Wikipedia talk:No paid advocacy/Archive 5

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Newbie Theory

To be clear, the theory that is being presented is not meant to be taken as an accusation. Please try to keep an open-mind and not take offense, as there is none intended. The first thought that entered the mind was that it appears as though those who are in adamant opposition of the idea/action of paid editing, are the same as those getting paid to edit. If it is not obvious why the two are thought to be one in the same, then here are things that stand out to a newcomer; anyone getting paid to edit is getting paid top dollar. Why? Well, because it is not accepted, making it difficult and leaving very few who offer the service. It is "illegal", so to speak, therefore one not only expects to pay the high price, but also has no choice. Now, if the policy were to change making the practice acceptable, even under strict guidelines, this will open the door for anyone to have the opportunity (provided they follow policy and meet certain criteria) to offer a fee based service, and in turn create what is known simply as competition. What would competition do to those who have been defying the system all along? It would force them to lower prices, spend what was once profit on advertising expenses, produce a more quality product in order to win a sale, and so forth. To be honest, this did sound a little far fetched until reading the arguments, and while there is no evidence to the fact, something that is perceived as such may e just as damaging as if it were to be a reality. Further, if the theory is far from truth, it does not take away the fact that by making the policy as rigid as it seems, those breaking the the rules are actually the only real benefactors. Seems foolish to me to oppose something that by doing so, there is no control. The only real way to monitor, control, and ensure guidelines are adhered to is take control. This will raise the bar on the quality of the content just by adding the competition factor. The consumer, given a choice, will likely hire soon realize with whom to spend their money. In turn alleviating much of the time spent on the chore of policing the situation, so the time can be better spent on other matters often left to lie in wait. An example, perhaps it would allow admin to take more time reviewing Articles for Submission therefore lessening the time from three weeks to only one. Face the fact that there is no way to stop it, but there is a way to moderate and take control, so then why not do so? Please before everyone slays me on this, I openly admit to not knowing all the facts, this is just as I see it from where I stand.SHurley619 (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

"...it appears as though those who are in adamant opposition of the idea/action of paid editing, are the same as those getting paid to edit." You totally lost me after that. Doc talk 03:33, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

That would be where "open-minded" would come into play, many people have difficulties with that, thanks for your feedbackSHurley619 (talk) 03:56, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I have no difficulty being open-minded. I have difficulty believing that you are a "newbie", however. Doc talk 22:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

If one had two acquaintances; one (a) whom did not engage with Wikipedia, so frequently had their edits reverted; and (b) one whom had been working on Wikipedia for five years, and researching lots of articles. …You would be more likely to ask the one with a reputation for guidance. If you noticed a particular area and suggested that it could do with some {{refimprove}} you would naturally ask a more experience person to assist with any research, writing and citing to improve the encyclopedia. I don't see where payment (in kind or otherwise) would come into such a decision about whom to ask—one would simply tend to prefer advice and assistance from those perceived as knowledgeable and trustworthy (ie. with kudos). —Sladen (talk) 08:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

"Consumers"; "... more time reviewing Articles for Submission therefore lessening the time from three weeks to only one."? I do understand that you are a 'newbie' and that you are being courageous in 'openly admitting to not knowing all of the facts', but would suggest that you acquaint yourself with the fundamental principles, policy and guidelines behind Wikipedia before assuming that it is a happy little corporate affair providing a user-pays service to clients (whoever you may imagine the staff to be and whoever you imagine the clients to be). I'm not certain as to what you believe we should be open-minded about as you've evidently mistaken Wikipedia for the antithesis of what it actually is. I'm with Doc on this one, although I'm compelled to qualify that your comment lost us simply because you entered having made up your own plot. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:30, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

"having made up my own plot," is not the case at all. I did not make it up. One thing, I do need to apologize and correct myself on, is I misspoke when I said those against are the one's getting paid. I should have been careful to say that their are some who are taking a stand against and getting paid all the while...a few bad apples, not a corporate conspiracy. The majority, I assume acts in good faith. I overgeneralized and see how that would make the idea sound "made up". Should I expose exactly how these people are going undetected, I thought it would be unnecessary, and a discussion would be enough, guess not...SHurley619 (talk) 14:03, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, i am doing my best to help the situation, by pointing us in the right direction, without having to say too much, but it is obvious that no one is willing to put their critical thinking hat on, and discuss the possibility. I am acting in good faith in an attempt to help, and since it is real, I have undeniable proof, I will explain in full detail, with proof and when I am done I will provide the link. I guess I will use a talk page or something, I will protect any and names, companies, ect. and if someone feels the need to ban me, than so be it. Those of you who are a little nervous, do not worry, my intention is to bring light to the issue not to you, you have your own karma to deal with. at least at this point anyways.SHurley619 (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Umm... what are you talking about? You have some bombshell "Wikileaks"-type thing to present that could make some editors "nervous"? Lay it on us, by all means. Doc talk 21:52, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Karma issues are very, very important to the development of Wikipedia. Do I need to realign my chakra in order to deal with your revelations? Incidentally, apologies to Sladen who has been working on realigning the thread/s in order to make some sort of sense of the entries here. SHurley619, could you please familiarize yourself with talk page protocols? I've encountered difficulties in following whether you are responding to anyone in particular or starting new comments from scratch. See Wikipedia:Tutorial/Talk_pages as a starting point. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

(Apologies for reverting part of the discussion here: it was unintentional) Barte (talk) 00:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

If I had a dime for every time I've accidentally reverted something... I'd have a shitload of dimes! No worries :) Doc talk 00:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem, Barte. While you're here, do you know of any good cryptologists who could help decipher SHurley's missive? Nah, forget the cryptologists. I think we need scatologists on the case! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:02, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I suppose we have to go the AGF route now. SHurley619, is this your first named account? Or did you edit with IPs until you learned the ropes? Because I do not believe that you are a newbie at all. Doc talk 01:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I find that I have to agree that I'm not convinced that SHurley619 is a 'newbie' in the true sense of the concept. Acerbic jibes aside, the boldness with which this proposal was approached and the allusions to, "I know various secret somethings none of you do." sits somewhat awry with me. I am not in a position to make accusations (don't you just love disclaimers?), yet this all smacks of being thought through and presented by someone far more familiar with Wikipedia than one would expect of someone who only started an account just over a month ago and has not been involved with anything outside of developing an article for PCN Technology Inc. And so, SHurley619, don't be shy: we all have our 'critical thinking caps on' so please don't concern yourself with outing the 'bad apples' for fear of besmirching the reputations of 'the innocent'. We're all anxious to hear any salient reliable, verifiable information you have. Don't forget that the majority here (and working on developing Wikipedia in general) are volunteers who get paid in that simplest of currencies known as satisfaction. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:44, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The "theory" is just garbage. This is a waste of time. Doc talk 06:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

If I say what I think at this point, I'm risking a serious increase in my karmic load . Especially now that Mercury is retrograde. Carptrash (talk) 14:59, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

WOW! scatologist? Really? Some of you are quite full of yourselves around here, not to mention RUDE! To set the record straight, I did NOT "edit IPs", and this IS my first experience editing on Wikipedia. Further, while memorable, it has been one with the most unpleasant group of people I have ever worked with. Does the "talk protocol" allow for using words like "shitload" and stating that someone's post needs a professional who studies fecal excrement, or a scatologist?

I am writing a TRUE account of my Wikipedia experience on User:SHurley619, I will keep it free of personal opinion, by only documenting the facts, and I would appreciate it if you refrain from attacking me any further, just as I am refraining from using a few choice words about some of your inappropriate comments. If only I had known what I know now, when I began this venture, I surely would have approached it differently.SHurley619 (talk) 01:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Just read this thread yesterday, and read User:SHurley619's Userpage which has been updated quite a bit since the discussion above. While I find SHurley619's opening of this thread with a somewhat absurd conspiracy theory to be a newbie mistake indeed and a distraction, his or her story, taken at face value as told on the Userpage, is important. Basically SHurley619 responded to a project on a job board, won it, and was sent a draft version of an article on PCN Technology and was told to get the article created at WIkipedia. I have nominated the article for deletion and User:rybec followed up with a !vote of support for deletion, noting that the initial article was nearly identical with one worked on by a socketpuppet of Wiki-pr (see the deletion discussion for details and links). I think the important point raised by SHurley619's story, is that we do need a policy banning paid advocacy, to cut off this nonsense at the source; the business models of companies like Wiki-PR and WikiExperts will dry up if they can no longer represent to clients that their work is OK under Wikipedia policy -- we must make it not OK by Wikipedia policy - we must ban paid advocacy. Doing so will reduce the amount of this stuff; nobody wants to spend money on a service that cannot legitimately deliver what it promises - that just makes no business sense. I acknowledge that this is a wild west thing and we can never prevent unethical companies (those who would buy the service and those who would sell it) from doing exactly what happened with SHurley619 - but we can ensure that it is not a legitimate business practice, which will reduce its prevalence. Jytdog (talk) 14:17, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I think Jytdog is "distracting" away from the real issue. I have yet to finish telling my story, and wonder why I bother for such a group.SHurley619 (talk) 22:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

problems connected

with this topic are editors who can refer to online or printed articles which constitute advocacy or lobbying, in media which are otherwise more or less reliable sources; and editors whose work on wikipedia constitutes advocacy without being paid by someone, out of ideological reasons, sometimes those are one-topic-editors.--Severino (talk) 14:12, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

This issue is getting public press

There is a radio broadcast about Wikipedia paid advocacy on CBC Radio HERE, in which Simon Owens was interviewed in response to his article in The Daily Dot, which may be of interest to this thread. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, being in Australia, I can't access the CBC interviews. The Daily Dot made for interesting but, frankly, sadly unsurprising reading. To my mind, however, it does underline the importance of having as many policies in place regarding advocacy as possible. Noting that one of the themes in the article addressed the 'guilty until you prove yourself to be innocent' legal ramifications, all I can say is it simply doesn't wash with me. If any non-advocacy articles are deleted, they can be appealed and reinstated. The fact that everything Wikipedia is a slow process is just a by-product of needing to be cautious. At least I feel justified in being anal about double-checking citations, particularly as most of the articles I'm involved with use non-English sources and I've caught out mistranslations, as well as distinct cherry picking. We know paid advocacy exists and will continue: but that's not a legitimate excuse to throw our hands up in the air and declare it open season for commercial interests. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. We should focus on content, not on WHO is editing or WHY they are editing as they are. We need to double-check citations (and other acts of due diligence) regardless of whether there may or may not be advocacy-inspired edits. Let's keep our focus on WHAT, instead of on time- and labor-consuming pointless witch hunts regarding WHO and WHY. --B2C 05:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

It's actually your comments which are "nonsense". Obviously you think that WP:COI should be totally ignored. Anglicanus (talk) 05:37, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Born2cycle, it occurs to me that the last bastion of someone who actually doesn't have a solid and rational argument is resorting to emotive contentious labels. "Witch hunts" (sic) seems to be a favourite on RfC pages for those who oppose proposals but don't have have anything of substance to support their objection. How, precisely, does WP:COI metamorphise into a 'witch hunt'? WHO and WHY is inevitably going to impact on the WHAT and will, ultimately, end up being far more time-consuming and complex to police. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:46, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Anglicanus (talk · contribs), I think WP:COI has no place on WP and should be deleted because...

Iryna Harpy (talk · contribs), point taken on invoking the term "witch hunt", but I'm sorry I still disagree with your main point. It's figuring out whether WHO has a COI and WHY they are editing that is "far more time-consuming and complex to police" than simply reviewing the WHAT for compliance with our content-specific polices and guidelines (NPOV, RS, NOTABILITY, etc.). In fact, reviewing for compliance with content policy is relatively cost-free since we have to it anyway regardless of WHO or WHY. --B2C 22:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

There's no need to apologise for disagreeing with me.

I don't find your argument about the WHO and WHY being irrelevant to be convincing. I would hazard a guess that the majority of us, when deliberating over the content of articles, check talk pages and follow breadcrumbs left by major contributors all the way from their user pages to their contributions in order to get a sense of whether they may have POV allegiances and, if so, to establish whether they're nationalists, fundamentalists or any other form of 'ist'. Doing so is simply a matter of empirical sense. Elaborating on the policies already in place is merely supplementary information reinforcing that paid advocacy is not tolerated. Contrary to your opinion, WP:COI is regarded as a fundamental WP cornerstone. Without it, WP loses all credibility as an encyclopaedic resource and becomes an op ed free-for-all. We can't all have specialist knowledge of every field represented in WP. How, exactly, will eliminating the WHO and WHY from the equation make articles easier to police? I didn't realise that NPOV, RS, NOTABILITY are self-evident without editors running checks on the veracity of an article. Are we to assume that, because it is there, it must meet all of these criteria? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:13, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Iryna (talk · contribs) doragaya, the WHO and WHY is irrelevant because only content matters. If an editor edits an article either their edit is compliant with content-governing guidance and policy, or it is not. It's not like NOTABILITY or NPOV applies differently to a given sentence depending on WHO inserted that sentence, or WHY. The CEO of General Motors, or someone he pays, can just as competently make a substantive and valid change to General Motors as can a college student studying engineering. And that same student can make unsupported statement without citation just as easily as can the CEO or his COI agent. In all cases what matters is the content, not WHO or WHY.

Of course you are free to ignore AGF and try to figure out if a given editor is some kind of -ist, but in the end all that matters is whether the edits are compliant with content-governing policy and guidelines. Trying to figure out, much less prove, that their edits are inappropriate due to a COI is all but impossible and ultimately a violation of AGF, NPA, etc.

Focus on content, not on the editor. --B2C 21:28, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Born2cycle (talk · contribs), this is a project built on trust (with verification). If a user is known to have an interest which they put ahead of the encyclopedia, that trust is violated. We, of course, do not rely on trust alone. But we must do what we can to foster trust among editors. A paid advocate for a company does put the needs of the company first--that is what they are paid to do. We will continue to verify each other, but we start with the reasonable assumption that everyone, no matter their opinion, is working for the betterment of the encyclopedia. That is not a reasonable starting assumption for a paid advocate. --TeaDrinker (talk) 22:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

One of the things that was mentioned in the CBC interview is that a certain company offers, for an extra fee, to write articles about your company, submit them to online publications without disclosing COI, and then cite them in Wikipedia. How are we to spot these? —Anne Delong (talk) 23:03, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

It is safe to say that these blackhat outfits will always be around. The best we can do is make it clear to their customers that the outfits are doing something prohibited on the project. Most companies will not hire blackhat PR firms, if only for the risk of negative exposure. Further, the regular finding of no consensus on paid editing policies is regularly being pointed to by experienced editors as evidence that it is de facto permitted. This is simply not the case, but the confusion is understandable. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:32, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

TeaDrinker (talk · contribs), the notion that "this is a project built on trust (with verification)" is meaningless. At least I don't know what it means. Equally meaningless is having "an interest which they put ahead of the encyclopedia".

We do give editors the benefit of the doubt, but I wouldn't say we trust them. Semantics aside, ultimately we judge the content of their edits (not the editors). What makes our articles surprisingly good and balanced is precisely because we allow anyone to edit. Republicans and Democrats edit Rand Paul and Barack Obama. COI paid shills (I presume) as well as corporate-hating environmentalists edit Monsanto. That's what produces such good articles, the tug of war between people with COIs from all sides. Everybody is biased. Sometimes we edit articles where our biases are irrelevant. Sometimes we edit articles where our biases do influence us. So what? Others with opposite biases are editing too. And we watch each other to make sure everyone's edits are compliant with content-focused policy and guidelines. Pretend you have a COI, and edit an article accordingly. Whether your edit gets questioned, reverted, or left alone will likely depend entirely on whether you allowed your pretend COI to create an inappropriate edit, which is all that ultimately matters. We work it out, and the result is usually excellent. I see no reason, certainly not expressed in this discussion, to exclude people with paid COIs from this remarkably balanced system. --B2C 23:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

B2C, I agree that content is what matters, and that this is what we should focus on. However, your argument above only works for articles which are watched and worked on by a significant number of editors, so that the content is actively and regularly checked. In reality, whether your edit gets questioned, reverted, or left alone will likely depend entirely on how many competent editors are watching that page; the number of pages in the English Wikipedia greatly exceeds the number of reasonably experienced editors. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Wikipedia is not a battleground, nor is it an adversarial environment like a courtroom. It is not the grand arena where the verifiable truth emerges from competing interests. It was not, at least, written that way. If you are proposing a change, you're welcome to do so, but at present, we cooperate. We do not allow anyone to edit, we allow "anyone" to edit, with plenty of provisos and limitations. We demand that editing be done with the best interest of the encyclopedia first. We do not allow vandals to edit, we do not allow tendentious editors to edit, we do not allow advocates of any sort to edit. Trust is essential, because we can not verify everything done by everyone. A person who can not edit with the interest of the encyclopedia first in their minds has no business editing at all. The format you propose of conflicting editors battling it out is quite contrary to what has been the traditional ideal, if not always the practice. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, Peter coxhead (talk · contribs), that's a "hole" in the integrity of WP. But COI editing (as well as vandalism and all kinds of problems) is going to occur on poorly watched articles just as much whether we have rules against it or not. And it's going to get caught just as well on watched articles whether we have the rules against it or not. So what's the point? I call WP:CREEP. --B2C 23:57, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I've said elsewhere that I don't think this proposed policy is useful, partly for the reasons you've given. However, we do need to be sure that we can act decisively if paid advocacy is discovered on a little-watched article, so it may be that some limited strengthening of policy would be useful. For example, when major plagiarism is suspected, the whole article is put off-line until it is sorted. It could be useful to be able to do that when major paid advocacy is suspected. This would certainly be a deterrent. Also perhaps a long-lasting hatnote warning that this article has been subject to bias through paid advocacY in the past. The wrong action in response to the problem isn't helpful, but no action isn't either. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Peter coxhead (talk · contribs), plagiarism is inherently problematic and, when suspected for good reason, justifies putting the whole article off-line until it is sorted out. Paid advocacy is not like that. Paid advocacy does not necessarily create problems at all. A paid advocate might write an article that is fair, balanced, NPOV, notable, etc., or at least is not all that bad.

The bulk of a paid advocates work is likely to be fine. In this respect a paid advocate is really no different than any other editor, because no editor is perfect. All contributors contribute positively as well as make contributions that others have to fix or improve (some leave more room for improvement than others...). The errors or imperfections a paid advocate is more likely to contribute might be of a different nature than that of an unpaid contributor, but I don't understand why that's an issue that needs separate attention, at all.

Why discourage paid advocacy at all? Even if paid advocates contribute only half of a balanced view in a given article, we're still better off with them than without them, because with them the rest of us only have to provide the other half of the balanced view, rather than both halves. --B2C 17:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Where we disagree seems to be this. You think that a balanced view comes from combining two unbalanced but opposite views. I don't. A truly NPOV comes from an entire article being written in a neutral way, reporting, but never advocating, all notable views. Read WP:IMPARTIAL. Advocacy of any kind is bad for Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is supposedly "cancelled" by advocacy for the opposite view. Paid advocacy is not worse than unpaid advocacy except that paid advocates have the time and energy to grind down volunteer editors. However, you are surely right that the focus should be relentlessly on content. Editors should be sanctioned based entirely on evidence that the content they added consistently violates Wikipedia's principles and guidelines, and not on whether they were paid to add this content. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

NPOV

Wikipedia articles must be neutral. Therefore, any type advocacy is not allowed, paid or not. Why do we need this new rule? Wikfr (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree we don't need the new rule, largely because of NPOV. But this is not because advocacy is not allowed. You can advocate all you want, paid or not, just as long the article content generated by your finger tips is consistent with NPOV and our other content policies and guidelines (WP:IRS, WP:NOTABILITY, etc.). --B2C 04:29, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
  • B2C, it seems you have a basic misunderstanding here: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ADVOCATE anything in wikipedia: you are here to write encyclopedia. If someone's goal is to advocate something, they usually run into all kinds of quarrels and either start gaming the system or got kicked out. NPOV per se does not prohibit advocacy. It is because NPOV is achieved by co-operation of many editors with different views, experiences, expertise, etc. Advocacy may be unintentional, since people are entitled to their views and not obliged to study opposite views to an encyclopedic, "wikipediable" degree. Opposite views are OK to be delivered by your colleague. But if you declare your goal to be advocacy in wikipedia, I will declare my goal to topic-ban you. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:17, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Staszek Lem (talk · contribs), I do not misunderstand the prohibition on advocacy; I disagree with it. Liberals subconsciously if not overtly advocate liberal values in their comments and edits; conservatives subconsciously if not overtly advocate conservative values in their comments and edits. That's just the way it is. The key to WP's success is allowing anyone to edit (the prohibition on advocacy practically has no teeth or influence), thus ultimately leading to a balanced presentation of the topics at issue.

      NPOV is not about not having a bias; it's about not expressing that bias in one's editing. People who have a bias because they're paid can do that at least as well as anyone with a bias for any other reason. At least if your bias exists because you're paid to have it you're aware of it, which is much easier to deal with than subconscious bias (which is prevalent in everyone).

      The reason I'm so passionately against WP:CREEP in this area (and even favor reversing practically all editor-targeted rules) is because I feel the heart of WP, and its success, largely lies in the focus on content, not on the contributor principle. In fact, I also believe most of WP's troubles and drawbacks stem from rules that violate this principle. Success and effectiveness in life is not coincidentally also largely like that. Trying to govern and control supposed bias or COI directly is inherently ad hominem, contentious, and ultimately harmful to the project. The more we all focus on content, and whether content is consistent with rules about notability, neutrality, proper sourcing, etc., and stopped trying to identify and dole out consequences to "bad guys", the better off this project would be. Simply blocking or banning someone for advocacy is moving in the wrong direction. If they repeatedly add inappropriate content (because of their advocacy or any other reason, identified or not), then block or ban them for that, not for WHO they are, or WHY you believe they are adding that inappropriate content. That's more than enough. Plenty. Adding rules about advocacy, COI, etc., is just WP:CREEP, disruptive, and harmful to the project. --B2C 23:49, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Wikfr, my answer to you is on three levels. One practical, the second business-oriented and also practical, and the third grounded in concepts of good governance (which of course has practical effects). 1) Practical. Paid advocates are different. They are, literally, paid to advocate. While volunteer editors hold down day jobs and edit in their free time, paid advocates edit on behalf of clients (or themselves) during their workday. Practically speaking, volunteers just cannot keep up on pages where paid advocates are active. Second, the business argument. Right now, organizations like WikiExperts and WikiPR can advertise to clients that their editing Wikipedia on behalf of clients does not violate any policies, and this is true. As a result we open ourselves up to their staff (employees or consultants) coming here and creating and editing articles that are not written with the goal of creating a great encyclopedia, but rather with the goal of making their clients look good (or at least giving them exposure on Wikipedia). If we made it clear in policy that paid advocates cannot create or directly edit articles, their business model is destroyed, as these companies could no longer represent that they can deliver what they promise; we get rid of the whole slew of problems and time-suck created by paid advocates. Finally, basic good governance. Governments, nonprofit companies, and most for-profit companies, have policies (not guidelines) about COI. This is basic good governance. Like all good governance, many good things follow. Such policies make it clear to employees and volunteers what is OK and what is not, with respect to using public or company resources for personal gain. Having such a policy ensures relevant stakeholders (the public, clients, volunteers, etc) that the organization is competent and is protecting everyone involved from corrupt activities. Having such a policy allows the organization to take decisive action when violations are found (which prevents confusion and inappropriate action). Wikipedia is important enough that we need a COI policy to provide clear guidance to editors about what behavior is OK, to ensure the public that we are on this so we can retain the trust that we have, and to allow editors and admins to take action when the policy is violated or suspected to be violated. For User:Born2cycle, a usable policy will have clear procedures to follow if one editor suspects another of violating the policy. Editors who do not follow that policy and instead harass their suspects would themselves be suspect subject to sanctions under the no personal attacks policy. We need this! Jytdog (talk) 13:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)(fix silly typo, sorry Jytdog (talk) 22:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC))

After reading Jytodg's comment and the incident reports involving wik_pr, the reason for a new rule seems obvious. Thanks for enlightening me. Wikfr (talk) 22:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

glad it makes sense to you, Wikf. I hope you help us all get something concrete done here! Jytdog (talk) 22:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, it makes little sense to me. It seems like yet another example of hand-wringing sky-is-falling drama without any evidence.

The claim that volunteers cannot keep up with paid advocacy editing is totally unfounded. Paid advocacy editors are paid to make sure certain articles contain or don't contain certain material. No one has presented any reason for anyone to believe that most of the time their efforts are not consistent with content policy and guidelines, or that their edits require any more scrutiny than any other edits.

The beauty of WP is that the explicit goal of any given editor does not need to be, "build a great encyclopedia". Yet their efforts, if consistent with content-specific policy like NPOV, WP:IRS, WP:N, etc., is consistent with that goal. This is no less true for paid advocacy editors than it is for anyone else.

Finally, it is in the interest of paid advocacy editors to develop good reputations on Wikipedia. They can only do that by contributing positively to building a great encyclopedia, at least with the majority of their edits. So, worst case, they are a net positive, probably far above the average editor. Therefore, discouraging paid advocacy editing is a detriment to Wikipedia. --B2C 23:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

New draft

I've started with this proposal, adjusted it based on comments and on the competing proposal I copied out of WP:COI, and have produced a new draft: Wikipedia:Paid editing policy proposal/2nd draft. Please review and comment. Jehochman ^Talk 02:51, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Intel agencies

Is this paid editing? Is there any evidence Intel agencies edit (paid employees = Paid editing ?) to push their agenda i.e Syria to influence public opinion? i.e. Obama wanting to intercede in Syria after Ghouta chemical attack, but he started losing public congressional and UK Govt support. I guess if they POV edit it would lead to problems. Should they self declare? Blade-of-the-South talk 09:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no small amount of obvious 'spin doctoring' in favor of, for instance, the US government. It does need to be addressed, and this is an interesting question. But if they self-declare, their work to 'spin' pages would be nearly impossible, so I highly doubt this will happen. Wikipedia does need to find a way to address this (known) problem, regardless of whether one can point to some proven exchange of cash. petrarchan47tc 06:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

It is an interesting one isnt it. When you think how Wikipedia is first or on the first page of most search engines, you can see why Intel agencies would assign people to edit WP for as you say 'spin' to try to mould opinion. Im certain they are here on the issues deemed sensitive. Snowden, Syria, Iran, NSA itself. How to spot them? Almost myopic focus, no give, like a supervisor will review their work. Should they declare openly? Maybe Snowden will do it for them. LOL. But seriously, I think its detracting from WP in general that they are clearly 'playing the system'. Blade-of-the-South talk 07:56, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Every point you've raised is valid for the "paid/advocacy/commercial" editing problem too. Special/commercial interests are attracted for the same reasons, and it is inevitable they will try to spin certain articles. Because we are anonymous, they have no compunction to edit according to the rules. A 'new' editor can pop up and take over if needed. With regard to government, an IP made an edit to Snowden, calling him a traitor, and that edit was traced to an office within, I believe, the Senate building. Less obvious POV editing has continued.

It is most certainly detracting from WP. Dealing with what amounts to dishonesty steals precious time away from those here to update and maintain articles. Because spin-doctoring can - and should - be expected here, we should have a way to address it, and a method for stopping it once recognized - one that doesn't require much time (ie, the editor who spots the problem would not be required to file a noticeboard and find all the required diffs). Your description of behaviours is spot on: they're easy to recognize, and therefore could be easy to stop. Wikipedia does not yet have language with which to address this. And any mention of POV prompts accusations of not AGF. petrarchan47tc 09:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Coundn't agree more with what you wrote. Scenario: Here are a few anonymous, hopefully neutral editors, trying to better an article and along comes a staggered group of paid intel editors, (some involved some drop ins) supposedly unknown to each other, who over time morph the article to a POV view. Its dishonest, less than but similar to NSA lying to and outraging people. Its also a long term plan. Accounts may be new or old. WP needs to have a look at this. Blade-of-the-South talk 01:47, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

As an editor of various military articles I can confirm that the US military at least on occasion edits articles. As an example, look at Volkel Air Base. In the history of the article you will find that information on nuclear weapons has been removed on several occasions. Tracing the IPs will reveal that the edits originate from US Air Force computers (153.29.60.60 -> proxy01.maab.afcent.af.mil). There's nothing subtle about these edits though so they're easily caught.BabyNuke (talk) 20:27, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Good example. Blade-of-the-South talk 01:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

It is fairly well-known that the CIA and MI6 attempt to control as many prominent media outlets as possible, attempting to thereby control the tone of the public discourse and render irrelevant any media outlets publishing countervailing views. The extent to which they are involved in such endeavors overseas would stagger the imagination. I have been dealing with it first hand for about ten years. Here is a link to a scholar that wrote on some related activity in the 1970-80s [1].--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 23:05, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting. Thanks I will look into that. Blade-of-the-South talk 01:09, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The Israeli IDF is quite open and very proud about its program to train young people, particularly from the US, in online pro-Israel propaganda. I don't know the numbers, but one gets the sense they have thousands of college kids getting paid for this stuff. Mondoweiss is a site that discusses Zionism and Israeli apartheid mostly from a US Jewish viewpoint and they have these Israeli spin-trolls popping up constantly. It would be almost funny if it wasn't. And there's nothing funny about turning WP into a propaganda machine. BabelBoy (talk) 05:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd be just as concerned, perhaps more, about Chinese and Russian intel agencies editing here. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:03, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe, but I don't know whether they would be so presumptuous to try to assume that mantle here, but maybe on articles where there is some nationalistic POV portraying them in a negative light. Editing sensitive political articles with a blatant POV requires a fairly high degree of sophistication, not only in the language, but in the ability to engage native English speaking American (and UK sphere) Wikipedians on the Talk pages directly in the respective local idiom. Only the CIA and MI6 (+ UK sphere,including Canada) could pull that off, in my opinion.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 19:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Many Russians and Chinese nationals have excellent language skills in English, including knowledge of idioms -- to ascribe all evil to the CIA and MI6 seems a trifle conspiracy-theory-ish to me at that point. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:36, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

There certainly are those that do have such language skills, so I suppose my emphasis was misplaced. Basically, I don't see them having much of a calling here on Wikipedia. Russia and China are not generally using their intelligence agencies to support their corporations attempts to capture and occupy markets abroad, or to influence elections and the like in other countries to create a corporate friendly environment. Such activities require the amount of spin in the media and other informational outlets to mask them.

There would only be a fraction of the number of corresponding articles, more about domestic politics and human rights in Russia and China than overseas activities.

Of course, the recent scandals with the NSA have exposed extensive civil rights violations in the USA as well as abroad, so maybe such Russian and Chinese agents would be infiltrating Wikipedia to defame the NSA <g>?--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 06:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I couldn't help but put in my 2 cents worth with all the to-ing and fro-ing on this subject. It seems that everyone is busy underestimating the sophistication of intel agencies and their agendas. John le Carré's novels don't hold a candle to the reality of the intricacies. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree that we should be worried about whether it's one agency or another, or what country is being represented. It doesn't matter whether it's Monsanto or BP. Wikipedia must not be allowed to be used for advert space or for government propaganda. At this point, editors who encounter spin-doctoring do not have any help stopping it. (Help is certainly not to be found using noticeboards that are sometimes manned by admins too busy to read edit histories and who choose instead to make rash, knee-jerk decisions.) This activity is not subtle, they are not hard to spot and are far less sophisticated than one might expect. We shouldn't need to be investigators or to have the random luck of knowing by whom an editor is employed. The activity of spin-doctoring can be addressed by behavior alone. petrarchan47tc 02:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing rational thought to this subsection, petrarchan47. What happens in RL is bound to find its way into Wikipedia. As you've noted, spin-doctoring for whatever cause or product is easily identifiable and can only be dealt with by being vigilant in as much as is possible. As it stands, we deal with secondary sources which is both a frustration and a blessing: at least it precludes original research. We don't write the headlines and, if someone else is trying to, we have ample policies and guidelines in place to undo any suspicious entries. I felt compelled to be flippant about everything being 'uncovered' and speculated on in my previous comment. Manipulating Wikipedia is probably quite low on their agenda considering that they can manipulate at the source. Wikipedia does not write expose pieces. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:43, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Interestingly, soon after a very controversial piece of legislation was passed, called the NDAA (section 1021 in the 2012 version allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil without charges, trial or representation), the US government contacted Wikipedia through the OTRS ticket system. A respected administrator dutifully brought a list of ten or so ideas, or talking points, that the USG wanted to share and posted them to the talk page without any indication of the true source. The admin called the source "the readers" initially, and content in the article was, well, influenced according to the suggestions. At one point, on one page in the talk archives, the identity of "the readers" was revealed by the admin. But it's buried and although I worked regularly updating it, I was never aware of the USG presence. The admin turned the job over to an editor, who I found removing names of senators who had voted for the NDAA, with the edit summary "does not belong in lede" (but it was removed altogether). Besides the removal of Senator's names, this is all according to wikipedia guidelines as they are written. It is folly to think this encyclopedia is not a target for the same folks who target the airwaves and/or who have a deep investment in shaping ideology/opinion. It makes the job of one who seeks informative, neutral articles much more difficult if we aren't aware of this. It will also make developing policy to curb it impossible. Wikipedia may not do expose pieces, but special interests do want a piece of this action, and heads in the sand will only aid in the destruction of this encyclopedia. (People are saying it has begun.)

On a related note (but not directed at you, Iryna), I'm seeing the term "conspiracy theorist" being thrown around a bit, and wanted to share some thoughts. This is a term meant to stop questioning of authority, especially the government. Wikipedia is the last place we should hear such an ignorant term - we should embrace questioning. From Esquire: "Conspiracy theorists”... is a loaded term... in its current weaponized form, [the phrase is] an invention of the CIA. That body, when widespread skepticism of the Warren Commission's findings first emerged, sent a memo, number 1035-960, to all its bureaus giving specific instructions for “countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists. article. Prior to that, "conspiracy" simply meant to make plans between two or more people. petrarchan47tc 07:50, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

If I'm going to be absolutely honest, I can't pretend to be particularly surprised about the US government's 'interest' in Wikipedia. I simply wanted to discourage the idiotic variant from being bandied around here. I get extremely irritated when people touch on the tip of something far more invidious and entrenched in the global system (economics being at the bottom of the structure) and turn true conspiracies into something they can be comfortable with because there's some absolute 'bad guy' identifiable at the end of their superficial deconstruction (such as the Illuminati, et al). Somehow, the most blindingly obvious is missed in favour of leading the gullible right off track. The 9/11 investigation (read as whitewash) is a prime example of a myriad of schlock theories which distract from serious investigations which I won't elaborate on here. There are genuine conspiracies, but they're not the kind being bleated about in this section. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:40, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Iryna. There are some real conspiracies but most conspiraciy theories just exploit the gullible.

No doubt intelligence agencies of all countries try to influence media; it is their job, but that is no reason to assume that anyone who promotes a view in line with a that of a national government should be taken to be a paid state worker or that their opinion should be discounted. The same is true for businesses. Even though I edit under my real name I have been accused several times of being a paid stooge for various business interests, just because I happen to support something that a business has done or defended them from an unfair attack. WP allows, and even encourages, editors to edit anonymously so, for the most part, we cannot tell who editors are or what their motives are. This is because the editor does not matter. What matters is what they say. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, the CIA used to brag about how many major newspapers and media outlets the controlled, until that was exposed and they had to go covert. It is decidedly no their job to be attempting to control the media and influence public opinion, because that undermines civil society and indirectly imposes the "party line" of the government on an given event as a defacto thread representative of public opinion per se.

There is no question that Wikimedia is a prime target for many government agencies coming under scrutiny in the public sphere, but intelligence agencies are probably the worst offenders because their scale of operation is global. For the seminal academic work on how advertizing undermined the public sphere, see this study by Jurgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Paid advocacy is more directly related to the later, as government targeting of Wikipedia is more likely to be covert and conducted by public officials, not PR people.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 11:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

But, as I said, government is overtly targeting sensitive articles through the OTRS ticket system, where our own administrators and editors do the covert part. I shouldn't use the plural, as I've only uncovered one such instance, but from my questioning of the admin, this is not uncommon. The same admin represented a request through the OTRS by BP, and did not reveal the source. Again the admin put an editor in charge, and the editor was highly tendentious and ended up banned after wasting literally months of honest editors' time with nonsense. My point is, government and big business are using and abusing wikipedia - all legally - because our own internal structure supports it, vehemently. The whole issue of whether and by what means they were paid to do this shouldn't hold us back from establishing policy to curb it. Are the government workers who filed the OTRS paid. Absolutely. No differently from the BP worker. This is why I responded to this thread in the first place. We can assume spin doctors are paid or enticed one way or another - but it is too much to expect a lowly wiki editor to prove this. If our guidelines are tied to this proof, those guidelines will apply to a minute percentage of the problematic activity. I am waiting for a proposal that addresses the obvious patterns of behaviour, rather than demanding proof of a paycheck. It's a much more realistic approach to the elephant in the room.petrarchan47tc 19:08, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, obviously if there are systematic lapses that allow large entities to co-opt Wikipedia resources in the form of admins and editors to do their bidding for them there are structural issues with the policies concerned. I'm not sure that characterizing that as simply behavioral is sufficient. What ever the OTRS policy is, it sounds like it doesn't work. Public officials may be "experts", but they are not the same as academics writing on topics in their field, and they certainly shouldn't be dictating how editors handle content. An academic is affiliated with an institution but only because of their success with respect to contributing to a given field of knowledge. That is one reason we have tenure system. Government officials, on the other hand, are unilaterally bound to their institution and/or administration.

Implementing policy in a manner such as to specifically leverage all legal provisions available against such activity by big business and governments should be a significant deterrent. --Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 11:40, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you. Though it's hopefully obvious, I would caution that academics, tenured or otherwise, are not necessarily the best contributors to a neutral article either. For instance, in the US, Stanford University took $500 million from BP shortly after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon an academic emerged with findings that went against all others, findings that showed the oil was naturally disintegrating and leaving little damage. Later, when scientists found the oil was still in the gulf and not disintegrating, the BP-funded scientist (albeit from a very respected institution) came out again with findings showing very little oil remained. If I'm remembering correctly, he had chosen to only test for one component of the hundreds. He is a laughing stock now among independent scientists, but this sort of thing can easily go unnoticed here, and we find ourselves ever grateful for the help of "experts". I would never know this if it weren't for an EPA whistle-blower who told me (after responding to request for help at the BP article), though of course his words were never printed by any media, and as you can imagine, the Standford guy's were splashed everywhere. petrarchan47tc 00:49, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

That's also a good point. There are many dimension to COI editing, and the editing by that prof from Stanford is an example of some of the more shameless, I reckon. There's also the case of John Yoo who, receiving full tenure at Boalt Law, UC Berekely in 1999 after teaching for the minimum number of years required to receive tenure, he left to serve in the Bush administration, where he authored the now infamous "torture memos", while enjoying the protection of tenure at the university. The DOJ didn't prosecute him or Jay Bybee, so there's a fully tautological circuit there where the Bush administration used the credibility of Yoo as a tenured professor at Boalt to author those memos, and then the DOJ refused to prosecute for lame reasons. The Wikipedia article on him is rather weak and somewhat promotional.

The point is, of course, that big business and government are trying to exploit Wikipedia in the same manner that they have tried to exploit academia.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:25, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

For the record, the scientist did not edit here that I know of. Rather, his work was presented by the BP PR team for inclusion in the BP article. It was meant to refute other science we had added to the page detailing the amount of oil that remains in the GOM. I'm making a couple points with this example. First, to have a paid editor (the head of the PR department of the 4th largest company in the world, no less) suggesting contributions and writing entire (controversial) sections for a Wiki article requires an equal and opposite force - ie, someone or some team able to research the neutrality and thoroughness of the claims/science presented. It has been argued that Wiki can handle paid editors naturally, because our independent editors are on top of it. But in this example, we would not have known how exceedingly POV the facts being presented were, had we not received input from a whistleblower from the EPA. The other part of this example shows that, as you suggest, respected experts can be horrifically biased. petrarchan47tc 04:01, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

What would be he implications of asking an editor if they are paid employees of an intel agency? Blade-of-the-South talk 23:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Update. Im a target of intel boys. [2]

Blade-of-the-South, please desist from using this page for canvassing. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Im showing WP is open to manipulation re paid advocacy, and yes its uncomfortable Blade-of-the-South talk 01:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, you're a real hero. Seriously, the next time you accuse me of being an "intel agent", I'm going right back to the admins. Knock it the hell off. -Kudzu1 (talk) 04:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Related discussions: Bounty Board and Reward Board MfDs

Editors interested in this discussion may also want to comment on the MfD nominations for the Bounty Board and Reward Board. --BDD (talk) 18:08, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

a couple requests for clarification (must precise nature of COI be disclosed? would CheckUser ever be used?)

I've been following both related proposals for a while, and while I'm generally opposed to the specific proposals, I'm staying open to the overall idea. I have a couple of honest (and I think important) questions for clarification:

1. When requesting an edit, would it be necessary to disclose the precise nature of COI, or merely the existence of COI? For example, for an article about a business, would you have to identify yourself by name as the business owner, or could you merely say using IP/pseudonym "I have a COI and I'd like to request the following edit"?

(I think the latter would accomplish the required scrutiny/distance without having the chilling effect of eliminating anonymity/pseudonymity.)

2. Would Wikipedia:CheckUser ever be used to enforce this policy, such as identifying users logging on from known PR firms?

Thanks, Proxyma (talk) 01:56, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Checkusers have broad authority to check anybody anytime to help control disruption. On the English Wikipedia we have a tradition that checkusering is done sparingly, only when there is evidence of sock puppetry or a need to quickly ID somebody who is threatening harm to themselves or somebody else, so that the IP can be given to police. I think any adjustments to checkuser policy are beyond the scope of this discussion, but would be taken up separately after this policy, or one of the other drafts gets approved.

I think that the nature of the COI should be disclosed. There is no requirement that anybody identify themselves. If somebody has a financial COI, they can just keep quiet and not make any requests. If they want to make a request, presumably there is a commercial advantage to be had, and they will have to reveal their connection to the topic. What level of detail they need to reveal can be determined by common sense, or by the WP:COI guideline. I don't think that level of detail should be specified here. Jehochman ^Talk 02:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Good explanation of why financial COI should be opposed

This post from Atethnekos is a very articulate account of why paid-advocacy editing should be rejected. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

This text may be a base of a section in the future policy, similar to section "Wikipedia's position" in WP:COI page. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:08, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Section "Subject-matter experts"

IMO the last phrase in the section is weak.

Something must be said to the and that subject-matter experts are prohibited from direct or indirect advocacy in favor of a business or an organization the expert associated with, as well as a product, a theory, or a belief put forth by the said business or organization. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

You mean a physicist should be precluded from putting forth the Theory of Relativity? I think that the implications and potential for Wikilawyering need to be considered. The policy we eventually enact should make clear that experts are welcome, and that it is not a conflict to write about the topics of one's expertise. Jehochman ^Talk 14:05, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. Jehochman, if you'd bothered to read comments on the three initial proposals, you might have picked up on the fact that this same old chestnut has been brought up time and time again. The Theory of Relativity is not a commercial product. There is a distinct line of difference between, for example, paid spin doctors employed by MacDonald's to push the nutritional value of their burgers (citing a database of 'proof' provided by their employer) as opposed to physicists developing the article on the Theory of Relativity. I, for one, am not going to choose a MacDonald's burger over a slice of pizza based on The Theory of Relativity. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:38, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

To me this goes back to an old drum I've been beating for a long while, the need to differentiate between a conflict of interest, and damaging actions resulting from a conflict of interest. Unlike many here, I acknowledge that the physicist probably does have a conflict of interest. Considering that subject area, the conflict of interest is less likely to cause problematic editing (but still could, if the physicist promotes their pet theories above more widely accepted ones). We've too long viewed "conflict of interest" with negative connotations, when in reality the existence of a conflict of interest is more often benign. Most everyone here has potential conflicts of interest in one area or another. As long as we conflate problematic biased editing with the concept of conflict of interest, we aren't going to be able to have very good conversations or policies on the topic. Gigs (talk) 15:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I do see your point, Gigs, and was aware of it when responding to Jehochman but simply didn't want to compound the issue of bad analogies. For example, the Big Bang is specialised area with very little being dedicated to serious research into alternative theories/variants on the theory (no, I'm not talking about religious pseudo-theory). I haven't been through the multitude of talk page archives but would have no doubt that 'fringe' would have been brought up more than once. While I doubt that there can be articles without COI on virtually any subject matter, as you've pointed out, there are degrees and degrees. I certainly have pet subjects but have avoided them completely thus far.

While I wouldn't go as far as to characterise a large portion of the instances as being benign, I still feel that the two proposals for a policy on 'paid editing' are leaps of faith bound backfire simply because assumptions about the rudimentaries of forms of advocacy have not been properly illustrated. I don't believe that an abstract concept of 'paid advocacy' can even pretend to address the complexity of the issue unless it begins with a list of identified forms of paid advocacy and which forms are out of bounds for the editing of Wikipedia. Thus far, everything seems to have been developed on the premise that we all somehow intuitively know what is and isn't paid COI advocacy. I'm extremely simple-minded and would like to see a definitive no-no list with a reasonably comprehensive elaboration of convolutions of each form of no-no. What I am seeing, instead, is a lot of "oppose"'s apparently based on the 'fact' that there are enough policies already dealing with/capable of dealing with the flouting of COI, notability, suspect POV, etc. What I see is that those policies are scattered all over the place and could do with being pulled together on a dedicated policy page. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

This policy, as written, would definitely prohibit a professional physicist from editing theory of relativity, which is why it later attempts to hand-wave away this fact. Iryna Harpy's identification of Relativity as "not a commercial product" only reveals her to not be a physicist; anyone familiar with the professional practice of physics would know otherwise. The press releases here read exactly like other commercial press releases because Stanford is selling interest in GR and so they act the same as anyone else selling anything else. WilyD 09:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wily, if you look at my response to Gigs here, plus my further elaboration on the subject on the Paid editing policy proposal/2nd draft, you may note that I further qualified this point (which I concur was overly simplistic) and will paste here for your edification:

"Per my response to Jehochman on the original proposal, the concept of 'academic'/'scholar' is being treated as an unrealistic abstraction, and I can't accept simplistic analogies (such as the Theory of relativity) suggesting that academic skill sets are clear cut. Having worked for a university for many years, I know for a fact that academics are heavily influenced by funding. Drug companies (er, I mean the Pharmaceutical industry) hand out vast sums in grant monies in order to establish cheap research and development units (and that is precisely the extent of their interest). 'Academics'/'scholars' contributing to articles surrounding pharmaceuticals must declare the full extent of any potential COI. If Roche is sinking money into their institution, it is not going to serve the academic's interests to bad mouth the company's practices. Neither can one expect NPOV contributions to the article on generic drugs. The same can be said of statisticians, biochemists, GE propagation, ad nauseum. Being retired, I can declare that I have no financial or other interests to declare. There! It's all on my user page. That's not so difficult, is it? Should the situation change, I wouldn't hesitate to declare any employment by any company or institution which could compromise my neutrality. Ultimately, the concept of academic neutrality has to be elaborated on, so I'd probably prefer clause 3 to be expanded on. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)"

This is why I am pursuing the identification and qualification of various COI areas as the preliminary step before cobbling together a dubious and ambiguous policy. Hence a physicist whose funding is primarily gleaned from private corporate grants must identify each corporation and the research areas being funded on their user page. That's a clear method by which to identify any potential COI. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that still entirely ignores the reality of how academics work. My funding comes entirely from governmental sources, but of course I still have a strong financial COI on any article relating to astronomy; those government sources provide funding mostly because of the public interest (although there're a few military applications which bring money into astronomy). The same is less true in more applied academics, but then (as your example notes, the gap gets filled by private funding, which is probably less significant (since they're less dependent on venues like this), but still runs afoul of the rules being bandied about. And every scientist working on drugs (to use your example) is going to have used drug company funding in the past, in the present, and/or want some in the future (which given the way grants work, is where the COI would be highest). Every academic would have to acknowledge a COI on every article relating to their field (and which this policy says, then, would be prohibited for editing any article in an area in which they're an expert). The problem is the assumption that having a private financial interest automagically puts you into conflict. It doesn't. I have a paid, private interest to create good articles about astronomical topics that spark public interest. I also have a Wikipedian interest to create good articles on astronomical topics that cater to public interest. There's no conflict between my two interests, which is why nobody sees it as a problem, and why the write a policy that says it's a problem, and then say "But that's not what I meant".

As far as I can see, there's nothing extra that needs policy to address it, but actual work of finding where advocacy is taking place, cleaning up the mess, fixing/banning the offenders, etc. But that's harder work than writing policy, so instead people are writing policies which do nothing new except ban professionals from editing in areas they're knowledgeable in. WilyD 09:38, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Point well made and taken, Wily. I'd initially jumped on the 'we need a policy' bandwagon due to the escalating pressure to find a method of addressing blatant commercialism. The closer I looked at the policy, the more inclined I was to feel that it was a very, very bad quick fix solution. I dislike the draft 2 version even more than this version. The devil is in the detail and the more certain details are being picked up on and believed to be addressed, the more abstract and ambiguous it's becoming. While I still feel that policy (or, more likely, policies) needs to be developed, I think we both agree that the methodology is wrong and that policy making must begin with identifying the forms of advocacy deemed to be undesirable rather than create a tangled all-rounder. A rushed job for the sake of appealing to the popularity stakes is not a job well done. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:17, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Extent of COI

How does the policy apply to Wikipedia editors who are paid by companies to advise them on how to "game" Wikipedia to exclude negative information and produce a positive article on their company or product? Wayne (talk) 07:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there's much we can do about that. Even without "gaming" the system, just being aware of how things are done around here is a major boost to someone who wants to introduce their own spin on things. We've put up an artificial barrier to entry with our bureaucracy, if that backfires on us because savvy editors can game it then that's really our problem more than it is a problem caused by someone teaching the uninitiated how to navigate. I guess the best solution is to not rely on bureaucracy as a barrier to entry. Gigs (talk) 15:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem with editors paid to advise on how to edit and navigate WP policies, it is only when they advise on how to manipulate WP in bad faith. Admittedly it is not a widespread problem but it can lead to significant bias in a large number of articles. In the case I'm familiar with the company was instructed on how to use Talk to get opponents blocked and get relevant negative information removed etc. Basically, how to effectively use Schopenhauer style strategies without getting blocked themselves. Editors who go this far should at least be warned as this is exactly the type of behavior the NPA policy is trying to negate. Wayne (talk) 17:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

A Big NO! to No Paid Advocacy

I strongly support paid editing in most articles.
The articles which should be exempted from paid edits would be GAs (Good Article), High and Mid importance articles (as rated by a project) and other articles which receive high page views.
The majority of articles, especially the stub and mid importance ones, badly requires editing. Since these articles are also less frequently patrolled or reviewed by admins, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to enforce that rule.
Clearly a biased or stub article is better than no article.
Wikipedia still has a long was to go when it comes to building up is non-English portfolio as well as simple english arm.
We have to keep in mind that a law or a rule cannot make gravity illegal. Likewise, in a far off country, these rules against paid editing won't be effective.
Besides, whats so evil about making money by editing articles? If a social science university professor can castigate his opponent's theories in Wikipedia (by providing appropriate citations), why can't a businessman castigate the quality of his competitor's (by providing appropriate citations)?
Yes, it does matter when that businessman happens to be Bill Gates or Steve Allen. But for the vast majority of the cases, it would be more judicious to let people be paid for writing an article where there is no such article in the first place.
Once, that article, initially edited (by the greedy) paid editors, and, rated as 'stub', gets elevated to a much higher quality or importance, the Wikipedia admins can kick in and prevent it from being edited by paid folks.
I know that this won't transpire in most of the case (because most articles won't get elevated, even the work of a paid editor) but it surely will be much better than a corporate website, that a visitor will visit.
The great thing about a company's Wikipedia article is that anybody can change it, even its employees. If an employee has discovered shady practices, and got her story reported in the press, which didn't receive any traction, then, if the employer or businessman, both of whom started the article to extol its virtue; gets rewritten (with citations) highlighting its misdeeds.
Then comes an admin who reviews it and make minor alterations if as so desired.
This, compared to the alternative; as with the case of the reader visiting a corporate website, where it extols its virtues and never mentions the expose news story.
This is the loose-loose-loose-loose sitituation.

• The reader is unhappy with the outcome.
• The admins are unhappy partly because the readers are unhappy, and, there are fewer articles.
• The paid editor is unhappy because he can't make money by writing good articles.
• The honest businessman is unhappy because he can't relay his company's legitimate virtues (even by providing citations).
• The activist employee is unhappy because, despite being able to publish a news story, she still can't bring about much change in business practices.

I hope sanity prevails in Wikipedia. Xyn1 (talk) 15:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Clearly a biased ... article is better than no article. No, no, no! No article is far better than a biased one. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Read Britannica and keep wiki articles in padlock state. Also, delete all the controvertial articals such as global warming, the recent financial crises, the invention of telephone, abortion, and half the articles under social science.Xyn1 (talk) 00:04, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

What do activist employees (whistleblowers) have to do with paid advocacy? Are you saying they are all paid by the ..er.. Pinkies? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:30, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, some people see that edits by activist employees are same as edits by competing businessmen. Essentially, conflict of interest. I deem there really is no difference between financial conflict of interest and some ideological conflict of interest. Xyn1 (talk) 00:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Delete half the articles under social science? Which half? Xyn1, this is not a forum for your ramblings. It's now become tiresome, and even slightly cruel, to respond seriously to what you're saying. Move along, please. Doc talk 09:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

My experiment

Hello all,

Forgive me first off, I am putting my thoughts here. There are three-four parallel discussions on this topic and I don't have the energy to follow replies to my post on five different pages.

The issue of paid editing has interested me for a little while, ever since a throw-away comment by a colleague of mine that said "I hate Wikipedia, you have to pay to edit that now." However I didn't like the idea of commenting on something I knew little about, so I set myself a little experiment: I wanted to see if I could take on a bounty at the rewards board, and still write a referenced, neutral, encyclopedic article on a notable, sound subject matter, and thus evidence that a paid editing request can still result in a positive contribution to Wiki-society.

The article I wrote was Silgan Holdings. The reward was 75 US Dollars, which I've had donated to the Rabbit Welfare Association. And after observing the article, and the discussions that resulted around the place (which included some comments from Jimbo) I've a couple of thoughts.

• It is a highly contentious issue, I did not have the article up for five minutes before someone was posting on my talk page.
• Though the response was a mix of positive and critical, absolutely none of it was rude, argumentative, or anything other than rational and well thought out.
• At least fifty percent of feedback suggested that the article evidenced a positive side of 'paid editing'.
• I felt no pressure from the 'sponsor', did not have a single message from them other than a thank you email and an email about how to get the funds given to the aforementioned charity. The user did not provide me with sources, nor did they try to provide their own content. As far as I can see they have not touched the article, nor has anyone else other than one user.
• The article is (modesty aside) reasonably well written, neutral and the subject matter's notability is evidenced.
• I was able to create the article with 95% third-party sources.
• It appears that the article would likely have passed all threshold tests for inclusion regardless of the means by which it was created, with the only factor seemingly the time an editor took out to make the thing.
• It seems advantageous to me that I a) have never, ever heard of the company before, and couldn't care less what it does and b) am an experienced user who knows COI when he sees it. I felt quite well equipped to take on this challenge and have found the response very interesting. I suspect a newbie editor would, however, fall into several obvious traps.
• I did also feel an uncomfortable sensation about it, and for some reason felt the need to publicly state that the money has gone to charity. Which is weird: it's not really anyone's business is it?

At the end of the day, I (I think) have written a neutral, suitable article. And if rabbits benefitted by 75 bucks they I'm not going to quibble. But I certainly hope that the experiment may yield more discussion on this topic.

And, I praise all editors involved, I've not seen one ounce of 'negative' argument or rudeness anywhere.

Regards, --S.G.^(GH) _ping! 13:15, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it's worth noting that Jimmy Wales described the paid work on Silgan Holdings by SGGH as "extremely problematic", "not healthy", and "corrosive to the moral fabric of our endeavor". That criticism from the co-founder of the Wikipedia project seems to have been understated in SGGH's otherwise well-considered evaluation of his experimental run with paid editing. - 2001:558:1400:10:D193:379E:43D1:2BD (talk) 18:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

A fair point. I saw the bit by Jimbo that says "There was no valid reason, as well, for the administrator to create the article in article space, rather than writing it - possibly on his own website - and then inviting editors with no conflict of interest to review it and add it to the encyclopedia if appropriate." and wonder if he thinks I'm connected to the subject in some way. But as I say, everyone may comment as they wish. That's the point. :-) --S.G.^(GH) _ping! 21:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

SGGH (before this gets derailed), I applaud you for having experimented with the system available at the time (the review body) and taken up the advertised path (clearly and in the open) for the benefit of helping the rest of Wikipedia learn, debug and improve any process. If the only strong critical suggestion (aka complaint) is that one could have done the development as a userspace draft before moving to article space, then I think one can evaluate that you walked the line well. It seems to have produced a useful article at the end, and which has continued to receive contributions from yourself and others afterwards. I hope Wikipedia as a whole can build upon what you've done, consider, and find a solution that produces equally good content at the end—but without leaving anyone with an uncomfortable sigma for having helped improve a Wikipedia. Once gain, you've tried one path available, and then written it up here, which even on its own was is a very useful experimental contribution. The bonus is the Wikipedia has one more article. I'm grateful to you. —Sladen (talk) 22:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I dont see the "experiment" showed anything useful at all. The "experimenter" is not at all of the class of people who do this for the money and not for the "experiment". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Sladen, in hindsight yes I would have done as you suggest. With regards to TheRedPenOfDoom, is it not possible that there are more people of the non-money-hunting-rent-a-writer editors out there than we may fear? I personally think it would be a neat way to get money for charity, or what-have-you, and I wonder if there are fewer people who would write whatever rubbish got them the cheque than we fear. S.G.^(GH) _ping! 23:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I generally agree with The Red Pen of Doom that this is an interesting experiment, and I'm pleased that you had good results, but it doesn't really extend very far. It is of value in regards to the rewards board, but unfortunately not outside of that. Still, I think the response from other editors was heartening. - Bilby (talk) 01:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom: SGGH used the mechanism-to-fund-edits presently available within Wikipedia, and it seems to have worked and produced benefit for all (funder, receiver, and Wikipedia+readers). Whereas, the premise of this RfC is the belief that the present mechanism-to-fund-edits available outside Wikipedia, can end up producing sub-optimal outcomes, where a benefit is slanted only for some (the funder and receiver, but not Wikipedia+readers). I'd like more examples and feedback, but AFAICT, if one method works over another we should be doing our utmost to refine and improve that proven working method. —Sladen (talk) 03:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello SG, thanks for sharing. What prompted your colleague to make that initial comment about having to pay to edit Wikipedia? – SJ + 21:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall actually, my ears pricked up at that sentence. We must have been idle at work and looked something up, which prompted him to say "I don't like Wikipedia." S.G.^(GH) _ping! 23:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your experiment, SG. I think you your experiment was not relevant to these policy proposals, because you had no financial motive. The policy proposals are directed at a) PR houses like WikiExperts and Wiki-PR, that seek to build businesses around paid editing and b) more broadly, editors with a financial conflict of interest. You came at your experiment with no financial incentive at all (you intended to give the money to charity from day 1) - indeed your motive was purely experimental. As many have commented, the purpose of the proposed policy is to be very much about "contributor, not content" - more specifically, about motive. The questions underlying the policy proposals, which I grant are uncomfortable ones, are (most broadly) "Does Wikipedia wish to continue allowing editors with a financial motive to be part of the Wikipedia community and if so under what conditions?"- and most narrowly "Does Wikipedia wish to continue allowing editors with an undeclared financial motive to directly create and edit content in Wikipedia articles, the subject of which relates to their financial interest, and if so under what conditions?" (which I think is a more addressable question) As it stands, Wikipedia policy does allow financially motivated creation and editing of content and whole articles; companies like Wiki-PR and WikiExperts can claim to their customers, in good faith, that the work they promise to do can be entirely consistent with Wikipedia policies. We enable their business models and we leave ourselves and our readers blind to the activities of editors who work for those companies; we are unable to audit them. Within the questions, is the assumption that financial motives may drive authors (consciously or unconsciously) to favor the source of money in the financial conflict, content policies notwithstanding. (I note that there is data to support the assumption in the field of scientific publishing) That assumption drives a desire for a policy that would require, at minimum, disclosure of such conflicts (as scientific journals require) and at maximum, that would forbid article editing and creation by editors with a financial motive. I also want to say that it is basic good governance to have a COI policy dealing with financial motives. Jytdog (talk) 13:41, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

But, hypothetically, what if I had kept the money? The article I had written would have been the same, and seems to be deemed passable by those who have commented already. I felt the need to disclose that I'd given it to the rabbit charity because 'honour' or something similar made me feel like I didn't want to be judged (which itself was an interesting realization, with regards to this topic) but I was under no obligation to disclose that part. Yet the article would - I believe - have been the same. Just a thought. --S.G.^(GH) _ping! 16:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

You cannot do an experiment with the wrong conditions and call it valid. The experiment is done. Also, an N of 1 does not provide interpretable data - it is just an anecdote. We have lots of anecdotes around paid editing and paid advocacy and volunteer tendentious editing. Now, if you make it your business to write articles for money, so that your ability to pay your rent or mortgage depends on acquiring customers and satisfying them; hire a whole bunch of people to do the work, let run for a few months or even a year, and then have someone do a study on the resulting articles (and maybe compare them to a random sample of articles created during the same time as a control)... that would be a relevant experiment that might produce useful data. If, by the way, your point is that it is possible to write a Good Article for pay, I think that is a pretty trivial point that nobody reasonable would argue with. Likewise, it is possible for a volunteer editor to create a terribly written, badly sourced, POV article. The concern here is the lack of policy guidance for editors who have a financial motive and the lack of policy guidance for the community, for how to deal with such editors. Does that make sense? I should ask you, though. How do you think your experience relates to the questions of a) whether we should have a COI policy at all, and b) if we should have one, what that policy should accomplish? I would be very interested to know! Jytdog (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Can you stop paid editing?

Be realistic: the marketing world has discovered another channel to throw their stuff into the world. You have seen that those guys simple will not obey the rules of the game and even revert to falsification when that suits their objectives. So the idea of stopping the marketing lads and lasses is just as realistic as landing a man on the sun and bring him back safely.

A two pronged approach is far better: 1) give the marketing world a Wikipedia-controlled channel to get relevant (to Wikipedia-standards, that is) info in Wikipedia. 2) have no mercy with advertising and ALWAYS delete the article. Claiming that somebody should just copyedit the article is just a free gift to the marketing guys as the inevitable delays just keep their promo in for a prolonged period of time. The Banner talk 18:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The editor who further up this page said that there's just an occasional bit of COI can't have spend any time in "Articles for creation", where we are drowning in it, paid or not. AfC is the Wikipedia-controlled channel you mention, and everything there is not indexed by search engines. It would all work fine if it weren't for the fact that some other web companies are less scrupulous and mirror the pages to a site where they are then indexed. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Can we ignore paid editing?

My suggestyon to nip this problem in the bud.

Paid editing is mostly about businesses, right?

Now, we have disclaimers about law articles that wikipedia is in no way a legal advice. The for medical articles: wikipedia is not a medical advice. Why not have the same about businesses and products: wikipedia is not endorsing any of them.

After that just watch the article against POV, PEACOCOK, ADVERTS, etc. Let competitors fight among themselves (eg proxy wars of paid editors), and we just block 'em all if wars too heated.

We have better things to do than to worry about coverage of businesses.

What do you say? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

We can't ignore paid editing, even non-profits are getting in the act. Look at the article Greening of Detroit before it rightly gets deleted.Detroit Joseph (talk) 01:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, what's your point? My point is the more the merrirer: if sufficiently many people with opposing POVs join, they will keep each other in check. That's how democracy works, right? (Oh, I forgot, wikipedia is not democracy). Staszek Lem (talk) 17:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I am looking at Greening of Detroit now. What's your point, again? Staszek Lem (talk) 17:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• comment I can ignore paid editing. I don't care if someone gets paid to edit an article or not. I care about the content of the article--that's what matters.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:49, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
• I agree see below.

Is money the main source of bad editing?

This whole argument seems to be based on the proposition that it is mainly money that causes editors to push POVs and write bad and unencyclopedic articles. My experience has been quite the reverse. I often see anti-commerce editors who use WP as a platform to push personal anti-commerce POVs, filling up articles with everything bad they can find about an organisation or industry. Rather than worry about who the editors are or what their motives are for editing we should concentrate on ensuring high quality encyclopedic content. We are not intended to be whistle blowers, freedom fighters, or propagandists any more that we are intended to be advertisers or promoters. If in doubt my suggestion is to ask ourself how a good old fashioned written encyclopedia would have handled the topic. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Needs a procedure section

This draft lacks a section on how Wikipedia will administer this policy. Providing guidance about paid advocacy is very important. But for this to be a useful tool for the community, the policy needs to describe a) what an editor should do if he or she suspects another editor of violating the policy, b) how the community will handle any investigation, and c) what the sanctions are. It should also make clear to editors how not to handle suspicions of COI editing, and possibly provide sanctions for inappropriate expressions of such suspicions. As many have pointed out here, we need to preserve and underline WP:AGF -- to do that and avoid witch hunts, we need to provide clear guidance about what to, and what not to do, when editors have concerns about other editors. Jytdog (talk) 13:47, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

"I have a headache." I second that...

Why are there so many proposals dealing with what is, essentially, the same subject matter jostling for attention concurrently?

There is no logic behind jumping from one talk page to another and finding repetitions of the same arguments from different people. Second drafts have been started up with 'consensus' being sought while the original draft is still a primary venue for comment. Is this a competition or is it a Wikipedia community discussion (emphasis on the singular object being 'paid advocacy')?

Let's get this on track by amalgamating the discussions into one thread. There's no such animal as "check" when you're playing draughts/drafts on separate boards. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Fundamental problem

Having read the dozen almost identical proposals on the subject, I think the real problem is that the definition of "Financial conflict of interest" discusses financial, and discusses interest, but is written so that whether the interests conflict is totally irrelevant. As a consequence, the remainder of the policy carves out huge, sweeping exceptions for academics, for the reward board, for professionals, translators, etc, because they're all paid, and they all have interests, but there's no conflict. Thus, a modification of the conflict of interest outline to require the interests actually be in conflict would solve a lot, I think. And allow for the writing of a policy that wasn't constantly disagreeing with itself, which results in a lot of nonsensibleness (and makes it basically impossible to predict how it's likely to be enforced). WilyD 16:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Close this proposal

Close proposal Based on the comments on this page, opponents outnumber supporters by more than 2 to 1 - I count 164 to 80 opposed. This policy has been under review for at least four weeks, and the most popular elements of this article have been included in subsequent proposals. Continuing to have this page open diverts resources needed to evaluate more recent proposals. DavidinNJ (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

We should move the variations on the theme to be subpages of a single policy page. That way each one can have their own focused discussion about the parts of their txt that are different from the other versions; but the long-term discussion about whether and how to have policy on this topic can be on a single talk page. Which shifts over time as subsequent proposals emerge.

The two proposals aren't organized by the same people; the many good points raised in both discussions need to be organized and responded to. It's not a matter of simply closing some proposals and revising what's left. The newer proposal addresses some of the issues raised on this page, but not others. – SJ + 01:10, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to ask an uninvolved admin to close the RfC when the time comes, which will be in a few days. The other proposals were opened by others, and at least two of them were almost identical to this one, so I have no idea what purpose was served by them. But regardless, I'd like to see an admin sum up the discussion that took place on this page so that we have pointers for the future. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:40, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I extracted something of the points raised in this spreadsheet. (he says, regretting not having a MW-spreadsheet to point to) – SJ + 06:30, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, SJ, that's helpful. I've asked at WP:AN/RFC for someone uninvolved to sum up consensus. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Quick thoughts on reviewing the above comments

Many concerns raised were about ambiguities that might allow a simple policy to be interpreted as applying to a broad expanse of editors and 'relationships'. Some of the above issues might be addressed if a few simplifications were made, such as:

• or by having some other form of close financial relationship with the subject of the article
• 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.
• s/ receiving monetary or other tangible benefits / being paid /
• s/ derive monetary or other tangible benefits / benefit /

Alternately, this could use the exact language used in COI policy. It could be merged into a section of that policy, or into WP:Editing policy, as a number of "instruction creep" comments suggested, to avoid confusion and redundancy.

Alternately, some would prefer to broaden the scope of financial COI (as demonstrated in some of the other drafts discussed). This seemed to generate more concern and opposition than support.

A few people noted that it could be worth focusing on "editing by PR firms" for crisper policy. This is an area where the greatest clumps of problem cases have arisen, including the major sock farms that have personally worn out some commenters. – SJ + 06:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Anonymity rules trump ANY COI issues

There are plenty of intelligent people on Wikipedia. EVERY editor should know that whilst anonymity is both respected and encouraged, it would be impossible to enforce such policy, let alone the guidelines. Wikipedia will never display balanced, NPOV content in the current editing climate. Davesmith au (talk) 23:11, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

when carried to extremes, these two basic principles are indeed in conflict. But without anonymity, we still have an encyclopedia, though there will be a few topics where many people may be reluctant to edit. But without NPOV, we don;t have an encyclopedia at all, just a collection of propaganda and advertisements and opinions, DGG ( talk ) 00:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

@Davesmith: That's a false dichotomy. Somebody just raised that same point on my user talk page, and I responded there so I won't repeat myself here. We ask many things of our editors; asking them to respect the Wikipedia franchise by not editing for money for commercial interests and private parties is not too much to ask. Coretheapple (talk) 00:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Core, I'm going to take the liberty of posting your words here, in case others find them of value like I did. petrarchan47tc 00:10, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Coretheapple: Are you a paid editor? That's the only thing that I think people need to disclose. I don't give a damn about their real name, age. weight and sexual orientation. There is no contradiction between a common-sensical rule to prohibit the corruption of Wikipedia and continued anonymity for contributors. It's not an "all or nothing" proposition, of which there are few in life.

We ask a great deal of contributors already: that they adhere to standards of civility and neutrality, especially the latter. Asking them not to be corrupt, not to sell their souls to the highest bidder when they edit this site, not to put the pursuit of a buck over Wikipedia's interests, not to stain Wikipedia's reputation, not to perpetuate a cancer that is a con game being played on readers - yes, that is reasonable to ask of contributors. Don't you think so?

It still will be possible to edit anonymously. All the editor has to say is "I'm being paid to do this" or "I have a financial COI in this area." That may make it easier to discern identity in some cases, but is not in itself a revelation of it. That aside, though, an editor not wishing to do that has a simple choice. I don't want to reveal who I work for on-wiki, but I would be required to disclose COI if I edited something related to them. So I solve the problem by refraining from editing any articles related to my employer or their products entirely. Any other editor not wanting to disclose COI for privacy reasons has that exact same option. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:49, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, anonymity should trump COI concerns, when they conflict. And doubly so for things extracted from the inconsistent wide-ranging random mess of our COI guidelines. North8000 (talk) 13:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree, the only way editors can be judged is by what they write. Who they are and even if they are being paid does not matter. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

If being paid doesn't matter then Wikipedia becomes a glorified version of the Business-to-Business Yellow Pages. Coretheapple (talk) 01:37, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time to limit anonymity on Wikipedia. When Wikipedia was founded, online anonymity was the rule. Today, it's the exception. (Facebook will close accounts with fake names. Google+ has a "real name policy", although they had to back down a bit on it to get market share.) I've never been anonymous on Wikipedia, I've edited for years under my real name, sometimes on controversial topics, and I've never had a serious problem. Perhaps Wikipedia should encourage, but not require, non-anonymous editing. In COI situations, anonymous editors would be more likely to be blocked for COI/SPA behavior. John Nagle (talk) 06:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

That would require a fundamental rewriting of the site's mantra: "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." I used to be of the "mandatory registration" mindset until it was pointed out to me just how many constructive edits are actually made by anonymous IPs. I doubt that the WMF will actively discourage anonymous editing anytime soon. And any sort of "real-name policy" will likely never happen here. Doc talk 07:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I just started using an automated tool for vandal-fighting, and I can attest that the vast majority of IP edits I've encountered are legitimate and constructive. Coretheapple (talk) 13:02, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

"The free encyclopedia anyone can edit" will still be true. if we abandon anonymity. Anyone will need to get an account and identify--privately if there is some good reason, as we do now for those who must use anonymous proxies. already in the deWP anyone can edit, but the edit won't be visible to the general public unless it has been approved by an experienced editor; and that is also true in the enWP on certain topics. DGG ( talk ) 04:57, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar. This means giving a warmer welcome to those who volunteer information about their off-wiki identities than to those who insist on anonymity. If I were too scared to edit under my legal name it would be harder for me to sell people on the idea that Wikipedia's a safe place. Telling people we need to flush out those who are bent on the "corruption of Wikipedia" is counterproductive. It just sends people scurrying to their holes and compounds the problem.

Editors like @Coretheapple say they "don't give a damn about [anyone's] real name" but that's because the names alone don't directly reveal who has decided to "sell their souls to the highest bidder" and who hasn't. Coretheapple wants editors to disclose their income and employer so those who are out to "perpetuate a cancer" and "stain Wikipedia's reputation" can be named and shamed. Is that not the point? What else are you going to do with that information?

A paid editor editing under his or her off-wiki name has already given investigative journalists and oppo researchers external to Wikipedia a good starting point to allow those external watchdogs to expose conflicts of interest. The harassment doesn't need to be brought "in house." I remember when Joe DeSantis, Communications Director for the Next 2012 Presidential Campaign was around here. I explained to him how to embed his affiliation in his signature but most editors just read it as a "kick me" sign. Never mind that he didn't edit articles directly, people still had to tell him he wasn't welcome around here and complained to Jimbo etc etc. It was all unnecessary as the media were already on the job of keeping an eye on his influence on Wikipedia.--Brian Dell (talk) 06:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I have to say that I find Coretheapple's words very worrying, far more so than the though of paid editing. They show an extreme anti-commerce POV that has no place here. I completely agree that WP is not the place for adverts or promotional articles but those matters can be address by looking at the content rather than the editor. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:14, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Martin, while I hear you that tendentious editing is a problem, it is already governed by content policies. The purpose of these proposals is to deal with a different matter, which is whether WIkipedia should have a COI policy, which it currently lacks, and which pretty much every for-profit and nonprofit has. It is basic good governance.Jytdog (talk) 14:02, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I would advocate no COI policy, because such a policy would be completely unenforceable and because such a policy would lead to a biased WP.

It is quite likely that some organisations have paid editors, playing the part of normal editors but trying to push the views of their organisation on WP. If these people do a good job, do a suitable amount of non-contract editing, and keep their noses clean, the is no way that they can be detected. Those who are more open about their status and even declining to edit article pages are likely to be seriously criticised. In these circumstances it is pretty clear what most smart organisations will do if we have strong COI rules. COI editing will simply move underground.

On the other hand editors with personal agendas, irrational fears, and gripes against organisations are free to edit at will, turning WP into some anti-establishment magazine.

The only way to avoid bad editing is to be constantly vigilant over content. If a paid editor from Microsoft were to add that Window 27 will be released in 2055 I would have no problem with that. On the other hand if any editor were to try to push Windows 27 as the best thing since sliced bread or say that it was a monstrous failure I would be highly critical. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Martin, COI policies are always difficult to enforce. That doesn't make them any less essential. One could same about laws against insider trading. The argument that "it will drive such activity underground" is specious. A good policy will provide clear guidance to editors with a COI so they know how to behave, will provide clear guidance to editors who are concerned about another editor's COI and will make it clear that harassment (pursuing accusations of COI outside the process provided) is sanctionable; will provide a fair and clear process for handling concerns about COI so the community knows what to do with concerns that are raised, and will provide guidance for sanctions for violating the policy. It is irresponsible for Wikipedia to not have clear policies governing what is OK and what is not OK for editors to do with regard to using Wikipedia for personal gain. That is what COI policies are for. Jytdog (talk) 15:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing whatever specious about argument that "it will drive such activity underground". It has been found in may fields of human activity that attempting to prevent something for which there is a substantial demand will drive it underground. Luckily though we do not need to provide guidance about COIs we just need to provide guidance about editing. Who does the editing does not matter; what they write does. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:45, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Martin and Jytdog

When I say "specious" I mean there is an air of sense about it, but at the end of the day it is a bad argument. You can make the same argument about most illegal activity. Please do address the example of insider trading - I would appreciate a real dialog! Should it not be illegal? Doesn't having it illegal mean that traders who want insider information will just obtain it in a more sneaky fashion? Also, I would appreciate it if you would address the governance aspect. I will add that scientific journals have COI policies that require, at minimum, disclosure of the conflict (google "conflict of interest scientific publishing" and you will find scads, each of which also address why those policies exist); there is data to show that financially motivated scientific authors produce biased articles. The phenomenon is real. Finally, simply asserting that "content is all that matters" misses the point. Nobody disagrees that Wikipedia's content policies are essential; the concern here is more narrow, and is focused on how to manage financially-motivated contributors. We know they exist; their existence trouble many in the community, they way such editors are and may be treated, troubles many in the community. Having a COI policy would make things more clear for everybody. Really finally, I don't get what is at stake for you in opposing this, which is a common sense, common thing in 2013 in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Would you please explain?Jytdog (talk) 18:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate a real dialogue too. I am not a paid editor (although it seems that some do not believe this) and a have no hidden motives. Before I go on to discuss insider trading, I should say that was thinking more along the lines of alcohol, other drugs, and prostitution. These things exist in all societies, ranging from those that embrace them to those that have draconian penalties for infringing laws against them. The main difference is that they are more dangerous in places where they are illegal. Prohibition was the biggest gift organised crime ever.

Insider trading is a difficult one, I do not think it is a good parallel to editing WP. If the stock markets were honest markets, based on the true value of shares rather than being a nest of speculators, bulls, bears, and bubbles, insider trading might be less of an issue. Either way though, the best defence against insider trading is to monitor the markets rather than the people. If a stock shows a rapid fall just after a large trade, that is cause for concern and investigation. Of course, we cannot tell how widespread insider trading is because we only know about those that get caught. Those that get away with it have caused their damage undetected. WP is not like that.

The point about WP is that what is written on the page is everything we care about. If a COI editor edits a page to say that Acme beans are universally declared to be the best in the world, and is unable to give a solid reliable source for this, the product promotion is easily spotted and rectified, just by applying the existing content policies. Would it make any difference if the editor had in fact been a kid who just loved Acme beans? My main point is very simple. With proper attention to content we do not need to attempt the impossible, which is to qualify every editor before they are allowed to edit. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:15, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying, Martin. I don't think you are a paid editor and I am sorry you felt the need to say you are not. My question was real (not at all rhetorical) and still stands - what is at stake for you in opposing a COI policy? You also didn't answer whether you think we should not have laws against insider trading. Please do answer. (I think the parallels with paid advocacy (even more so with undisclosed paid advocacy) are pretty clear but will save that til I hear your answer). Also, do you acknowledge that pretty much every for profit and nonprofit company has a COI policy, and the role of such policies in good governance? You actually didn't respond to any of my questions. I do understand your point, btw - you don't need to repeat it! Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not think you have ever accused me of being a paid editor but others have.

On balance I would have rules against insider trading.

I acknowledge that most for profit and nonprofit company have a COI policy and that in those circumstances that would be good governance. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:44, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not commenting on Martin specifically, but based upon what I have seen posted from other defenders of paid editors, I get an impression that the motive for many supporters of paid editing among the experienced editors is: "I slave away here for nothing and if I want to get paid for editing I want to have that option." They're leaving open an option. I can't say I blame them. If the door is open, if even administrators get paid to edit, why shouldn't they? Mind you, I'm just speculating but that's my strong suspicion. Don't forget that this paid editing discussion in multiple forums, featured on everybody's watchlist, has served not just to expose the practice, but to advertise it! Coretheapple (talk) 16:57, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I have not heard anyone say that; I think that speculating how your opponents would answer a question is not a productive way to reach consensus with them or even to try to understand them. Blech. I've asked a real question and I am interested in actual answers.Jytdog (talk) 17:09, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

You asked a question, and to be frank I don't think it's any more "real" than my answer or any answer that can be given. There are people here who are paid, and there are defenders thereof. Together they constitute the vast majority of persons who have commented on this, and it's also correct to observe that they are uniformly rigid and unwilling to budge a millimeter. Therefore any effort to get "consensus" is utterly futile. What's needed, if a person is genuinely interested in rectifying this serious problem, is to make the case for change so that it can be enacted by the Foundation. Jimbo just posted a few minutes ago, in response to a posting of mine, that the supporters of paid editing have "already lost." I have no idea what he means, but I don't see how he could possibly be referring to a consensus has been reached, as the discussion, in multiple forums, has been totally inconclusive and at loggerheads. Moreover, it has been so, I understand, for eight years. Coretheapple (talk) 17:19, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Coretheapple if you are hopeless about reaching consensus, that is your business; please don't disrupt my efforts to reach it. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 22:31, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

My motive for permitting paid editing is not that I want to get paid it is that I want to create a better encyclopedia. Coretheapple, if you follow my conversation with Jytdog you may find out more about reasons for wanting to permit paid editing. Jytdog, I have answered your questions. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:11, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

'Paying for the article' is encyclopedic information, so 'to make a better encyclopedia,' one would disclose paying for the article. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:45, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Martin, sorry about that. I too have been accused of being a paid advocate and I don't like it. That is not where I was going. Thank you for responding to my questions about insider trading and about the standard-ness of COI policies. With regard to your answer above, about your motive being wanting to make a better encyclopedia; that too is a non-answer as we all want that! It is the basic AGF assumption that we all have about each other. So I am sorry but I still don't understand the reason to oppose having any COI policy. I really don't want to guess so would love to hear what is at stake for you. I think you see where I am going with the insider trading thing and the COI policies. Public markets are predicated on the idea that everybody has access to the same information; if you are entrusted with insider information you are simultaneously obligated to not use that information in the public markets for private inurement, both by the company in which you obtained that information and by the markets themselves. People violated that trust often enough that it started to create doubt that the markets were truly level playing fields, so in order to maintain trust in the markets laws against insider trading were passed. They are essential for maintaining that trust. Wikipedia is similar - it offers the public NPOV, reliably sourced information and anyone can edit if they agree to abide by our policies. However, there have been enough incidents of people with a financial COI making edits in favor of their COI that trust is eroding in the public, and editors (like Core) are becoming disheartened and (in my view) overly inflamed. Editors, readers, the community, and individuals who have a financial conflict of interest are all in a difficult spot because we have no policy guidance on how to behave with regard to financial COI. For-profits and nonprofits have COI policies because conflictual situations arise all the time, and it is essential for individuals and organizations to have clarity about what is OK and what is not OK, and what to do when what-is-not-OK, happens. It is basic good governance in 2013 to have a COI policy. Wikipedia is important enough that we need one too. I am very much of the opinion that the policy needs to also be very clear about what editors should do if they suspect COI, and what the community should do to investigate, and the policy should give lay out sanctions for violating the policy (both for editors with a COI who violate it, and for editors who accuse other editors of COI in ways outside the prescribed pathway). Anyway, thanks for continuing to talk.Jytdog (talk) 22:31, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

There are important differences between the stock market and WP.

In WP no editing can happen in secret. In the stock market secret deals can be done in which, say, insider A tells B to tell C to buy then C pays D to pay A. No doubt this is the kind of thing the authorities are on the lookout for but it can be far from obvious. In WP if a person makes a NPOV edit, it is immediately visible for all to see.

NPOV edits are easily fixed in WP; damage done by insider trading not so.

Another objection I have is that the proposal is contrary to WP's basic concept of the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If we ban a class of people it becomes the encyclopedia that only some people can edit. Allowing anyone to edit is one of the means that WP uses to achieve a genuine NPOV. If you ban some people you do not get a global POV. Commercial organisations, political parties, pressure groups, and other organisations that might pay editors are not always wrong.

Let me ask you this. Imagine that there was a paid editor for ,say, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, intend on pushing the party's POV at every opportunity. What would this person actually do? Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:Martin Hogbin - sorry for the delay, yesterday got away from me as did today. Great questions... but let me adjust your story on the insider trading a bit. The more relevant example is that Mr. A works for PubCo and learns that a PubCo drug has failed a clinical trial. Mr. A sets up a short, scaling it to try to get under the radar, and profits handsomely when the stock plummets after the failure is announced (you can add a step where Mr. B is a trader and is friends with Mr. A who lets the information slip, if you like). This I think is the more common kind of insider trading, is more analagous to what happens here. All I have are anecdotes (of which I am sure you have read many too) of articles that were created or edited and remain present for long periods of time, that suppress negative information or promote some company or product in pretty overt ways, and it easy to infer that they were done for promotional reasons by an editor who had a financial COI. There are those anecdotes, as well as the hard data we have arising from uncovering the network of SPIs working for Wiki-PR. We are aware of these, because they do get caught and fixed eventually -- I am 100% with you on that. The content policies are absolutely essential and they work; I am not a Chicken Little. With respect to what you say about the damage from insider trades being unfixable while wikipedia is fixable: if you look at this transactionally, a reader who comes here and obtains information while the article is still corrupted is just like the guy on the bad end of a trade corrupted by insider trading right? We cannot go back and fix the bad info that reader got. And the damage to trust in the market, is very parallel to the damage done to trust in Wikipedia. With respect to your last question, you are dead on - a tendentious paid advocate will indeed violate the content policies. No argument there, whatsoever. Just like I would agree that a paid advocate can create a Good Article (well written, truly NPOV, and well sourced). I hope you can see that what I am after is COI policy that makes it clear a) whether using Wikipedia for personal benefit is OK or not, and if it is OK, how; b) how the community will deal with violations. That ~should~ help keep down the number of "insider trading" incidents, will make it impossible to create a business doing "insider trading" and will help restore and keep trust in Wikipedia. Finally, I think you are now saying that what is at stake for you, is Wikipedia being an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." My hope is that the COI rules still allow editors with a financial COI to be part of the community; they would probably have to accept restrictions on what they can do to content in which they have a financial interest, but their voice can be here, like Arturo's is. Thanks again for talking! Jytdog (talk) 01:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear what you are referring to, you are talking about a situation where someone edits WP in order to manipulate share prices? Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

no i am sorry and thank you for asking. i am saying that "paid advocacy" is to wikipedia, what "insider trading" is to the markets. i put "insider trading" in quotes to try (lamely) to signal the analogy. both are going to happen, and just as we need laws against insider trading so it is kept clearly illegitimate, underground to the extent people do it any way, and minimal due to the risk of its illegality, we need a good policy to keep paid advocacy in its place. sorry for being too rhetorical. Jytdog (talk) 23:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

But there are still big differences. Many things reduce confidence in WP but I would not put paid advocacy at the top of the list. Vandalism, jokers, people who thing they know something and add it to WP with no source, people with grudges against people or organisations, people who think the purpose of WP is to right great wrongs, anti-business, and anti-establishment editors all reduce confidence in WP. Why single out paid for editing? Martin Hogbin (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

That is a great question. I agree that all those things are problematic (and in general fall under WP:TENDENTIOUS editing). And I agree that they all ~may be~ a bigger problem. One of things I think we all suffer from, is a lack of data; it would be very useful to have a better grasp on the biggest sources of problematic edits. Sorry to put words in your mouth and I apologize if I am wrong, but I think you perhaps associate the drive to have a policy on paid advocacy (which is the subject of concern, and which is different from paid editing, many forms of which are actually blessed by Wikipedia) with editors whom you may perceive as having the biases you describe above. Part of my goal in engaging with you, in particular, is to ask you to step back and see that the issues are larger than some anti-business agenda - that the issues are standard, mainstream, good governance issues. We don't have a COI policy and that is a gaping deficiency for a major organization in 2013. In other words, it is about money but that does not mean it is all about some anti-business agenda - what it is about, is our lack of a policy governing how Wikipedia resources can and cannot be used for private/personal gain. That lack is bad for everybody. I would like for you and others who have flatly opposed Wikipedia having such a policy to see the need for it, work for it, and participate in the conversations that will shape it, with a goal of reaching consensus with people who think differently. Thanks for your continuing patience with me. Jytdog (talk) 11:43, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

You are quite right in that some of my specific concerns are related my own editing experience, but I expect that is true for every editor. On the other hand, my experience is not restricted to anti-big-business editing, I have seen attacks on small social organisations and educational establishments by people who clearly have an axe to grind. I have also seen articles seriously compromised by fanatical supporters of Nikola Tesla, for example.

Regarding stepping back a bit that is exactly what I am doing. WP started as the encyclopdia that anyone can edit. Nobody knew where this would lead but it seems not have been too bad. That was a fundamental principle of WP and once we start to change it we open a Pandora's Box. I see it a bit like universal suffrage. In most democratic countries the basic principle is that every adult gets one vote. That includes big business leaders, hate group members, stupid people, and bad people of all sorts. Probably things would be better if really bad people were not allowed to vote but nobody has found a way of doing this, so we are stuck with 'the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried'.

So it is with WP. Once we start restricting who may edit it is very hard to know where this will lead. I think many articles in WP havr reached equilibrium, where the rate at which they are being improved equals the rate at which they are being degraded, even by reasonable good faith editors. There are ways that might be proposed to improve things but they essentially move WP towards wikis like Citizendum.

Basing our decisions on who the editor is or what we perceive their motives to be is also contrary to another fundamental principle of WP, which is to argue about content and not editors. In my opinion, we should first look at ways of dealing with COI editing that are based on this principle before we start to chip way at its integrity.

Finally, it is a fact about human nature, especially when dealing with large groups of people, that an action designed to have a particular effect often has the opposite effect. If stringent measures against paid-for editors are imposed the likely effect is that good paid-for editors from responsible organisations will declare their interest and, for their trouble, find their editing privileges heavily curtailed, whilst bad editors, paid by evil forces, will find ways to hide their interests and be able to edit freely. Thus, even within the paid-for editing category, the measures have a negative effect.

So, although I do have personal experience of certain bad forms of editing, my argument is based of fundamental principles. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I completely hear you on the fundamental principles issues here. I value the openness of Wikipedia a lot too. What I am seeking is middle ground; preserve openness as much as possible, but at the same address the valid concerns that other Wikipedia editors have. The community as a whole is in turmoil and if people don't move off fundamental principles on either side we are going to end up with nothing done, yet again. I like your analogy to voting. It is a good one. Following that, buying votes is illegal, no? A bought vote is comparable to paid advocacy. As we work this over, and as you or I consider analogy after analogy, we are going to find that in the real world, nothing is absolute; freedoms are always restricted to some extent in order to preserve the common good. Jytdog (talk) 13:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion any problems caused by paid-for editing do not justify further compromising our basic principles. I have not seen any serious problems caused by paid editors. Can you point me do any? Or does the 'problem' only exist in the minds of certain editors?

To go back to a question that I asked earlier, what could a seriously bad intentioned, paid-for, editor actually do? Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I answered your question - sorry it was buried in one of my too-long answers. I said that the bad-intentioned paid advocate would act exactly the same as the bad-intentioned volunteer editor; edit tendentiously. The ~only~ differences are: 1) the paid advocate can do that eight hours a day, while the volunteer has some other full-time work; 2) the fanatic volunteer will probably be limited to one field or so, while the paid advocate can range throughout the entire encylopedia. With regard to the "why" question. I have given you the answer based on different principles; a) a community in turmoil that needs a consensus solution to arrive at a new stability; b) basic good governance to regulate how Wikipedia resources are used for private gain. With regard to your "why" question - you say you have not seen any problems. Which prompts me to ask, have you looked? Have you checked out the extent of work of the Wiki-PR SPI network? The edits made by WikiExperts before they were banned? I am not aware of any convenient summary data, but I will ask around and come back with what I find. But do let me know if you have looked... thanks! Jytdog (talk) 16:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

No, I have not looked for paid editing problems, but neither did I look for other editing problems, but I found them nevertheless. I you point me in the right direction I will look.

I really cannot see how a paid editor can get far without being noticed and banned. Even if the editor reincarnates, once a problem of NPOV editing is noticed in an article people tend to keep a look out for more. On the other hand I have seen an unpaid editor with a direct COI create and sustain (even after Arbcom intervention) an entirely fictitious article.

What is you answer to my last point above, that tougher COI rules will mean that we end up with more bad paid editors and fewer good paid editors? Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:49, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Let me pause us here. There is a difference between "paid editors" and "paid advocates." It is very doubtful that any new policy would prevent paid editors who are blessed by Wikipedia from actively editing articles. Do you get that? Jytdog (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I an not sure that there is a clear distinction. I really believe that no sensible policy on this subject is possible. Where does an editor become an advocate? Are paid advocates worse than unpaid ones? For example, I am a solid Conservative voter. I believe in Conservative Party principles and regularly edit political articles. Am I an editor or an advocate? Say I am now a member of the Conservative Party, does that make any difference? What if I am paid, but not specifically to edit WP? It is an impossible jungle.

Luckily there is a simple answer. Forget the editor, concentrate on content. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

What I have seen here is that most editors who want a policy, draw a clear line between paid editing and paid advocacy and have worked hard to distinguish them in discussion and policy drafts - which is very possible to do. I have seen no one argue for banning paid editors who are (for example): employees/interns of the wikimedia foundation; educators who are paid to work on Wikipedia content on their field of expertise, etc. When opponents say that a COI policy would ban all paid editing it is really frustrating. Do you see that? Jytdog (talk) 17:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

No, I dispute what you say, I do not think it is possible to draw a clear line between editing and advocacy. Are educational establishments or even the Wikimedia Foundation immune from advocating a biased POV.

neither do I think payment is always the problem. I believe that there are greater threats to the quality and authority of WP than paid advocates. I am sure that many groups of people have unpaid advocates on WP, religions groups, hate groups, ethnic groups, political groups. These may all be pushing particular POVs but they are all OK however, if anyone is paid for their time they are a baddie.

Nothing you have said convinces me that there is a real problem that needs solving by eroding two of the basic principles of WP. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Please don't jump around. You are thinking so uncharacteristically sloppily Martin! You are smooshing together 3 things now, tendentious editing, paid editing, and paid advocacy. All three are different. Waving your hands and saying "it can't be done" while you say vague and confused things is the weakest sort of argument... please. We are all better than that. You are much sharper than that.Jytdog (talk) 18:44, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

btw, this study was just offered up as being "some data". THe first thing I've seen that tried to gather and analyze data instead of throwing up anecdotes. It is not published in a RS and is a pretty small sample (random set of 100 business articles)...Jytdog (talk) 18:55, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

opened a thread at Jimbo's talk page asking who knows if there is any data about the extent of the problem. Two super interesting articles, this one - a survey of PR professionals which is super illuminating; and this one by a Danish business-communications group, valuable mostly for the review of the literature in the intro. But you would find perhaps interesting their database and especially, the entry on edits to the BP article. Need to figure out how to ground a conversation on these articles... is there a paid advocacy problem or not? while looking at actual information.....Jytdog (talk) 01:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not smooshing anything together, I am arguing that it is impossible to clearly separate them.

I agree that looking at some actual data would be a good idea, but here is the worry: you and other editors have been arguing very strongly that we need to do something which compromises two of WP's basic principles about paid advocacy yet there seems to be little evidence that there actually is a problem at all. Can you point me to an article where paid advocacy has actually been a significant problem? Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:52, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

To actually answer one of your questions '...entry on edits to the BP article... is there a paid advocacy problem or not? I see no paid advocacy problem at all but I do see a significant anti-business, anti-oil, anti-BP bias from some (presumably unpaid) editors. Martin Hogbin (talk) 12:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The Danish paper is so interesting, right? Above you asked me a very good, hard question: "In my opinion any problems caused by paid-for editing do not justify further compromising our basic principles. I have not seen any serious problems caused by paid editors. Can you point me do any? Or does the 'problem' only exist in the minds of certain editors". I am grateful to you for posing this question and have gone looking for data on the extent of the problem. I don't have an answer and I don't see that anybody has a solid answer. There are two batches of data that were mentioned on JImbo's talk page, one, an active project by User:Bilby where he actually went to job boards posting Wikipedia editorial work, and tracked what happened, and the other, a batch of data collected by a now-banned user on edits to articles about companies - two page powerpoint on the results is here. And there are lots of anecdotes which you can find at Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. None of those go to extent, per se. But answering your question narrowly, those are places to find specific problems, where paid advocates made tendentious edits. Examples do exist. But again, I cannot argue that they are extensive enough or that they persist long enough to threaten the project. On the other hand, you cannot argue that they are not extensive enough or they do not persist long enough to threaten the project. All we can do is discuss principles. Do you see what I mean? Jytdog (talk) 14:17, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Continued below. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Principles

If it is principles that you want I would start with, "If it ain't broke don't fix it", followed by not eroding the two basic principles of "Attack content not editors" and "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit".

It is beginning to look to me like this (Not your arguments but the general 'no paid advocacy' movement) is some sort of, dubiously motivated, witch hunt. One thing I love about WP is that everything is recorded. It is always (except in the most extreme cases) possible to go back to an issue and see exactly who said what and what article edits they made. I have seen cases where attacks have been made on large organisations, industries, social and educational establishments; not blatant attacks but the inclusion of excessive and unencyclopedic negative information on the subject. The point is that I can refer you to the pages where these things have occurred so you can see for yourself what went on.

No one seems to be able to show me an article where paid advocacy has been a serious problem. Until they can it will be very hard to persuade me that we need to take drastic action to fix this 'problem'.

I understand the general principle that in many spheres of human endeavour paid advocacy is frowned upon and even legislated against but it looks to me that WP, by its very nature, should be immune to this form of improper influence, provided that we are vigilant over content. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I need to scoot, but do you see that you have no basis for arguing, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? You have no basis for saying it is not broken, just like I don't have one for saying it is. The lack of data changes this conversation profoundly for both sides, I think. We both have to take our ignorance seriously. Jytdog (talk) 14:59, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Of course I cannot say that there is no problem at all but I can say, with reasonable statistical confidence, that it is less of a problem that other forms of bad editing because I have seen other forms of bad editing in my, essentially random, sample of WP editing. I have also been involved in articles where there are accusations of paid advocacy flying about but where I have seen no evidence for this.

I therefore have reasonable evidence to say that paid advocacy is not the most urgent problem facing WP but that some people incorrectly see it as that. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

"reasonable statistical confidence"? Come on! That is just gussied-up language for "here is what my gut tells me." With respect to coming to your conclusion based on your own experience... is that how you actually make decisions? You limit your data to what you personally experience? That is certainly not how organizations make decisions! Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

on the "principles" thing, please see letter from WMF linked-to below. Thoughts? thanks.Jytdog (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I have taken a sample from WP pages and it shows evidence of various forms of bad editing. It show no evidence of paid advocacy causing a problem, neither can anyone show me one. That is known as statistical sampling. It is possible to calculate from that evidence the probability that paid advocacy is more common than other forms of bad editing in WP. My guess is that, on the data that I have, paid advocacy is very likely to be less common than other forms of bad editing. That is how I make decisions, it is how many serious organisations make decisions, and it is how you should make decisions. Martin Hogbin (talk) 00:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Jytdog, thanks for the interesting discussion. I do not seem to be convincing you to change your view and you are not convincing me. My last word on the subject has to be that if we are going to seriously erode two of the most fundamental principles of WP, "Attack content not editors" and "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit", principles that have served us well and helped create a unique resource, they need to supply evidence that there is a problem that needs solving and that eroding these principle will solve the problem; so far I have seen neither. There is no onus on me to produce evidence; the onus to provide evidence is on the person who wants to change basic WP principles. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:32, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Am very grateful to you for hanging with me! I have thought a lot about what you have said and have learned from you. I really hear you on the content not contributors thing, and also the "anyone can edit" thing. Thought a lot about that and have direct responses. Wikipedia already has policies that are 100% about contributor -- WP:SOCK being a key one. Right? That one is all about the editor. Second, under every COI policy that has been put forward, no one is banned from editing Wikipedia altogether. Anyone can still edit. There are just limits on what an editor can do on topics where they have a COI. And again, Wikipedia already has policies limiting what editors can do - you cannot vandalize, you cannot do OR, you must write in a NPOV way, etc etc. All kinds of limits. A COI policy is not a strange new animal never seen before; it is like the other limits that already exist. I don't understand how you can say that that a COI policy really violates either of those things.... What do you think?Jytdog (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I just wanted to amplify on Jytdog's point above (and I might add that it's nice we're on the same page at last, at least on this issue). One thing I've seen that concerns me is the widespread belief that restrictions like this will result in "bans" descending upon scores of editors. I've seen no one advocate that but many people raise it as an objection to having policies restricting paid editing. I can't possibly foresee people being banned for violating this practice except in extreme circumstances. Right now, people who are found to be violating policies are given an escalating set of penalties, beginning with warnings. I don't see why that would be different with a prohibition on paid editing. Coretheapple (talk) 18:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Jytdog, as the rules are now, anyone can edit until they demonstrate by their edits or actions that they should be sanctioned. Sock puppetry is an editing action, either trying to evade a ban or pretending to be two people. Until they demonstarte a problem with their edits anyone can edit. Yes, of course WP limits what editors can do, that is fine. The principles at stake "anyone can edit" and "attack content not editors". NPOV is a content issue.

I think this thread may start to get repetitive though because I am going to end again with saying that the onus is on you to provide evidence that there is a problem with paid for editing and that your proposals will solve this problem. Martin Hogbin (talk) 23:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I am with you man in terms of wrapping this up. Will need to think more about providing rationale for change. Thanks again for talking. Good food for thought. Jytdog (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

A rationale is easy; you should be looking for clear evidence that there really is a problem. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

You go too far here; if you do not see that there really is a problem, you are not looking. Earlier you said you had not seen any evidence of a problem - i gave you sources, and I hope you looked at them. It is difficult to determine the pervasiveness of the problem, which is a different question. I count on you to be less sloppy! Jytdog (talk) 14:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

You have not given me evidence of a problem, you have given me evidence that some people think there is a problem. Please just give me one article where paid advocacy has been a problem. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:47, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, there are LOTS of anecdotes as I have mentioned; when I say "anecdotes" I mean individual articles that have been affected by paid advocacy. Many of them are collected in the Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia article that I pointed you to earlier. Jytdog (talk) 17:13, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

It should be a simple matter, therefore, for you or another editor, to refer me to an article where there has been seriously problematic editing by an editor who is a proven paid advocate. Please, find what you consider the worst case of paid advocacy, show me the article, show me the diffs, and show me the proof that the editor was a paid advocate. That is all I ask. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Very solid anecdotes abound if you look in good faith for them. I am sorry to say that at this point you appear to be just playing games with me; I see your unwillingness to lift a finger as bad faith and willful ignorance. Had you written something like, "I have looked and found no page that was damaged by COI editing and was not quickly fixed under our content policies" (if that is your point) - in other words, shown some willingness to consider the evidence that was provided, my reaction would have been different. As I wrote above, I was with you in wrapping this up earlier. Thanks again for talking. If you want to engage in a good faith discussion, please contact me on my Talk page.Jytdog (talk) 12:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

I see now that this is turning into a witch hunt. There is no obligation on me to do anything to defend long established WP policies. If you propose to change them, the onus is clearly on you to provide evidence of the problem that you claim exists.

In previous centuries women were murdered because they could not produce evidence to prove their innocence. If course, neither was there evidence to show that the had turned children into frogs (obviously) but, just as now, justice was turned on its head and the burden of proof was placed upon the accused rather than the accuser. No doubt the poor women were accused of 'bad faith and willful ignorance' just as you have accused me. There is no reason why they should have lifted a finger to find evidence of their innocence just as there is no reason for me to do anything to show that paid advocacy is not a serious problem. The is most certainly not a game it is very serious when anecdotal 'evidence' and personal belief are used to pervert the natural rules of justice and fair play. Martin Hogbin (talk) 12:51, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

for pete's sake, Martin don't be hysterical. I am not "witch hunting" anyone, much less you. I guess you cannot see how arrogant your prior remark appeared to me. I am trying to have a real conversation with you, and for that to happen, we both need to be engaged and to try to understand where the other guy is coming from. I felt (and still feel) that for you to not take the time to go read the links I provided, and instead sit on your butt and make further demands, is indeed a sign of bad faith. I am not your servant; I am your equal looking to have a real conversation, looking for you to engage with me as I am engaging with you. If you are unwilling to hold up your end of the bargain and do some homework, I have no interest in continuing the conversation. Jytdog (talk) 13:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the witch hunt I referred to was against paid advocacy not me. As I said there is no obligation on me, or anyone else, to do anything to defend long established WP policies. If you propose to change them, the onus is clearly on you to provide evidence of the problem that you claim exists. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

While you have somewhat of a point, if you choose to engage in dialogue, especially on Wikipedia where the clearly articulated ethos is that we try to reach consensus, that means that if you have a subsequent obligation to try. Not doing any homework, is not trying. Really this is way too meta already. But bottom line, my job is not to kiss your ass and bring you little delicacies on tiny platters. If you want to play princess, please don't waste my time; not the kind of discussion I am interested in. If you want to do the work of dialogue, please let me know. Jytdog (talk) 16:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Don't shoot the messenger

It is always a sign of a weak argument when one person turns on the personality of the other rather than the substance of the argument. That is one reasons that we have the policy of no personal attacks here.

I have looked at some of the links you have directed me to and the problem is that I see no actual evidence of bad editing caused by paid advocacy. On the other hand, I do see evidence of bad editing by unpaid editors, who do not seem to understand the difference between an encyclopedia and a tabloid newspaper or a court of law.

Who on earth thinks that calling a brand of lager 'wife beater' is remotely encyclopedic??

Whilst I am very keen to see all those MPs who ripped of the taxpayer with fraudulent expenses claims brought fully to justice I am puzzled as to which editors think that WP is the correct vehicle to do this.

So, I have done my homework and it confirms what I originally thought. If you want to change my mind you need to show me some evidence of bad editing caused by paid advocacy. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Back to the original thread

@BrianDell: the ultimate purpose of disclosure is to advise the reader that the article that he is reading was at least partially drafted by the subject of the article. Only Wikipedia fails to make such disclosure. However, even better than disclosure, and this is the path I favor, is a rule banning paid editing entirely. You don't have to disclose a nefarious or unethical practice if it is not permitted. The only reason disclosure is an issue at all is that the current situation is a complete free-for-all: rampant paid editing, no mandated disclosure either to other editors or, God forbid, to readers. I sometimes think that many editors feel that Wikipedia's audience, the ones that it writes for, are other editors or the subjects of articles. In this paid editing discussion, very little attention has been devoted to the fact that readers see articles appearing in their Google results and are totally clueless as to the fact that those articles are very often planted in Wikipedia by the companies or persons who are the subject of those articles. To the extent that readers are aware of that happening, or suspect it, Wikipedia's credibility takes a hit. It's a shame that Wikipedia has almost no interest in retaining its integrity in the face of this outside assault, and no interest in the value of its own brand identity, which is under pressure from subjects that are only interested in their own brand identity. Coretheapple (talk) 14:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Coretheapple do you have any data to back up your claim that Wikipedia "articles are very often planted in Wikipedia by the companies or persons who are the subject of those articles"? If you do not have data to support that, I would suggest you hold onto that assumption more lightly and treat conclusions you draw from it, more tentatively. I think you and I agree (to a certain extent) on the need for a COI policy (although not on its extent, I think) but we need to make solid arguments.Jytdog (talk) 15:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Since we're dealing with an unregulated practice and an absence of disclosure, we're left with anecdotal evidence as to how widespreadthe problem is. In a discussion on Jimbo Wales's discussion page, people on the other side of the argument concede that the problem is widespread and use that as an argument for not banning the practice. An outside website and bulletin board, Wikipediocracy, has a running discussion thread which identified over 400 paid editors. I also thought it was interesting that in using a vandalism tool for the first time (STiki), I found that I stumbled upon a COI article and a network of paid editors within the first half hour of usage. I am, despite the uncertainly of numbers, comfortable with saying it is a widespread problem and that "very often" is a fair terminology to use. However, I don't think that we should get hung up on numbers that much, as when you create a conflict of interest/paid editing rule you're dealing with a practice that needs to be abolished, no matter whether there are 300 or 30,000 paid users. Coretheapple (talk) 15:40, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying! I have wondered if anybody has quantified this. It appears that you don't know of anyone who has. (wikipediocracy is not a reliable source btw) Your experience is indeed an interesting and troubling anecdote. However hand-wavy assumptions and anecdotes are not a basis upon which an institution should make a policy decision.Jytdog (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Having the subject write or edit the article about itself is unthinkable everywhere but in Wikipedia, and elsewhere it is outlawed without any demonstration of need, because other organizations do not believe that it is necessary to quantify a severe ethical issue before taking a stand against it. The issue is whether Wikipedia will get out of the Stone Age on this issue, not whether there is an issue to get out of the Stone Age of. If we get into a "how serious is this problem" discussion we will make the current exercise in futility even futile-er. Coretheapple (talk) 16:23, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree very much that we need a COI policy. You are the one who made the argument that we need it because COI editing is a very extensive problem. I agree, very much, that the conversation should not go there.Jytdog (talk) 16:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Also, I dispute that it is true, that "Having the subject write or edit the article about itself is unthinkable everywhere but in Wikipedia" For instance, scientists working for pharma companies can and do publish scientific articles all the time about their employer's drugs (the drugs' structures, how to make the drug, how the drugs work in vitro, how the drugs work in animals, how the drugs work in people, etc). The journals obligate such authors to disclose that they work for the pharma company and that the pharma company owns the drug. That is one set of examples that is very common, is even expected, and is considered valuable by readers.Jytdog (talk) 19:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I can amend that analogy by adding that newspaper travel sections sometimes publish articles that are planted by the travel industry. The movie "Sweet Smell of Success" showed a publicist planting articles in a column for a client. But those practices are considered sleazy. Coretheapple (talk) 20:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

all i am saying is that there are indeed high quality sources of information that allow COI authorship (with disclosure) and are not considered sleazy. you are right that there are sleazy examples too. we agree that there should be a COI policy - what we are discussing are the arguments for it. big sweeping arguments fail. to get consensus we need to make careful arguments that do not fail, and we need to aim for a policy that evidence-based arguments can support. we agree that this is important! Jytdog (talk) 20:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

As has been pointed out to me, disclosure to readers presents many problems because of the ever-changing nature of Wikipedia. Without disclosure, there is really nothing but sleaze in COI editing. It has no saving grace or justification whatsoever, and I see no point in being equivocal about it. Coretheapple (talk) 20:41, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting point in your first sentence, about disclosure getting lost in Talk pages and article history. I think there are ways to manage that. I don't agree with the rest. I always think about my BATNA when I negotiate. When I look at this, folks with your view are on one end; and folks who support the status quo (no COI policy; all paid editing is allowable under policy) are on the other. If the negotiations fail, the status quo prevails. I don't want that; there is no good BATNA for me. I guess I don't understand what your BATNA is.Jytdog (talk) 21:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

"Negotiate"? First we have to discuss the shape of the table. Then we can arrange a cease-fire, after which we can all go to Paris. Coretheapple (talk) 22:48, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The process of reaching consensus is a negotiation... you seem to be saying that allowing any COI editing means that Wikipedia is sleazy, with no room to compromise. Am I missing something? If not, again, I don't understand your BATNA. Jytdog (talk) 22:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you're serious? I didn't think you were. This is such a sprawling, time-consuming and totally futile mess, involving several hundred editors and IPs, paid and unpaid, that you can hardly call it a discussion, much less a negotiation. Coretheapple (talk) 00:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

here is a little corner of it, working toward consensus. would that we all tried, instead of just staking out claims, this would go more efficiently. :) Jytdog (talk) 00:10, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Remind me to loan you a teaspoon the next time you want to row to China. ;) Coretheapple (talk) 00:39, 14 November 2013 (UTC)