Which are the appropriate in-article COI template/s for disclosure to EU readers
Could anyone direct me to the appropriate COI template/s, if any, to be disclosed prominently on articles directly of concern to European readers which are contributed via suggestions of disclosed paid editors. This template disclosure is for the compliance with European (EU) directives refered to in WP:COVERT. This is not an issue which non-European users of Wikipedia seem to understand or take seriously. 101.60.197.154 (talk) 14:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
You are correct that the en-WP community has not engaged with this. Do you happen to know what templates they use in de-WP? A link would be helpful. Oh, I can ping User:Steinsplitter and User:AFBorchert - perhaps they can provide the links and describe how they are used there... Jytdog (talk) 19:47, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
This is a key issue. We don't distinguish sufficiently, if at all, between the kinds of paid editing the community tolerates or even welcomes, and the kind it usually objects to. The objectionable paid editig is the kind that might reasonably be construed as covert advertising. Perhaps we need a new template. SarahSV(talk)23:04, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
The general opinion on the DE-WP is that paid editing in any form is frowned upon and after the Munich judgment companies should not influence (directly or indirectly) Wikipedia content without an upfront disclosure that it is the company saying it. Useful links, Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Umgang mit bezahltem Schreiben, Wikipedia Diskussion:WikiProjekt Umgang mit bezahltem Schreiben, Schleichwerbung on Wikipedia: Companies must be careful!. Reading through their discussion, DE-WP editors don't have a policy like WP:PAID, seem to strictly go by ToU, are quite vocal about keeping out even declared paid editing, and seem upset that EN-WP policies are being used to justify paid editing on DE-WP. The German lawyer has caught the main problem for Wikimedia in Europe, it is not enough for WMF to claim (and the Munich court outright rejected this ground of WMF) that the proposed paid edits are discussed on the talk pages which constitutes disclosure, because Wikipedia content can be freely reused by others (such as Google Knowledge box) and the readers do not know where the content emerges from unless it is contained prominently in the article itself. Vedicant (talk) 05:53, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
The situation is well summarized at The Signposte "Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate". Whereas Wikipedia's own The Signpost interprets it as This means any Wikipedia article edit made by an editor with a related business background is potentially, per se, pursuing unfair competition under EU competition law and all that matters is that the edit can be judged as (potentially) advantageous to the company, the independent legal bloggers are more clear on the Schleichwerbung (covert advertising) aspects. Dr. Thomas Schwenke interprets the judgment as Any statement in which a company advertises itself or its achievements must be recognizable as an advertising statement. It is an anti-competitive stealth promotion when a consumer cannot see that the company itself is behind the statement ... I can imagine that companies will now go on to make the contributions only through agencies or otherwise. In this case, it should be clear to all parties that the actions of the third parties to the transaction are to be treated as the company's. The agencies should draw their clients' attention to this risk. In simple terms if Wikipedia editors insert content which is even potentially commercially advantageous or disadvantageous to a European business entity without prominent upfront disclosure, it leaves those editors, the company and WMF open to anti-competition prosecution. 101.62.209.122 (talk) 09:38, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
to be clear I pinged those two editors because i understand they are active at de-WP and can tell us what is actually happening there, on the ground. Which is different from us trying to read the tea leaves of another community's practices via bloggers or the written policy there. Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
What IP 101.62.209.122 and Vedicant have posted above is extremely accurate and should not be simply skimmed over as a block of TL;DR by anyone following this discussion.. Perhaps it's not just a new template that's needed, as suggested by SV, but a clear local policy and, as she further suggests, one that clearly addresses the different kinds of paid editing. For more clarity, here are the main points again (the translations are mine):
The Munich Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) in its judgment of 10.05.2012 (Ref: 29 U 515/12) said that:
...even
Wikipedia articles, that are beneficial to a company, are advertising.
If the company's CEO makes such a contribution, it is to be attributed to the company.
It is not enough for the company to be visible from the discussion page. The average consumer usually does not look at this.
To which Dr Schwenke’s comments include:
Any statement in which a company recommends itself or its achievements must be recognizable as an advertising statement. It is an anti-competitive sneak advertising when a consumer can not see that the company itself is behind the statement.
If they are conducive to business, Wikipedia articles from companies are covert advertising . This also applies if it can be seen from the discussion page that they originate from the companies themselves.
This is a hard blow for all companies that participate in the Wikipedia. This is because virtually every company-created Wikipedia page, which even remotely serves the company, represents sneak promotion.
Attorney Ferner provides an even more detailed breakdown of the München verdict on his website.
Institutional memory is often short on Wikipedia, but those who were around 5 years ago will recall the important summary in Signpostof November 12, 2012.
IMO, whatever laws the US based Wikipedia respects, we have in the German law what I think are ideal basics for for creating a local en.Wiki policy for paid editing that concerns the promotion of businesses, and in particular the BLPs that masquerade as business promotion. Moreover therefore, the 1,000s of 'Yellow Pages' directory-style stubs are also advertising; any sources only prove their existence and at best, a very weak notability, but the presence of them is 'beneficial' to the subjects of them and they can be deleted G11. Pinging Doc James. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:00, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
Kudpung, this is what is badly needed. In the past we've used the terms "paid editing" (which could be good or bad) and "paid advocacy" (always bad). But the distinction didn't work because few editors acknowledged engaging in advocacy; PR agents would say they were doing their best to be neutral. What we need is more precision.
Anything that could reasonably be viewed as "covert advertising" seems to cover the kind of paid editing the community doesn't like. That term could embrace articles about commercial and non-commercial people and organizations. We would need to write up any new description very carefully to ensure that it doesn't become a catch-all phrase that could be made to fit anything. SarahSV(talk)02:31, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely. PR agents are doing what they are paid for: Public Relations, which however neutral, provides their clients with a 'beneficial' presence on Wikipedia; thus promotion. It's one of the forms of advocacy which we need to accurately characterise. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:47, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
Not to nitpick, but as a marketing guy, I would say having an article on Wikipedia is not advertising. It is a type of marketing, specifically branding. it lends credibility to a company. It doesn't draw in new customers like advertising, it creates a sense of familiarity and trust in a company by anyone who has already been captured by their advertising. To some, the distinction is minor but to the company and any marketing firm, it is a different thing altogether. This is why they like to drop names, list altruisms, puff up sales numbers to look bigger, etc. A few novice COI editors do list products and extol the virtues of them, but any serious paid editor is going to focus mainly on image, which is why they often try to remove negative information, and part of the reason they pad the sources. Dennis Brown - 2¢12:37, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
Using press release websites, using the same source but listed individually for multiple citations, or using sources that really don't match the claim, such as when the source merely mentions the company and says no more. When 50%+ of the sources are like this, it is obviously padding. It's done to get reviewers to pass it by because it looks legit, and to simply make the article look authoritative to the casual reader. Dennis Brown - 2¢20:36, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
Regarding these edits: Though I appreciate having specific examples may help some people, I hate giving free publicity to a company when it can be avoided. Can some generic term like "freelance recruiter" or generic company name ("FreelanceRecruitingCorp") be used instead? isaacl (talk) 19:44, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
That's a good point; on the other hand, this may be an instance where it is helpful to editors to see specifics and where the publicity isn't particularly helpful to the company. I could be persuaded either way. Going beyond your question, I think the community might want to consider a complete ban on edits arranged by such brokers. I've been seeing editors I respect raise the issue of a complete ban on any sort of paid editing – I think that perhaps only banning broker-mediated paid editing would be more practical and would be a good first step. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
It should be a pretty easy case to make that when the broker's ToS contravene our ToS (for instance, not permitting disclosure of the clients' identities), those are effectively banned. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:46, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
So far from giving them favorable publicity, it would serve as a warning to those who might be tempted to use their services that the articles are very likely to be deleted. DGG ( talk ) 16:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
My personal preference would be to put a list of banned affiliations elsewhere, such as a dedicated page. In the spirit of denying recognition, I prefer to avoid mentioning the names of disreputable parties whenever possible. isaacl (talk) 16:39, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I jumped too many steps. In this particular case, it's not a question of listing banned affiliations, but examples of freelance recruiters in order to clarify all of the relationships that need to be disclosed. Is there consensus that having specific names is sufficiently useful that it should take precedence over denying recognition? isaacl (talk) 23:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
User:IsaaclUser:TryptofishUser:Bri Is it time we move the list I have been working on here out of my user space? People are welcome to add to it in my user space as well of course. Could use some formal criteria for who to include / what evidence is required for inclusion. And maybe different categories. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:47, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
It's fine with me to move it to WP: space from user space. I think there needs to be a clear plan about how it will be used. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
One of the problems is that we are having these discussions in too many places at the same time. I realise that we have topic-specific venues for a reason, but I'm getting confused with having to flash back and forth between here, WT:COI, and my own talk page where a lot (and I mean a lot) of serious discussion takes place, and at user talk:Jytdog, and I'm sure that many of us are missing vital comments by not following every thread. I'll begin by posting here a recent comment by Tryptofish:
Also, there is something distinctively, well... rotten, about paid editing arranged by brokers such as Upwork... We could place a total ban on paid edits that are arranged by such brokers, particularly when those brokers engage in practices that contravene the existing ToU. We should effectively blacklist such organizations. The community has already agreed to saying, in WP:OUTING, There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum such as the Conflict of interest noticeboard is not a violation of this policy. I think we should make maximal use of that, and feel free to aggressively investigate paid edits coming from such sites.
We could start by banning everyone on this very old list which is as worthless as some non-agression pacts. Its not a binding document of any kind such as a professional charter or a recognised code of practice like the Bar Association. These co-signatories have no intention of observing what they put their names to and will agree to anything if it deflects suspicion and keeps them in business. It will never be possible to completely eradicate paid editing, but banning it would at least provide us with enough lever to impose sanctions instead of pussyfooting around each individual case at our plethora of noticeboards and Arbcom. I don't think I'm mischaracterising anyone when I state yet again that paid editing is totally antithetical to the concept of voluntary projects - which it is, and there can hardly be any counter argument. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:40, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
While I am certain sympathetic to the problem of conversational sprawl, I did start this particular thread with a specific question regarding the recent edits to the accompanying Wikipedia page. I suggest that other matters can be consolidated into one of the other threads, thereby avoiding creating one more thread about those topics? isaacl (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Blocking the use of brokerage services for paid Wikipedia work is something I would strongly support. Such a move would allow us to request that the honorable services remove all the accounts involved in this work. Anyone wish to draft a RfC? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Another factor we don't usually discuss is that Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest has had multiple media mentions and this one has not. So, for widest understanding and dissemination of our community's norms it would be good to have a prominent conversation there. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:42, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
My apologies to Isaacl for getting this thread off-topic. But it is indeed the case that an idea of mine for banning paid editing from broker sites has been under discussion for a while now at WT:COI, and that's probably a better place to discuss it. I'd like to see how the discussion at COI about the FTC turns out, because it may make everything else moot, but if it doesn't, I'd be interested in starting an RfC about those broker sites.
The people working for this company believe that it is fine for them to edit directly in mainspace and to create new articles, per their actions and per this statement by user:Salvidrim!.
In my view - and my sense is that this also has broad consensus in the community -- it is not OK for paid editors to directly edit or create articles in mainspace. But this is not written policy.
I have talked some about adding the "prior review" thing to this policy and I am considering an RfC, per the draft below. Wanted to get some thoughts first.
The RfC to amend this policy would have three proposals:
1) Rename this to "Paid editing policy"
2) Change the lead to add a third paragraph:
Paid editors other than Wikipedians in Residence as described below, should not directly edit or create articles in mainspace, but should submit content for review prior to it being published. However, they may revert obvious vandalism (such as page content being replaced by obscenities) or obvious violations of the policy about biographies of living persons. The key word is "obvious", that is, cases in which no reasonable person could disagree.
3) Include a provision directly below the "Wikipedians in Residence" section:
Prior review
Paid editors other than those described in the "Wikipedians in Residence" section above should not directly edit or create articles in mainspace when they are editing for pay. Instead, they should submit draft content for prior review by independent editors, and should make a clear disclosure along with the submission. The proposed content should be published in mainspace by an independent editor after the content has been reviewed for compliance with the policies and guidelines.
For changes to existing articles, a proposal for new or changed content should be made on the relevant article Talk page, along with the disclosure. Editors can mark the submission with the {{request edit}} template.
For new articles, drafts should be put through the articles for creation process, with a disclosure made on the associated Talk page prior to requesting review.
Paid editors may revert obvious vandalism (such as page content being replaced by obscenities) or obvious violations of the policy about biographies of living persons. The key word is "obvious", that is, cases in which no reasonable person could disagree.
As this page covers disclosure, particularly in context of the terms of use, I suggest starting a separate page for any proposed paid editing policy that limits what paid editors can do. This would make it clear that the constraints on what paid editors can do are distinct from the disclosure procedure. isaacl (talk) 04:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Regarding the proposal, would the limit be on content related to the editor's client, or all content? If all content, then we're basically saying paid editors cannot be members of the Wikipedia community. I realize it may be a pipe dream to wish that paid editors would understand Wikipedia's mission and contribute accordingly in other ways, but saying they cannot do so will permanently close off that possibility. isaacl (talk) 04:50, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
I do not agree with doing this separately. People editing for pay should have one policy.
There will always be multiple applicable policies and guidelines, such as the conflict of interest guideline, the guidance on having an article, and the verifiability policy. Given that the paid-contribution disclosure policy is governed by the terms of use, for clarity it's simpler to keep it independent from guidance on what a paid editor can do, which is not covered by the terms of use. Let's not muddy up the waters further regarding the "Changing this policy" section.
Regarding your modification, I suggest that the constraint be worded in terms of when the paid editor has a conflict of interest, to avoid ambiguity regarding what the editor is being paid for. isaacl (talk) 06:21, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
This page is not a paid-editing policy. It's a paid-contribution disclosure policy, and the only part that is policy is the part that repeats the terms of use. If you want to start an RfC about creating a paid-editing policy, please create a new page with the words you're proposing, and put it forward as a proposed policy. SarahSV(talk)05:32, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
I think if it were restricted to articles that could reasonably be construed as covert advertising for commercial organizations, services and products, it would have a good chance of success, if it were worded carefully. SarahSV(talk)05:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
I think that the wording about "directly edit" in mainspace in part (2) is a problem. I really cannot support anything that precludes any and all kinds of direct page edits. I've used several times the example of a disclosed paid editor who fixes vandalism or BLP violations without first asking in talk, and I think that it would be appalling to much such edits forbidden. What we are really concerned about here isn't that kind of page repair, but rather the introduction of new content, either as a new page or as new material in an existing page. If there were an explicit exception for reverting vandalism and BLP violations, then I could support this. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:08, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
How would you propose to do that exactly? Maybe a third bullet, along the lines of what is in the COI guideline?
However, people editing for pay may make unambiguously uncontroversial edits:
I cannot support allowing paid editors to fix dead links per matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/easy-wikipedia-link-building/ and cognitiveseo.com/blog/8825/wikipedia-broken-link-building/ . MER-C11:56, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Support the spirit of point 2 - Maybe this RfC in this context and at this venue is not the optimal way to lead to policy changes but I must still offer my moral support to changing the rules from "strongly discouraging" paid mainspace edits to "disallowing" them altogether. My recent experiences have shown that even someone with decent intentions and who believe his integrity beyond the influence of COI can prove unable to properly manage his COI (and that's without even mentioning intentionally nefarious or disingenuous paid editors). That being said, I echo Tryptofish's concerns about blanket-disallowing all edits and proposing that an exemption be made similar to the first point of WP:BANEX: "Reverting obvious vandalism (such as page content being replaced by obscenities) or obvious violations of the policy about biographies of living persons. The key word is "obvious", that is, cases in which no reasonable person could disagree." at least, and perhaps broadening to other minor non-controversial edits (repairing links, fix spelling or wikisyntax errors, expanding existing references, self-reverts, etc.) Ben · Salvidrim!✉21:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Actually, Jytdog, what Salvidrim said is what I would have said in answer to your question to me. That is, the BANEX language would work fine, and could simply be appended to (2) without creating a new bullet. On the other hand, one could instead make it longer to include those other points, but I don't think that it's particularly important to do so. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Slightly off-topic, I think we should ask paid editors to set up dedicated paid-editing accounts—linked to their main account—so that all their paid edits come from one account, and one that has no additional rights beyond autoconfirmed. That would solve a lot of the problems we're seeing. SarahSV(talk)23:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Obviously I support this (since it's what I've done), but basically you're suggesting that once an account is used for paid editing, it should ONLY be used for paid editing, and every edit should come with a declaration. I suppose some might not use two account but stick to a single, paid editing one (like CorporateM and such). Ben · Salvidrim!✉00:08, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Support wording to state those involved with paid editing are not to edit directly in article space. Rather than "should not directly edit" wording should be "are not to directly edit". "Should" implies "suggestion". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:45, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
With the added text about vandalism and BLP, I now support all three points proposed here. I have a couple of suggestions. About that added text, I think the way it is written in the proposed lead is good. In part (3), the Prior review section, I'm not sure whether the underlined material is intended as a third bullet point or not. I think there are two ways to format it, either of which would be equally good:
One is, instead of making it a separate bullet point, insert it at the end of the first bullet point, about existing articles. For flow, I would modify it as "Paid editors may however directly revert obvious..."
The other option would be to make it a separate bullet point. In that case, it doesn't need to be changed, but it needs to directly follow the bullet point about existing pages, not the bullet point about new pages. The easiest way to accomplish that would be to put the bullet point about new pages first.
Also, considering how RfCs about policies typically go (in other words, the strong resistance of the community to change), I strongly recommend making it two separate RfCs: one about calling it a policy, and nothing else, and the other about the lead addition and the Prior review section. If the community doesn't agree about calling it a policy, I don't want that to jeopardize the prior review idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:12, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
Support all, at least in spirit. I also support that paid edits must be made on one, and only one, separate account. I also recommend strengthening the disclosure requirements to require disclosure on the talk page, in the edit summary AND (was or) on the user page. I suggest adding something like "nothing in this policy implies any obligation by the Wikipedia community to accept or retain paid-for content; content is still subject to normal editorial processes including deletion" -- I want to preempt complaints of the form "I disclosed, why are you speedy deleting [this spam page]". MER-C12:23, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
The problem with banning direct editing is that it won't work without processes in place where paid editors can request changes and get a response in a reasonable time. It has to be a package, because if it continues as it tends to now, where changes are requested but never done, it won't work. With that said, is direct editing the core problem? It wasn't the main issued with Master_Wiki as linked - that was far more about approving articles from AFC. I'd fully support a policy banning direct article creation. - Bilby (talk) 12:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
User:Bilby Please don't describe this in the language of "banning". It immediately rings of "banning paid editing" (and people will hear it that way). It is hopeless and insane to "ban paid editing" and I would never propose that.
All of us operate under the constraints of the policies and guidelines. It is not OK for any of us to replace article content with "cow cow cow cow" even though anyone can do that. What this proposal is, is a way to manage paid (and conflicted) editing by putting additional constraints on editors, where they have a COI. It is consistent with how COI is managed everywhere in knowledge-based publishing (even novels get reviewed by real world "editors" before they are published by real publishing houses). WP is a weird blend of self-publishing (per WP:USERGENERATED) and community edited. So the "prior review" is a bit ...unintuitive in some ways here. But there is nobody to whom I have explained this "disclosure + prior review" process in plain words, who didn't grasp it immediately.
Yes, it would be better if we had employees and could make promises about timelines for review. We don't, and this makes the business model for paid editing in WP challenging. But paid editors who are clueful understand this challenge and manage it by a) managing their clients' expectations, and b) putting enough jobs together that it works for them, or doing paid editing here as just one part of other PR work they do.
But please don't call this "banning" anything. Please. It is managing paid editing using a near-universal process. Jytdog (talk) 20:10, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Your wording was "Paid editors ... should not directly edit or create articles in mainspace". If you would rather, we could call this "prohibiting direct editing", but "banning" seems like the correct word. That said, we've seen what happens when paid editors try to follow this - they propose a change on the talk page, and either a) they know other editors who they can ask to have a look, or b) they don't, and they have to hope that someone spots the request and chooses to help them out at some point in the next few months. I think this is potentially a good means of managing paid edits, but only if there is an associated process that ensures that changes are considered in a timely manner, and people are made aware of how to engage with this process. If all this means is that most disclosed paid editors propose a change and then have to wait for months until they realize that no one is going to bother commenting on it, much less implementing it, then it won't work. They'll either end up making the change themselves or they'll loose the contract and an undisclosed paid editor will implement it. - Bilby (talk) 22:25, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I think that Bilby raises a legitimate concern regarding what happens when a paid editor does the right thing by making a talk page request, and then a long period of time goes by without a response. We have templates for similar situations, such as requested edits on a protected page or help-me requests, that put the talk page into a category that someone is likely to be watching. I think that it would be an excellent idea to create such a template for prior review requests. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
There already is such a template. {{request edit}}.
On Bilby's "objection"....
We have a rock and a hard place and another hard place.
The rock is that this is a volunteer project and we cannot compel anyone to "service" paid editors at all, much less on any kind of deadline.
The first hard place is that we remain "open" and we are committed to pseudonomy.
The second hard place, is that we need to manage paid and conflicted editing with disclosure and prior review. It is utterly backward in 2017 for any knowledge-publishing organization to not have this in place. We cannot say, "sure please just directly edit mainspace, we will catch up with it at some point". That is retrograde.
The only way between that rock and those two hard places, is that paid and conflicted editors need to be willing to wait until somebody is motivated to review their stuff. Is that optimal? No. Are there ways that paid editors can facilitate review? Definitely - they can build a reputation for proposing well-written, well-sourced, policy-compliant content that can be implemented without too much time and effort.
When I talk to paid editors who want to be good citizens -- who are attracted to the values of the project and don't want to be industrial polluters -- I explain to them that they cannot build a business model around timely deadlines and remain white hat. They don't like it, but they get it. I know, and they know, that if they go black hat, we will eventually catch them and indef them and they will get more bad PR out of it. (The Statement grew out of scandal after scandal) Really.
Are there people who don't care about the mission and values of WP? Yes - some of them edit for pay, some come here to troll and vandalize, some come here to push some point. We indef people who are NOTHERE all the time. We don't change or write policy to accommodate them.
Wikipedia does not exist to facilitate paid editing. We can accommodate people who want to do it in good faith, but the needs of the volunteer community and the mission, not to mention the integrity, of the encyclopedia come first.
The backlog for requested edits currently goes back almost 5 months. Having a tag is not a solution. Having a functioning system involves more than adding a tag that requests a change - it requires responses in a reasonable time, such that using the tag is a viable option. I'm in agreement that paid editors should request edits that are then considered by independent editors. But if requesting means that the edits never get made, either because there's no working system that answers those requests, or because people simply refuse to "do the work of a paid editor", then it won't be effective. You need to tackle both problems together.
I agree that there is no perfect solution. I'm just concerned the if the solution for the relatively minor problem of disclosed paid editors editing articles directly is to create the bigger problem of more undisclosed paid editors editing articles directly, then we need to rethink that part of the proposal. If we can get a workable mechanism which means requesting edits is a better option than undisclosed direct editing, then it will be a great way forward. - Bilby (talk) 08:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
This is very much "if wishes were fishes", without proposing or supporting anything less bad. If you are supporting the status quo (in which the written guideline says that direct editing in mainspace is strongly discouraged for conflicted and paid editors) and are just opposing the effort to see if this is actually policy, then please say that. If you want to change the guideline to remove that and be silent on direct editing, please say that. If you want to change the writing to explicitly clear the path for paid/conflicted editors to edit directly, please say that. What do you support, Bilby? When you reply please keep in mind what you perceive the community as wanting as well. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 15:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
No, this was not "if wishes were fishes" - you don't seem to be willing to read what I write. But ok. I do not support a ban on direct editing of articles for paid editors, as we do not currently have a workable alternative for how changes can be made. I'm ok with this being renamed a "paid editing policy", because that's what it is, and I fully support insisting that new articles go through AfC. If there becomes a workable system where requests for change are made in a timely manner, I could support a ban on the direct editing of articles by paid editors, but right now such a ban is not sufficiently necessary to cover the damage it would potentially do.- Bilby (talk) 22:23, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
You can call me a fish with a wish, but I still would like a dedicated edit request template for this purpose. OK, so we already have the "request edit" template – and we also have a long backlog in responses to it. If we also had a new "COI request edit" template specifically for this use, those requests could be dealt with separately from the others, and that can only be a good thing. If nothing else, consider: if paid editors use the generic existing template, they may well get responses from editors who are uninformed about COI and paid editing. But if their requests are treated as a separate category, then editors such as those who watch WP:COIN can keep an eye on those requests. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
Oh, and yes, the spirit of this - the reason for it -- is indeed what went wrong with the Mister Wiki. Salvidrim said it clearly here on my TP - that he thought someone could edit for pay without being affected by COI. Soutermans thought the same thing. They both very much think differently now. But that incorrect assumption is what led them to do directly edit and do the phony AfC - they thought of AfC as a silly hoop to jump through. Jytdog (talk) 20:27, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Declaration of Paid Editing is subordinate to any policy on Paid Editing. The problem is that we don't have a policy on paid editing per se. Let's aim high and get that sorted out first. As always, I'm totally opposed to paid editing in any form whatsoever (except WIR). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:53, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
I support the idea here entirely. If the following makes things too complex, please just reject it, but I think this might be simpler in the long run. The basic idea is to make a new policy WP:Commercial editing policy
Define commercial editing broadly, e.g. "Commercial editors include any editor who edits as part of a commercial transaction or as an employee of a commercial editing firm. This definition may be similar but not identical to "paid editor" as defined in the Terms of Use."
Then give examples of who is included, e.g. people in the marketing department of a company, ad agency employees, owners and execs of firms writing about their firm, etc., etc., etc.
Then give examples of editors who are not commercial editors, e.g. WMF employees and chapter representatives editing as part of their work for these organizations, Wikimedians in Residence, academics and researchers editing based on their expertise, but not on behalf of their employers, etc.
The reason I think this is important is to avoid the pesky, mostly off point, objections that always show up and derail discussions on paid editing, e.g. what about a person in position x (e.g. a manufacturing floor foreman) editing in a particular situation (e.g. without the knowledge or input of his bosses). With this type of definition we can always come up with a direct answer to that question without derailing the rest of the policy.
Then we can add in the specifics, e.g.
All commercial editors must register one (and only one) account named in the form User:Username (commercial) and conduct all their commercial editing from that account.
if the editor has a non-commercial account, it must be linked to from commercial user page
the account may not have user rights beyond autopatrolled
Commercial editors may not directly edit or create article pages. Rather they should ...
Commercial editors must declare their paid status according to WP:Paid editing disclosure using (the required templates). They must also declare their employer, client, and affiliations on both their user page and the affected article's talk page.
They may not review drafts at AFC, or articles at WP:Good articles
whatever other limits we want, but I'd keep it to a small number in order to maximize the chance of passing.
This is just a format that I think will avoid the usual problem of people nitpicking a proposed policy to death. Just fill in the blanks with what you want. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:35, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
Well this has turned into a herding cats thing. I want to get one simple thing done. Namely, making it clear that paid editors should not directly edit in mainspace (with the exceptions of correcting simple errors or vandalism). The second half of the near-universal COI management process in publishing, of "disclosing + getting prior review before publishing". I want to get this done. I believe that this is already policy in the practice of the community and we just need to go through the process of writing it and running the RfC to affirm it. (that is only my sense of course and I realize that my perception may be incorrect)
An alternative approach would be to see if we can elevate the actual WP:COI guideline to a policy. That would also get this done. What do folks here think about the likelihood of that move succeeding? Jytdog (talk) 19:47, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't think there is the remotest chance of getting COI upgraded to policy at the moment.
To get the "bright line" made policy, create a policy page, word it carefully, tag it as a proposal, and open an RfC. (Everything will hang on the wording, and it needs to be kept simple; don't introduce any complication or ambiguity unless it's necessary). I think it might succeed if it is limited to commercial editing—anything that could be described as "covert advertising".
My sense is that the community is not ready to pass bright line across the board. Certainly, there seems to more opposition to paid editing now than ever before, but is that real opposition, or is it that those who don't oppose have stopped commenting so much? Look at all the recent COI and OUTING RfCs (which mostly revolved around paid editing). Almost none of them gained consensus. SarahSV(talk)22:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
After a lot of work and a lot of listening, a version of those changes did gain consensus. But anyway, the larger point here is that any kind of proposal concerning policy status is going to face a difficult and lengthy process before it can have any hope of happening. That is exactly why, in my earlier comment in this section, I strongly recommended having an RfC just about the revisions concerning prior review, without folding in the rename to "policy". That's not difficult, and it really is the most pragmatic way to go. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Whether it would be easy or not to get done, making COI a policy is by far the best suggestion, and should be the first of several steps. I see prior review as being impractical, because just like allowing declared paid editing, it plays into the hands of those who exploit our voluntary work to make a career out of paid editing (such as user:KDS4444), and who will take it as another step to legitimise paid editing and consider it a licence to do so.
Prior review would complicate things for the declared paid editors, they would simply join the 99.9% of paid editors who are already operating underground, who have no intention of declaring their work, and have no scruples about exploiting our voluntary work or Wikipedia as an alternative means of marketing for companies
The next step is to make paid editing completely incompatible with the holding of advanced rights. Even if a user creates creates another identity for his paid editing (such as user:Salvidrim!), it just creates yet another perceived degree of tolerance for paid editing - and its still the same person. It's just as fallacious as the claim by WMF employees that they don't think like staff when they are contributing to discussions as an editor - no one can claim to successfully manage a voluntary split personality. At the end of the day, it's paid sockpuppetry. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:10, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
The conflict of interest guideline says "you are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly" and contains a section on handling edit requests. Are you concerned that promoting this to a policy would be a step to legitimise paid editing? isaacl (talk) 05:08, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
As I said Isaacl, the first step is to bring the COI guideline up to date to reflect the enormous problems with paid editing - whether declared or not - and make it a policy. Yes, I am concerned that plenty of users who see that paid editing is tolerated in some form or another will use that as a licence to make a career out of it, they are doing it already. It's a blatant exploitation of the voluntary work that the majority of users have put into this encyclopedia and maintaining its quality. It's totally antisocial. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
Well, you said making COI a policy is by far the best suggestion, and should be the first of several steps. But OK, let's say some other steps should come first. Based on your concern users who see that paid editing is tolerated in some form or another will use that as a licence to make a career out of it, is there anything you do think a paid editor should be allowed to do? For example, could they be a resource for Wikipedia editors to request references for potential material in an article? Or should the conflict of interest guidance simply say paid editors cannot edit at all? isaacl (talk) 03:50, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
I think it's pretty obvious. I seem to be yelling into the wind from a remote mountaintop when I say that no advanced rights are compatible with paid editing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:37, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
All this tough talk about tough rules just pushes paid editors underground, into sock territory, and frankly, they outnumber CUs and admin so I don't expect we would "win" that battle. Either you manage it in the open, or get 50 more CUs, but just adding more rules isn't going to solve anything. I've been knee deep in enough times to see the actual scale of the problem, something I think is lost on most editors. Dennis Brown - 2¢02:06, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Dennis Brown, I think everyone here understands the scope of the problem. The question is if underground is actually worse than what we already have. I haven't made up my mind, but I also have never seen a convincing argument that it was. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:48, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
After blocking 300 PR related socks in just one case, which is probably still a record (and led to WilliamH retiring and handing in his Crat/CU/Admin bits in frustration), my opinion changed drastically. So has talking to some of these editors privately. It led me to conclude we need to be more generous in working with paid editors who will disclose and follow the rules, making it much easier for CU to put the hammer down on those that don't. This empowers non-admin to monitor as fellow editors. I once thought we only had a few thousand paid editors, but I was off by at least a full factor, the overwhelming majority just go unnoticed. We simply don't have the manpower to ban it, and we never will. It's why I don't get overly involved in the issue, I still have good reason to believe that most editors in fact do not understand the scope. I have learned that socking is easy to do, very easy in fact. Easy enough that the overwhelming number of socks of all types go unnoticed. We only catch the sloppy ones. We keep digging this hole, keep trying to take a hard ass stance on it, even though it has never worked and the problem just keeps getting worse. I'm hoping the greater community will eventually figure out this is the wrong approach. It reminds me of the War on Drugs, and is seemingly just as effective. Dennis Brown - 2¢14:03, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Dennis, thanks, those are very good points, and they are giving me a lot to think about. The analogy with the War on Drugs is an apt one. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:55, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
But the war on drugs continues and go"vernments are not legalizing their use for 'declared users' just because they haven't got the capacity to combat it 100%. The more chinks in our armor we offer the paid editors, the more they will exploit them. We keep mentioning the different types of paid editing: there are the Curry & Chips snack booths on the corners of Connaught Square in Delhi, there are pompous 'get me on Wikipedia' individuals (some of whom have sent me emails directly asking me to 'quote' for my services), and there is the most distasteful crowd, the KDS4444 and their ilk who are deliberately abusing Wikipedia to make a career out of it, and their marketing knows no bounds whether they are independent or working through one of the agencies. I'm sorry Dennis, but I can't agree with you on this. The only way we can have any effect is to make it very public that paid editing is unacceptable and that its practitioners are social parasites, and to catch as many as we can so they have to refund their clients. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:24, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
"But the war on drugs continues and governments are not legalizing their use for 'declared users' just because they haven't got the capacity to combat it 100%". See Prohibition of drugs and Supervised injection site. At times, where prohibition is ineffective, the only alternative is management. - Bilby (talk) 05:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
What Bilby said. The way to have less problems is to manage the manageable and focus your resources on the real problems. If you think you can stop paid editing, you are underestimating the profitability and scale of it. All you do is incentivise paid editors being more crafty, more underground, and you only catch the new paid editor, which typically are not really professionals. Putting a rookie's head on a pike is not going to stop the real professionals, who will just keep socking, undetected, using proxies, laughing at your little whack-a-mole game. I want solutions, not empty bragging rights. Dennis Brown - 2¢14:05, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
Paid editing company
We appear to have a company that will both create you a Wikipedia page after first creating the references required to support said page.
I think your report might get more visibility and the attention it needs on WP:COIN that on a policy's talk page..... Perhaps this helpful message should be added at the top of this talk page, like it is on WT:COI?
And a corollary to the thread immediately above, TonyBallioni has just stated on WT:COI: '...this is the perfect example of what we have been talking about: editors who declare will almost never actually follow en.wiki policies and guidelines.'Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:47, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes. I blocked for violation of local English Wikipedia policies on promotion (WP:NOTSPAM). The TOU being the minimum requirement to click the save button. If someone who follows the TOU violates local policies to the point of disruption, we block. There is no reason paid editors should be any different than volunteers. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:50, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
I have never seen some Indian Paid-editing firm in action.And, the amount is approximately equal to the salary received by many semi-top-tier government officers over here per month.Sigh....Winged Blades Godric16:20, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
This is not unique. One of the declared COI editors who also does PR work explained to me as the basic technique of professional PR. They also told me that essentially everything published about a company even in the most ethical magazines and newspapers would be instigated by PR--that the essence of their job is to get articles written and placed in respectable publications. DGG ( talk ) 23:09, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
Request for comment on inclusion of past paid-editing disclosure within current policy
As the comments point out, the current policy seems broad enough. While sharing of past paid editing status is preferable, it's perhaps not necessary to force it down through policy inclusions. Lourdes06:34, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The current policy does not seem to specifically capture the area of past paid-editing. In my view, most of the policy seems to be inclined towards current and future expected paid-editing activities (e.g. "If you receive, or expect to receive [...]"). While I have not been / am not a paid-editor, I would like to invite the community's opinions on exploring the following issue:
Should/should not we include some line in the current policy, which captures past paid-editing activities; for example, by adding to the current policy:
"Users must also disclose whether they have ever in the past received compensation for their contributions to Wikipedia."
Meh. I think there are a lot of good comments in the discussion below, but I figured I'd get things going up here. It feels to me like this is gilding the lily. I do agree that, just because it happened in the past, it doesn't make it OK. But it seems to me that the issue comes down to content: if there is content that we discover to have had undisclosed paid edits in the past, we should deal with it. Yes, at the level of a guideline, it's best practice for someone who is no longer doing paid edits to disclose it retroactively so that other editors become aware of it without having to hunt it down themselves. But, as policy, I don't think we're going to block someone who made undisclosed paid edits before the ToU were issued but has behaved appropriately since: it wouldn't really be preventative, would it? --Tryptofish (talk) 01:02, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
Lourdes, I hope you don't mind that I tweaked this to survey and discussion. Thought it'd make it easier because this is pretty complex. I get the intent here, but my question is whether or not from a practical standpoint this is enforceable: we already have difficulty enforcing the TOU with current accounts, expanding local en.wiki policy to cover edits made years ago before the TOU change, while something I very much do get from an ethical perspective, might be something that we could never really do for all editors practically. If what you are trying to do here is get rid of what looks to be the grandfather clause that is in the proposal at WT:ADMIN, I'm not sure a discussion at PAID for all editors is the best way to achieve that.I think everyone who is at all aware of WikiPolitics knows that I don't have a very friendly stance towards paid editing, and indeed often am fine with policies that give us a grounds to take action even if they are not perfect, but I think this reaches back too far into the past to be meaningful: anyone who edited for pay undisclosed before the TOU change wasn't necessarily breaking a policy, and anyone who edited for pay after it is already required to disclose. I'm not opposing this, but I would like to hear your thoughts as to how this change as worded would have a practical impact. I very much respect your views on these matters, so I'm still weighing where I will stand on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:07, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi Tony. Thanks for the detailed response. In my opinion, information that an editor was once paid to edit an article, is perhaps reasonable for the community to assess future claimed unpaid edits by the same editor to the same article or to matters related to the article (like deletion discussions). Apart from this, in my opinion again, the intent of the addition is also to cover paid editors who disclose only the current companies they are being paid for as they are not required to reveal their past affiliations. I would consider this addition to be in lines with the current policy, but clearly, the community needs to decide whether they'd want this or not. Thanks, and Happy Holidays! Lourdes06:33, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
Why should there be a distinction? Financial conflicts of interest don't magically go away or become less harmful to Wikipedia because of a change in the Terms of Use on some arbitrary date. MER-C11:14, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
"Received compensation" is a fairly broad category that includes Wikipedians in Residence. It not only includes people who are specifically hired to edit Wikipedia but could also reasonably cover a scientist who edits Wikipedia in his domain within his worktime. Using such broad wording to require disclosure of past editing seems wrong to me. ChristianKl (talk) 14:15, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Disclosure of "indirect paid editing"
So we have the case of Tony Ahn at COIN, who has made the argument that if he drafts content off-WP or in his userspace for pay, and another editor then posts it to WP, he is not violating the TOU. (e.g diff).
If folks are not aware, this is apparently the model that some paid editing companies use, as described here for example.
This was also noted somewhere by User:DGG but I cannot find the diff of that.
So the question is, what change could or should we make to this policy, to make explicit the obligation that the whole chain of paid editing be made clear?
I am thinking a new section following "How to disclose", something like:
Indirect paid editing
The origin of Wikipedia content that was generated for compensation or the expectation of compensation must be disclosed in Wikipedia, no matter how many people there are between the originator of the content and the person who adds it anywhere in Wikipedia.
Paid editors who supply content to another person who adds the content anywhere in Wikipedia, are obligated to ensure that the other person, and any other person to whom the content is passed prior to being added to Wikipedia, discloses the origin of the content when it is added to Wikipedia, including the employer, client, and affiliation of each person to whom the content was passed prior to its being added to Wikipedia.
A person adding content anywhere in Wikipedia on behalf of a paid editor is obligated to disclose the origin of the content, and the employer, client, and and affiliation of him- or herself, any other person in the chain, and of the original paid editor. The person adding the content to Wikipedia is responsible for ensuring that he or she has the right to grant the license to the content that is required in the Terms of Use.
I vaguely recall that recently there was a thread on how to disclose that some added content was based on content created by a paid editor, but I don't remember where. In essence, this is the model that the conflict of interest guidance recommends, assuming it is all done on-wiki: editors with a conflict of interest are supposed to propose a change on the article's talk page, it gets discussed, and then other editors can make changes based on the outcome of the discussion. Technically the addition to the mainspace page should be attributed to the thread on the talk page, so all contributing parties will be credited. We could underscore the need for this particularly when one of the contributors is a paid editor.
I don't know what can be done to prevent the problem if the co-ordination is done privately, though. It's a form of proxy editing, and so the proxy editor can be treated as having the same conflict of interest as the paid editor (not sure if the proxy should also be treated as a paid editor). This practice is, in any case, against the policy on the inappropriate use of alternate accounts, so I don't think any new text for this guidance page is needed. It probably wouldn't hurt, but let's face it, someone claiming that proxy editing absolves them of responsibility isn't going to be deterred by some new sentences. isaacl (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
This is not about attribution (the recent matter that I believe you mentioned, is here).
The two bullet points you listed above specify that the origin of the content must be disclosed. So if all contributing editors are cited, and editors comply with disclosure requirements, then the origin is revealed. Nonetheless, I agree the key question is if there is a way to reveal the provenance of edits made via proxy editing, since there is no on-wiki connection. Unfortunately, at the moment I don't have any good ideas. However, proxy editing to avoid scrutiny is already contrary to policy and I believe a case can be put forth to block any editors who admit to this practice. isaacl (talk) 03:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The issue is that there is a way to read the letter of the policy such that people like Tony Ahn, and the folks at the thread I linked to, believe they are in compliance with it. We should make it clear that this is not actually following it. Jytdog (talk) 03:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
It's not only paid editing, it's meatpupettry. Having someone else post the content you write has always been considered a form of deceptive editing here, and we have never hesitated to ban both accounts, and delete further contributions from them via speedy. We sometimes cannot tell whether a second account is a sockpuppet account from the same person, or a meatpuppet account from another person acting at the instructions or in the interests of the first, and we treat them equally. The problem is the same as with all puppetry, detecting it. It's a little harder, because the technical means available to checkuser do not usually help.
What's more, it's plagiarism. Hiring another person to write an academic paper for you is likely to get both parties sanctioned in the real world, sometimes in a way which can affect their careers much more than anything that will happen at Wikipedia. There's are products to detect it, and we use some of them at WP to detect copyvio.
Given the difficult in getting people to be honest of their own accord when they think dishonesty will serve their interests, is is necessary to supplement detection with prevention. Like most college teachers I know, I tried to design my assignments in such a way as to make the usual methods of plagiarism impossible. At WP, we need to have article standards that decrease the temptation for people to try to promote themselves and the businesses--not just by making mush more use of deletion for promotionalism , but by routinely removing promotionalism from articles in ways that will stick. (Higher notability standards in some fields would help, but notability is such an multifaceted problem that we need to consider NOT ADVOCACY as the even more basic rule than NOT INDISCRIMINATE.)
We need to specify the prohibition in our COI policy--not in order to make a new rule, but rather to avoid doubt, and to have something easy to cite. There is one change in our policy that would make it easier to deal with all forms of paid editing and other blatant coi --we should retrospectively delete articles written by someone found to be doing undeclared paid editor or to be using sock- or neat-puppetts, not just the ones after the person was banned.
Yes, it's pretty clear this is being done. It's meatpuppetry to work around PAID. It should result in a block. If we need any wording, it should be about generally trying to game the system, and include mention of SOCK. --Ronz (talk) 03:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The sock thing is about what happens at this end. The goal of stating this clearly is to make the letter match up with the spirit. Nobody - not the originating paid editor nor anyone the content is passed to, should be able to read this policy and think it is OK under this policy to "wash" content by passing it through third parties and then post it without disclosure. Right now they can. Jytdog (talk) 03:39, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
As I said, sure, we could modify this guidance page, but the truth is nothing will help when editors are being disingenuous. They'll keep trying to claim they comply with policy, even when they don't. isaacl (talk) 04:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I believe I already acknowledged the enforcement issue. I have heard you. You have not addressed the primary reason this is being proposed. That's OK; you don't have to, but I am concerned you don't understand the purpose. Jytdog (talk) 16:24, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
We tried earlier to deal with this , at least partially, via copyright disclosure but it seemed that OTRS didn't like the extra work among other reasons. But we do have something on this under Affiliations:
"Affiliation: other connections that might be relevant including, but not limited to, people or businesses who provide text, images, or other media for the paid edit. If a paid editor is working as a contractor, "affiliation" would include any broker involved in the transaction (e.g. Fiverr, Upwork, etc)."
We could expand this. "Affiliations" IMHO was meant to be vague in the ToU to cover something like "whatever is necessary to avoid gaming the formal definitions". So it could read, e.g.
"Affiliation: other relevant connections. These connections must be disclosed or the paid edit may not be made. Each provider of paid editing services must ensure that he or she has the entire list of affiliates. These include, but are not limited to:
people or businesses who provide text, images, or other media for the paid edit
a writing contractor's broker or agent such as Fiverr and Upwork which helps arrange the paid edit
the ultimate beneficiary who initiated the paid editing and any contractors or subcontractors who pass the work along to the final paid editor.
Any business or editing step that obscures paid editing participants or effectively avoids scrutiny of paid edits by the Wikipedia community. The participants in these steps are also considered to be affiliations that must be reported."
I'm certainly not married to the text. The 3rd bullet point has most of what JTY wrote. I do like the last bullet point. And, as new avoidance schemes are invented, we can just add them to the list. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
If paid editing isn't banned first, I think paid editors should edit as if they are under ArbCom restrictions, similar to BLP editing: They should expect their edits to be scrutinized, they should not restore any edits they've made that have been removed, and the burden is on them to gain consensus for their edits. Using meatpuppets in those circumstances is clearly an offense that would result in a block or ban. --Ronz (talk) 17:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I strongly support updating this policy to clearly prohibit this dodge, but I also think that it's important to keep whatever we add as brief as possible, rather than to add anything lengthy. I suggest adding a brief paragraph as the new third paragraph of the "How to disclose" section, after "There is no confidentiality for the employer, client, or affiliations" and before "The conflict of interest guideline further...":
It makes no difference if the paid editor writes the content off-site or in userspace and then another editor moves the material into mainspace on their behalf. Both editors are required to make a disclosure.
I feel that existing policy on proxy editing as well as the current terms of use already covers this. (In the particular case in question, the editor ignored the fact that all edits, not just those to mainspace, are covered by the disclosure requirements.) So while I'm not necessarily against adding something, I think it'll just lead to another edge case being discussed and more text added, ad infinitum. In the interest of keeping Wikipedia's guidance as concise as possible, in part to maximize the chance that it'll be read, I'm not clear a change is really needed. isaacl (talk) 23:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I think those are good reasons for keeping any change succinct, and for not belaboring details in the change, because the more details, the more for wikilawyers to latch onto. But I also think that the examples cited in the opening post by Jytdog do demonstrate that a direct statement needs to be added here. It's not good if people are failing to put 2 plus 2 together because it wasn't made explicit. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The only person who is claiming to not understand the terms of use is the one who for some reason thinks this absolves them in some way. No one else has an issue. I prefer denying recognition and not making addendums for each new theory put forth by an un-cooperative editor when existing policy already covers the situation. It just encourages them to think that some magic path can be found to evade all the trees, while missing on seeing the forest. isaacl (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
And I think the only person in this discussion who opposes doing anything here is you. The goal here should not be to make a point to the miscreants; it should be to make things so that as little of good editor time as possible gets wasted by miscreants looking for excuses. Add a succinct statement here that cuts the legs out from under such excuses, and that will be a good thing. The short version that I proposed does nothing to open any new doors for skating around existing policy. And there is genuine reason, already explained above, to be concerned that existing policy actually is insufficiently clear.
In my opinion, this discussion has been going on long enough. I'm going to give it one more day, and if no reasons emerge not to, I will implement the version that I proposed. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I think adding text to target the latest excuse is more making a point than just getting on with the business of sanctioning violations of existing policy. We waste our own time by trying to find new reasons to deny faulty reasoning that has already been refuted multiple times. Nonetheless, I haven't opposed any changes, so feel free to proceed with whatever edits you feel have consensus. isaacl (talk) 23:36, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I like the minimal version proposed by Tryptofish. As per others, my concern with having a specific section on "indirect paid editing" is that it leads to the idea that having someone else post what you wrote for Wikipedia is not "direct" paid editing. It is paid editing, and therefore falls under the ToU, whether or not you are working with someone else to make it happen. Thus clarification as per Tryptofish is simpler than making a distinction that could lead to problems down the line. - Bilby (talk) 07:39, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I've removed this latest addition from the policy:
It makes no difference if the paid editor writes the content off-site or in userspace and then another editor moves the material into mainspace on their behalf. Both editors are required to make a disclosure.
This strays too far from the Terms of Use. This page is policy only because of the Terms of Use. The Terms of Use are (obviously) about people who use this website: "These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation."
If X is paid to write something for a third party, Y (also paid), and Y adds it to Wikipedia, I don't see how we can request disclosure about X from either X or Y, because X hasn't contributed to Wikipedia directly. Yes, I know there was a recent case of a Wikipedian running a paid-editing farm, and I understand that there is good reason to add some careful words about that. But the words that were added would cover anyone at all, including people who have never edited Wikipedia; and it would cover any words they had contributed.
Expecting paid editors to disclose that could lead to all kinds of privacy violations and attempts to control people's off-wiki lives. In the BP case, for example, we would be insisting that BP tell us exactly who from their team had written each part of the proposed contribution. It isn't reasonable to pry to that extent.
Actually, I've reverted myself because I don't want to spend time arguing about this. If someone else wants to argue the same point, by all means ping me. I do think those wanting to extend this page should hold an RfC to ask about its status, because edit by edit it's being extended beyond the Terms of Use, which will end up creating a page with a policy tag on it that isn't really a policy. SarahSV(talk)04:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
People edit policy pages all the time, and this time there was plenty of talk page discussion first. If it was policy before the edit, it was policy after. And if it wasn't policy before, it didn't become policy now. The TOU expressly allow local changes that set more stringent requirements than the TOU themselves set, so this was actually in conformance with the TOU. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Incorporating new developments
There are several developments over the last couple of weeks and perhaps extending over the next couple of weeks that might affect this policy. We should probably start discussing these. They include:
The recently closed Arbcom case.
The proposed change to the text of WP:Admin which looks like a lock to pass.
and probably a few things that I've left out. My only intent is to start the discussion on how adjustments to this policy might be made. I might not be able to participate in the discussion until next week however. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:00, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The proposed change at meta is, as far as I'm concerned, an absolute mess. I don't see that changing, so I have no idea how to handle that. In regard to the arbcom case, the change at WP:ADMIN seems to address the core issue there, so presumably a reference to the change from here would see that handled. - Bilby (talk) 04:54, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
The RfC at WT:Admin was closed as pass. I'll include the following as a separate section. Feel free to modify.
Administrator actions in conjunction with paid editing - Administrator tools may not be used as part of any paid editing activity, except as a Wikipedian-in-Residence, or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
I think the second sentence providing specific guidance on what administrators may or may not do as paid editors fits better under Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, since this guidance page is on disclosure. I am still planning to work on separating the contents of the conflict of interest page so there is a more concise instructions-oriented main page, with sub-pages for supporting information, and can incorporate this instruction for administrators. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I think we cross edited. The change to WP:COI looks ok, the change I made to this policy is still in there. Let's see what others say before deciding where the best place (or places) is/are. Smallbones(smalltalk)19:31, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
DYK and COI/paid editors
If an article was created and/or nominated by paid a COI editor, should that be explicitly disclosed in the nomination?
Should articles created and/or nominated by paid COI editors be eligible for DYK?
Special:Contributions/Matiasrecchia raises some questions that I don't think we currently have a solution to. It's obvious that they haven't written what they have submitted themselves and have noted that they sought the advice of an "expert". This seems to be a loophole in our current system as rather than client > paid editor > article we have client > paid writer > client > article. Technically the user is not a paid editor, but is submitting content that they have paid to be written. It also seems highly likely to me that the "expert" is blocked here already, and if that's the case then the user is proxying for them. This isn't the first time I've seen something like this, although I can't recall other examples. Thoughts? SmartSE (talk) 08:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Unless I'm missing something, the passage in WP:PAID#How to disclose that says: It makes no difference if the paid editor writes the content off-site or in userspace and then another editor moves the material into mainspace on their behalf. Both editors are required to make a disclosure pretty much covers that situation. Although I guess that offenders might wikilawyer over the definition of "another editor", a commonsense reading makes disclosure mandatory. (And the requirement here is not that paid editing cannot take place, but that it must be disclosed.) The case that you linked to also raises COI and proxying issues, but those are probably better left to other policy and guideline pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
I guess the "expert" would be somewhere within "employer, client, and affiliation", and it may not matter which one. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Or what?
Starting with the nutshell:
“If you are paid in any way for contributing to Wikipedia, you must disclose it”.
Must? Must or what? Must or you may be whipped with a guideline that says “very strongly discouraged”. This “policy” has no teeth. It is all bluff. It is not actionable, and as not actionable, it is not a proper policy, it is just a dream. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:37, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I get what you mean but, if in the balance of probabilities, signs point to someone being paid and not disclosing, then they will be blocked. SmartSE (talk) 14:12, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I’ve made similar arguments, except I’ve made them against people who don’t want to enforce this. The language is mandatory, and the MisterWiki case made clear that it is viewed by the community and ArbCom as being a requirement to edit here. Because of this, local admins have the ability to enforce it like we would any other policy or guideline, and the enforcement bit is easy: we block the accounts and delete those that don’t meet the CSD criteria at AfD and/or PROD under WP:DEL14/NOTSPAM. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:51, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The "or what" part isn't an issue; the problem is knowing when to take action. Given the anonymity of editors, proving someone is a paid editor is difficult. isaacl (talk) 15:14, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I confess to looking at some of SmokeyJoe's recent edits to try to understand the context of the comment, and based on that I'll walk back a bit of what I said. Although I still think the biggest issue is identifying a paid editor, there is an open question regarding if there is a remedy for not disclosing initially. Can an editor subsequently disclose and resume editing? Is there a consensus on a point of no return, after which an editor would be permanently (well, as permanent as anything is on Wikipedia) banned? isaacl (talk) 17:19, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Blocks are still intended to be preventative, rather than punitive. In principle, if a paid editor discloses after being blocked, there is no in-principle reason why they couldn't then be unblocked. However, in practice, the questions of whether or not they will continue to disclose and whether or not they will engage in promotional editing come into play. - Bilby (talk) 17:25, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
A terms of use violation, however, is a failure to meet a condition for using the web site. If an editor is warned about complying with the terms and still fails to disclose, is there a point where this failure is considered sufficiently egregious to be incompatible with collaborative editing in Wikipedia? isaacl (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Certainly nothing formal. But that's the case with most blocks short of an community ban, a CU block, or a small number of clear exceptions - we don't have any solid rules on when to (or not to) unblock. - Bilby (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The key difference is once someone breaks the terms of use, technically the bell can't be unrung, and theoretically there is no barrier to being permanently blocked. Nonetheless I appreciate in practice the decision to unblock will be based on the blocking administrator's judgement, or a community discussion. isaacl (talk) 22:20, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The ToU also bans incivility and vandalism, but we unblock in those cases. I don't think we've been viewing ToU violations as an automatic permanent block by necessity. - Bilby (talk) 00:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
For what its worth, I detest TOU block because they raise the very real question of whether we should unblock someone who discloses after a block on these grounds when there are valid questions re: promotional editing banned by local policy, whether they will continue to disclose, whether they have had previously blocked accounts, etc. I generally prefer spam-only blocks when they are justified over TOU blocks, as this is more clearly part of local policy and we have more experience dealing with unblocks and moving forward. I will make a TOU block when needed, but if there are other options under local policy, I prefer to go with those. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:34, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The "very strongly discouraged" refers to editing articles directly. That's a separate issue to disclosure. A paid editor must disclose per the Terms of Use, but is only "very strongly discouraged" from directly editing articles once they have disclosed. Thus per the ToU, we can block for failure to disclose, but we shouldn't block a disclosed paid editor for editing directly. - Bilby (talk) 17:08, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
“A paid editor must disclose per the Terms of Use”, or what? If they don’t disclose, nothing happens. If they do disclose, the consequences to their intentions are harsh. Is anyone surprise that they are active and not disclosing? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:43, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
The issue of whether compliance (disclosure) is more risky for someone than is non-compliance is a real issue that has been discussed a lot. For what it's worth, the community is getting better and better at smelling out undisclosed paid editing (there are multiple "tells"), and I think there is a growing understanding that once someone does voluntarily come into compliance and discloses it would be a bad block to penalize them retroactively, assuming that they really have started to edit constructively. Spend some time at WP:COIN, and it becomes apparent that, at least sometimes, "don't disclose" means something does happen. But there is indeed a lot of room for improvement. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:57, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Per Tryptofish, if an editor doesn't disclose, and is found out, the account is blocked. If they continue to engage in paid editing (as is often the case) and are spotted, they are blocked and all of their work deleted. However, if the concern is that we end up with a situation where it is arguably better to not disclose and hope you aren't spotted that to disclose, then yes, I've made that case before, but I don't see a viable solution as things stand. - Bilby (talk) 00:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
So, I’ve read it. A few concerns that I’m not sure are overcomable: if it is promotional, we just delete it: AfD is becoming much more sympathetic to the concept of native advertising as a deletion rationale even for decalared editors. If AfD will do the trick in most of these circumstances, I’d prefer that to quarantine. 2) We already have this. It’s draftspace/AfC, which any user can do already. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:41, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I can understand the reasoning behind this - effectively hold articles to ransom unless the editors disclose, forcing them to meet the ToU. In that sense it forces editors to either disclose or to charge more for the extra work required to establish an account before they can start creating paid articles, potentially pushing up the cost of paid articles. There is an advantage in this.
However, we hit a pile of difficulties, not the least of which is that it is easy to get around (create an account and do some editing before you do the paid job, and if questioned just lie about why you made it), and that it will tend to hit the least problematic of the paid editors (brand new ones creating promotional articles) at the cost of adding another barrier to involvement in the project and creating an atmosphere of distrust where new editors need to prove their innocence. It might be worth exploring, but I think with the changes to ACC, coupled with G11, we will already be handling the problems around the type of paid editing that this would address. - Bilby (talk) 07:18, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
One of the tells of a throwaway sock is that they don’t engage in dialogue. You think this will encourage UPEs to start creating backstories for their socks? I think it will make them very uncomfortable. Back stories, and dialogue, they risk creating a link to the UPE’s main account. I think it will be effective.
ABF, and distrust offending new editors? How many genunine newcomers really appear one day and write an article on a for-profit topic? I thought genuine newcomers begin by fiddling, and bold newcomers are more than eager to engage in conversation about their interests.
If AfD had become more tough with UPE product, can we add mention of this to the policy. Can we document that undisclosed paid editing is a reason for deletion? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
post facto
So a guy walks into a police station and says "I've been a burglar all my life. Now I've told you, can I continue? Oh, and BTW, can I keep the stuff I nicked?" Or what?Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I think that comparison is off the mark. UPE product is not stolen. I think a better comparison is Guerrilla gardening. After admitting the trespass, the owner decides whether to keep or remove garden. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Not really, SmokeyJoe. For one thing, Wikipedia is not an abandoned vacant plot - it's very much alive. They are sneaking in at night to plant their weeds in the garden we have paid for with our volunteer work. So yes, as the owners, we can decide whether to add fertiliser or a good dose of weed killer. I favour the latter - and pulling up the weeds they planted before they were caught so that they have to refund the customers who ordered them.
And then start thinking what kind of a fence to put around the garden without making too much inconvenience for the legitimate daytime users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
See? My analogy carries further. These guerilla UPEs are planting weeds, or something even more nefarious, even though at a glance they look pretty. I’d like their work to be more easily and quickly rejected. Deletion hides the evidence of long term patterns. Do we all suspect that these throw away socks, excepting the inept, are controlled by familiar Wikipedians working amongst us? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:36, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I think tracking should be dealt with separately; ideally we would keep account of problematic editing with a high potential of re-occurrence regardless of how we deal with it. I realize, though, that typically tool support is the best way to ensure this tracking takes place. Perhaps someone may be interested in developing something that would let admins easily perform a corrective action and log it against suspected problematic editors? (Where to log it is still an open question.) isaacl (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Stepping back out of the garden for a moment, I looked at the quarantine proposal page, and I think it has a lot of potential. The basic concept that new page patrolers could in some manner flag new pages that smell like UPE, and force some kind of scrutiny before the pages go live in mainspace, is a good one. I appreciate the concern about it raising a new obstacle to new users who just want to join Wikipedia, but it's certainly better than speedy deletion in that regard, and not really any worse than getting a notability tag on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:22, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I think I'm more inclined to prefer a problematic article going through the speedy deletion process in order to delete promotional material swiftly. That does put trust in the reviewing admin, however, to adequately evaluate the promotional nature of the article. Additionally, although personally I think new good-faith editors should be able to create a new article that doesn't smell like a pure publicity effort, that may be snobbery on my part, and perhaps I should be more forgiving. isaacl (talk) 16:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Speedy deletion as a response to suspected UPE violation is out of proportion and was clearly rejected at the last WT:CSD discussion. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, speedy deletion is a response for promotional content. What type of non-promotional content did you have in mind to be quarantined? If the issue is that the community isn't able to agree that an article is promotional, then I think we need to address that, so we can deal with public relations efforts swiftly, whether it is by deletion, quarantine, or some other procedure. I realize, of course, that trying to establish standards in Wikipedia is hard. Nonetheless, I think it may be necessary for lasting change to occur. isaacl (talk) 22:50, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I think the issue the community has isn't so much about defining it, as about taking an irreversible-ish action without enough scrutiny. Promotion isn't as clear-cut as nonsense pages or attack pages. There is more opportunity for more eyes in a quarantine process. Also, there is a choice between quarantining all promotional-looking pages, or quarantining only those that are both promotional and written by an account that looks like it is paid and undisclosed. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Obviously I am not talking about G11-eligible new pages. Sub G11. About a company, its product, or its founder, but not requiring a complete restart per the G11 requirement. The issue is the undisclosed paid editor, suspected. Not speediable. Tony says AfD is starting to engage, but AfD always goes to content, and the issue with this policy is the editor. How to encourage the genuine newcomer to explain, and to make it uncomfortable for the UPE SOCKer? In my experience, UPEs never engage in dialogue, at AfD or elsewhere, and its not hard to work out why. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I guess my problem is that I'm more hard line than those who participate in deletion discussions. Well, we already have a move to draft space as a potential outcome of a deletion discussion. If an article appears non-promotional but conflict-of-interest concerns remain, perhaps it can be moved with a special accelerated clock for deletion, shorter than the standard six months. isaacl (talk) 23:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Quarantining and moving to user draft space are close to being the same thing. But unlike drafts, there could be an opportunity for multiple editors to promptly see the situation and to try to deal with issues of ToU or policy violations. And I think we are talking about promotional content, just not unambiguously promotional as per G11. (Sort of like: not stinky enough for CSD, but too stinky to wait for AfD.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Moving to draft space would fail to convey the message. Much of the time, the UPE page is in draft space and needs to be quarantined from there. I suspect some UPE sponsors are partially satisfied by a live page in draft space. The page needs to be blanked and templated as suspected TOU violating UPE product, in words that the sponsor will understand. Isaacl, hard line is great, but “nothing but deletion” means very very soft when it is not clear cut. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:32, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure much is gained by moving a draft article out of draft space to somewhere else where the established deletion process for drafts won't take effect. However I understand the difficulty in getting a promotional draft deleted, as deletion discussion participants seem to be giving drafts more leeway to be improved. But the only way for a change to truly take hold is to build a consensus to delete these drafts more rapidly. Some people think an existing draft will help people write a new article, but I think the reverse can be true: an existing article puts an existing structure in place, and many will be reluctant to rewrite from scratch, even if it is warranted. isaacl (talk) 00:40, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
"But the only way for a change to truly take hold is to build a consensus to delete these drafts more rapidly"? That is a route taking you straight to stalemate. There will not be consensus to delete something on mere suspicion. That is that status quo. By default, it means unproven UPE product stays indefinitely. It gives the UPEs clear incentive to continue as they do, using throwaway socks, staying under the radar. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
I know, that's why I said earlier it would be hard. But it's at the crux of the problem: until there is agreement on how to deal with conflict-of-interest editing, the community will continue to argue about what to do, ad nauseam. I fully agree we need to provide disincentives for undesirable behaviour, but in many areas the community (well, the portion that is sufficiently motivated to discuss these topics) doesn't agree upon what behaviour is desirable. (*) And that is the underlying stalemate that needs to be resolved.
(*) The complementary problem is that English Wikipedia's traditional way of making decisions does not scale and is not conducive to determining what option will bring the most benefit (or the least harm) to the most people. So there might well be an option that would make most people happy, including the silent majority, but our approach of "straw poll followed by arguing with individuals" is unable to figure it out. isaacl (talk) 01:44, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Strong oppose if it weren't clear by my comments above, I'll put a formal !vote here. I think this proposal is a waste of time. We already deal with this crap fine now: if it is UPE, we delete it. End of story. If you want to argue that we don't always do that, AfD is broken, etc. then this proposal will only make it harder to delete things and will give spammers a weapon to bludgeon us with our own TOU: We've declared! We're following your policy! You can't delete this and/or block us! is already a common refrain from spammers.As I have said many times before, and this page has stated since either December or January: disclosure is only the first step. Individuals who disclose must also follow the local policies and guidelines of the English Wikipedia, which the vast majority of them don't. While following the TOU is important, we need to ask ourselves why it is important. It isn't just because our readers have a right to know that they are reading a commissioned advertisement (in addition to being a moral right, this may in fact be a legal right depending on the country of jurisdiction): most of them will never know something is commissioned because they never make their way to a talk page.No, the main reason we have the declaration process is because it enables those of us who are frequent editors to review potentially problematic articles. We are getting better at it. I think speedy deletion should be available here, but it isn't now (and I know it didn't gain consensus a year ago, but will one day as the community becomes more aware of the flood here.) What is available is our normal means of enforcing behavioral and content policies: deletion via XfD/PROD and blocks. This proposal would make both of those harder, and would give spammers a weapon once they declare. There is no reason to create a super-draft-space (which is all this is) with more bureaucracy when the end result would be that it is harder to delete spam, either by G11 or XfD, or block the spammers who flood us with it. And yes, I'd rather it be in mainspace where we actually have a shot of deleting or fixing it than in some process wonkery spam-only procedure the promises to be just as broken as AfC and MfD are at dealing with it in drafts. No, this is a step in the opposite direction. TonyBallioni (talk) 11:18, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
AfD and PROD are not broken. Neither is G11. They work quite well in my opinion. AfC and MfD are broken, and this wound just make that worse. I view this proposal as making it easier for spammers to break local policies on the English Wikipedia and to WikiLawyer us to no end. I’d sooner just not enforce the TOU than deal with it this way. This is especially the case as we’ve seen what is in my mind the failure of AfC to be able to actually handle promo editing. Creating AfC 2.0 will in no way help this problem and will only make it easier to flood mainspace with trash. Again, disclosure is not an end in itself here: it is a means to discover potentially problematic content. If we’ve already determined something is problematic (which is why it would be flagged as UPE...) we have existing methods under local policy to deal with it without super-draftspace. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:54, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
I think your wrong about what this process would do, but you might not be. Loopy is not quite the right word, can I colour it with “challenging”. I’ve been searching AfD for deletions due to UPE, and am not finding them, instead UPE product is deleted for being promotion and for lack of acceptable sources. Can you point to any examples? Yes, this was more about AfC than mainspace, and I think AfC stuff should be coupled to NPP, which I think works well. I think AfC is broken, from inception, just like the article incubator, and that Draftspace as a whole is a net negative. MfD works well for everything except drafts. I don’t think MfD can fix AfC. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
I’d have to go through my nominations. I typically frame it as native advertising/NOTSPAM rather than UPE, though I’ll mention the TOU when need be. As I alluded to above, while I am fine enforcing the TOU through blocks and deletion, I prefer doing it through local policies: excessive focus on the declaration makes us lose sight of what the declaration is supposed to achieve: review and quality control. I suppose my premise is that probably 90%+ of paid drafts should be deleted under N or NOT. This includes the ones that have declared. I’ve seen plenty of declared paid editors get mad because they feel targeted because they declare and say something along the lines of “But I followed the rules!” ignoring the fact that the rules exist in part so that their articles can be targeted for quality control, which includes deletion.I suppose my biggest concern with this proposal is that what it tries to deal with are edge cases where the editor is assumed to be engaged. In my experience, these are some of the most difficult cases to deal with and any bureaucratic step we add (such as AfC or even the user page declaration) is only thrown in our face as creating a right to an article if it is used. What I see this creating is AfDs where “Keep— declared after it was quarantined.” becomes a thing. I’d rather just test my luck at AfD on the merits. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:43, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Next step
I've got very mixed feelings on the above discussion. I too am frustrated by the difficulty of removing articles authored by UPEs and by the length of time AfD takes. But I also believe that "quarantine" looks too complicated and could have negative effects.
I'll suggest looking for another solution to move the ball forward. We've made great progress over the last year or so in getting the tools to stop paid advocacy. For example:
Prohibiting the use of admin tools for paid editing (WP:Admin), and several others
Ultimately, we need to have a bright line rule, i.e. no paid editing on article pages, but disclosed paid editing on talk pages is fine. This has been part of WP:COI forever, but unlike other guidelines folks assume that they can just ignore it. Making it a policy - separate from this page or WP:COI, would give it much sharper teeth. We could take most of the wording from WP:COI, but I think the shorter and simpler, the better. Just to start the discussion on wording, I'll suggest:
"
paid editors are prohibited from editing articles on topics they are compensated for;
they may propose changes to articles on talk pages (by using the {{request edit}} template), or by posting a note at the COI noticeboard, so that their proposed changes can be peer reviewed;
paid editors may not create new articles, except by submitting them via the Articles for Creation (AfC) process;
articles newly created by paid editors that are not approved by the Articles for Creation (AfC) process may be deleted by any administrator;
paid editors may not act as a reviewer of affected article(s) at AfC, new pages patrol or elsewhere;
they must respect other editors by keeping discussions concise, and by refraining from multiple submissions of similar material at AfC.
For the purposes of this policy Wikipedians-in-Residence, and editors paid by the Wikimedia Foundation or its affiliates shall not be considered paid editors."
If folks here consider this a step too far, I've got another proposal concerning the "touting of securities" or pump and dump
The Securities Act of 1933 seeks to prevent fraud in securities trading and makes it unlawful to promote the sale of securities unless 3 disclosures are made:
the nature of the compensation (e.g. payment in cash or securities)
the source of the compensation (i.e. the client), and
the amount of the compensation
This applies to any security offered to (almost) any U.S. resident - see U.S. person. "Offered" is defined very broadly - the security only needs to be "described". I've put some details in the essay WP:Deceptive advertising
This page seems to be the place to put this. The ToU prohibits fraud in particular, and unlawful activity in general on Wikipedia. The law is all about disclosure of paid communication. And I'd like to emphasize that this applies to some of our worst paid editing problems, e.g. binary options and retail forex. It might help if . folks have details about this type of regulation in Europe, the UK, or elsewhere. Please let me know what you think. Smallbones(smalltalk)03:00, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
It is incorrect to say that the WP:COI guideline has had "no paid editing on article pages" forever - it doesn't have that now, and hasn't had it in the past. It does say that direct editing of articles is "very strongly discourage" but it is not banned. - Bilby (talk) 15:39, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
You've hit the nail right on the head on why this needs to be a policy. Guidelines do not have strict rules and prohibitions, so the guideline says paid editing on articles is "very strongly discouraged." It seems clear enough - everybody should avoid paid editing of articles except in extraordinary cases, and even then they should discuss why they violated this particular guideline. The problem is that essentially every paid editor completely ignores the guideline. That's just not how guidelines are supposed to work.
Let me just give a few examples of guidelines that almost nobody ignores, so that people can see the difference in how WP:COI is treated:
from WP:AGF "editors should not attribute the actions being criticized to malice unless there is specific evidence of such."
from WP:POINT "When you have a point to make, use direct discussion only"
from WP:DISRUPT "Accounts used primarily for disruption may be blocked indefinitely."
from (WP:GAMING) "Disruption of any kind merits being warned (or blocked) by an administrator. Violating the principles of Wikipedia's behavior guidelines may prejudice the decision of administrators or the Arbitration Committee."
Guidelines are not simply ignored whenever you feel like it. So let us underline for paid editors who wish to disrupt, game the system and who don't assume good faith or intend to follow our guidelines, that they can be blocked for ignoring WP:COI.
The easiest way to do this is to make this section policy. Perhaps I should add an extra point
You may be blocked ...
If you think that the COI guideline is at fault by only saying "very strongly discouraged" then we can quickly change that (if you are serious), but the best way will be to make this section policy. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:56, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
This is interesting, if a tad muddled. I guess the point is that your statement:
"Guidelines are not simply ignored whenever you feel like it. So let us underline for paid editors who wish to disrupt, game the system and who don't assume good faith or intend to follow our guidelines, that they can be blocked for ignoring WP:COI."
is irrelevant, as paid editors are not ignoring the WP:COI guideline if they edit articles directly, as they are not banned from editing those articles. If you wish to propose that paid editors should not be allowed to edit articles directly, you can do so and seek consensus for the new rule, but in doing so you are making a change that is not currently supported by the COI guideline. - Bilby (talk) 18:15, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
I think I notice the UPEs writing promotion fall nearly cleanly into two categories: (1) the inept writing WP:CSD#G11-eligible pages; and (2) the clever, who write pages that appear to easily pass G11, and are even tough to argue "fails WP:NCORP", with attractive wikimarkup and well-formatted WP:Reference bombing. The second, the cleave UPEs, are probably all throw away socks of a relatively small number of experienced Wikipedians.
Should these clever suspect UPEs be refereed to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations? I think it is not Wikipedia:CheckUser#Fishing, because, there is a clear and objective reason to suspect sockpuppetry. I think it is not McCarthyism, because the checkuser policies and procedures are well regulated.
When the UPE product is deleted, the UPE contribution history is inaccessible to most Wikipedians, and connecting the patterns is not possible for for non-admins. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:50, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
they can be - if there is a reasonable suspicion of sockpuppetry, you can still request a CU where the master is unknown. - Bilby (talk) 04:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
You can request it if you don't know the master, in part in order to identify who the master is. If the original master isn't identified, my assumption is that we;d just assign it to the oldest identified account. - Bilby (talk) 06:40, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
That can vary to some extent with which checkuser responds. My experience has been that some of them are very hostile to being asked to run a CHU without strong evidence, as what they (not I) call a "fishing expedition". --Tryptofish (talk) 16:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
This is always the case, though, as we haven't emphasized consistent standards so much as independent interpretation. That said, WP:NOTFISHING does give some support to allowing CU where the master hasn't been identified. I guess the problem is how strong a case you need to argue that it is a sock of an unknown master account. - Bilby (talk) 17:34, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
I've raised this issue before. It would be good to get more clarity on what is or is not considered suspect enough to run a check, but ultimately, it is up to the CUs to decide and it is best not to discuss what makes a user suspicious in public. SPI is poorly suited to such requests though as there is no master and clerks are trained to decline CU unless there is evidence of socking. I ask CUs via email for checks fairly regularly and they normally oblige. However, in the last year or so, UPEs in general seem to have gotten much better at avoiding getting caught by CU and IMO it's becoming less and less effective as a tool to combat UPE. SmartSE (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Clarification of indirect paid editing
I've been thinking about this for a while.
In light of the fact that the TOU allows for local-project policies having more stringent requirements than the TOU themselves set, I propose that we clarify the term "indirect paid editing" to include something along the lines of "editing a Wikipedia article or article talk page while being compensated by the subject of the article, even if the editor isn't compensated directly for editing Wikipedia."
This is what I always considered "indirect editing" to mean, and on occasion I have stated that understanding to editors who are engaging in promotional activity on Wikipedia in behalf of their employer or client even though the employer isn't paying them to edit here. A recent example that comes to mind is the CEO of a company editing his company's article. He's clearly being paid by his company, it's more than a mere conflict of interest, but he isn't being paid to edit on Wikipedia. ~Anachronist (talk) 18:52, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
I can certainly agree that there are cases like that, that should indeed be considered a form of paid editing, but I can also envision plenty of cases where it is a WP:COI without rising to the level of being paid editing as well. I'm not sure how to draw the line between those. If there were a biographical page about a CEO, made notable by that person's status as the CEO of the company, and that CEO edited the biography, that would be a COI issue, but I wouldn't treat it as paid editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
Consider the case of someone who works in Apple's music division making an edit to an article on the iPhone. I appreciate that some have previously expressed the view that this should be considered paid editing. However it would be nice to strike a balance, since often employees will follow their companies' news and so be well-positioned to provide reliably sourced, neutral point of view updates. isaacl (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
This is my concern as well - we can slowly stretch the definition of paid editing if that's really an approach we want, but defining it as "you get paid by the organisation, even if you don't get paid to edit" is placing it in an ugly grey area with no clear point of demarcation. The current understanding, that if you get paid to edit Wikipedia then you are a paid editor, seems like a clear point to distinguish between paid editing and other COI edits. - Bilby (talk) 23:53, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
@Bilby: That misses the point of my original question, which is about indirect paid editing. Direct paid editing is when you get paid to edit Wikipedia. That is obvious. That isn't what I'm trying to discuss in this thread. The policy mentions indirect paid editing without clearly defining what that means. And I am proposing that indirect paid editing includes the case where your employer or client is paying you, but isn't explicitly paying you to edit Wikipedia.
A public relations employee wouldn't have "editing Wikipedia" as a requirement in the job description. A PR employee isn't being paid directly to edit here, but shows up on his own accord to engage in promotion. That is indirect paid editing. And I propose that this should extend to non-marketing people as well, who are clearly attempting to use Wikipedia as a publicity platform for their employer or client — and that would include a CEO as in my previous example. ~Anachronist (talk) 07:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
No, if we extend it to non-marketing people we walk down a slope that is going to kill most of the distinction between "paid" and COI. It is reasonable to expect that if you are paid to promote a company, and you edit WP about the company, then you are being paid to edit WP even if it isn't specifically in your job description. But just being an employee of a company and editing WP doesn't make you a paid editor - it only makes you a COI editor. We need some sort of solid line to make sure that the distinction means something. - Bilby (talk) 08:07, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Bilby and Isaacl. And it wouldn't really accomplish anything practical to extend the definition in this way. We already have a COI guideline, and there really isn't anything that "indirectly paid" editors could do that would be harmful without violating COI. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:30, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Again, the comments above do nothing to clarify what is indirect paid editing. It is mentioned in the policy but not defined. The whole point of this section is to work out what that means, and change the policy document accordingly. We aren't talking about extending the definition, this is all about clarifying the existing policy. At the moment it isn't clear. Let's not be sidetracked. The policy already extends "paid editing" to indirect paid editing. ~Anachronist (talk) 05:53, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
My understanding was that "indirect paid editing" is those who are paid to write material for WP, but then have another person post the actual content. They've written the copy, intending to have it added here, but claim that as they didn't edit directly they don't need to disclose. - Bilby (talk) 06:07, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I didn't realize until now that this is what you meant. I've looked through the entire policy page to see where it refers to "indirect paid editing", and it really does not delineate that as a different category of paid editing. The closest I found was this sentence in the lead: If you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for your contributions to Wikipedia, either directly or indirectly, you must disclose who is paying you to edit (your "employer"), who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. That isn't talking about indirect edits so much as indirect compensation. So an editor who just happens to be working for a company is getting paid directly for their work for the company, and the nature of their work may determine whether this is paid editing or just COI. What "indirect" means here is where the company pays a third-party broker, and the broker pays the editor to make the edits: we don't let that editor say "I never got any money from the company" as an excuse. In other words the "employer" and the "client" can be two different entities. I would be OK with making that clearer. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:49, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Would it help to make this change?
If you receive, or expect to receive, compensation for your contributions to Wikipedia, either directly or indirectly, you must disclose who is paying you to edit (your "employer"), who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. It does not matter whether you are paid directly by the client, or paid indirectly by an employer on behalf of the client.
OK, that looks good. There has been confusion, from me and others, as to where to draw the line, and I started this discussion to define that line.
As you proposed, that line is defined by indirect compensation. That's fine. I would still argue that editors who get paid to engage in marketing, promotion, or public relations, and who edit Wikipedia with that intention, should also be classified as a paid editor regardless of whether Wikipedia is in their job description, because they are still receiving payment for executing their duties, using Wikipedia as a platform to do so.
That is far more than just a COI. That falls squarely into paid editing territory, although they aren't being paid directly to edit Wikipedia. They are being paid directly to engage in PR, and they use Wikipedia as one of their tools to do their job for their employer or client.
As an analogy, if you're a carpenter, you're being compensated directly for doing carpentry. If, for example, the job involves cutting wood planks, your customer or supervisor doesn't care, whether you use a table saw or a hand saw to cut wood, as long as the wood gets cut. You're paid directly to cut wood, but indirectly to use a specific tool to get that job done. ~Anachronist (talk) 18:00, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. So I think that there are two components to what we are discussing here. One is simply to define what the word "indirect" meant, and I think my suggestion does that. A separate aspect is what you just described. This policy page has never, to my recollection, used the word "indirect" to mean that, so this brings us back to whether we should extend the definition in some way, as opposed to clarifying what the word meant. The question then becomes whether we want to spell out a specific rule for public relations employees separately from employees as a whole. Per the comments already made by other editors, it seems obvious that someone editing about a company as a marketing person for that company is making paid edits, whether or not the word "Wikipedia" is in their job description. I suppose we could say that explicitly, but it's going to be difficult to delineate the distinction between marketing employees and other employees. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I looked at where we might (or might not) do something like that. I think the most relevant place on the page is where the terms are defined and "employer" is defined as: Employer: the person or organization that pays a user to contribute to Wikipedia, whether that user has a freelance contract with the payer, has no contract, is a salaried employee of the payer, or is a salaried employee of another organization. So if the employer pays a user to make the edits here, that's obviously paid editing (and what you are calling "direct"). If the employer pays a user for work that has nothing to do with publicity, then that's a COI but not paid editing. So we are talking about when the employer pays the user to generate good publicity for the company, but never spelled out that this should be accomplished by editing here. As I see it, they are still paying the "user to contribute to Wikipedia", and editors here need not care what the employment terms are. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I agree we should say something like that explicitly. I remember incidents where a company PR person insisted "I'm not being paid to edit here" and that situation should be addressed. I have also encountered several marketers and PR people who come to Wikipedia wanting to do the right thing, be transparent, engage on talk pages, and so on. They would have no problem with putting a {{paid}} template on their user page, since they already make similar disclosures such as "I am the Public Relations Manager for XYZ company." And then there are cases when the owner of a small company gets on Wikipedia to engage in publicity activities because they don't have a marketing or PR person among their employees. I recently encountered a situation like that. An editor who wrote a promotional draft told me he's the company's founder, therefore he wasn't being paid to edit here, but when I explained that promoting his business on Wikipedia may indirectly benefit him personally, he agreed to put a paid editing template on his user page. I think he realized, also, that not doing so would risk his account being blocked because his contributions gave every appearance of an undisclosed paid editor. He wasn't trying to hide anything and wanted to do the right thing. I may have been stretching the definition of "indirect" then, but for that situation it would have been nice to have a clearer policy on the meaning of "indirect". ~Anachronist (talk) 19:10, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Oh, one other example comes to mind: I recall a temporary intern who was ordered by her supervisor to promote the company on Wikipedia, but she insisted she was an unpaid or volunteer intern, therefore cannot be considered a paid editor. I honestly didn't know how to respond to that. As a volunteer or unpaid intern working in behalf of an employer who orders you to edit Wikipedia but doesn't pay you money, are you still being compensated? Possibly yes, because if you find no value in that position, you wouldn't be in it, therefore you must be getting compensated somehow, even if intangibly. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:17, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
About interns, the last sentence of the "Meaning of "employer, client, and affiliation"" section actually makes it crystal clear. One can just point to that. And compensation is not limited to money. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:43, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
About the other part:
Employer: the person or organization that pays a user to contribute to Wikipedia, whether that user has a freelance contract with the payer, has no contract, is a salaried employee of the payer, or is a salaried employee of another organization. Payment to contribute to Wikipedia includes payment for publicity on behalf of the client in any venue, when it includes edits here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "when it includes edits here". I think it kind of contradicts the point that payments made for advertising channels in general still meet the criteria of a paid editor. How about changing the text to something like this:
Employer: the person or organization that pays a user, either directly or through intermediaries, for contributions to Wikipedia. This includes users on contract with the payer, users without a contract, salaried employees of the payer, and salaried employees of other organizations. Users being compensated for any publicity efforts are deemed to be paid for their contributions to Wikipedia related to the employer.
I agree with your criticism of the version that I had suggested. As for your suggestion, I find it confusing to present it as a definition of "employer" that then goes on to talk about different kinds of users. I'd also like something more succinct. I'm still thinking about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
I made the first of those two changes (first of two boxes). I don't intend to do the second unless other editors express support for doing it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I like the clarification. Yes, it explains what should be obvious - if you are a PR person and you edit for a client you can not claim that your editing is incidental if it is not a contracted line item - but it seems "obvious" is just another word for loophole in the paid editing world. Jbh Talk20:38, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I assume you mean the second one, the one that I did not make. I'm certainly open to including it too, if there is consensus, but I didn't feel comfortable implementing it without clearer support on the talk page. I'm still concerned that, even if we add such a clarification, the way I drafted it here probably needs more polishing. I don't feel like it's all that clearly written, and I'm not sure that there isn't a better place on the page to locate it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:37, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I like them both - anything that closes loopholes is something I am all for. True, the 'payment for publicity' sentence could be better worded but I can not think of how just now - I'll think on it a bit... Jbh Talk23:46, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
How about this, incorporating part of what Isaacl suggested:
Employer: the person or organization that pays a user to contribute to Wikipedia, whether that user has a freelance contract with the payer, has no contract, is a salaried employee of the payer, or is a salaried employee of another organization. Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors.
Since it's really more about compensation than about the employer, I think it would be better to place it a few lines down at:
Payment or compensation: money, goods or services. Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors, regardless of whether they were hiredcompensated specifically to edit Wikipedia.
I like breaking up the sentence regarding the employer into two, to emphasize the first part is the actual definition, while the second part are some (but not necessarily all) examples of specific employment situations. How about the following:
Employer: the person or organization that pays, either directly or through intermediaries, a user to contribute to Wikipedia. This includes cases where the employer has hired the user as an employee, has engaged the user under a freelance contract, is compensating the user without a contract, or is compensating the user through the user's employment by another organization.
Regarding the change to the section on payment, to avoid getting back into the question of what it means to be hired, I suggest dropping the final clause. That is:
Payment or compensation: money, goods or services. Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors.
As long as we don't add the new stuff to the "employer" line, I think you are right, and splitting it into two sentences is a good idea. About the "payment or compensation" line, I could go either way depending on what other editors think, but I think an advantage of that last phrase is that it makes the meaning a lot clearer, as in: "you don't get to claim that you are not a paid editor just because you're contract did not mention Wikipedia". But you raise a valid point about "hired". How about just changing it to "compensated"? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:25, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Sure, using "compensated" is helpful. I don't have a big issue with making the implicit—"any publicity efforts" including "not necessarily Wikipedia in particular"—explicit. isaacl (talk) 21:29, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
I have in the past advised new editors that if they are required or expected to edit Wikipedia as part of their job responsibilities, or if doing so is likely to enhance their professional reputation or job assessment, they should be considered to be paid editors, even if none of their payment is specifically for making edits. DES(talk)DESiegel Contribs17:08, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
That is why I added (some time ago, and after discussion) the statement that unpaid interns are considered paid editors if they edit as part of their internships. DES(talk)DESiegel Contribs17:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
To recap, here is the last set of proposed changes:
Employer: the person or organization that pays, either directly or through intermediaries, a user to contribute to Wikipedia. This includes cases where the employer has hired the user as an employee, has engaged the user under a freelance contract, is compensating the user without a contract, or is compensating the user through the user's employment by another organization.
Payment or compensation: money, goods or services. Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors, regardless of whether they were compensated specifically to edit Wikipedia.
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Should Wikipedians be allowed to use community granted tools in exchange for money?. Regards:) Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 07:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
Done. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:09, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
