea. For instance, the Internet Explorer article, or more generally, the article on attributes of different web browsers. The Microsoft people can more accurately and more quickly update the IE article or the IE section of the web browser article than the general public. It doesn't follow that their input into the article is evil or bad even if it is self-interested. Many of the technical articles in the wikipedia (for which the wiki is a tremendous resource) would suffer under this directive.

How is Wikipedia to know if a person is financially interested in an article. They don't know much more than the name of the person, they don't know who they work for, and shouldn't.

Endo999 (talk) 15:47, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia does know if a user is editing in some unusual way which indicates a stake in the matter. If we suppose that User: Dr. I is an eye doctor who stumbles across an article entitled Laser-Assisted in situ Keratomileusis, A few things *could* happen:
  1. The doctor posts a reasonable (if a bit overly technical) scientific description of the procedure, results and risks. So far, so good.
  2. The doctor posts an opinion downplaying the risks and hyping the benefits of the procedure. No longer WP:NEUTRAL.
  3. The doctor cites "Dr I's 20/20 LASIK clinic" as the primary source for otherwise-valid info. Beginning to venture into WP:COI and WP:SELF.
  4. The doctor removes an entire validly-sourced section describing the risks of the procedure, soon becoming the centre of an edit war on the merits of blasting away at eyeballs with excimer lasers. Not good.
  5. The doctor rewrites the piece as an advertisement touting the procedure and encouraging patients to mortgage their houses in order to pay many thousands of dollars for the procedure. Problematic.
  6. The doctor creates Dr I's 20/20 LASIK clinic, a blatant WP:SPAM promoting one clinic over another. Not OK.
  7. The doctor pays some fly-by-night "User: Wiki PR" to create Dr I's 20/20 LASIK clinic for a cash payment in response to an ad on craigsfist.org. Clear abuse; this needs to be shut down.
Quite the spectrum, and not one but multiple bright lines need to be drawn to distinguish these edits. Some are constructive, some need to be taken to the talk page or need WP:COI disclosure, some should not be tolerated period (to the point of prohibiting them in the site's terms of use and in policy).
  1. is valid.
  2. should be taken to the talk page - disclose any WP:COI, explain why the current text is not WP:NEUTRAL and attempt to get a consensus instead of replacing "Darth Vader is going to blow up your eyeballs" with the equally-opinionated "LASIK is the greatest medical miracle in history".
  3. needs both WP:COI disclosure and a second opinion as to WP:OR and WP:SELF so as not to give undue weight to one clinic
  4. is not ok. Disclosing WP:COI is not enough to excuse or justify removing valid information on the risks of the procedure. Policy needs to be clear in this regard.
  5. is WP:SPAM. Again, this goes beyond WP:COI.
  6. likewise. WP:SPEEDY.
  7. is where we need an explicit WP:No paid advocacy policy that goes beyond the existing COI/SPAM rules. A subject should not be paying the author of a Wikipedia article on that subject, period. Anyone using product placement agency style tactics needs to be shut down and maybe even sued by the WMF - which would require clear policy and clear TOS prohibiting these edits. A Wikipedia:Paid editing (policy) was proposed in 2009 and never implemented; we are now paying the price for that decision. K7L (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
This is an excellent analysis. Couple of questions, though. What happens when you have PR and marketing types essentially placing their product (whether it be a book, invention, celebrity, or business) in various reviews and sources and newspapers, with that promotional material eventually filtering through to more permanent and (supposedly) reliable sources? Do we have to trust that the whole process of sources being reliable acts as a check on this? That eventually the more sober analyses come to dominate, and with time the promotional froth fades into history? Also, what happens when the 'product' being placed is an educational resource such as the various GLAM initiatives (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) where institutions partner with Wikimedia and Wikipedia? Or when a paywall resource gives out free accounts and asks to be 'credited' in the citations? Most of the time, these seem fine, but sometimes lines are crossed and it is not totally clear. Carcharoth (talk) 05:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Press coverage of this issue

Read "Is Wikipedia for Sale"[8]. The story describes "Wiki-PR"[9], a company in the business of paid advocacy on Wikipedia. "Are you being unfairly treated on Wikipedia? Our Crisis Editing team helps you navigate contentious situations. We’ll both directly edit your page using our network of established Wikipedia editors and admins. And we’ll engage on Wikipedia’s back end, so you never have to worry about being libeled on Wikipedia." They specifically mention Priceline and Viacom as using this service. They also have an unhappy customer, Emad Rahim, whose article was deleted.

This is getting to be a big problem. John Nagle (talk) 18:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to see how this is any different than it has been in the past... at least after Wikipedia started to get top ranking for major search engines like Google? That is what these companies are after, and they've been playing games with the search engine companies since practically the day that somebody noticed you could tweak things on the pages in the first place.
Seriously, I don't think this is as much of a problem as you are making it out to be or that this article is sensationalizing it to be. I am concerned about the "Wikipedia admins" claim of this company, who is suggesting that there are admins who are bought and paid for which are watching the back of other editors engaging in edit wars to sanitize articles.... of which this particular proposed policy would have zero impact on keeping under control. Certainly this article does not change my opposition to this policy proposal. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:56, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Reporting does not make a problem bigger. If there's a slow news week and somebody decides to write a piece about Wikipedia, we do not need to respond by throwing a dramafest. Jehochman Talk 15:15, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

What we should all be able to agree upon

Okay, so much for the "bright line" approach to paid advocacy. Ain't gonna fly this time, same as last time, same as next time... Let's concentrate on some things that we can all agree upon and see if we can build upon that.

1. Maintaining Neutral Point of View is absolutely critical. This is a fundamental policy of the site and I doubt there is a single person here who wants to see it undermined.

2. There are currently Paid COI editors at work on Wikipedia and there have been for a long time. I'm just going to leave that right there, I think we all know this is true.

3. There is a natural tendency for Paid COI editors to undermine NPOV if left completely to their own devices. Paid editors are given the job of creating an article and often assigned to maintain that article. This implies more than just maintenance of neutrality, but rather to provide a positive benefit to the Employer/Article Subject. It is human nature to attempt to provide value for one's current employer in the hopes of gaining a share of that value through raises and future employment at the task. In short: close supervision is necessary.

4. There is currently no way to identify Paid COI editors at a glance. We use anonymous registration, multiple accounts are simple, and those Paid COI editors who attempt to use a "promotional" user name are blocked at the gate. Something needs to be done to identify these edits so they may be scrutinized.

5. Those following the Identify-Your-COI-On-The-Talkpage "strong suggestion" open themselves to harassment. As the father of paid editing at WP phrased it in a recent WPO thread, identifying COI on a talk page is like taping a "Kick Me" sign to your back. There needs to be some sort of protection for those who try to follow the rules (NPOV, identification of COI) from harassment.

The answer seems obvious, does it not? Carrite (talk) 19:07, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree specifically with Carrite's #4 above. I was once trying to edit a country's articles (you don't want to know!  :) and discovered an entirely too knowledgeable editor. There was no way (he had a volunteer support staff who voted en masse against you) you were going to ever edit anything, no matter how WP:RS (NY Times, Washington Post), that made the Maximum Leader look bad. I don't see how anyone would have been able to check out his source of income. Student7 (talk) 18:05, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
In regard to 5 - no, I don;t think declaring a COI is akin to a kick me sign. :) But the problem, as things stand, is that it is still better for the editor to hide their COI (and avoid any risk of harassment) than it is to declare it openly. The fix is to change the balance - make it better to declare a COI than to hide it. - Bilby (talk) 04:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Carrite (talk) 05:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Comments

I've been watching with interest, uncertain as to whether I should comment, being a PR rep myself. However, my other comments seem to be appreciated, so I thought I would give it a run.

My point-of-view has changed. The BrightLine does not prevent a COI editor from making COI edits by proxy. Additionally, those proxies have a difficult time assessing whether the content is neutral, or at least, whether it is written the way they would do it. Finally, it creates the impression of adding legitimacy and entitlement to editors that insist we provide them customer service and do exactly as they say, as if following it gives them some special privileges or protection from criticisms (it does not). Also, the BrightLine is often abandoned anyway when the editor does not get their way. It is easier to revert in article-space.

I find wisdom in how COI was communicated all along. Those with a conflict of interest are discouraged from authoring articles where they have a conflict of interest, because they are unlikely to be neutral. Whether from Talk or in article-space, we are still discouraged. However, not prohibited, for the various reasons already discussed on this page.

The Verification policy is a good precedence to follow here. The appropriate source depends on the circumstance. So does appropriate COI behavior. A PR rep should not be editing controversial areas where they have a financial connection - they should even be careful to avoid lobbying and micro-management. They are encouraged to point out factual errors, correct grammar and fill-in citations. They should seek input and gain unambiguous community support before making changes, if they make them themselves. And so on. Also, each volunteer editor will manage COI a bit differently and there is no reason to stamp out that difference, so long as they are acting in a manner that is supported by consensus within reason. CorporateM (Talk) 06:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

If every PR person "got it" as well as you, the current system would work fine. And since by default (decision-making stalemate) the current system is what we've got, all of us are going to have to work hard to make sure the PR community all "gets it" as well as you. Thanks for your thoughts. Carrite (talk) 16:18, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

...that anyone can edit

Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. If someone paid/with COI edits, there is no lack of measures to counter any undesirable consequences, if need be.

The need to disclose advocacy does not warrant any paid editor disclosing his/her being paid for edits. Although, such editors may be encouraged to discuss before editing, it must not be a precondition.

So, WP:SNOW. Fauzan✆ talk ✉ email 15:48, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Although I've said it before: Until the community decides to change pillars three and four of the WP:5, the COI bashing this proposal advocates is a non-starter IMHO. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:33, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

WikiExperts is appealing its ban

Folks interested in this policy may well be interested in this - WikiExperts, a firm like WIki-PR, is appealing its ban. Jytdog (talk) 17:09, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

They're a firm like Wiki-PR in that they are a PR firm writing and editing articles for money without declaring their COI but I've seen no evidence of them crating puff-pieces on non-notables or anyone else or any other tendentious editing. (They've agreed to declare their COI in future.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:35, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Case Study: Light bulbs

So lets work through a simple case study. Lets say that I work for a light bulb company, and I included pictures of my companies product ... to act as advertising/sales promotion ... how is the community going to tell that this is paid advocacy?? Or reverse, that I removed/replaced pictures from a rival company to reduce their sales/advertising ... how would you know?

Let's take this further ... should wikipedia have articles on companies (like apple, microsoft etc.) as it could be construed as helping to promote their products?? I think this "No paid advocacy" is almost unenforcable ... because I can do anything from my home computer under the guise of work. Bhtpbank (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Statement from the Wikimedia Foundation about paid advocacy

It's worth noting here that Sue Gardner has released a statement calling paid advocacy a "black hat" practice that "violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people." SlimVirgin (talk) 17:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that this whole issues comes under a proposal to review pillar 3 and to only permit registered users to edit the encyclopedia ... something which I strongly support. Bhtpbank (talk) 17:49, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
If we ban paid advocacy, anonymous editors like SlimVirgin should also be banned. We don't know who an anonymous editor is, and have no way to tell if they are paid or not. Let's have a big helping of transparency, and apply it equally to all editors. It is unfair to penalize editors who disclose their identity while giving a free pass to anonymous editors to do whatever they want. This is a very unfair proposal. Jehochman Talk 17:52, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Your conclusion doesn't follow. Registered but anonymous editors can be tracked. If it is discovered that they have consistently added biassed material to an article or articles all their edits can be reviewed. They can be sanctioned or banned. IP editors are a different matter altogether.
When I first started editing Wikipedia, I didn't understand why so many editors choose to register under nicknames. Now that I have seen and experienced the volume of aggression generated by some editors, I've changed my mind. In particular, I would, sadly, never advise a female editor to allow her real identity to be exposed on Wikipedia. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:05, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Why not, precisely? 86.31.65.145 (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Because of the obscene, violent, sexist language I have seen directed against editors who were known to be female and who had edited in a way some aggressive editor (virtually certainly male based on the comments) didn't like. Wikipedia is unfortunately no different from Twitter in this respect. I'm not going to be more precise for what are hopefully obvious reasons. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, men really are the pits, aren't they. World would be a better place without them. 86.31.65.145 (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)What does anonymity have to do with the press release? Let's focus on the press release, which also includes the statement

Being deceptive in your editing by using sockpuppets or misrepresenting your affiliation with a company is against Wikipedia policy and is prohibited by our Terms of Use. We urge companies to conduct themselves ethically, to be transparent about what they're doing on Wikipedia, and to adhere to all site policies and practices.

Anonymity, incidentally, is not against policy. --Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 18:09, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
It does follow. I edit under my real name and endure a constant barrage of assumptions of bad faith because of my profession. I'm sick and tired of it. If we ban paid editing, we then need to know each editor's name and employment so we can verify. Otherwise, the rule is only going to punish people who operate in good faith. Jehochman Talk 18:10, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I do understand what you are saying. I edit under my real name because I think it would be better if most editors did this (there are however valid reasons not to do so in some countries). But there is still an important difference between registered and unregistered editors, and registering, even under a nickname, is still better than editing as an IP. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:30, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I think your reductio ad absurdum is absurd. Wikipedia:Sock puppetry does not require every person to disclose their identity so that we can verify they are not a sock. A requirement to disclose conflicts of interest does not end anonymous editing for everyone. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:41, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
But it makes no sense to say that an IP editor should disclose conflicts of interest. They don't have a user page to use for this purpose; they will often have different IP's each time they edit. So there is a conflict between allowing IP editing and requiring disclosure of COI. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Reading from the beginning of the thread to here, it's clear that it's gone way off on tangental things. Doc talk 21:19, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
It more or less can't follow, because paid advocacy is already banned. Only paid non-advocacy is allowed. The only dispute is from those trying to confuse the two. WilyD 15:11, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
And non-paid advocacy is banned also. All advocacy is banned, under the core principle of NPOV. Without NPOV, we wouldn't be an encyclopedia, or at least not an encyclopedia anyone would have any reason to use rather than going to the open web and seeing what organizations and people say about themselves. DGG ( talk ) 18:36, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, exactly that. And that's why this policy is a step in exactly the wrong direction: Gardner's statement notes she wants university professors to be able to edit articles where they're experts, and yet the only difference this policy would make would be to ban that sort of thing. WilyD 15:09, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Why are you obfuscating the emphatic and distinct contrast drawn the press release between "paid advocacy" and "a university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise"?--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:03, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Because we're discussing this specific policy proposal, which also draws no distinction between the two, by ignoring the issue of advocacy, and instead focussing on the non-issue of whether people are getting paid. WilyD 16:49, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
WilyD, can you elaborate on why you think this proposal would mean academic experts couldn't edit in their field? SlimVirgin (talk) 16:16, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
For instance, I'm a paid academic expert. One of the things I'm paid to do is communicate my science, and the general science of my field, to the public at large. Although it doesn't explicitly cover Wikipedia, improving Wikipedia articles definitely falls within this realm; it's no different than giving public talks, or demonstrations, something I also do in the course of my job. This falls afoul of point 1. Probably, even doing anything to encourage public interest in my science/science in general falls afoul of point 2, since I work in a field almost entirely funded by government grants/private grants driven almost entirely by pubic interest in the subject (astronomy). Any time spent doing public outreach is putting money directly into our coffers (indeed, a point made again and again whenever people talk about the need to do outreach). As far as I can see, any attempt to focus on whether people are being paid, rather than whether they're co-opting Wikipedia to engage in advocacy, is always going to sweep up academics. I only get paid because the public is interested in the universe. Every good article in Wikipedia about planets, stars, or galaxies makes it easier for me to get funding. 16:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I respect your academic field and pursuits, but frankly, if you are unable to discriminate between the problematic nature of the difference between PR people editing Wikipedia with the ultimate aim of promoting an entity that is trying to sell a product or service, not related to higher education, and the benign nature of experts in academia contributing to Wikipedia in their respective fields, it is difficult to discuss the issues being raised here.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

PR people editing Wikipedia with the ultimate aim of promoting a product or service are already being banned when they're discovered, because they're violating policies like WP:NPOV and WP:SOCK, flagrantly and repeatedly. It's a problem, but not one that can be solved by a policy forbidding it, because it's already forbidden by policy. All this proposed policy does is add the kind of editors you seem to consider benign. I can differentiate them perfectly well, which is why I don't like a policy like this, which only serves to bundle them together. WilyD 17:08, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
(ec) Conflict of interest is about having secondary relationships that interfere with your primary relationship, and the primary relationship is with Wikipedia while you're editing it. Being paid to teach history or science, then writing about history or science on Wikipedia, doesn't involve competing relationships, so it doesn't represent a COI. That is, there's no conflict between you qua science educator and you qua Wikipedian.
If you were being paid by a drug company to tell the public that their drugs are great, then your relationship with the drug company would interfere with your relationship with Wikipedia. Wikipedia wants you to tell the public everything that good sources write about this drug, whereas the company is paying you to tell people only that the drug is a good thing. So you qua drug company rep would directly undermine you qua Wikipedian.
It's only the second kind of example that the proposal addresses. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:05, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that that explanation is exactly backwards. It's only the first kind of example the proposal actually addresses - indeed, I think it's only the first kind of example that this proposal can ever address, because the second kind of example is already prohibited. Advocating in a way that's against Wikipedia's interests is banned by WP:NPOV, and paid advocates engaging in the second kind of behaviour have been clandestine since the days of WikiMyBiz, for precisely this reason. The only thing this policy has the potential to do is lump paid advocates of the first kind in with paid advocates of the second kind. 17:42, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
That's the thing I'm having difficulty seeing. Can you say which words in the policy you see as addressing the first kind of editing? I'm asking because we can use the oppose arguments to rewrite the proposal, so it's important to know which part(s) you see as problematic. There are editors who don't want to stop the second kind of example, but for those that do, it would be good if we could find different words. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:46, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
There is, I think, a fundamental flaw in the design of the policy, because it addresses who the person is, not what they're doing. If you want to prohibit a certain kind of behaviour, you have to prohibit the behaviour (a tautology, yes, but it is the point here). To discriminate in editors who are paid to disseminate information in a way that congruent with Wikipedia's goals, and editors who are paid to disseminate information that's incongruent with Wikipedia's goals, you can only discriminate them based on how they're editing, not whether they're being paid. (And in that case, the policy/policies already exist - mostly WP:NPOV). If you're really only interested in dealing with the second kind of case, new policy proposals are probably a waste of time. The second kind of case is already prohibited. Re-prohibiting it isn't going to change anything. There might be room for a noticeboard/Wikiproject/working group/?other initiative?, but I can't see how you can merely reword it when the premise is inherently flawed. WilyD 09:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Advocacy is OK if supported by ref.

We are here to get INFO. If someone wants to add support for a product or person, (business is called unnatural person under the Law.) then who cares as long as they add references and are factually accurate. I don't want the practice of replacing one company's photos with a competing brand. But all companies have the ability and equal access to post their product. Perhaps if there is a flurry of edits from rival Members, then the page should become Semi-locked and require review before alterations are made to the page that Users see. This seems a pretty reasonable solution. ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whiterussian1974 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Verifiability isn't the only thing that matters. Advocacy runs afoul of WP:NPOV, which is a problem. It's just not less of a problem if the advocate is doing it for free. WilyD 08:37, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Advocacy means putting a positive slant on something, and is not NPOV. It is different from giving positive information, and is never OK. For example, recording that an actor won some Oscars is OK (with citations), but that is not advocacy, it's factual. Saying that an actor is one of the greatest ever to tread the boards is not OK, however many sources say that. All sources are not equal. --Stfg (talk) 09:37, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I have to agree with User:Stfg. All facts are not the same. Stating in advance that there may be a COI or that you've been hired/contracted/engaged by an entity is helpful, however it doesnt resolve the NPOV issue. Such an individual is paid to develop and present a story or picture. To ensure that this story or picture is presented they often have to determine which master to serve - objectivity or their benefactor. Thus we have articles in which "spin" as been added to the sources/references/facts so as to tell the (often, less than objective) story. Bilbobag (talk) 16:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
But this is a WP:NPOV problem in general, not exclusive to paid advocacy. Spinning or cherry picking sources can (and does) happen even if someone doesn't have a WP:COI. It's dealt with by reverts or future edits. I have (and disclose) my COI regarding asphalt and concrete pavements, but in reading those articles I have seen and edited thinly sourced claims. Because I to try to uphold NPOV, I have improved citations for some statements that are not beneficial to asphalt, but I have also added balancing material, all sourced to WP:RS material. I firmly believe I am acting to improving the NPOV in these articles. Again, it all goes to editor's intent and their adherence to Wikipedia's mission. Carter (talk) 17:04, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Carter - overall I agree. I just think it happens (or is more likely to happen) when one is a paid advocate. 67.86.191.179 (talk) 17:13, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Paid advocacy rarely affects the core articles of the encyclopedia. Unpaid advocacy from zealots does affect them. As individuals advocating a personal cause will always want to contribute, and whether or not we permit anonymous editing will still leave most of them perfectly willing to do it under their true name, the only defense for NPOV is to watch the articles, and to the extent WP succeeds in this, it is because of the benfit of crowd editing. The key problem with the typical articles from paid advocates is that they are likely to be articles that nobody else is watching. DGG ( talk ) 18:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Financial COI is an issue, but activist COI is pernicious.

I agree with those above who support edits by people in the profession or company affected by the article, who are notionally paid and edit in their area of expertise. Excluding professional expertise in the area because they get a salary would be silly.

I see far worse advocacy problems in politically contentious topics. If the community jumps on WP:NPOV violations, it can treat equally the editing excesses of the paid political staffer AND the unchained activist.

ChrisPer (talk) 04:35, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting take there. How, precisely, did you come to the conclusion that a profession or company is NOT a political entity? Could you, perhaps, draw up some guidelines as to how to distinguish between vested economic interests and vested economic interests? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:30, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
You might read that point again before trying to undermine it. The political office obvious does have a vested economic interest, but if the editor in question isn't a member of the office, but merely of the political movement, it doesn't make their advocacy less problematic. This unpaid advocacy appears to be the dominant problem on Wikipedia, as it's political, nationalist, and religious advocacy where advocacy is at its worst - not corporate interests. WilyD 13:02, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Doubtful, since so much financial COI produces so much banality, but banality sucks more and also misleads, stupifies, and makes disreputable. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:18, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd suggest that it is you, Wily, who should read the comment and my response again with care. You're simply reiterating the simplistic categorization applied by ChrisPer. Take a look at the article Alanscottwalker has suggested and you might elicit some insight into the complexity of the issue. I'd assume that you're aware of the series of documentaries called, "The Corporation"? Attempting to parse contributors into groups which, according to you, translate into "... political, nationalist and religious advocacy ..." (sic) as being divorced from what you would probably construe as being transparent 'paid' advocacy is a serious mistake. As irritating as the interest groups may be (and I predominantly work on Slavic pages so am acutely aware of the war of words being waged), at least it keeps Wikipedians on their toes regarding POV as opposed to the insidious nature of corporate interests. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:49, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Which only shows that you still haven't read what Chris wrote. If I write flattering copy on Rhinoceros Party of Canada because I want people to vote for them, but I'm not a candidate or office staffer and don't stand to make any money off them being elected - I merely want people to elect them because I want to see British Columbia renamed to La La Land - that doesn't make it magically okay. It's not worse than doing it because the party pays me, but neither is it better. Most anti-abortion activists (say) have no financial stake in the issue. It doesn't make their advocacy more acceptable than some staffer paid to advocate for them. The organisation being advocated for might stand to make money of it, but that's not what we're discussing. Only whether the editor stands to make money off it. WilyD 08:35, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Another attempt at bad analogies and oversimplification. Your great copy for the Rhinoceros Party of Canada will, in theory, be carefully parsed by people who want the opposition to win or are suspicious of their policies for x and y reasons. Other sources will be introduced, citations asked for regarding anything suggested that is not reliably sourced and, perhaps, there will be edit wars breaking out at regular intervals. That's how articles are developed and it is only reasonable to expect that people with other preferences and rationales for their preferences will act as a method for checking and balancing your POV lauding of the party. The same is true of articles on abortion whether you are pro or anti... etc., etc., ad nauseum. The balance is lost when paid advocates for one or the other side, who come armed with prepared reams of documentation, research, are trained and hired specifically for their wordsmithery skills, and are salaried in order to enable them to work full time on the article in question are brought into the equation. That's not balance: it's an ability to wear the opposition down by time rather than by validity of the arguments brought to the table. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:43, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Not all paid advocates are full-time Wikipedia editors. In fact, from what I've seen, I'd guess that most of them spend only an hour or two a day onwiki, which is just like the typical experienced editor.
I have, on the other hand, seen some remarkably prolific editors who spend entire days pushing POVs that nobody could possibly make any money off of, like the exact definition of special education or whether academic field #1 is a complete or partial subset of academic field #2. We've had activists on all sides of every sex-related subject you can think of. And then there was the woman who spent weeks trying to tell the world that a particular surgery ought to be illegal, complete with links to her extensive website on the subject. Have you ever followed any of the serious psychiatric articles? They attract activists with no financial incentives, e.g., one person who actually put "Personal experience" in the references at Involuntary commitment. How about the man who wanted to re-write an article about a historical disease as a WP:COATRACK for his new theory that standing up straight was a good idea? Two of us spent months dealing with him; he eventually was banned.
We get all sorts of retired, disabled, and unemployed people here, and a small proportion of them are enormous time sinks. Compared to the people who are trying to save the world, I'd honestly prefer to deal with the handful of paid professionals I've encountered, who have generally been polite and grasped the concept of reliable sources. So I don't really think that "paid professionals waste our time (more than the kooks and unpaid POV pushers)" is an argument that holds water. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
As Iryna Harpy said, there's a loss of balance with paid advocacy. This loss not only takes time in the way that casual vandalism or pushing a pet theory does, but I find often lies undetected for months precisely because it doesn't involve a POV dispute, meaning a lot of badly-written, hopelessly partisan puff pieces, often related to particular corporations, brands or their ostensible USPs become part of Wikipedia. Have you moderated a web forum protected solely by Captcha recently? People are paid $1 for hundreds of spam comments or edits. Without the monetary incentive, the problem would be manageable without resorting to IP reputation. Similarly with Wikipedia, and it will get worse unless a straightforward explanation to potential editors like WP:PAID is adopted. --Cedderstk 09:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

How much "Paid Advocacy" does the Wikipedia Foundation estimate occurs?

It occurs to me that I have no idea on how much this happens in order to judge how big of a problem it is. Can someone please point to where I can find this information.

Is is such a big issue given how much edit warring occurs on pages that are likely to be sensitive to this issue. In other words, do we need such a policy if WP:NPOV already covers 99% of the activity that this new policy appears to be aimed at? Bhtpbank (talk) 16:15, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good question. If we had metrics for how much paid editing was going on...Oh, wait, it is impossible to identify a stealth paid editor. this entire discussion has been for naught. Capitalismojo (talk) 22:20, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Companies spend millions to improve their search engine rankings, improve their company image, and advertise their products. Since Wikipedia is at the top or near the top for most searches by most people for many companies, it is absolutely unsurprising that they will take an active interest in their Wikipedia page. Almost a quarter million people looked at the Microsoft article last month. If they had an opportunity to reach a quarter million people a month with a positive message about their company, I suspect they would jump at the chance. We don't have any hard data, but I think it is safe to say many PR people salivate at the opportunity to reach people that Wikipedia potentially provides. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:14, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Agreed that it would be fascinating to quantify the corporate input... 'mebeh' if we ask them nicely? After all, they're the ones who'd spend a 'lot'x10 on data mining for themselves and checking on their competition. I think it can be agreed that a lot = a really, really, really BIG quantity = average CEO wage probably more than the running of Wikipedia. Let's not forget that millions are also spent on giving themselves a 'humanitarian' face (from educational grants to influential NGOs), all of which they do NOT do for personal satisfaction but for the accolades. Rest assured that the generosity of their philanthropic ventures wouldn't make much of a dint in the budget supplied for advertising how generous they are.
One example - Volkswagen gives out hundreds of thousands in research grant funds for Endangered Languages in the tertiary education sector every year. It's a pittance to them but how does it translate in 'good guy' points? Take a look at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. If we checked through articles which, on face value, wouldn't appear to have any connection with multinationals, I wonder how many companies are doing a more thorough job on developing Wikipedia pages to really get a bang out of their less obtrusively spent buck? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:48, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
This is why I say Wikipedia is going to need to up their security game or lose volunteers to the stress of competing against paid editors for hours on end. Or change tactics and allow companies to maintain a section in their article that is blatantly labeled What the firm has to say. There is the thought that Wikipedia can never win this "drug-war" and build their own paid editing bureau. Wikipedia is always underfunded and these companies are not going away. I think Wikipedia is or will be facing the same crisis as PBS when they finally had to allow small commercials from corporate sponsors. *waits for the flaming* I'm just following my business sense down a most probable path for this dilemma. Alatari (talk) 01:09, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I cannot say that I know how much paid advocacy editing takes place. What I can say is that I did some review of this issue several years ago, and found evidence pointing to paid advocacy at least by 2003. By the time of my first direct encounter with it in 2007 (the article involved is probably still in my top-10 edited articles), it was already rampant in certain areas of the project. There are also areas where true-believer advocacy has been rampant almost since the inception of the project. I'd suggest looking at specialized notability criteria that seem to be particularly weak (e.g., would article subjects otherwise meet GNG if not for the specialized criteria?) to find topic areas where paid advocacy is particularly strong. Risker (talk) 01:55, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
You're not going to be flamed by me, Alatari. And, yes, I agree entirely with your take on specialized notability criteria, Risker.
I'm fairly certain that this entire subsection can be summarized as a vote of disenchantment with the lack of serious policy in place and an inability to do anything about it out for fear of being accused of alienating new contributors. So much WMF time, energy and budget has been thrown at the 'agile programming' rolling out of VE in order to make Wikipedia more 'intuitive' and 'user friendly', while vital fundamentals surrounding policy have been submerged. Indeed, it's reached a critical point where a whole new set of corruption-specific templates need to be developed.
How about starting with a generic, "Wikipedia Disclaimer: None of the content or citations within the body of this article should be understood to be neutral, relevant or even notable as the authors and sources may or may not be paid by interest groups and advocates involved directly or indirectly with the subject or may be working as lobbyists for the same. As a principle, Wikipedia objects to disclosure of contributor affiliations therefore relies on your ability to discern between paid promotion and NPOV representation. We suggest that you visit this page (insert link to paying corporate sponsor or relevant interest group forum) for the unredacted version of this article (assuming that it has been redacted in any shape or form)." --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:45, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

A crazy idea, but it just might work

I have been thinking about the many comments on this and related pages observing how difficult it is to detect any but the most clueless stealth paid editors. I was thinking that perhaps we could get their former customers to help.

Imagine yourself working for a corporation and unwittingly hiring a firm that turns out to have violated Wikipedia guidelines, and then later, when you realized what was happening, switching to an ethical firm that follows our Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. Of course we here at Wikipedia should do everything we can to advertise the many advantages of doing that.

What if the person who chose the wrong firm had an easy, highly-visible way to privately email someone here at Wikipedia and tell us that a stealth paid editor had worked on their Wikipedia page? Needless to say, we wouldn't just take the word of an anonymous tipster for it, but we could scrutinize the editor(s) who worked on that page at that time and possibly find other pages edited by the same stealth paid editor.

Also, when such a company hires an ethical firm, they are likely to reveal that they tried the stealth paid editor first. It would be in the ethical firms best interest to let us know about that. If we set up such a thing, we should assure the whistleblower that we are not going to out him or his company. This is the sort of thing that someone writing a magazine article about this would love to include. This is a bit of a crazy idea, but it just might work. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:34, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Would this be illegal?

I had just made up my mind about minor paid editing. I have put down my ideas User:The Banner/Workpage28. Would this suddenly be illegal? The Banner talk 23:39, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

The question is not whether you can convince yourself that you're assiduously following policy and guidelines, but rather whether other people would agree. Moreover, is it valuable and reasonable to ask volunteers to spend their time checking over the work that you're getting paid to do? Your idea has more grey in it than black and white, but the fundamental issue remains present. --TeaDrinker (talk) 02:08, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
TeaDrinker: yes, it would be reasonable to ask volunteers to spend their time checking over the work that you are getting paid to do. I am one such volunteer, but only for those paid editors who commit to following our plain and simple conflict of interest guide. When there is money to be made doing something, policing can not stop it (see Drugs, War On...). What we can do is give ethical paid editors a way to cooperate with us. It is easy to think that the alternative is "no paid editing", but, like "nobody doing drugs", that isn't one of the options available.
The Banner: I have been following these various proposals, and making paid editing by ethical paid editors who follow our plain and simple conflict of interest guide "illegal" is not going to happen. All the proposals involve firms that refuse to follow the rules. I would advise you to place such a commitment right at the top of your page. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
And my plans are to follow the rules at all times and make it clear when an article is ordered. The Banner talk 08:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I would still like to see User:The Banner/Workpage28 explicitly state that you will follow Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide --Guy Macon (talk) 14:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I have suggested that The Banner delete the page for the time being, since it seems clear that the page is intended to be developed into an actual advertisement for a Wikipedia editing service. It seems clear that the basic approach is in conflict with the conflict of interest guideline. Further its presence as an advertisement on Wikipedia's userspace seems to indicate that such is acceptable (even encouraged) by the project. Neither seems to be true given the above discussion. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:07, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
And I refuse your threat to remove it. The Banner talk 00:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Ultimately, if it isn't illegal, it's certainly highly unethical. I wouldn't want to have my Wikipedia contributions associated with this behaviour, nor Wikipedia being perceived in this light (quid pro quo is a user pays service regardless of what kind of payments are being asked for). What do you add as your next option: an offshore account? Be aware that a few of us watching your page with disdain and I'm certainly not reading any of the suggestions being made above as being threatening. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:32, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(ec) I don't want to come across as unfriendly or threatening in any way. However I do think the page is inappropriate, as such I think it is worth a discussion on MfD and will nominate it for such. My viewpoint entering that discussion is that it should be deleted, but I hope it is not viewed as a criticism of you, merely as an effort to make a better encyclopedia. In my view, soliciting clients to post articles for pay in userspace is not reasonable. I have added the nomination (Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:The Banner/Workpage28). --TeaDrinker (talk) 00:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
The "threat" is not here, but on my talk page: I'd be somewhat inclined to nominate it for MfD if you're resolute about keeping it, (...). And a quick look on this is good enough that mr. Teadrinker is, to put a mildly, strongly opposed. The Banner talk 08:58, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Nothing in TeaDrinker's comments above or at User talk:The Banner#User:The Banner/Workpage28 resembles a threat. If you really want to do this, you will need to be very thick-skinned and ignore a lot of harsh comments. Instead you are treating gentle suggestions as if they were threats. Also, TeaDrinker does not have the power to remove the page. All he can do is to nominate it for deletion and let the community decide. I think he makes a good enough case that if he doesn't nominate it, I will. It also does not bode well that you ignored my request instead of adding a note to User:The Banner/Workpage28 explicitly stating that you will follow our Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide. One has to wonder why. Do you have a problem with following WP:PSCOI? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I have no problem with WP:PSCOI, except that is just an essay and that it adds nothing to what is already in my draft. The Banner talk 08:58, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I am sure that The Banner has his reasoning (and I look forward to hearing it on the MfD page). He is a fine and reasonable editor by all that I have seen, and so I am sure is was no more his intent to stir up drama than it was mine. The issue is clearly something that the community needs to decide, and an MfD will facilitate that discussion. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I have no doubt that this is just one of those internal disputes that is being blown out of proportion and can be resolved in a reasonable and amicable manner, TeaDrinker. The Banner quite evidently embarked on this with good intentions months ago and, in reading the commentary on the relevant talk page certainly elicited the sense of mixed responses of unambiguous support and unambiguous opposition. No doubt he felt this to be an appropriate venue in which to test the waters but did not factor in the already heated nature of the debate, nor anticipate the overflow of extremes in sentiment spilling over into his proposal/query. It's ended up as a bit of a Lemony Snicket's series of unfortunate events. Whatever the outcome of the discussion by the community, by no means should it seen as a tarnish on a good reputation. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:09, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I was aware of the heated debate, that is indeed why I wanted to test the water here. A non-friendly environment is sometimes the best place for sharpening the wits. But I had hoped for a discussion, not for an attack (the MfD-page) nor for being pushed to using an essay that add nothing to what is already on the page. So, for the moment I go not left, nor right, nor backwards or ahead, I just sit, wait and read. It is a draft-page for a reason! The Banner talk 09:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
The rather aggressive debate on the essay page (which, to your credit, you were not engaged in) is precisely what I was referring to. Hopefully, tempers have cooled a little. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
With all due respect, I am capable of differentiating between different editors and reacting to what they actually write rather than automatically treating them the same as some unrelated editors elsewhere on the page. A couple of the above comments dismiss my legitimate concerns with phrases such as "non-friendly environment", "blown out of proportion" and "rather aggressive debate". Whether you like it or not, I have a reasonable objection based not on emotion but on observed behavior, and whether you address it or not, it will come up as other editors observe the same behavior. I suspect that this is moving towards the rather shopworn "they were mean to me so I withdraw my proposal with a few snarky last words" reaction, but I would much rather have a calm, reasoned discussion about my concerns without a bunch of amateur psychoanalyzing concerning why I have those concerns. To that end, I am going to outdent this, make a fresh start, and express my concerns again. You can refuse to address those concerns if you want, but please don't patronize me. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:06, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I am sure that The Banner is a thoughtful editor and a fine human being, but he is also discussing the possibility of becoming a paid editor, and thus his stated plans are naturally going to be scrutinized. If you look at my posting history you will see that I am a strong supporter of allowing ethical paid editors to participate and have personally worked with several of them to get their edits into the encyclopedia. An anti-paid-editor (and there are many) is going to be far less friendly about the possibility of an established Wikipedia editor accepting pay, and the WP:AGF shield is very thin in the case of paid editors.

I find that the two reasons The Banner gives for refusing to commit to following our plain and simple conflict of interest guide simply do not make sense. The stated reasons are (direct quotes) "It is just an essay" and "It adds nothing to what is already in my draft" (referring to User:The Banner/Workpage28).

"It is just an essay"
The fact that The Banner is being asked to make a commitment to voluntarily follow an essay that dozens of other paid editors have agreed to follow is rather the point. I wouldn't ask him to make a commitment to voluntarily follow a policy or guideline such as WP:COI because he, like all of us. has no choice -- you either follow the rules of you get blocked. The problem is that every paid editor, including those who were later banned, claims that they are following the letter of WP:COI, which they interpret (and sometimes twist) to be as permissive as possible. And agreeing to follow another set of rules that they created is a signature move for those paid editors.

Meanwhile, those paid editors who want to work together with us have pretty much all explicitly agreed to follow the advice in that particular essay. As I said before, one has to wonder why they all agreed but The Banner does not.

"It adds nothing to what is already in my draft"

This is demonstrably, factually incorrect. The draft has nothing faintly resembling "Do not directly edit articles about yourself, your organization, your clients, or your competitors" and "Post suggestions and sources on the article's talk page, or in your user space". Instead it says things like "I will only write about people", "When I have decided to write the article", and "When the article is ready, I will duly launch it on Wikipedia". Any reasonable person would conclude that The Banner is planning on directly editing Wikipedia articles for pay, and that his refusal to commit to following our plain and simple conflict of interest guide is that he plans on directly editing Wikipedia articles for pay. I would very much like to discuss those apparent plans in a calm, civil manner. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:06, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

1) After giving me sources, the one who requests the article will have no further influence. I decide about notability, I decide about the content of the article, the community decides if the article survives the AfD (assuming that each and every article of which I declare that it is written on request/a WP:COI will be send to AfD); 2) I can put down hollow phrases like that essay on the draft, but it will be the facts that make or break the editing. I am willing to follow a Guideline, not an essay that can be altered or ignored at will. The Banner talk 13:49, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
"Can be ignored at will" is red herring. You are the one who chooses whether to ignore it or not. As for "can be altered at will", if you are concerned about alterations, simply say that agree to it as written on a particular date.
Why don't you just admit that you won't agree because you plan on directly editing Wikipedia articles for pay? That is a decision that, according to current Wikipedia guidelines, you are free to make (at least until Wikipedia:No paid advocacy becomes a policy), and directly editing Wikipedia articles for pay is your declared intent, so why pretend otherwise? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:09, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
It is very difficult for me to image that an “advertisement" as poorly written and proofed as the Banner’s and as Byzantine and Kafkaesque in its guidelines drawing any clients, but it does open the specter of thousands of such sites, professionally executed, both on and off Wikipedia and that concerns me. The Banner will quickly be left in the dust, but a dusty stampeed it will be. I can see giant billboards vying with the attorney ambulance chasers all around the Big I , for example, shouting out, “ NEED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE? Not happy with how you or your venture are portrayed there? Visit wikieditors.com and talk to us about your needs.” Is that your vision of the future of Wikipedia? Because it is not mine. Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 17:13, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
The Banner, you've declared that, "... I am capable of differentiating between different editors and reacting to what they actually write rather than automatically treating them the same as some unrelated editors elsewhere on the page." (sic) No, you aren't and have, unfortunately, proved it here with continued attacks on TeaDrinker and myself who were trying to diffuse the tension. If you're incapable of seeing that and continue to misconstrue olive branches as condescension, it doesn't say much for your analytical abilities. I would have preferred to have stated that which Carptrash has now stated, but saw that you were in a defensive state of mind. There is no headway to be made in a discussion with someone who flatly refuses to concede anything other than their own overinflated estimation of their abilities.
I am, now, going to be scathingly, unambiguously honest with you. If you're not prepared to accept that you are working (volunteering) within the confines of an institution whose premises are based on ideologies antithetical to your own, and that you are proposing to set a precedent that will open the sluice gates for those who do possess the requisite skills (which you lack) to be recruited for pay by companies looking for professional wordsmiths with impressive analytical and behavioural credentials, you need someone to hold a mirror up for you in order that you reflect on your skewed comprehension of reality (I won't apologise for the bad pun). With all due respect, m'dear, your literacy alone begins and ends with coding. As Carptrash has so aptly expressed it, you will be left trampled in the dusty stampede without so much as a look-in.
P.S. The fact that you imagined that this was a good venue in which to bring up your ad (er, essay) attests to the fact that you must be right off your bonce. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
One small correction: I am the one who wrote "I am capable of differentiating between different editors and reacting to what they actually write rather than automatically treating them the same as some unrelated editors elsewhere on the page". I caused the misattribution above by making an error in my signature which I have since corrected. (Note to self: next time, smoke crack after editing Wikipedia...) Otherwise I am in complete agreement with the above. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:39, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
"the above" meaning . . . . ..........?Carptrash (talk) 23:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Iryna Harpy mistakenly stated that The Banner wrote the words starting with "I am capable of". I, Guy Macon, actually wrote them. The mistake was actually my fault, because I, though a simple one-character typo, signed my post in a confusing way. I have fixed the sig, and I apologize for any confusion that I caused. Sorry about that. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:51, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(Note to self: next time, smoke crack before editing Wikipedia...) Well, that does explain how The Banner suddenly became articulate towards the end of his diatribe. I thought he might be an a-typical loony who becomes more lucid as he descends into the depths of delusion. Well, I won't bother with trying to work out what to strike through as my blurb is still accurate. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:44, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
As long is everybody is rolling over each other, I just do nothing. I leave the draft page as it in and wait till the dust settles. By now, I feel I have ended up in a grinder between the Enforcer of the Green Corner at one side and the Enforcer of the Yellow Corner on the other side. Lads and lasses, figure out first what becomes the guideline. I am a strange guys: the more hammering you do, the more sceptical and critical I become. The Banner talk 10:51, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Interesting. I wrote "I suspect that this is moving towards the rather shopworn 'they were mean to me so I withdraw my proposal with a few snarky last words' reaction" yesterday, and here it is, just as I predicted! Perhaps I should quit my engineering job and become a paid psychic.
I can see it now; "Are you unsatisfied with your Wikipedia page? Unhappy with the results your are getting from trying to buy edits? Call the WikiPsychicHotline and we will use our psychic powers to reveal what the problem is!" Then I could just cut-and-paste the actual advice I give out from our Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide page... --Guy Macon (talk) 11:46, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
If he's doing good quality work and it's neutral and adheres to policy, does it really matter if he's being paid? We already have the reward board to prostitute ourselves for barnstars. At least this guy is smart enough to make money (or charitable donations) from it. Thanks ツ Jenova20 (email) 12:03, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

"At least this guy is smart enough to make money". An interesting thing to say to say to a bunch of volunteers. Makes me pretty stupid, doesn't it? Giving al that time and effort away for nothing? Carptrash (talk) 16:24, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Wait...what? We don't get paid? I figured Jimbo was just seven years late with my paycheck... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 18:42, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Only Americans will not be paid. All others have to be creative and deserve their payments. The Banner talk 13:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC) And to mention your MfD: the page will be back asap after removal. There are no official gagging orders, only WP:IDONTLIKEIT
Oh, goody! I'm Australian. Who do I forward my request for a pay cheque to? So, according to your theory, The Banner, corporations are exclusively US entities and the only people capable of writing copy for corporations and various other business interests are Americans? Gosh, I wonder what the multinational corporations would make of it. Whoops, pardon. Have to go. I'm in conference with my buddy, Gina Rinehart. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:08, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I would like to remind those who have been following this -- on both sides of the issue -- about Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:The Banner/Workpage28 There are currently only four keep/delete comments. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Bitcoins

Are bitcoins "monetary or other tangible benefits"? If not, the text should be rewritten to include them as benefits that mean financial conflict of interest. --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Some may argue that bitcoins are not money, but no reasonable person thinks that they are not a tangible benefit. This will remain true until you can no longer buy things with them. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:56, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
NaBUru38: Again, this is missing the point. The currency most used on Wikipedia is kudos. Form of 'benefit' is barking up the wrong tree; one cannot know… —Sladen (talk) 10:34, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Editing which is influenced by a conflict of interest is the problem. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
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