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:I still agree that the other kind of paid editing however, the "mercenaries" as I call them, should be banned. Those who edit Misplaced Pages professionally and are more or less unrelated to the companies they make pages on, aside from being hired to do so because of their expertise in Misplaced Pages rules and how to sidestep them to make promotional pieces. These are far more problematic because they are hard to detect.-- <small>]</small><font size="3" face =times new roman>†</font><small>]</small> 03:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
:I still agree that the other kind of paid editing however, the "mercenaries" as I call them, should be banned. Those who edit Misplaced Pages professionally and are more or less unrelated to the companies they make pages on, aside from being hired to do so because of their expertise in Misplaced Pages rules and how to sidestep them to make promotional pieces. These are far more problematic because they are hard to detect.-- <small>]</small><font size="3" face =times new roman>†</font><small>]</small> 03:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
* '''Support''' paid advocacy is a conflict of interest with summarizing truthfully. ] (]) 02:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Can the section title please be changed? It isn't about WP:BRIGHTLINE, which is a shortcut that leads to this page at the moment for some possibly not very good reason, but about WP:No paid advocacy. Or would this mess up the RFC system? W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I think we should stop using "brightline" altogether regarding this proposal. It's obtuse, confusing, and uninformative. Bright-line rule is, I suppose, rather obscure technical law lingo. I'm a well-read, educated person and I've never seven heard of it until now. Misplaced Pages needs less jargon amongst editors, not more. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:34, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree there's confusion. An editor on Jimbo's page referred to a simple "bright line rule." but didn't mean Misplaced Pages:Bright lines. Instead meant this proposal, which confusingly has a redirect from WP:BRIGHTLINE. I suggest that the redirect be removed, partly due to confusion, and partly because the proposed rule, while it deserves serious consideration, is not a Bright-line rule.--SPhilbrick(Talk)11:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Agree that a prohibition on editing by paid advocates isn't a bright-line rule NOW. Perhaps it ought to be. However, I see some burgeoning potential issues - such as determining who is a "paid advocate." At present, craigslist abounds with "writing gigs" which are nothing but solicitations to enter positive comments in electronic media on broadcast music (increasing the "buzz" on new music releases for obvious reasons to the marketers of the music) and other commercial ventures. But Misplaced Pages has enough to cope with without gaining an undeserved reputation as a place where editors can shill for commercial ventures. I'd like to see proven cases of paid advocacy added to the Bright-Lines as a cause for banning an editor.loupgarous (talk) 20:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose The methods that allow someone with a COI to request an edit are broken and backlogged 6+ months, and AFC is a mess too. In the absence of effective ways to work within the proposed rule, making it a policy will just lead COI to violate it, and once they do, why abide by all our other policies if we are going to block them anyway. If anything is to be done, we need to deal with the issue in a comprehensive fashion, dealing both with reducing Bias and other problems that COI editors can introduce, while simultaneously making it more attractive for those COI editors to work with us, not against us. Monty84517:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
To be fair, a good one out of five COI editors that pop up on IRC in #wikipedia-en-help are unhelpable due to having a serious conflict of interest; the rest are rather more reasonable or are unhelpable for other reasons beyond their control (i.e. language barriers). Also, the same ratio of COI editors actually read Misplaced Pages's policies, so even the ones who are helpable often ask why their promo piece has been denied at AfC. —Jeremyv^_^v14:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support This is a very minimalist policy, and I understand why that is. But I think that it may be too minimalist, especially in that it does not address AfCs, fails to take into consideration COI editors on talk pages sometimes functioning as de facto "managing editors" or straw bosses, cracking the whip in their articles. It contains no method of disclosing to readers when articles contain content that originated from the subject of the article. Given the gravity of the situation, and the resistance to even cosmetic change from the "community," I wonder if this really is a situation in which Jimbo Wales or the WMF needs to take the lead. After all, it is their brand whose value that has been harmed by COI editors. Given the utter absence of understanding of this issue by Misplaced Pages volunteers, I fear that there is really no other recourse as a practical matter. They need to step up to the plate and come out from under their desks. If they don't, then they are the ones harmed, their reputations are hurt, the reputation of their product put in harm's way. As a person who is not paid, as just a hobbyist, I can't see myself getting worked up into a lather when the proprietor of a business, even a nonprofit one, allows his property to be degraded as has happened with Misplaced Pages and its persistent COI problem. Coretheapple (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support many people claim that our policy regarding public relations on Misplaced Pages is confusing. This should solve that problem. In reality the Bright Line rule has been accepted for a long time now - practice sometimes outruns actual written policy here - but we just need to officially confirm that this is policy. The content shouldn't be contentious - advocacy is prohibited, so paid advocacy should obviously also be prohibited. This just gives a method that PR firms can use to avoid the problems posed by the already prohibited paid advocacy. I would just like to see a clean up-or-down decision on the Bright Line rule, there should not be anything difficult about it.
(EC) with the comment immediately above. Let's please keep this to one issue at a time. If I read your opinion correctly, I'll suggest you put in "Support" for this and take up other issues later. Let's make this clean and simple. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
On the contrary, I'm leaning to oppose, as this rule, if adopted, would implicitly "legalize" practices that are just as bad as the ones prohibited here. Coretheapple (talk) 19:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi Core, I know that the kind of obeying-the-COI-guideline editing that goes on (for example at BP) deeply disturbs you, and that you would like to see it banned. I respect that. But I cannot imagine that you actually oppose Brightline, per se! If you oppose this, it would be a tragic example of an effort "eating itself" (of "the left will eat itself" fame). Getting a core financial COI policy into place is essential for Misplaced Pages. It would also provide a base camp for your Everest-sized goals. Jytdog (talk) 19:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
They really aren't , compared to the real world. Misplaced Pages is way behind on COI and, especially, in disclosure to readers that articles contain content suggested or written by the subjects of articles. The second sentence of this proposal is what worries me. If if were removed I wouldn't object to it, but it specifically sanctions practices that can be and are abused. Coretheapple (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Despite my misgivings I've changed this to "support," as plainly the culture here is so welcoming to COI that this very modest proposal hasn't a chance anyway. Coretheapple (talk) 21:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support I think that minimal is probably sufficient, because paid editing per se is not against policy, only subversive paid editing. Accordingly, what seems to be needed immediately is a basic framework, which can be built upon later, as appropriate. As it stands, this joker at Wikiexperts is just acting like he can ride in on a moral high horse and try to misappropriate "the project" for his (and his benefactors) private ends.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑17:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support - Misplaced Pages needs a clear, written policy on financial COI, like every other major non-profit. We owe it to to ourselves, and to the public that trusts us, to get this done. The proposed policy is concise and focused on the key issue, and is our practice anyway, and should be accepted as is. Jytdog (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
This is an enormous change, but I think it is one we need to make if Misplaced Pages is to adjust to the realities of being a Top 10 website. Support.AGK19:10, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Very strong support. I actually had a little bit of a difficult time with this at first. But I have to admit that Misplaced Pages has a number of articles with paid promotional advocacy in very unusual places that, to me, seem rather blatant in their promotional tone and content. We all seem to focus on the major corporations and their marketing firms and departments, but forget that even individuals with smaller monetary gain are at work on Misplaced Pages. One city article I work on has a major contributor that has managed to stick content about their local theater in almost every single section of the page. Why a city article would need a promotional image of a theatrical production uploaded by the director/writer of the production and executive director of the theatre (as well as it's founder) seems to me to be a valid example of paid advocacy. Attempting to do anything about it becomes nothing but accusations against those that bring up their COI and battleground behavior to keep their promotional content in. As Wikipedians, many of us can recognize in the history of many articles where actors, politicians and even just everyday people, attempt to add content that they have either gained financially from or are attempting to. We have debated the issue of having been an employee verses being currently employed by a company and whether that constitutes paid advocacy and I believe the consensus is that, being paid by a company to work in unrelated areas that are not related to publicity, promotion or PR do not constitute paid advocacy or paid editing. University professors are paid by their college for their expertise, but are not paid to promote the university or themselves by editing on ancient history (using your own reference is a different subject) or other academic subjects and does not constitute paid or advocacy editing. However, being on a politician's campaign staff and editing that persons Misplaced Pages article does. Aside from the BP controversy, I think this "Brightline" policy is something that would indeed help just by the community putting their foot down and just doing what we know is best for the overall project. I strongly believe this is one very good step forward.--Mark Miller (talk) 19:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: For the record, this would also remove all professional scholars from editing in their field of expertise. Lawyers who cannot write about laws. Doctors who cannot write about diseases (most of our mental health articles are curated in part by psychiatrists and psychologists). Economists who cannot write about economics. Mathematicians who cannot write about math. As importantly, I do not see any significant difference between paid advocacy and unpaid advocacy: That is, advocacy is advocacy, whether or not there is a dollar value attached. This proposal ignores the advocacy that is much, much more common, and has in fact been the subject of innumerable disputes on this project, far more so than paid advocacy has been. This essentially says "we're gonna write whatever you want about you, Big Company/Major Institution/Famous Person, and there's not a darn thing you can do about it, because we also control the mechanisms through which you could complain." Meanwhile, we fail to actually curate the existing articles and ensure that they are factually accurate and balanced; in fact, when people try to balance them, they are often driven off by those who advocate for their personal position to take primacy. Advocacy is advocacy, and the failure of this policy to address the very entrenched biases that we already know have caused disruption in this project practically since its inception, while worrying about a small number of areas where a better solution would be more stringent notability policies and improved editing overall, guarantees that we've failed to address the issue. Risker (talk) 19:29, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I fail to see how this would "remove all professional scholars from editing in their field of expertise". I myself am a scientist, please explain what in the proposed policy would prevent me from editing physics or astronomy related articles? Regards. Gaba 20:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Risker, the proposal wouldn't prohibit a professional from editing in the area of his/her expertise. It would prohibit a scientist working for Merck from inserting promotional material about Merck's products (for example), but that's a much narrower restriction. Also, let's keep in mind that this proposal isn't intended to be a complete one-stop solution to the problem of inappropriate advocacy. It addresses one very specific and pernicious type of advocacy (paid editing). We still have a lot of work to do on tendentious and agenda-driven editing across the board. But it seems unrealistic to discard this proposal for failing to address all forms of biased editing. MastCell20:47, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
This proposal assumes that there is a bright line, but there isn't. The line is blury, and many editors will have a hard time understanding where it lies. Moreover, it is very, very unethical to ban somebody from using talk pages to request help for a client. If Misplaced Pages has diddled a person or a company, the employees of agents of that company have every right to point out errors and request help, and even to make corrections themselves if there is an egregious policy violation (such as vandalism of an article). Jehochman20:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
What is the difference between "promotional material about Merck's products" and "a more recent review article, that happens to be more favorable towards Merck's products than the current sources in the article"? Actually, pharma companies are massively regulated, and many of their legal departments simply forbid directly editing the articles, so let's take a more plausible question: What's the difference between "promotional material about Nike's products" and "a scholarly article about Nike's products, that happens to be more favorable than the current sources in the article"? Or "promotional material about 'my' field of psychology" and "scholarly articles about 'my' field of psychology"?
On the one hand, I admire the concision of this page. On the other hand, a somewhat longer "does not include..." list might be useful. For example, it's not clear whether "representative" means (more or less) official representatives, or if even student interns, editing without permission or even knowledge of their employers, are included. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I actually disagree with you, MastCell. It is very, very difficult to draw the line here. For example: Psychologists charge their clients directly here in Canada (i.e., they are not covered by our government health insurance). It is very easy to make the case that they are writing for their own personal financial benefit if they write about certain theories or treatments in which they are expert. We ourselves use Google Scholar to measure the impact of scholarly works, so working to get one's own studies mentioned on-wiki, whether by modifying or writing the article and adding it directly, or alternately by making it incredibly easy for someone else to add it once the article is up....well, there's at least a reputational benefit, and possibly a financial one if it leads to more grants for further studies. The scholar whose graduate degree depends upon the articles created for Misplaced Pages, and the students whose Psychology 101 marks are dependent on making xxx edits and adding yyy characters of content have a genuine, financially-based conflict of interest; failing means taking a hit in their longterm career trajectory. Meanwhile, people advocating that company xxx is are treated with more respect than people who try to provide balancing factual information because the latter are presumed to be paid advocates.
One of the issues here is our incredibly low notability standards. Much of this would not be an issue if we were to look to ourselves and stop acting as if almost everything is notable simply because it got a mention somewhere online. We wouldn't even need to worry about a huge number of these articles if we had reasonable notability standards and if we didn't have to send those articles through a rigorous and lengthy deletion process. We refuse to deal with non-financial COI and advocacy amongst our own editorship while whining endlessly that Company XX has come here and had the nerve to suggest we've got something wrong. Sorry, but I think we need to clean up our own act before we create policies that will be used primarily to gain advantage against opponents in ideologically-based editing. It looks good on paper, but the actual words don't say what you think they say. Risker (talk) 23:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
This kind of 'nothings perfect, so we should do nothing' is plain Misplaced Pages nihilism. Financial COI is a well known, well defined concept in every reputable reference source, and profit and non-profit organization, and has been so much longer than Misplaced Pages has been around. Financial COI does not extend forever. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
This is not the solution, though. A policy against advocacy may be a solution, and advocacy without financial incentive is a much, much more serious problem in this project.
Don't know who wrote this but your statement seems out-of-touch with reality, people regularly pay quite allot for what they want advocated. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
User:Risker for what it is worth, my read is that the proposed policy would also prevent an employee of Greenpeace from editing articles related to global warming. I think your example about an academic scientist writing about his own work and citing his own publication is interesting and difficult. (disclosure, I work at a university). I agree with you, that citing one's own published research on Misplaced Pages would cross a line. And I am OK with that that behavior would be barred. WIth respect to a psychiatrist (or other professional who has their own shingle out) writing about their field in general or even about an area in which they are a specialist... I have no problem with that, especially if they don't try to edit based on their own authority, but instead follow RS rules etc. and not cite their own work. The chance that somebody living nearby would solicit them is pretty darn low. Of course, using his/her User page or Talk pages to solicit business would be way over the line. And if somebody started trumpeting their Misplaced Pages work in ads, I guess we would have to come up with some way to deal with that... this is really a simple thing - basic governance that Misplaced Pages sorely lacks. Another thing - having this policy in place, would dry up Wiki-PR's business in a heartbeat. They would actually have to lie to tell potential clients that what they do is OK. That does not get you far in the business world. Right now, they can honestly say that no policy bars their work. Jytdog (talk) 01:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)(clarify Jytdog (talk) 10:31, 15 October 2013 (UTC))
It wouldn't do a darn thing to Wiki-pr's business, and I have no idea why anyone would think that. As long as a person or organization can see that there's an article about their rival or some other similarly (non)notable organization, there is motivation for them to get someone to write them a Misplaced Pages article. But this will be used against people trying to edit legitimately (I can already see "obvious PR person, ban" when someone tries to remove negative bias over the objections of someone who's been around longer), and it will chill the editing from people who actually are experts in topic areas, where someone could make a case that they might possibly financially benefit. Many of the "scientific" topics that have articles on Misplaced Pages have comparatively few qualified practitioners or experts, and the increased respectability of their topic of expertise in itself can have a positive financial impact for them. More concerning to me is the fact that we've long tolerated biased and COI editing from our "amateur" editors, and unless they become so overwhelmingly blatant that they wind up at Arbcom, almost nothing is done about them. I can recall a situation where dozens of articles were created or edited in a biased means simply to harm the reputations of the subjects of the articles, in relation to what is a well-known contentious scientific topic. That occurred years ago, and yet to this day many of those articles remain heavily biased. The editors who created/expanded the articles included longtime administrators; the person who raised the alarm was an academic who didn't know his way around Misplaced Pages. Guess who got banned? We still see the use of categories to indirectly connect article subjects to subject areas when there is nothing in the article to support such a connection; those are added only by experienced Wikipedians. The basic concept behind this has been used on at least four occasions that I'm aware of to try to remove editors with knowledge and expertise in a topic because it goes against the bias of other editors, to the point that they were actively surfing the web to "prove" that someone might possibly be somehow "making money". This is handing a tool to people who have the time, energy, and tenacity to ride their hobby horses, but will have almost no effect on biased editing for money. Risker (talk) 01:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, can you provide some example where everyday companies (leave your Pfizers and Monsantos out of it for now) spend money in projects that are as blatantly unethical and untenable over the long term - especially PR projects - as paid articles in Misplaced Pages would be under this policy? It would just be a waste of money and it would harm your reputation. I don't understand your argument. And you didn't touch on what I said, that Wiki-PR would have to lie - in public and continuously- to say that they can deliver what they promise. Under common law they would become liable for fraud, in any case. (I paid you for my article, where is it? Um, it was deleted because I am a paid advocate and that is not allowed in Misplaced Pages. Oh, so you misrepresented what you could do for me - give me my money back.) They would be out of business in a heartbeat. (btw, I do hear you - very clearly - about the problems with tendentious editors and incompetent editors... and the worst, incompetendentious editors. I've had to deal with some of them myself and it is hard and ugly. But I don't understand why you bring that up, here. This policy is not meant to address that, so why derail this on that account?) Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 02:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
We have no way of knowing who is getting paid, who is carrying out their advocacy based on personal philosophy, who is doing it to troll, and who is doing it because they saw something they thought was ridiculous in an article and is trying to fix it, and just becomes subsumed in the wikiculture like the thousands of other editors who came before. Focus on neutrality and notability of content, our core encyclopedic values, and it turns out that money isn't the factor here. It's quality of content. Risker (talk) 17:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi Risker. While I appreciate you indenting your reply under mine, you didn't respond to anything I said, but instead brought up new objections. Difficult to have a discussion this way. Jytdog (talk) 22:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Risker is speaking in a very trout-worthy manner, scaring us all. "Mathematicians who cannot write about math." Really? Doctalk07:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
@Jehochman: I am given to understand that people or organisations affected by this policy would be fully entitled to contribute to the article talk page. AGK10:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm new to this issue, but so far I've been unpersuaded that the ill (COI editing) is worse than any supposed cure in place or proposed, including this one. WP editing is inherently a collaboration of people with broad variety of interests and biases. Some percentage of those are paid. So what? Yes, it's not ideal, but I believe our policies and guidelines regarding content mitigate any potential significant harm to WP. With proper attention to proper sourcing and notability, it shouldn't matter whether the editors are paid or not, or what their biases may be. As long as the "voice" is the NPOV, we're good. --B2C19:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support, and I also support elaborating briefly about disclosure by adding "on their user page, and on the talk pages of each article edited" to the end of the lead paragraph. CullenLet's discuss it19:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, largely per Risker above. The quality of Misplaced Pages is till very poor in so many (especially scientific) areas, that we should welcome scholars and scientists to write about their work, rather than prohibit it. I understand where this proposal is coming from, but ignoring the fact that academics might be the most valuable contributors Misplaced Pages can have, is not helpful. --Reinoutr (talk) 19:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't follow this reasoning. Paid advocacy is not going to improve the quality of our scientific coverage. This proposal is not going to prohibit scientists in general from contributing. MastCell20:54, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
modified support Support complete policy ban of undisclosed COIs. Explicitly disclosed COIs should be allowed to continue as per current policy. (Disclosed at the user level, and PER ARTICLE where the COI exists) Gaijin42 (talk) 20:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I also largely agree with Risker on this. Besides, if such a rule were adopted, you'd just drive underground the few who are willing to disclose a COI, unless the WP:OUTING policy were also changed dramatically (abolished and witch hunts encouraged to root out the undeclared COIs). The editors most affected by this proposed ban are the ethical professionals editing in their own filed, who would indeed cease to contribute any content here. Since this bright line idea came from Jimbo's page where the current topic is now certain brand of nationalism, I really don't see you could draw bright line rule for that, even though it's just damaging to Misplaced Pages's credibility... No editing for anyone getting a good feeling from their edits? No edits allowed if they improve your country/ethnicity image? I think this site would be turning into Wikipediocracy really fast if this rule were adopted. Someone not using his real name (talk) 20:10, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. We can require disclosure of paid editing, but we should not ban it completely. If Misplaced Pages writes about somebody or some organization, that person or organization has an absolute right to respond, to correct the record, to point out errors, to request help. If Misplaced Pages has an article about me, but I am handicapped, or don't write well in English, and I need to pay somebody to edit on my behalf to keep my bio free of slander or vandalism that could damage my reputation, would you ban that person? This proposed policy is overly simplistic because it fails to take into account the many possible different situation that could occur. If a company wants to copy edit and format their article (without introducing POV), revert vandalism, report attempts at POV pushing by "haters", why should we prohibit that? Jehochman20:27, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Existing policies on vandalism, NPOV, etc. already exist and are theoretically followed by all editors. "Hired guns" that offer their services over the internet, promising to protect one's investment for the Google hits their article will generate? A very sordid business. Doctalk01:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as written. Although the problem is no doubt real, the proposed phrasing is too broad and runs the risk of driving good faith editors away or underground. Being paid to write an article is one thing. Writing about things you have a financial or other stake in is quite another. We're a community of volunteers and amateurs, not a community of people ignorant of the subject. If I own a comic book I should be entitled to edit the article about the book. If I own a few shares of Apple stock, or used to work for the company (in a non-executive role, and not in PR) I should be able to edit articles about Apple products. If I am a veterinarian I should be able to write about horses. If I went to a college I should be able to edit articles pertaining to the college, even though I have a financial and personal stake in improving the reputation and awareness of that school. The anti-business sentiment that money and career make an editor suspect and corrupt the process, whereas religion, opinion, hobby, belief, or any of the myriad things that draw people to a subject do not (atheists writing articles on atheism, communists writing articles about politics, vegetarians writing about factory farming) is misguided. When a business owner, corporate shill, or other single purpose advocate writes an article out of whole cloth, it's usually obvious and we already have ways to deal with it. The more interesting question regarding what to do about paid writers and company PR departments who actually know how Misplaced Pages works and game it with otherwise reliably sourced, well written articles does not seem to be a huge problem (yet), but it suggests a narrower, more targeted response. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:29, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for many of the reasons given above. The definitions in the proposed policy are too vague, and even were they not it will often be impossible to determine that advocacy is at play or to enforce the policy. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits21:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. We can require disclosure of paid editing, but we should not ban it completely. It won't work, and trying will make things worse. Oppose the shortcut BRIGHTLINE. The proposal is not about bright lines. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose We can strongly discourage paid editing but not ban it. We should try to work with the COI editors to develop a lasting relationship, not declare all out war. KonveyorBelt22:15, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose to "Editors with a financial conflict of interest ... must not edit affected articles directly." I saw a number of scientists who edited pages related to their work, and I am one of them (I did not receive any payment; to the contrary, editing on-wiki damaged my work because I spent too much time here). In most cases, these scientific researchers made reasonable effort to follow all policies. Sometimes, they did not, but it was very easy to fix (here is one of many examples: ). My very best wishes (talk) 22:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure I could support the starting line "Paid advocacy is not allowed...". The objective here isn't to categorically forbid a class of editors from participating here at all. However, I think we should focus on the fact that, while no editor is perfectly neutral, paid advocates have an especially strong incentive not to edit neutrally, and may in fact be forbidden to by their clients if they want to be paid. That's why we call it as we do—it's not just a WP:COI, it's a true conflict of interest. I think we should require, rather than suggest, disclosure, but if those principles are followed, it is not forbidden for the paid advocate to edit. Whether they should be forbidden to edit articles where they have a COI, or just strongly discouraged, is an open question, but in either case transparency should be mandatory. That will allow other editors to check up on it. Seraphimblade22:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose mostly per SmokeyJoe. I also echo his sentiments about the shortcut, though I think it may be appropriate if this page were to become policy. --BDD (talk) 22:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - As Wikidemon notes, "financial stake" is far too vague. There's also the question of enforcement. If an editor is making positive contributions to an article, then we find out he is a "stakeholder", then what? Policies should generally only prohibit things that are actually damaging. NPOV and other content policies already cover the potential damage. Or on the other hand, how is someone supposed to figure this out? Unless a user admits it, or edits from their work computer with an IP address clearly tied to the company, it's practically unprovable. So in most cases it will be unenforceable and in others we may not want to enforce it. Worse, editors who may have otherwise chosen to declare their COI may choose not to to avoid getting blocked. Mr.Z-man23:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Moral support - There needs to be a no paid editing policy. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia first and foremost, not a PR platform. I don't care if they submit a perfect article, we do not need to be seen as allowing people to PR here. However, this is not the policy. ~Charmlet23:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support and Broaden This isn't broad enough. All people whether paid or unpaid should avoid editing articles where they have a conflict of interest. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I've never been paid to edit Misplaced Pages, but I've been paid to write articles for others to publish on Misplaced Pages. I then took that article to DYK of my own accord because it was interesting and DYK-worthy (w/o getting paid). If this policy passes, what stops me from being punished? I've never been accused of not being WP:NPOV or posting articles that failed WP:GNG, so why shouldn't I continue to edit the way I do?--v/r - TP 23:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Support per the fact that paying someone to edit even the most basic encyclopedic article for the greater knowledge of us all is unheard of. Paid editors are here to promote, spin and "protect" the articles they are paid to make "notable". People that engage in this behavior (like MooshiePorkFace (talk·contribs)) are simply here to corrupt this 💕. Doctalk01:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose because I've seen several paid editors who have done their best to learn our ways and write articles that comply with our policies, and that's fine. Removing those just because we fear a selected group who doesn't behave that way is not something we should seek. Also, we have bigger problems than this, even when I realize that this RfC comes as a follow-up to the Morning277 drama. — ΛΧΣ02:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
An example of one of those paid editors that you've seen who have changed their ways from promotion to strictly encyclopedic entries might help sway one such as me. I've never seen one that isn't here to puff up notability. But you will hopefully change my mind with an example. Doctalk02:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support. As much as good faith is necessary, the simple fact is that being paid to edit can not be done in a WP:NPOV manner. If somebody is paying an editor to contribute content, then "the client's wishes" > "neutrality" simply because if the client isn't happy no pay is forthcoming. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to paid editing and paid advocacy, and it's why "edit for pay" is fundamentally and intristically incompatible with Misplaced Pages. - The BushrangerOne ping only03:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
"the simple fact is that being paid to edit can not be done in a WP:NPOV manner" There are some exceptions to that I could see being highly desirable; if large scientific institutes and museums etc hired editors to increase the coverage of science etc, I'd be all in favour of that sort of editing (of course if they edit where they have a COI there is a difference), IRWolfie- (talk) 09:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
...I can sort-of see your point - if, say, the Smithsonian gave a bunch of people $500, a computer, library access, and said "have at it", that would be cool, but that needs to be a "allowed with permission" sort of thing rather than "allowed by default" because, alas, even if that happened the COIPOV paid editors would outnumber them by at least 100:1. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and human nature being what it is, "take out this bad content or I won't pay you what we agreed for your editing" is almost certain to always result in the "bad content" being removed. - The BushrangerOne ping only15:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose It is already policy that advocacy is not acceptable - see WP:NOTADVOCATE. This page is therefore redundant contrary to WP:CREEP. The page seems too obsessed with money rather than the bias which is the real problem for us. If someone can get a gig writing for Misplaced Pages then this is a good thing, not bad. Per Dr Johnson, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money". See also refusing to write for free. Warden (talk) 04:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
"If someone can get a gig writing for Misplaced Pages then this is a good thing, not bad." Writing what? PR bullshit is what. Doctalk05:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for a multitude of reasons. 1: It's often impossible to tell if someone is a paid editor or not. 2: It is perfectly reasonable that a company, knowing it has an employee of good standing here, instructs that editor to update their article. 3: Making this policy would require a fundamental rewrite of several other policies, which discourage paid editing, but don't come close to prohibiting it. 4: It would be much more effective for someone to be required to acknowledge that they engage in paid editing, than to blanket ban it (preferably with a notice on their user and talk pages.) They wouldn't have to disclose their clients, or even if all of their articles are paid-for or not; simply that they engage in the practice. 5: When you get long-term, good-standing editors like TParis who occasionally have, directly or indirectly, received payment for articles, you know this is a daft idea. 6: It would simply drive the smarter paid editors underground, and make them harder to track. 7: We should really deal with any abuses of Misplaced Pages on a case-by-case basis. Lukeno94(tell Luke off here)08:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I'll send you a check for five whole dollars to improve the most viewed yet least-referenced article on the site. What are you gonna do for that five bucks? It better be unbiased and encyclopedic things that most readers would benefit from reading. And... Begin! Doctalk08:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't seem necessary to place a blanket ban on paid editing to implement a stronger deterrent against predatory PR operatives. Requiring disclosure and restricting the scope of activity to indirect editing, such as through Talk pages and the request edit template, should suffice. --Ubikwit見学/迷惑08:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Paid editing could actually be turned into an incentive. Articles in most need of improvement in a "drive" situation. A non-profit organization doing a fundraiser. Not a crazy concept. 1st prize gets a virtual Kewpie doll. Doctalk08:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Strongest oppose - Misplaced Pages shouldn't be policing this when it's run by volunteers. It doesn't matter what suspected or announced COI a person has, it's the quality of their additions that matter. We shouldn't deter people being honest about this stuff or you'll quickly see specialist subjects deteriorate and stunted. It will deter editors and tell those with in depth knowledge of a topic that their input is not wanted, or worse, banned. When Misplaced Pages is already haemorrhaging users this just makes the problem worse and speeds up the decline. There's not a single way this can help Misplaced Pages except for a smaller AfC cue. Thanks ツ Jenova2009:12, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Who are the "police" here? Volunteers. Volunteers policing other volunteers. Anarchy is better for some. Doctalk09:25, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Paid advocates don't come to wikipedia to edit specialist topics, they come to edit organisation pages and biographies to try and skew them for their clients. Many of Wikipedias best articles are in medical topics, and the star editors in that area edit for free, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Be clear and honest here, this policy change won't eliminate paid editing and COI, it will hide it. It's a deterrent to honesty and a line right through the Misplaced Pages slogan "The encyclopaedia that anyone can edit". Thanks ツ Jenova2011:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support - paid advocates/editors are, by definition, in opposition to our policies on guidelines regarding neutrality and bias. GiantSnowman10:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose-- There are already way too many policies. Put a few lines in COI or advocacy or something, no need for yet another policy. Lesion (talk) 10:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This is a terrible idea. The pressure for paid advocacy, in particular the amount of money available, is simply enormous. We are not going to make it go away by banning it here. If we try, we will get secretive, fly-by-night paid advocacy, instead of honest, openly declared CoI. It will be far better for Misplaced Pages to have known advocates so we can check their work and keep it up to standard, than to face endless trickery and corruption from the dishonest end of the market. Disclosure is what we need, not a foolish ban. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm here to contribute to the general knowledge of the millions of readers of the #1 💕 on the internet. On my free time, free of charge, and always according to the rules that I've learned and that are clearly outlined here. I'm an unpaid idiot, wastefully volunteering his time. My edits can be checked by anyone at any time, free of charge. How much will you pay me to edit your article? Please make it a lot. I like nice things. Doctalk11:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose As I pointed out in the other vote, you can't get rid of it, all you can do is drive it underground. I'd rather find common ground on regulation.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose because the policy would depend on an editor's motivations, which are usually impossible to prove and possibly irrelevant. We should block and ban users only because of problems they have caused. If someone is doing biased editing and carries on after a warning, then block them. Whether their reason for doing so is money or some other motivation is firstly hard to prove (unless they tell us - and we shouldn't punish for disclosure), and secondly not of much practical concern to Misplaced Pages - it's the effects that matter. W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support First thing what came to my mind after reading about this proposal is that wikipedia will turn into a comfortable lounge for desperate SEOs... And what about 'us', the Volunteers??? Martinian11:19, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Not personally a fan of paid editing, but it's not the big problem. The problem is poorly sourced articles about non-notable topics: these can and should be dealt with in the normal way. We can't close our eyes to the fact that people see a Misplaced Pages article as an important part of their online presence, and I don't blame people for editing the article about their own business or, if they don't feel competent to do so, employing someone else to do so. This is only a problem when such editing breaches an existing rule, in which case let's deal with it under that rule.--Korruski11:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, with the possibility of supporting after we figure out where we're trying to draw the lines. Our copyleft license isn't the noncommercial CC-BY-NC, it's CC-BY-SA ... which means we want people to figure out new ways to spread our material around the web, even if they somehow get money for it. So ... if they make money on text a minute after it's on the page, they're a hero, but if the money comes a minute before it's on the page, they're such a heinous criminal that we need to spend our valuable time hunting them down? As stated, the proposal isn't logically consistent with our copyleft license. - Dank (push to talk) 12:03, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
P.S. Also per what seems to be the general consensus here; Zenswashbuckler below says it well (if with more emotion than I would). Also: I've never made any money from Misplaced Pages text, nor plan to, nor know anyone else who does ... but since the decision got made in the early days to avoid a noncommercial license, I think we're probably stuck with that at this point. There are plenty of great noncommercial sites out there, and maybe those would be more logical places to be having this conversation. - Dank (push to talk) 18:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Before explaining, I actually thought this practice was already explicitly banned. But since it apparently isn't, I think it's not going to work. While I'm very sympathetic to the desire to keep someone (especially a paid "lobbyist") from pushing a slant, full disclosure is more important and easier to "police". Banning it will just drive it underground, and paid editing will still go on in secret anyway. It won't do anything to solve the problem, it'll just make it worse! Better sunlight than shadow. But thank you SlimVirgin, for bringing up something so very worthy of discussion. Hamamelis (talk) 11:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support, as stated above, the policy is a clear extension of WP:COI. I would insert "ordinarily" into the policy - occasionally editors with COI have a valid point to make. COI-editing is rampant and threatens the reliability of Misplaced Pages both through through distortion of article content via WP:UNDUE. --Smokefoot (talk) 12:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose If they make edits that are against Misplaced Pages standards, then remove them and ban them, but we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt.ShotmanMaslo (talk) 11:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, of course. We have policies and guidelines for how articles should be written and developed. We have built up the project to focus on the content not the contributors. This idea is turning that around to imply that no matter how good the content, if the editor has a financial (why financial anyway?) connection to the topic they cannot edit. But editors with less understanding, and emotional POV issues, are free to fiddle ineptly with any articles they wish! In my experience on Misplaced Pages the worse behaviour conflicts and the worse POV issues involve editors with emotional COI. I don't think there were paid editors involved in article disputes such as Tea Party movement, Falun Gong, The Troubles, etc. COI is often a very personal thing, which sometimes may not even be fully apparent to the individual concerned. Arbitration Committee members are sometimes asked to recuse from a case due to a COI which they weren't conscious of. In addition to a professional COI there are emotional, sexual, familial, racial, etc, and selecting just the professional out of all the potential conflicts seems inappropriate. If it is felt necessary, I would prefer the focus to be on tightening up the policies and guidelines on editing, or polishing our procedures for dealing with editing infringements, rather than looking into the motives of editors. Added to which, this policy would only be enforceable if an editor declared a COI. Unless we are now going to require full and detailed registration for all editors, listing all financial interests, this could only be enforced by the sort of sleuthing that gets the "well meaning / misguided" sleuth banned from the project for invasion of privacy. This is not a good proposal. SilkTork13:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
This analysis seems quite unserious. Why financial COI? Because every reputable enterprise recognizes the concept, and directly addresses it and because they are not reputable if they don't do so. You are saying, apparently by analogy, that there are other COI's but even if true that would be no reason not to address this well recognized one. Moreover, your concept of emotional COI is rather bizarre. There are people who cannot write neutrally but it is not because they have a conflict of interest as that term is normally used. COI is an objectively recognizable relationship. (e.g. financial, official, familial, sometimes personal-friend/enemy) beyond those it is almost never recognized as a conflcit of interest (rather, it is a belief, an opinion, a like, a dislike, a lack of circumpection, an inability to express onself apporpriately, sometimes a mere association - but not an addressable conflcit of interest). Such objectively recognizable relationships in common understanding make actions as to them when mixed with other responsibilities subject to specific expressly stated rules in the real world. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Alan. Every reputable publishing enterprise has a policy in place to deal with financial conflicts of interest. It's a sine qua non. We don't have such a policy. In the real world, financial conflicts of interest are recognized and treated differently than "emotional, sexual, racial" COIs (whatever the latter are supposed to mean; I'm a little afraid to ask). Finally, I am so sick of the argument that just because not every recent conflict can be boiled down to paid editing, we can therefore ignore the issue. MastCell19:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as written What about employees of companies with 30,000 employees? What about employees of companies with 3 employees? What about stockholders of major public companies? What about minor stockholders of closely-held companies? Lou Sander (talk) 13:39, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - The policy is too broad and ambiguously written. Further, it's practically unenforceable unless someone adds content that is obviously and egregiously POV/COI. A good editor would avoid detection with good content rendering such a policy feckless. As a counter, perhaps Misplaced Pages could put together a guild of approved editors under special identified accounts who are permitted/licensed by the project to add content for compensation by outside firms. Have it centralized, establish a system of oversight, the editor attests to their demonstrated knowledge of relevant POV/COI policies, etc., and if a company or external entity wants content added, they can select from this pool of editors. And Misplaced Pages could get a cut. On the other hand, if Jimbo and the top brass insist on preventing editors from being paid for focused content, perhaps he should open up that large stock of cash he's been amassing with our donations and reward editors for contributing featured content. I'd love a $100 gift certificate to Applebees for an FA or a little cash--I'd write more of them. Recently, in seeing that my work has been published by a opportunistic firm that does POD books from Misplaced Pages content and charges for it, it makes me hesitant to contribute seeing that others try to capitalize off my donated knowledge and work. This is why I only contribute for my hobbies, and not the bread-and-butter knowledge relevant to my income-generating work. The material relevant to my occupation on Misplaced Pages is sorely lacking and for good reason--I get paid by the hour in the real world for that. --ColonelHenry (talk) 13:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as written The draft begins "Paid advocacy is not allowed on Misplaced Pages." So unpaid advocacy is? Yes, there's a problem. Unfortunately this draft is not the solution. It confuses two issues. Advocacy is utterly against WP's founding principles. COI, whether financial interest, reputational interest or any other kind of interest, is a different matter. It's best dealt with by requiring full disclosure and coming down hard on any case where there hasn't been full disclosure. The problem with the PR firm which started this off was that there was not full disclosure, which would have to include who their client was and that they were being paid to edit on this client's behalf. This is what we should make a policy. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, for essentially the same reasons as Jenova20, SilkTork and Peter coxhead. Advocacy, whether paid or not, is against the content policies, and bad for us; editing in conformance with the content policies, whether paid or not, is good for us. We need to get better at dealing with advocacy, but that means being more skilful and more robust at enforcing the content policies, not mechanical rules restricting who can edit. ("emotional COI" -- great term). --Stfg (talk) 14:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose- I oppose this proposed policy, at least as written. The policy attempts to eliminate paid editors who might generate biased articles that create a financial gain for their employers, which I fully understand. Unfortunately, as written, this policy could and I believe would be interpreted to mean that academics and other highly knowledgeable people could not write about the fields that they are the experts in, as others have pointed out (See: Risker above). For the record, I am an academic. With the current conflict of interest rules, I have had numerous colleagues accused of conflict of interest when writing articles about subjects on which they were experts (not about their institutions). I think this proposed policy's wording would make such occurrences even worse. I think the goal of keeping Misplaced Pages a trusted, neutral source of information is laudable. I just think the particular wording of this proposed policy would have very negative unintended consequences. Stevenmg (talk) 14:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose We should encourage transparency from paid advocates, rather than pushing them underground. I further see this as being unnecessary: less-experienced paid advocates' edits are fairly blatantly promotional, which let us directly invoke WP:NPOV, and generally leave us in the right if it escalates to something like page protection. More experienced paid advocates will not be affected by this, as they already work close to the ground. So what does this really do? —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 14:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Furthermore, I oppose on the grounds that this is a virtually unheard of policy decision on enwiki. This policy decision amounts to a preemptive topic ban of unspecified breadth on paid advocate editors. The only other place where I believe we engage in preemptive administrative action is when a user registers an apparent role account or uses a famous person's name, and even then we allow said user to change his or her username. Everything else I've seen on Misplaced Pages has been action following harm undertaken to prevent more harm. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 18:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: I prefer disclosing COI, rather than banning contributors or contributions (which will just drive COI editing underground). Quality content can be added to Misplaced Pages by editors with a COI. For example, I wrote and promoted Music for a Time of War to FA status, disclosing my COI from the start. What makes this so wrong? --Another Believer(Talk)14:24, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
That you are under the impression that this is an attempt to ban COI editing is amusing. How much did you get paid to get that article to FA status? A lot of money? Was it worth the paycheck? COI indeed. Doctalk14:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose on the basis that not all paid contributors do a poor job. When they do, Misplaced Pages has existing guidelines and sanctions to deal with the problem. On the other hand there seem to be very few paid contributors who declare their interest and it would certainly be sensible to encourage them to do so. Sionk (talk) 14:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose mainly based on Risker's comments, but also based on reality. We already have paid editors at work, and our current policies don't deter them. How is this supposed to magically make them go away? COI also exists, and we do a damn poor job of keeping up with it now. This won't change anything...except add another layer of stuff and as others have pointed out would drive paid editors and COI deeper underground, soaking up more of our limited resources. No thanks. Intothatdarkness14:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Any editor that is already "underground" shouldn't be driven further underground. Because those of us above ground need to dig them out, right? They are going to do it anyway, so make it easier for them. Sounds great! Doctalk14:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: The basic idea is sound, but it has unpleasant potential for being used as an excuse to ban random editors from certain articles. And also it might be stretching things a little to insist that people creating give details about their profession. I know people can reveal things about themselves, but shouldn't people have a degree of anonymity on this site? --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Nope. No anonymity is allowed here, and that's what this is all about. E-mail me your information and we can continue. Doctalk15:12, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as written - while it sounds good, this would only hurt the honest people who are good contributors to the Project. It would prohibit me, for example, from editing virtually all articles dealing with the Democratic Party and my branch of higher education. I hope someday to get more political work and/or a tenured academic position; this policy would drive me and many others out of WP or -- worse -- underground as sockpuppets. I am in favor of mandatory, general disclosure of COI. For example, I have disclosed on my user pages the approximate income that I have received from partisan sources, my relationships with BLPs here, issues that I care about, policies and politicians whom I support, people whom I've known or met or are fans of, and even places and things that I've experienced. Much more beyond that is an invasion of one's right to privacy. FWIW, I am in favor of a complete ban on autobiographies. Bearian (talk) 14:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Rather than ban groups of people we need to go after incorrect behaviour - and we have policies and guidelines for COI and advocacy etc. If the quality of the edit is good then allow it - if it is poor then review it and if it is consistently poor then address the editor. Also I don't see how this policy could be enforced so it would become a way of attacking an editor. We should be worried about what is in Misplaced Pages not what happens outside it.Antiqueight15:03, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose No offense to the drafters of this essay, but it is still a draft in progress, and has a ways to go before it deserves the status of guideline, much less policy. Three examples: I own share of mutual funds which attempt to hold virtually all public in the world. Millions of others have similar holdings. Every one of us is a stakeholder in every public organization in the world. Which means I should not be allowed to edit any article about any corporation. Second, stakeholder is even broader than that. It includes customers, which broadens the net to cover just about everyone. Third other benefits is a term broad enough to drive a truck through. I'm in favor of having a serious discussion about this issue. This page is a start, but we need to get better organized. Just holding votes on a few essays is a small start, but we need to do more.--SPhilbrick(Talk)15:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support Stop it. Ban it. Put our feet down and slam the door in their faces. Paid editing, of any form should be intolerable and unacceptable across multiple levels. The fact that Misplaced Pages is going downhill in this regard is part of the reason why I no longer contribute very much here. Somewhere along the way, we have lost a bit of our soul and our integrity. ThemFromSpace15:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support, as a much-needed step in the right direction; our wooliness about advocate editing flies in the face of WP:NPOV, and is being exploited. Miniapolis15:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: Unless we are willing to change one of our WP:5 – Misplaced Pages is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute: Since all editors freely license their work to the public, no editor owns an article and any contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed. Respect copyright laws, and never plagiarize from sources. Borrowing non-free media is sometimes allowed as fair use, but strive to find free alternatives first. To something like: Misplaced Pages is free content that anyone (except anyone receiving financial or material benefit broadly construed) can edit, use, modify, and distribute: this type of proposal is just bad business and will cause far more damage to the encyclopedia and community in the long run than good. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. WP:CREEP. Users should declare their conflict of interest, but as long as they are not POV pushing there is absolutely no benefit to restricting their editing. If they are POV pushing then go through the existing channels (probably ANI) and assess topic bans individually - if they have declared a COI then that should be easier to accomplish. --W.D.Graham15:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Dishonest paid editors will do it anyway, so why punish the honest ones? Or drive them to dishonesty? Considering there are so many editors out there who trash BLPs and organizations (and the paid ones among them are less likely to be honest), and that there is a lack of real sanctions against some of them - (no matter how many times they are taken to noticeboards, the reason I've cut back my editing substantially), plus the fact there is an increasing lack of editors willing to correct even egregious errors whose correction would never be contested, I think it would be destructive to forbid it. Once the COI is announced, editing can be more carefully scrutinized. Support honesty, don't encourage dishonesty. User:Carolmooredc16:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for many reasons, but as an example, I am a supporter of the Misplaced Pages:Education program and I would like to see Misplaced Pages integrated into classrooms. In doing this, I would like university professors to receive salary while encouraging their students to contribute to Misplaced Pages. This policy as written would unduly exclude professors from developing course content in the education program because they would be receiving salary while doing outreach for the Wikimedia movement. These case studies would not have happened with enforcement of this policy. Blue Rasberry (talk)16:10, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi Bluerasberry, I've clarified that the Education Program is exempt from this, and that the policy should not be interpreted to mean that subject-matter experts are discouraged from contributing. Being an expert has nothing in itself to do with having a financial conflict of interest. SlimVirgin16:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I am not satisfied with a list of exemptions and I remain in opposition. If there is something fundamentally different about the kinds of people exempted then that should be articulated and written into the main policy so that anyone could intuitively understand what kind of behavior is acceptable and what is not. Anyone reading the policy should be able to expect that all these listed exemptions would be outside of the targeting of this policy because of behavior and not their titles. Teachers and Wikipedians in Residence are exempted as were the Google researchers; yet historically all of these have sent a small percentage of troublemakers to Misplaced Pages. The titles are not the distinction; I want the policy to be about behavior and not special permissions that come inherently with titles. Blue Rasberry (talk)16:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: I'd be happy to think of new wording if I could understand the objection, but I'm not sure I do. We have small numbers of troublemakers from every category of editor, so that's not really the issue. The issue is paid advocacy only. Someone furthering the interests of GLAM, Education Program, etc, is (hopefully, and for the most part) furthering the interests of Misplaced Pages and education in general – that's the behavioral issue – so I'm not sure why you would see them as included in this. If you can think of a way to tighten the writing, or to explain the issue further so that I can try to do it, that would be great. SlimVirgin17:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I have a series of objections but the primary one is that I do not want good contributors excluded from Wikimedia projects. Exceptions cannot cover all editors and I want good people with good contributions to feel welcome for what they do and not for what their title is. If this policy includes exceptions then to me that smacks of the Citizendium philosophy of giving or withholding privileges on-wiki primarily based on what people do off-wiki, and this strategy has already proven to lead to a lot of problems which transparency and openness circumvent. I do not want to institute a Citizendium model here, and when anyone makes exceptions to policy for certain people holding titles, then that is what is happening.
No, the issue is not paid advocacy/editing. The issue is the problems that result from almost all but not all instances of paid advocacy/editing. Also, no one anywhere on this project has ever clearly defined the differences between "paid editing" and "paid advocacy", and until definitions exist then discussions probably cannot proceed. The working definition is that "paid advocacy" is "paid editing" which does not comply with Misplaced Pages community guidelines. All discussions on this topic make no sense to anyone outside this movement because advocacy in the Wiktionary sense of the term has nothing to do with its use in this small community on Misplaced Pages. The reason why GLAM, the Education Program, and the rest should be included in this is because they conduct "paid advocacy" in any normal sense of the term as used in any other place than on Misplaced Pages.
Neither I nor anyone else who has yet presented seems able to express in writing the idea of "accept good behavior and prohibit bad behavior, regardless of the source". In short - if a contributor's work would be unanimously and uncontroversially welcomed on Wikimedia projects under any scrutiny then that person should feel welcome to contribute here even if they are paid, and if a contributor's work is bad then they should quit doing it here even if they are an educator, non-profit partner like a Wikipedian in Residence, or WMF partner like Google. Titles correlate with the kind of work a person does, and are great and cheap indicators for risk assessment, but are not the authoritative last word on judging whether someone can help the Wikimedia movement. Blue Rasberry (talk)18:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: Thank you for explaining. I understand the point about us not having clear parameters, but we do have a working idea. For example, I assume you agree (but perhaps not) that the PR manager for a drug company should not write our articles about that company's drugs. That's the classic paid-advocacy model, where we are, in effect, hosting covert advertising. At the other end, we have ancient historians writing about Ancient Rome, because they love it. They may or may not have jobs in universities, but that would make no difference, because there is nothing to be gained but education all round. Are these working definitions (ostensive definitions) not enough to steer us through this? SlimVirgin18:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
No, this is not good enough for me. A PR manager at a drug company who can comply with Misplaced Pages community guidelines should be allowed to edit. Right now it would be impossible for any PR person to do this because the Misplaced Pages community needs a lot of infrastructure to empower it to keep COI in check, but in medicine especially, Misplaced Pages needs a lot of help from somewhere and I think that large-scale contributions from industry when properly funneled through a series of checks could be welcome. The industry should feel especially welcome to drop money into non-profit health organizations like university medical schools and community hospitals and encourage them to address the Misplaced Pages problem through their respective communities. Especially in the field of medicine the content on Misplaced Pages needs to be absolutely perfected beyond reproach because Misplaced Pages's traffic makes it a public health concern. Misplaced Pages is already far more popular of a source of health information than the NIH, CDC, or WHO, and in the sense that we are navigating the largest and most utilized media organization the world has ever known, I do not take this lightly.
I think that the Wikimedia community has an obligation to give to the public a timeline of exactly when the most accessed 5,000 health articles on English Misplaced Pages will have universal on- and off-wiki consensus to be perfect in every way and also when they will be translated into a minimum of 20 languages each. In estimating this timeline we should account for when this would happen both with and without industry funding and paid advocacy contributions. I also would like to see the Wikimedia community start making demands on humanitarian grounds that corporations donate resources to the movement with no strings attached, and for governments to begin to recognize that the best thing that they can do for public health education and people's rights to seek and find information about their health is to build from what the Wikimedia communities are producing. The current proposal here blocks much of what I want. This movement should stay entirely grassroots. It should also receive good contributions whenever it would be practical to do so. PR people are bad people. There has to be a way to work together. Blue Rasberry (talk)19:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
User:Bluerasberry I hear your concerns about excluding good contributors. However, without a COI policy that excludes paid advocacy like what Wiki-PR does, Misplaced Pages is wide open to companies with business models like Wiki-PR that are financially modified produce gobs of articles and are not committed to our goals and standards. If we had a clear policy excluding what they do, their businesses would dry up, as they could no longer represent that what they do complies with Misplaced Pages policies. Misplaced Pages is like honey to flies for such businesses and a ton of the resources of our volunteer community has been devoted to dealing with the swarm. (Not to mention the damage to our reputation, that we knowingly leave ourselves open to this) As you oppose this very targeted and concise solution, how would you suggest we close the door to companies like WIki-PR? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 11:53, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
User:Jytdog - The proposed solution is neither targeted nor concise - it makes no sense in standard English and has a list of odd exceptions. I want the door closed completely to entities like Wiki-PR. I want the door open completely to good editors. Literally thousands of people have been unable to articulate how to do this. I have no suggestions for something better at this time but I do feel that this proposal would make things worse than they are now. Blue Rasberry (talk)12:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support Misplaced Pages needs to tighten its rules instead of just letting people do whatever they want, getting surprised when they use Misplaced Pages for promotional purposes, and then blocking them after the damage has been done. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of reverted edits. Getting paid to edit this site greatly increases the likelihood that you will be violating Misplaced Pages's policies on advertising. Jinkinsontalk to me17:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose SilkTork explains it best. We have policies in place. The vast majority of POV+COI issues, and the most egregious, involve emotional, sexual, familial, racial, etc. fulfillment rather than financial. I would add religious, personal vendetta, nationalism, and political views to that list. First Light (talk) 18:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support I'm a little confused how one would verify the editor is a paid employee, but these editors almost always show a clear COI editing with promotional tone. If a company or organization is notable enough to warrant an article or section within, there'd be plenty of unaffiliated editors to do the task. I just see this type of COI too much when patrolling. An easy prime example is checking the user creation log, with after some number of edits, it's clear by their username they are working for a company. These users are swiftly blocked, so I deem it appropriate to extend policy to cover such actions of other users. Note while I support this proposal, I do see foresee potentially heated disputes with users defending themselves as non-paid affiliates... — MusikAnimal18:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support. The policy, as worded, is very clear, straightforward and simple and applies only to individuals who are paid directly for their efforts on Misplaced Pages and only prevents them from directly editing articles. Since advocacy on talk pages is permitted, it is not as if corporations and the like will an avenue to point out mistakes or various monied lobbies won't have a platform at all. They will only be disallowed from directly editing articles, which seems fair. Allowing paid editors to directly work on articles is problematic for two reasons: (1) it skews the knowledge base toward people and entities with money, and (2) it could have a de-motivational effect on the vast numbers of unpaid volunteers who edit here. I do agree with some of the oppose !voters above that this may drive paid editors underground or force them to work through socks, but it is not easy to work underground and socking has the nasty habit of consigning editors to Wiki-purgatory. On the balance, I think we'll be better off pushing paid editors into the fringes rather than allowing them to occupy the mainstream. --regentspark (comment) 18:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)\
Strong Oppose - with a broad enough definition, I would not be able to edit an article on Taco Bell, because I took a customer satisfaction survey and they gave me a taco. If an individual edits in a reasoned fashion, their edits are not affected by their motivation. I find there are a vast number of individual with strong feelings for and against every entity, practice, thinking... almost ANYTHING. Few of those POV problems are due to financial interest. Most are due to emotional interest. Better to say "you must not edit an article you care about"... which is ridiculous as well.Unfriend13 (talk) 19:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The proposed wording is too broad—and yet too narrow. As is, it is possible to consider employees of a non-governmental organization as ineligible to write on their field of public service—because donations (revenue) are derived from their work in a sector. Similarly, the wording could be read to imply that employees of a company could not edit articles on their industry. Would editing fracking articles be banned by employees of both Greenpeace and shale oil/gas companies? If so, we lose expertise on both sides of an issue. Regardless, an accusation is made in a moment, but a defense in a hearing could take a long time to pursue. And money is a crude tool for judging bias, motivation and results. It seems that implementing WP:BRIGHTLINE (as "No Paid Advocacy") would be using a hammer to nail houseflies: not very effective, and we’d end up damaging a lot of things while trying to get rid of an occasional pesky critter. As others have said: Let’s avoid creep. We already have several means to handle the issue: Misplaced Pages:Conflict_of_interest, Misplaced Pages:Neutral_Point_Of_View, WP:Promotion, Misplaced Pages:General_notability_guideline and Misplaced Pages:NOTHERE#Not_being_here_to_build_an_encyclopedia. ~ Desertroadbob (talk) 19:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose: Though most of my arguments against a firm Brightline and/or mandatory COI disclosure can be found here in reply to the current effort to ban a paid editing company for stating explicitly that COI disclosure is not already mandatory and that at this point it is only advised or suggested according to the guidelines, I will add something here as regards this proposal. The policy being proposed here conflates paid advocacy and paid editing. One can be paid to edit, and edit fully within Misplaced Pages's guidelines. That is what a good paid editor does--they transcend any lack of neutrality and have the ability to explain Misplaced Pages's rules to the client in such a way that they are happy with Misplaced Pages-appropriate material and do not insist on promotional material. The good paid editor is, in fact, indistinguishable from any other Misplaced Pages editor, as they do their jobs perfectly--and that job is not to fool Wikipedians, but to act as a model Wikipedian in adding any information to the site. The only difference is that instead of personal interest driving the editor to edit Misplaced Pages, the paid editor is paid to edit articles they may not have edited on their own. That paid editor, if not a paid advocate, does not take into account the promotional considerations of the company or person that pays them, and produces a Misplaced Pages-appropriate article based on independent research. The company pays the editor, because the most beneficial presence for them on Misplaced Pages is a Misplaced Pages-appropriate one and not one riddled with promotional errors. Until that difference, and the context it brings, is present in the proposal then we are not close enough to making the guideline a policy. AKonanykhin (talk) 20:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Strong support - Paid advocates aren't paid to present their clients neutrally, they're paid to put the messages out their clients want the world to hear. That is a fundamental fact which cannot be ignored. While it is certainly possible to write something that has the look and feel of a neutral, unbiased article with citations from reliable sources, what we don't see is what has been left in the file cabinet, the negative things that are left unwritten, because to present them would hurt the advocate's client. This creates a tension between what we require and what paid advocates are paid to do, and it's a tension that cannot be hand-waved away, because the fundamental goals of the two sides cannot be harmonized. Rather than have the onus on us to discover the myriad ways in which advocates can hide or sugar-coat the truth about their clients, we need to place the onus on them by disallowing them access to the project, and banning them when they break that rule and are uncovered. This is a matter of protection for survival which can't be ignored. 20:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beyond My Ken (talk • contribs)
Oppose. Misplaced Pages is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. How on earth could such a policy be enforced? We only know that editors are COI if they declare it and they are then ususally treated appropriately by other editors. SpinningSpark21:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose – The various comments above actually demonstrate that the proposed policy is easily misunderstood. That is, editors are commenting as if any "paid editing" is "paid advocacy". Also, the proposed policy is flawed as written. E.g., "other benefits" is unduly vague and broad. (Wikipedians-in-residence (and other volunteers) receive a benefit when they can post their editing accomplishments in a resume.) And what is a "close relationship" or "similar non-promotional work"? Too much of this proposed restriction is shooting the messenger and ignores the good news that the messenger – the editor who is receiving pay for providing edits that comply with guidelines – can bring. As it stands now COI editors can be blocked if they go too far. So, rather than posting a vague and misunderstood policy, we can strengthen existing policy by requiring paid editors to post the {{connected contributor}} template (with clear declarations) on the talk page of those pages they have an interest in. – S. Rich (talk) 21:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose As WrittenDisclosed COI's (paid or not) should be allowed to edit without any special permission (however, edits by such parties should be subject to speedy review and reversion, if necessary). Sebastian Garth (talk) 22:03, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, although I think we need a policy to address problems in this area. The problem is not about being paid, but rather, editing in a disruptive manner as a result of being paid. We should focus on transparency and on adherence to existing policies. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Our guideline on COI editing should be seen as demanding exceptional behavior from anyone with a conflict of interest on a subject, with deviation from acceptable behavior being dealt with more strictly. As long as someone complies with our content policies we should have no objection to them contributing here.--The Devil's Advocatetlk.cntrb.17:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Support. However, I have no clue how this could ever be enforced. I support any idea that puts us one inch closer to the end of: "anyone can edit Misplaced Pages". I think we do an amazing job here considering anyone with a computer can edit articles. "Oh thank goodness for semi protected articles"....it's a start. Made me chuckle when I read the short proposal, because the other day I became curious what the difference was between "Silver Tequila, and "Gold Tequila", and I don't even drink, however, the subject came up in a discussion between friends. I ended up on the "Jose Cuervo" page. I swear, when I started reading the article, I could almost hear a jingle playing in the background...lol. Of course the difference in the colors wasn't in the article because all the manufacturer does (after a few minutes of research) is add Carmel coloring additive to the Silver, and then calls it "Gold". Needless to say, I added and cited a section explaining the difference. Yes, I'm tired of Commercials here, as well as vandals, and will support anything that helps eliminate them. However, again...how in the world with the current "anyone can edit policy" here, are we going to enforce it? Oh...forgot to mention that Jose didn't appreciate the new info to his commercial, and I have had to make reverts or changes to very clever edits daily. The amusement never ends. :) Thanks-Pocketthis (talk) 20:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
To be fair your citation doesn't say that Jose Cuervo only adds caramel or that they don't have different varieties - only that some add caramel and that to properly age it is expensive. I would want to see a real citation to believe either way..Hmm don't know why I came across this...--Antiqueight03:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose any major conflicts of interest should be declared. If done correctly then paid editing/advocacy could be good for the project. However declaring that paid advocacy is completely out of bounds is impossible given the ease of creating accounts. Tell paid editors to be upfront and declare their interests, and they will have more respect from me. Those that deny COI should be treated harshly.Martin45123:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Cautiously Support we need a "bright line rule" - paid editors are difficult to catch, so if they are caught they should not get away with a warning, they should be banned. IMHO the bright line can be put differently: it is enough for the users a)properly identify the COI (including a tag on the article if it mostly written by an editor with COI), b) not engage in edit warring over the article (0RR). For me it will be enough, but this should be a bright line rule - those disobeying the rule should be banned if caught Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support* Some above say it would be unenforceable. And that's true, in a sense. COI editors would need to be subtle about it. But having a way to fight back against blatant cases would still be a plus. This proposal is certainly a step in the right direction. Let's take that step. DavidHobby (talk) 00:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Agree with the reasons articulated by User:Desertroadbob. The focus should be on NPOV, bias, and advocacy, and tools exist for handling those. That said, when an editor has a COI, they should be obliged to disclose it. Carter (talk) 01:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support as necessary for
maintaining wikipedia as an encyclopedia and not seeing it (further) devolve into the newest avatar of geocities, myspace etc as a venue to promote organizations, individuals, and POVs; and
a community of volunteer editors many of whom will be driven away (in the long term) if their efforts to build a credible educational resource are allowed to be hijacked by advertising and PR professionals. Personally, I will be hesitant to volunteer my time if I see that I am essentially competing against paid professionals who don't share my regard for NPOV, and that any credibility I build for the project by writing well-sourced, high quality articles just contributes to fool readers into trusting other promotional-content-masquerading-as-articles.
Additionally, in many opposes above I see arguments that preventing PR professionals from writing wikipedia articles and trying to police finacial conflicts of interest, will somehow also prohibit professional scholars from editing wikipedia. This IMO is fallacious as almost all reputable research (eg) and educational (eg) institutions manage to have financial conflict of interest guidelines, while relying on those very same scholars and experts for their functioning. In all these policies, and any course on ethics in business or research, financial COI are treated separately and handled more severely than other "natural" biases related to political, religious, ethnic, national etc beliefs and the inevitable presence of the latter class is no excuse to overlook the former. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. (You won't find any of these organizations arguing "All we care about is good research/education, and don't care what financial arrangement the researcher/professor has on the side". Somehow analogous reasoning seems to carry weight in some of the opposes here).
I do acknowledge that wikipedia will face problems in enforcing any paid advocacy/financial COI prohibition, but don't see that as a reason to not lay down the principle in the first place; and imperfect enforcement is preferable to a laissez faire system. Lastly, I realize that this particular proposal is unlikely to be approved (given the state of current !voting), but hope that the community is eventually able to come up with effective policies in the area for the long-term health of the project. Abecedare (talk) 01:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Flat out Oppose kicking and screaming and thinking this is one of the worst ideas ever to be presented to Misplaced Pages. Ideas like this need to be buried nice and deep, but with a big flag saying "don't go here". Not the very least of which is the fact that it will only impact those who are open and honest about any conflict of interest and let the scoundrels who are more likely to be trolls off the hook. Letting other editors know about biases you may have when editing articles is certainly useful (regardless of if you are paid or not), but merely the fact that somebody is getting paid or not should have virtually no significant impact upon the evaluation of the quality of the edits of that person. Since paid editing is already mentioned in this "policy", it already provides plenty of wiggle room for somebody to weasel their way out of any sort of realistic enforcement. I'd like to say simply get back to the idea of this being a wiki that "anybody can edit" and don't get so snooty about who that "anybody" might actually be. If the edit improves the article, keep the edit. If the edit stinks, it should be culled. That should be the standard and not the sort of narrow application that this policy seems to be implying. WP:COI is plenty sufficient at the moment and does not need any sort of gilding of lilies. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Strongest possible oppose This is the worst proposal I've seen related to paid editing. The effect will be to greatly damage the encyclopedia. The redefinition of paid editing and paid advocacy is incorrect. RyanVesey03:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Advocacy is comparable to political lobbying, and historically it's better to register lobbyists and keep an eye on them rather than drive them underground. Also like political lobbyists, paid advocates have a deserved bad rap, but do play in a role in drawing attention to developing issues. Paid advocates can inject life into inadequate articles and inspire editors to set the record straight. They can also spot factual errors and correct pejorative statements. Advocates should definitely by required to declare their conflicts of interest however.... --Sigeng (talk) 03:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose – I have two main concerns about this. Firstly, explicitly banning this won't actually stop people from doing it, but it will stop people from being open about it. If it's going to happen, it's better that as many of them as possible actually admit who they are and why they're here so everyone else can take that into account. The benefit from the, in my opinion, very few who would stop because of this is outweighed by the problems caused by the others going incognito, as it were.
Secondly, if Politican X is running for office, and someone, or a group of someones, is steadfastly scrubbing their article of anything that might be negative, does it really matter if those editors are there because they're X's staffers, or unpaid campaign volunteers, or unaffiliated partisan editors who just really like X and want them to win? That's the sort of thing that's a problem regardless of where it's coming from. I think that a lot more of the contentions on political articles come from random people with very strong opinions rather than people who are paid to be there. Egsan Bacon (talk) 04:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support. Promotional articles have gradually become a huge problem here, and defining it away by allowing paid advocacy would open the floodgates to a lot more of it. So I believe this is necessary. I wouldn't mind having another bullet in the "acceptable paid editing" section to include being a paid professional in a field which you also edit articles in, and even for the editing to be included in the things one is paid to do, as long as the editing is not promotional in nature. For instance, as an academic, I am mainly paid to teach and research on topics related to my interests here, but my performance evaluations are also based on "service", which could reasonably be interpreted as including my Misplaced Pages editing activities. I don't think this proposal is intended to address that sort of paid activity, but additional clarity in that respect wouldn't hurt. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Past experiences with Misplaced Pages policies such as "verifiability, not truth" show that after a little while policies get interpreted literally, so your current belief is wishful thinking. You personally do have a huge conflict of interest in promoting your particular area of computer science research on Misplaced Pages. Of course you could argue that you more or less promote other areas of computer science or math, but that's just a wider COI as far as this policy proposal is concerned: you have a "some other form of close financial relationship with the subject of the article". Someone not using his real name (talk) 12:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, reluctantly. Comments such as yours have convinced me that too many people here are, like you, unwilling to distinguish between experts and advocates. I strongly believe we need expert editors to hold up the technical side of our encyclopedia and prevent it into degenerating into a worthless encyclopedia of celebrities and pop culture. And although I believe the current proposal wasn't aimed at expert editors, you have convinced me that it could easily become aimed at them later The alternative, insisting that those parts can only be edited by people who aren't paid for anything related, will likely lead to the technical articles being edited primarily by student volunteers, giving little or no coverage to topics outside the mainstream undergraduate curriculum, and leading (in my experience editing articles that are in the mainstream curriculum) to amateurishly written articles. We will have to find other means to counter advocacy, I guess focusing more heavily on the actions and less on who does them. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:39, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This is silly, how would you even know if someone is paid unless they tell you. So if you now make a rule that it isn't allowed it punishes those who are honest about their work while encouraging everyone to go underground. There obviously will always be people paid in one way or another to edit articles so why not make a way for them to do so above board? Sportfan5000 (talk) 06:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support as an editor of several years I have encountered many single purpose editors who are obviously paid employees or too close a connection. I've complained about WP:COI breaches but the community seems weak to deal with it... with the usual "we'll just watch editor X closely" I've seen legal threats made by paid advocates, one WP subject names on his own personal website WP editors that he wants to name and shame and offers a reward for anyone with personal information on these editors (I'm not naming this real life person which has a WP article) . single purpose editors even if not paid advocacy have no interest in NPOV or building a better encyclopaedia, they simply want to push an agenda. They have zero interest in working on other articles and spend their time monitoring one article on behalf of the article subject. This includes overly positive commentary in articles (often not from reliable third party sources), but worse, removal of well sourced and balanced coverage of controversies. I firmly believe strongly tools are needed to deal with paid advocacy in WP. LibStar (talk) 07:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support the community needs to make it crystal clear COI PR editors are not welcome here in any way, shape, or form. Ethical companies (and their lawyers, and PR advisers) will follow our policies, and those who don't will risk PR backlash or worse if they're found out. That it can be difficult to enforce is a red herring, when they are found out they will be dealt with, same as we enforce bans and block abusive sockpuppets, even though many of those slip through the cracks too. Siawase (talk) 08:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose - NPOV and paid advocacy are NOT mutually exclusive. I don't think the system is broken - unreasonable COI edits are usually spotted and corrected pretty quickly. You can be a good editor with a COI. Far better to engage with these editors within a framework. I have and will continue to make edits on subjects and things I am related to, but I always work to the core principles. This is blocking everyone because of a few bad editors - if you want to make a difference on that basis, block IP editing! OwainDavies(talk) edited at 09:19, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose As currently written, the policy attempts to distinguish between paid advocacy and paid editing; the former banned, the latter allowed. But advocacy is already banned, so what is this trying to achieve? GoldenRing (talk) 09:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as policy. Advocacy is a large and serious problem, and I cordially invite anyone who doubts this to spend a week doing AfC work, and helping out on IRC help, where in both the fraction of spammers is easily over 80%. The problem I perceive with paid editing is that the paid editors either think they are able to write neutral articles, or they know they can't, but that it can't hurt to try to push through anyway - they know they are not doing the right thing, but hey, free promotion, and it's somebody elses problem. The underlying problem here is that we need people to abide by the spirit of NPOV, and those looking for a loophole don't generally think in terms of the spirit of a policy, the spirit of the project or the right thing to do. But what we need is not a policy - we already have that in NPOV. What we need is to tell them, and keep telling them that what they are doing is doesn't mesh with our project, and they have to stop doing it, without needing a specific policy document that has that exact content. And at some points it does work out. I'm really happy we have Akka (toolkit) now for example, which was written by people with a conflict of interest. We should be open to valuable additions like that. I'm not willing to give articles like that up for a bright line that makes it easier to point spammers to. What we can do is take a less lenient line on what they are doing wrong, and if they are clearly here with the wrong intentions not be afraid to tell them no, and tell them to go away - if necessary with blocks. We don't need a bright line policy to do that. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. In many cases, those with a financial interest in a subject are the only parties interested in keeping an article current. Misplaced Pages is (unfortunately) full of pages with POV problems, but I would rather a biased updated page than an so-called unbiased page that is so old and out of date that it is of no use whatsoever. I think we can and should build on the proposal below to require disclosure of these types of edits. However, rather than requiring that it be disclosed in the edit summary/signature (which could easily be missed by accident), we should add a yes/no radio button below the edit summary that is not set by default but must be set in order to save the edit. These flags can allow editors to watch for and verify/NPOV pages that have been edited in this way, and would ensure that anyone who misled the community about their interest in the article cannot claim to have done so by mistake. - Nbpolitico (talk) 12:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This rule seems both ill-considered as to unintended consequences and unenforceable. Pay isn't the issue, the person isn't the issue, it's NPOV. The focus should not be the editors but the edits. This will not address the underlying NPOV issue it hopes to solve. It should not be adopted. Capitalismojo (talk) 13:00, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Forbidding advocacy is already policy WP:NPOV, and I'm with Risker in seeing not much of a difference to religious or nationalist unpaid advocacy. The ethical thing for any editor to do is to disclose any COI. Moreover, to effectively forbid me to edit certain articles is neither going to work (how will you know), nor particularly fair to me: My institution has granted me paid leave to attend Wikimania. Now everybody knows that I'm editing, and it is entirely possible that the odd request comes in, from my boss(es), to improve our institutional article, to write about a conference we host, and so on. I can do it in a non-promotional tone, I'll disclose. But in a way it is still advocacy, because our competitor's articles are in a much weaker state. Do you want to forbid that? --Pgallert (talk) 13:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose It only interferes with COI editing by honest editors and would catch only the most naive COI or pai editors. Paid editors could just not mention the fact that they are paid, and business owners could just choose a username which id not tip you off that they were the proprietor of the business they were writing about. It is as pointless as the loyalty oaths required by the US in the 1950's. I do have qualms about POV pushing by PR firms, but we can fall back on what is in the actual edit and use reversion or blocking if it is not supported by reliable sources and presented in a balanced NPOV way without undue weight. People who teach at a college have a financial interest in the image of the college. Someone who gets a pension from, or has his retirement savings invested in the stock of, some company has a financial interest in that company looking good. Someone who lives in some tourism destination has a financial interest in the article about it being written so that visitors come there. This and like proposals are just "theater," making us feel better about the nonPOV nature of the project without having any real effect except on the rare editor who comes out an states he is editing for pay or to benefit himself financially in some way. Edison (talk) 14:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose For small and medium companies COI editors are often the best placed to edit articles on said companies and will have the best resources and expertise on products. Other editors can inspect cited materials to check for bias.Testem (talk) 14:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose As long as its written according to WP:NOT and is writen in an "objective and unbiased style" and is "free of puffery" then why does it matter who writes it? The beauty of WP is that anyone can edit, keep it that way. Simon Caulton (talk) 14:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I agree to several opposition comments. I wish to add myself that I did not see how "paid advocacy" is substantially different from paid editing, or even the policy of COI itself. --G(x) (talk) 14:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Earthly incarnation of Platonic pie-in-the-sky ideal. How on earth are we going to enforce this? I should be giving this a militant, borderline-deranged level of support and campaigning, but I just don't see how you can enforce it. I personally believe that the marketing/advertising/lobbying/"communications" industry is just about the most totally morally bankrupt profession on earth (at least a pimp is honest about being a pimp, and does terrible harm to a relatively few people; advertisers are coming close to murdering democracy itself), and I'd put Wikilobbying in the "See Also" section ("When money determines Misplaced Pages entries, reality has become a commodity."). But - what can we possibly do to enforce this that we don't already do to remove straight-up, ordinary-course POV edits? We already check, to the best of our ability, for promotional / press-release language, for whitewashing, for overweighted reliance on positive sources. If we put paid COI editors through a stricter ringer with no reward for doing so, or worse, totally outlaw them (if we use only a stick and not a carrot), all we'll do is increase the number of unmonitored POV edits, and once they're editing "illegally" anyway, why should they then have any scruples about balance? Without the possibility of good standing for playing by the rules, all you do is guarantee disobedience; and in that situation disobedience quickly becomes self-righteous, i.e. civil disobedience, even where that perception is objectively ludicrous. Pragmatic acceptance and intentional correction will always work better than blundered idealism, whose incompetence quickly spirals. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠14:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - If we remove professionals from this equation, then we are essentially removing the one source of editors that are truly unemotional in their editing. Yes, paid editors can be passionate about the subject they edit, but they have their employers and/or clients to answer to as well as the WP community. IMO paid advocates are held to a higher standard than the average editor. Remove the professionals as User:Risker defines it or paid editors who happen to be PR or marketing people and WP loses a significant source of information as well. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 16:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose since paid advocacy is (1) almost impossible to determine unless the COI editor reveals it, making it therefore (2) unenforceable. Comment. My sense is there are fewer COI problems on heavily trafficked articles with high daily pageviews (100+/day), since opposing viewpoints cancel each other out, and bias is more easily exposed. The bigger problem comes with single-focus editors editing articles with low pageview counts. I wonder if a bot could paste a warning flag on single-editor articles with meager eyeball traffic, with inadequate references, suggesting bias.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. We're already taking care of COI and spam to the best of our ability. Adding a new rule won't help. Kafziel18:39, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Strongest possible support. We've already seen plenty of examples of how people with financial interests in companies, careers and/or products try to further their own interests here on WP, both by adding or removing content from existing articles and by creating new articles about persons/companies what-have-you of dubious notability. Thomas.W18:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We've also seen how many people with new accounts vandalise Misplaced Pages too. We should definitely enact a policy to ban all editing from new accounts too. And then we can expand it to ban editing from everyone who has ever used bad punctuation in a sentence! Misplaced Pages is the encyclopaedia that "anyone can edit". This policy is a terrible unpolicable idea and it will force people to deny their COI, not be open about it. That's an own goal and will speed up the decline of membership. Thanks ツ Jenova2019:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Support and broaden as per Cullen. A disclosure of relationship MUST be built into the policy and readily accessible to other contributors/editors. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as patently unenforceable, and as attempting to judge edits by the purity of the edtiors' motives rather than the content of the edits themselves.
This policy is altogether unenforceable. If we've used it to bust User:ManageYourOnlineReputationSolutionsLLC, will they spend an hour in tears and then resolve to find honest work? Not likely. They'll register under new usernames that give nothing away, avoid any mention of their commercial intent on their userpages, and happily propagandize away as before.
We've already got a policy on biased edits, and we already try to enforce it. The proposed policy doesn't add anything useful to it; rather, it declares that biased edits for commercial purposes are somehow more egregious than biased edits made with other motives. Rather than singling out one class of non-NPOV edits for particular opprobrium, we should try to eliminate bias in all forms, regardless of its motive. Ammodramus (talk) 22:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as per 'Discussion' comment (below). Go after the article not the editors. Add a '$' in the top-right (with lock status & '+'for 'good article etc) or a tag to display front & center for 'Sources on this page may be compromised by an undeclared financial, or tangible benefit, conflict of interest'. Proof for adding the tag would be based on article content not editor witchhunts and could be debated on the talk page as per any other tag & proceed through the thundering bureaucracy as required. AnonNep (talk) 02:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Per many of the arguments of other opponents above. I do not see the problem in having those edits, and I do see problems in not having those edits. SO I oppose not just "as written", rather I oppose the proposal in any form. Debresser (talk) 01:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support - Our ultimate goal should be to attempt to document truth, so far as it has been approximated by reliable sources. Receipt of payment or expectation of receipt of payment has an insidious effect on the actions of even the best-intentioned, and typically the effect will be to the detriment of the goal of seeking truth whenever that goal is perceived as being at odds with presenting information that is favorable to the point of view of the payer. So while I might quibble with some of the text in the proposal, I support the general intent. That said, I can't see this rule as being even remotely enforceable. Even if it is promoted to policy level, financial-COI advocacy will continue, perhaps a bit more covertly than at present. Dezastru (talk) 04:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
"Our ultimate goal should be to attempt to document truth": WP:NOTTRUTH
So what approximates "insidious effect"? Cooperative editors are not a problem whether they're paid or not. Uncooperative editors ignore policy anyway, and we can already deal with that. Paradoctor (talk) 11:01, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This proposal goes against Misplaced Pages's greatest strength: It can be edited by anyone, instantaneously. --Spannerjam 04:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This policy doesn't seem to distinguish between edits that are technical and non-controversial in nature and edits that might have an impact on how the article subject is perceived.
I imagine that most of us would have a strong objection if a company unilaterally deleted well-sourced information about a scandal, but would anyone object to a company updating out-of-date revenue figures with the latest results? Consider the following case. An editor works for a large technology company which makes popular mobile devices. Would anyone object to that editor updating his company's section in the article List of displays by pixel density to include specifications for the latest generation of products? Depending on how you interpret "affected articles", this proposal would ban that sort of edit. It seems unnecessarily bureaucratic and against Misplaced Pages's WP:SOFIXIT spirit to expect that an editor who is interested in making such a change get a third party to do it for them. It also seems unrealistic to expect that volunteers will process minor, technical tweaks in a timely manner.
If this policy is going to be successful, it needs to be more targeted towards banning edits that actually are advocacy, and not just ban all edits to "affected articles" by anyone with a financial COI.GabrielF (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Jimmy Wales' so-called "Bright Line" is unrealistic. It is impossible to play "Whack-a-Mole" without making the wikicrime of "Outing" vanish, since identification and elimination of violators of the so-called "Bright Line" will require..........identification for their elimination. Moreover, with no real name registration and sign-in-to-edit, the effectiveness of WP's blocking and banning mechanisms will remain a joke — if we get lucky and catch one, they'll just put on a new mask. This won't stop paid editing, it will only drive it underground and make it more difficult to locate and monitor. Carrite (talk) 05:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Y'know, excellent point that's exactly right — the essential core of this matter is already covered in policy. We're just debating an empty slogan, in the final analysis, since its provisions are not enforceable under WP's current structure... Carrite (talk) 16:35, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Paid editors can do a good job in writing neutral articles, it is the POV-pushers we should punish and we already have policies against that. If this policy is implemented, Misplaced Pages would have to change its slogan to "the 💕 that anyone can edit, unless you are being paid to do so." Mentoz86 (talk) 07:01, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for the simple reason that it's unenforcable. We can make it a policy, sure, and then those who want to avoid the rule will simply edit as an anonymous IP. Next to that, we already have policies that should catch blatant advertising or POV/COI editing. Yintan13:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Focus should be on the edits not the editor and I agree with others that the brilliance of Misplaced Pages is that anyone can edit it. I would oppose anything that creates barriers to participation. But, I’m thinking maybe we need more paid editing not less - meaning, why not raise funds so that experienced and dedicated Wikipedians can be compensated for the work they contribute, including catching and challenging POV or Advocacy edits. ??? Apologies, if that’s been considered a thousand times before…But I think it's an idea worth thinking about since WP is so big and influential …Depthdiver (talk) 16:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, per User:Risker on two points. First, subject matter experts are not supposed to be able to argue from authority on Misplaced Pages, but their contributions are nonetheless valuable, and professional SMEs would be banned under this proposal. Second, "paid advocacy" is no worse than unpaid advocacy, and is unworthy of special treatment. RossPatterson (talk) 10:36, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose; There are as many people who would like to use Misplaced Pages for damaging others' reputations, as there are those who would like to use Misplaced Pages for self-promotion—we already have a policies for this: WP:NPOV/WP:COI. Keep it simple and focused: it is the quality of the output that should be measured. We are asked to consider WP:No paid advocacy#Paid_editing_versus_paid_advocacy where several of the examples are focused around those positions that the Wikimedia Foundation might fund. I would be uncomfortable with the Foundation having an exclusive economic fiefdom over the right to contract improvements to Misplaced Pages. WP:NOBIGDEAL applies to adminships, and the same no big deal should apply to funding—any invitation should be extended freely, fairly and equally to all contributors and contributing organisations, as long as they abide by the rules on WP:NPOV/WP:N/WP:V/WP:CITE/….
Remember: the high-level aim here is to build an encyclopedia, not to dream up policies that selectively apply 9–5 weekends and bank holidays excepted (ie. how would we even begin to ascertain if (or how) somebody is being compensated for any edit). My feeling is that policy appears to be trying to impose unworkable technical solutions to social problems, and perhaps misses Misplaced Pages's central aison d'être (the content). —Sladen (talk) 16:04, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as written - I can see perhaps modifying the proposal in certain ways. (1) Paid editors, and firms, disclose their status in some way that makes it generally knowable. I won't specify how. They also establish their credentials in advance of any sort of paid editing by developing one article apparently outside of their field of paid interest and receiving sufficiently favorable reviews to be "approved." (2) They disclose in some prominent way their involvement on the talk page of the relevant article. (3) For every article they develop for which they are paid, they also work to bring another, separate article, outside of that field, up to roughly similar status. There are a lot of significant articles regarding even important topics in various fields which still need lots of work, and having them develop this sometimes neglected or overlooked material would both be beneficial for wikipedia as a whole and also probably improve the paid editors' general reputation here as well. John Carter (talk) 15:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support - COI editors should make a proposal on the talk page and/or approach editors without a COI to add material that they prepare. At a minimum, they should be asked specifically to disclose their COI, abide by a 1-revert rule and avoid all edit warring. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support - yes, it would be difficult to enforce. But if made policy, it would be an important step towards making Misplaced Pages a more trustworthy source of information than it is at the moment. We need a policy like this, and sooner or later, I hope we'll get one. Robofish (talk) 17:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Policies are in place that ensure that content is appropriate the encyclopedia. I do not need to know an editor's motivations to judge the edit. Putting such a policy in place also sticks a thumb in the eye of WP:AGF.--~TPW19:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support Misplaced Pages needs this policy. Granted, moderating for conflicts of interest is a vexing issue, but it is emphatically not true that a user's motivations cannot materially affect the quality of an edit. Of course, the policy touches not at all the issue of UNPAID advocacy, which can be just as destructive to WP articles. But this policy does have the virtue of disempowering corporate and major political party flackery here in Misplaced Pages to a large extent. It's one more tool among many to make sure that Misplaced Pages articles are objective and factual, not promotional text. I disagree with the argument made above that professionals would never be able to post edits on topics relating to their occupation. WP:PROVEIT is the greatest protection against abuse of "the argument from authority," by requiring professional and lay writer alike to confine statements in an edit to those drawn from acceptable research sources.loupgarous (talk) 20:35, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
"not true that a user's motivations cannot materially affect the quality of an edit" That's right, and that's why nobody has said it.
"this policy does have the virtue of disempowering" proposal, not "policy". And what kind of disempowering would that be? The kind that WP:BLOCK lacks? It has been stated before on this page, multiple times: We already have policies to deal with problem editors. No evidence has been brought forward that his proposal would improve the situation. And there is good reason to believe that it would harm the community, and therefore the project. Paradoctor (talk)
That's right, it's meant to prevent contributors from being unfairly pre-judged. A self-disclosing editor is obviously a cooperative editor. Villains, OTOH, don't announce their evil intentions. So, this proposal punishes cooperative editors, and diverts attention away from the actual targets. Paradoctor (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose on grounds of redundancy: advocacy is already prohibited. Policy is already in place concerning editing with COI. This proposal seems to go against WP:AGF by indicating that some editors should be assumed to be editing in bad faith if they have certain external connections. As has already been pointed out, most experts work professionally in their fields of expertise, meaning that many expert editors will have at least some potential conflicts of interest when editing in their fields. What actually matters is the content's point of view and non-promotional, encyclopedic character. Each edit should be judged based on whether it makes the encyclopedia better or worse, not based on the background of its writer. Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Virtually all of our reliable sources were created by "paid advocates." Whether it's a paid journalist from AP or a University professor publishing from a research grant. We paraphrase paid advocates so we might as well let them write what we paraphrase. If neutrality is an issue, we have NPOV. If sock and meatpuppets are an issue, we have that covered as well. It's silly to create a rule that will be breached by the same people that create the issue in the first place and then drive away abiding editors, like journalists or professors, with this policy. If the articles and content are good, why stop them? And if they are crap, a rule like this isn't going to stop them. --DHeyward (talk) 21:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I would make a distinction between a paid writer such as a journalist or researcher and a paid advocate. I try not to paraphrase the latter. But you make some good points. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
modified Support - as per Gaijin42 above. COI editors willing to declare in the edit summary of each edit who was paying them or other financial interest would be welcome. Others not, as per the proposal. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose We should encourage editors who know the subject they are talking about. The question is not whether or not editors are paid. It is whether or not the edit is verifiable and neutral. Apuldram (talk) 22:35, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - I have no problem whatsoever with an organization, even a very large company, from having an employee who edits Misplaced Pages on the company's behalf. COI to me is only a problem when the edits are not neutral. We already have all sorts of rules about the behavior of editors. So long as a paid editor is neutral, and following WP's guidelines, why discourage them from adding quality content on a topic they know something about? Personally, I think every major organization should have a Wikipedian-in-residence. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Support Personal and corporate autobiography have been an ongoing issue with WP:AFC submissions, we do need to clearly draw the line. K7L (talk) 01:27, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Strongly support
This is a simple policy that every other high-profile nonprofit requires of its volunteers. Who is going to come to WP for unbiased information once they find out that big PR firms are paid to write WP articles, and we have no problem with that? It doesn't matter that we can't stop all the abuses, what matters is that we set a clear standard. The current COI guideline does not do that; all it says is "If you have a financial connection to a topic...you are advised to refrain from editing articles directly..."
The proposed policy does not prohibit scientists in industry, or lawyers or psychologists in private practice, from writing about their fields of study. The proposed standard is "You expect to derive monetary or other tangible benefits from editing Misplaced Pages." That's easy to avoid and still make a contribution.
In spite of what people have said above, this policy will go a long way toward cutting down the paid editing on WP. PR firms may not be ethical, but they care about appearing ethical. Most are not going to offer services that involve lying or misrepresenting themselves on websites, if the website clearly bans them.
I think if we don't implement this, it will have a chilling effect on the hardworking editors doing the thankless task of correcting NPOV abuses. As a volunteer editor, I'm going to get pretty tired of reverting some piece of promotional crap, if I find out that the editors that keep putting it in are a paid team of suits in an office. I think we may see editors getting discouraged and abandoning corporate articles to the flacks. We may even see editors deciding to donate their time, energy, and enthusiasm to other sites, sites that actually care about volunteers.
Anyone who thinks it doesn't introduce bias to have paid lobbyists involved in a process should look at Congress. I love the argument, made ad infinitum above, that we need "experts" with COI to make articles accurate; it's the same argument corporate lobbyists make to Congressmen. "You need us; we've got the inside industry knowledge!" There are plenty of people who have COI-free expertise; I'm one.
Fence-Sitter : I believe, from reading through more on this subject, that people with a financial COI (in that it is a financial COI only) should have some method to easily identify their financial COI. While a financial COI contributor may be able to edit a Misplaced Pages article in an unbiased view, allowing them to identify their COI in a relatively easy manner allows other editors to know that their edit may be biased. This would allow for editors who wish to do so, to review the edit and determine whether its biased. Should a financial COI editor make significant, obvious biased edits they should be reported and thus banned from editing either the article or their account banned entirely (if that's possible). "Easily identifiable" to me would be something in the edit summary as I'm somewhat still new to Misplaced Pages. Other definitions such as "significant, obvious edits" could be determined later since there are three parallel proposals on paid editing. Koi Sekirei (talk) 05:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Strong support It seems that a lot of people voting on this aren't actually reading the proposal (or at least not reading it fully). It's not saying that COI's cant contribute, its just saying that they should request edits rather than perform them. This seems sensible. I have dealt with quite a lot of COI stuff, and I think a policy like this would be helpful. Benboy00 (talk) 16:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - When I have had a WP:COI, such as for Al-Ma'arri, I made some uncontentious edits adding the research I'd done for my non-WP content; and requested another editor added a link to my content (his only English-language radio bio). They agreed it was justified, and added it. That workable judgement call would, to me, seem to work for WP:PAID as well. Ian McDonald (talk) 17:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose — The proposal links to the COI page, which already has something on paid advocacy. In addition to it being redundant (from my view), the proposal as it stands is a little too sparse and broad for my comfort. I'm also uncomfortable with outright stopping these people from contributing, and would rather see some sort of extra scrutiny on their edits instead. Rnddim (talk) 20:08, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Strong support - I've been calling for this for some time; perhaps this is in response.
This would of course not be retroactive; we never sanction folks for edits that complied with policy when made, but don't comply with new policy. Some have opposed as if this were not true.
Of course the editors and admins who are themselves paid advocates are !voting in support of this; if there's another !vote on this or similar proposed policy, I would urge the proposer to ask that all voters declare whether they have performed editing that this policy proposes to bar. So it's important that we hold the closer to the proper standard when s/he closes this; it's not a count of votes; it's an evaluation of logical arguments. Going through ~2 dozen oppose !votes, I see remarkable quality - many of them hold no weight at all because they are built on a foundation that is a false premise - it's patently absurd (AGK used the term reductio ad absurdum above, and it's apropos) to read this proposal as, barring a doctor from writing about medicine, or similar examples; a doctor couldn't possibly have a "close financial relationship" to the vast majority of medical topics on wikipedia; a doctor certainly could have a "close financial relationship" to one or a few topics - a doctor whose edit would plausibly significantly increase his income would be in violation - such as a doctor who has a patent on medical equipment to treat heart disease and edits article material that discusses using medical equipment to treat heart disease. There is a "close financial relationship" because edits that make such equipment more popular are likely to increase his income, and by an amount that could well be significant. As an indicator of due diligence, I ask that the closer indicate that s/he has read this, Elvey's !vote, and that no one else comment on this sentence.
Several of the oppose votes boil down to no argument - e.g. stating that the status quo is fine hardly deserves to be considered a weighty argument. (!votes of KonveyorBelt, Seraphimblade, SmokeyJoe, etc.)
The only oppose argument I saw that had weight was NE Ent's 'Oppose per unenforceable', so I'd like to address it. Certainly enforceability is an issue, but then that's the case with several policies; sock policy enforceability is an issue too; surely anyone with intelligence and moderate technical expertise could avoid detection, but I still don't think we should do away with it. Valid con arguments, should be weighed against valid pro ones.
Paid editing is largely illegal in the US and EU. As noted here, the FTC has said as much, and there's even wikipedia-specific case law in Germany. Vicious circle of paid editing Just as we tell users what files not to upload for reasons of copyright law, we should tell them that if they are compensated for their editing, there are some edits they must not make for reasons of advertising law. --Elvey (talk) 21:25, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Support in strongest possible terms. Paid editors can make good edits, but they will argue relentlessly for their bad edits. They insist on going through every procedure, every talk page, and every policy available to them. Moreover, they are paid to take one position, and thus are not discussing in good faith. They are paid, in essence, to be utterly and totally intransigent. I can speak from experience, that I have dramatically reduced my editing because of frustrations in dealing with paid editors, and this is not an uncommon experience. Fundamentally, paid editors are not entering discussions in good faith, and they have superior resources to outdistance opposing viewpoints. It can not be allowed. --TeaDrinker (talk) 00:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Partially Oppose From experiences volunteering in the help irc channel, some of these editors can genuinely still contribute positively to Misplaced Pages, as well as spot errors unininvolved editors would miss. The problem here is spotting them (and getting them to admit their COI), guiding them, and rooting out the peacockry inherent in their edits. I believe it would deprive us of a lot if they were forbidden based only on the criteria that they were technically paid to do it.
Most "paid" editors are employees or interns of their respective companies, or agents of respective personalities. And yes, I still would absolutely require all of their edits to be completely neutral and solidly sourced. And be merciless in denying them a page when their subject is not notable. I've succeeded in wrangling out acceptable articles from people like these before on subjects which are notable. Though admittedly it requires constant guidance as most of them are newbies. But most importantly, these articles are articles that no one would otherwise think of making, even though they are notable, because no one simply interested in them (especially for companies or celebrities from non-English speaking countries).
I still agree that the other kind of paid editing however, the "mercenaries" as I call them, should be banned. Those who edit Misplaced Pages professionally and are more or less unrelated to the companies they make pages on, aside from being hired to do so because of their expertise in Misplaced Pages rules and how to sidestep them to make promotional pieces. These are far more problematic because they are hard to detect.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL03:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Past practice is that factual, non-controversial, edits to articles may be made directly by editors with a COI, especially if a source is provided. For example, if an article about a company lists its officers (or some of them), and one of them retires and a successor is appointed, A business owner, company employee, or paid editor could directly edit to make that change without going through the {{edit request}} mechanism. Also, obvious blatant vandalism may be reverted by such editors. I would like these included in the proposal. Any objections? DES17:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Would it be reasonable for someone that may be doing paid advocacy to submit an article to AFC as long as they have full disclosure in that submittal? --MASEM (t) 18:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Then that should be added here, as another route for how such editors can still contribute (assuming, of course, we don't completely shut off paid advocacy per above discussion) --MASEM (t) 18:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
On the contrary, it's a form of gaming the system that needs to be stopped. It skews the content of the encyclopedia toward articles planted by the subjects of articles and their reps, especially small companies of limited interest, and implicitly exaggerates the importance of subjects that receive such advocacy vs subjects in the same industry and business category that don't pay to have their interests pushed on Misplaced Pages. Coretheapple (talk) 19:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I see what you meant by "it's current practice" above; however, I postulate that if AFC is doing the right job - not only reviewing the article but doing a cursory check of other mentions of the topic to make sure that there isn't any obvious aspects that are being missed in the candidate, it doesn't make sense to not allow that to go through. Or if anything, have a COI AFC board so that multiple editors can check. --MASEM (t) 19:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Diverting volunteers to vetting what paid editors are doing isn't the answer, and would not address the problem of giving excessive attention to companies and persons who pay to plant articles in Misplaced Pages. Coretheapple (talk) 19:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
We're talking about an activity that should be happening irregardless of who submits an article to AFC; check to make sure the topic isn't a hoax, that there is balance to the coverage, etc. The only additional aspect here is that if there's an AFC that's attached to an editor that has asserted their COI, the article should be doubled checked for tone in additional to all the other steps a AFC entry should review, which takes at most a few extra minutes. --MASEM (t) 21:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Comment I think it's important to note that much of paid editing is done by experienced Misplaced Pages Editors, not outside PR firms. And because these Editor are fully aware of WP policies and guidelines, I think their participation is much preferred to newly created accounts and IPs who show up to put out fires.
I have actually seen instances where I know an Editor was paid to be a liaison between a company and those Editors who were actively editing an article and his/her participation led to a better article. In one particular instance, the paid Editor posted suggested edits on the Talk Page that uninvolved Editors were free to accept, reject or ignore (and all of their statements were sourced). I just think it's important to realize that paid editing takes a variety of forms and not all of it is ham-fisted PR companies asserting ownership over articles. Liz18:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
P.S. The Editors in question were transparent about their role and COI. They didn't hide what they were doing. Liz18:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Disclosure is sort of a litmus test that separates those paid editors editing in a policy compliant manner and those with an ulterior, advocacy-type motive they seek to conceal in order to circumvent, er, 'guidelines'.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑18:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Question: As worded, would the section entitled Financial Conflicts of Interest apply to academics or researchers who are receiving Grant $$$ on projects related to topics they might be editing, to students who are receiving scholarship $$$ and grades for editing Misplaced Pages as part of the Misplaced Pages:Education Program, to individuals that have supported non-profit organizations financially, etc., etc.?? --Mike Cline (talk) 19:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I would say probably yes, probably not, and no. Grant money is the tricky one, and is a widely recognized source of conflicts of interest. Absent specific facts, its hard to say with certainty, but it would be easy for academic or researcher to allow the grant money to could their neutrality when editing. The education program, afaik, doesn't have them edit anything about the program itself, so as long as they are editing about things unrelated to the source of the funds, and their only incentive is to produce quality work, its not an issue. As for groups you contribute to, we usually ignore non-financial COI, and are only interested in financial COIs to the extent that the person with the conflict would benefit financially. Monty84520:05, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Labeling academic researchers who have received grant money as being in COI would mean that most experts of any scientific Misplaced Pages article would be ineligible to edit them. In a hypothetical where such a policy were imposed outside of Misplaced Pages, such interpretation would essentially mean that almost all scientific publications and texts would be in violation of COI, and if such a policy were implemented by scientific journals, societies, and textbook publishers, it would empty PubMed's database and college book store shelves. The possibility that some would interpret a Misplaced Pages COI policy in this way is more than enough reason to strongly oppose implementing such a policy, at least as currently construed. I couldn't imagine anything more damaging to Misplaced Pages's external credibility than discouraging the contributions of expert editors that have grant funding, particular when the vast majority of it is awarded through a stringently peer-reviewed proposal system. CrazyPaco (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi B2C I am responding to your !vote above down here, so as to avoid cluttering the survey. I am new to the issue of COI policy at Misplaced Pages too, but not to COI policies in general. I work at a university, where knowledge production is our game, and our name and reputation are our most valuable asset. As industry and universities have come to collaborate more and more, and the isolation of the "ivory tower" has become a thing of the past, a lot of universities have put in hours of thought (much of it based on very difficult lived experience) on crafting COI policies. And pretty much all universities have them now - the core ideas are a) disclosure (daylight as disinfectant) and management of COI, which includes at minimum requiring disclosure, and forbidding some activities. BrightLine has both, as simply as it can be stated. (there are many many elaborations that are possible) I looked at your userpage and see that you are a "bottom up" guy and that you value the products of thoughtful experience. I hope you can hear me, that having things happen like the big sockpuppet network (which we are still living through), and other recent events, damage our good name and dishearten a lot of editors and admins. And it is that much worse, that we don't actually have a COI policy that clearly forbids what happened. We owe it to ourselves and our public to have a core COI policy. It is basic governance. I agree with you, very much, that bad faith editing will out - it was actually a single editor checking the reliability of sources who tugged on the thread that unraveled the sockpuppet network. But that doesn't mean that we have any excuse for not having a core COI policy. I hope that makes sense to you and that you might consider supporting this. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 20:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Hello Jytdog (talk·contribs)! Convincing me (and others, presumably) that COI is a problem on WP is pointless; I'm already convinced about that. What you need to convince me is that policies, guidelines and rules attempting to address the problem of COI on WP are going to have a significant effect on the problem, and that that positive effective will not be outweighed by the negative effect of the accusations, investigations and untold other unintended consequences of such policies, guidelines and rules.
As to comparing us to other organizations, like universities (or even publishers), that's not very convincing either. Nobody else produces work that is a collaboration of numerous mostly anonymous contributors. Also, our work is also unique in that it is strictly limited to non-original notable content that is supported in reliable sources. That really limits the influence the COI or any bias any one editor has as compared to what that influence could be at universities, newspapers, magazines, etc. --B2C21:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi B2C thanks for replying! I see, sorry for missing the point. awkward. Let me start at the end of what you wrote - we agree there a lot - the front line (and most important thing) remains content and the policies governing it (no OR/SYN, NPOV, RS, etc) and I would add, how well editors apply them! There is no substitute for that, and they go a long way. I hear you that we are fundamentally different than universities, publishers, etc, with our crazy open and anonymous system of contributors. But there are two key areas of overlap: 1) both WIkipedia and others are vulnerable to people on the "inside" using its resources, made available to them on trust, for their own benefit; 2) both rely on the public's trust. Repeated violations of trust degrade morale and ethics on the inside, and degrade trust from the public. Clear and reasonable COI policies, and clear and reasonable procedures to enforce them, address both. They are the time-honored solution. To the your first and key point -- would it have a significant impact on the problem? With respect to public trust, implementing a policy is the very least we can do. With respect to actually reducing COI behavior... it is hard to predict. But I think having a clearly articulated policy would definitely increase the risk for companies like Wiki-PR - who would hire them, when their activities are clearly against Misplaced Pages's policies? Wiki-PR would have to outright lie to say that what they do is OK. I think having that business dry up would go a long way. And there is currently confusion among editors - I continually come across people, in all good faith, saying "Of course it is fine for me to edit my company's page" With COI only a guideline and somewhat obscure, there is actually little we can say to them. So yes, I think there would be significant impact. Thanks for talking! Jytdog (talk) 01:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
It should be possible to draft something worded in a manner that provides a narrow scope for addressing the type of corporate PR advocacy threatened by WikiExperts, without sweeping up everyone with a professional interest in a given topic into that policy net.
I don't agree with the "advocacy is advocacy" school of thought, as being paid to advocate creates an incentive to do battle and engage in other WP:NOTHERE behavior to fulfill one's extraneous obligations, whereas holding a professional opinion on a given topic doesn't necessarily entail the encumbrance of being financially compelled to behave irrationally to promote the POV one has been contracted to advocate. This should not result in a policy that countermands WP:YESPOV.
Perhaps an attempt should be made to distinguish between "paid editing" and "paid advocacy". If that were possible, maybe it would be feasible to demand disclosure of the COI in both cases, but restrict only the editing that falls under the "advocacy" category to Talk pages, etc. There is a difference between someone being paid to create an article about a notable topic and someone advocating for commercial or political aims, with the intention of co-opting Misplaced Pages as a vehicle to promote the commercial or political agenda. One is in line with the informational purposes of an encyclopedia, and the other is at odds with it. So long as paid editing per se is required to be disclosed, the added scrutiny should provide an incentive to be more circumspect in pushing a POV. Corporate PR would seem to be in a completely different category, however.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑00:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Not here to support or oppose a policy, but just to voice my opinion. Echoing some of what was written above, company owners and employees are generally tolerable. The ones who are totally clueless and just here to advertise can be blocked immediately, and they are. The rest can typically be conversed with and convinced to either contribute within the bounds of COI or leave Misplaced Pages entirely. The truly intolerable editors are the actual paid advocates. This is a distinction in my mind between someone who gains a hypothetical financial benefit from a Misplaced Pages article (employee of a company), and someone who is being paid to write/edit a Misplaced Pages article (outside contractor). They care only about getting the job done, however it can be done, so they can get their paycheck. They have no interest in constructive contribution, and no interest in learning the rules except as far as it helps them achieve their goal. They are a subset of WP:NOTHERE. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:No paid advocacy seems inherently contradictory to me. It says that paid editing is allowed, but you may not edit if "you expect to derive monetary or other benefits from editing Misplaced Pages". The example given is clearly paid advocacy, not paid editing, but the wording of the prohibition would forbid most of the paid editing that is declared acceptable further down. If I'm wrong about this, please let me know why. – Quadell12:10, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Comment In the light of recent Wiki-PR revelations and to handle that sort of actions in the future I would support making WP:COI a policy instead, which would automatically make WP:NOPAY a policy as well. In this sense the proposed policy looks essentially repetitive and redundant. Brandmeister13:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Minor rewording - Item 2 of the "definition" of financial COI says "you expect to derive monetary or other benefits from editing Misplaced Pages". This should read "you expect to derive monetary or other material benefits from editing Misplaced Pages" and/or "... benefits from the subject of the article" or similar. If I read it literally, the current definition says I have a financial COI just because I get the "other benefit" of feeling good about fixing a spelling error on the article about my employer - even when I do it anonymously (and my employer is not aware that I'm doing it). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Comment, as I said in Survey, I think we need a bright line rule that would allow to ban violators when they are caught first time as it is very difficult to prove paid editing. Still I think we could place the line somehow differently. It would be sufficient to a)identify all the possible conflicts of interests including tagging the article if it was mostly written by editors with COI; b) No edit warring if COI. For me it will be sufficient, a) would allow scrutiny of COI-related issues by unbiased editors, b) would make NPOVing of the articles easy. Still it would be more acceptable for people with COI especially different borderline cases Risker was talking about Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Comment Is this the wrong way around? Shouldn't it be less about outing of editors that could have a $ incentive, and rather identifying articles that could be possible $-makers if misused. And tagging the latter in some way for patrol? In other words, develop a policy to flag the potential money making articles rather than witchhunt editors (who, even if paid, are playing by the stated rules)? AnonNep (talk) 22:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
For your consideration, I offer my own Timbo's Rule 15."There's unnecessary confusion about how a paid Conflict of Interest editor can edit successfully at WP. It's actually as easy as one-two-three... 1. Declare your COI on the talk page. 2. Commit no spam — stick to uncontroversial, sourced content. 3. Invite scrutiny." (April 2012) Carrite (talk) 16:47, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support I've seen too much advocacy editing in biographies and corporations. Paid advocacy is inherently not neutral. Hekerui (talk) 08:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
As an alternative, I would like to see a way to add users, IP addresses or maybe even a block of IP addresses to my watch list, preferably with some automatic expiration time. That way, having encountered suspicious editing from an IP or new account, I could easily monitor if the editor was exhibiting a pattern of abuse. Jackmcbarn pointed out to me elsewhere that "We've wanted that for 9 years, never got it, but never got told no. See bugzilla:470."--agr (talk) 11:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
This and the bugzilla may not be very well expresssed. You already can put users and IP addresses on your watchlist. Is it that you want to put a user's contributions on your watchlist? How many do you want listed? Presumably not just the last one. What I do when I want to know if a vandal or other evildoer has stopped is to put them on my watchlist and then occasionally click View and edit watchlist. This gives a link to their contributions. --Stfg (talk) 12:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I want the user on my watch list, not the user's talk page. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. I want to know when a user makes a new edit. The latest edit will do; an easy way to get the last few would be nice, but there are other ways to get that. What I don't want is to have to keep checking for recent activity. I only have so much time to devote. If I see vandalism or something that looks improper (like removing well sourced criticism) from an IP or new account or if I get a complaint, I want to see if that pattern continues. A watch list tool would make it much easier to find and track accounts engaged in activity that violates our rules. It's something practical that can be done easily, as opposed to an unenforceable No paid advocacy policy that is about to snowball out.--agr (talk) 14:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
There was already an attempt to mark the proposal as rejected ("No way this will pass with so many opposes registered"), but that was reverted ("Your conclusion is a fair one but closing this will stifle the discussion. And discussion is always a good thing.").
It seems to me that everything that needs to be said has been stated multiple times. COI editing is a problem, but efforts to restrict it, beyond enforcing standard content-related polices and guidelines, creates more problems than it resolves. I propose we close the discussion and mark the proposal rejected. --B2C06:20, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose While it's obvious this isn't going to pass, there continues to be good discussion and new ideas. Since this is such a community-wide issue, let everyone have their say. First Light (talk) 14:39, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Not ideas so much as comments that put this proposal in perspective. One which I appreciated is yours: "LOL. Yes, and vandals should also be required to identify themselves, preferably in their signatures." It was worth keeping this open long enough to see something that we agree on :-). I'm in the oppose camp here, and think that there can't be too many nails put in the coffin. First Light (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Tagging this proposal as rejected does mean you have to stop discussing, the tag explicitly states "If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump.". From what I gather, even the supporters do not believe that this proposal has any chance. Time to die.Paradoctor (talk) 21:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support closure Was going to weigh in but it looks like the weights are all on the scales already as it were and we've got a clear answer. Time to finalize the clear decision. 0x0077BE (talk) 18:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Support This proposal has, to put it bluntly, no chance in hell of ever passing. There is no new ideas, just more and more people expressing the same old rehashed consensus. KonveyorBelt18:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I can't see how this can be policed or how it benefits Misplaced Pages as a policy. If a paid advocate adds NPOV content that is properly referenced, what's the problem? If they add unsourced or non-NPOV content, we have established policies for dealing with it. - Scribble Monkey (talk) 21:33, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Support Paid editing is bad for Misplaced Pages. There's an enforcement problem, but identifying paid editors usually isn't that hard. Some write obvious promotional material. Some focus on narrow areas of commercial interest. The concern that this will prevent experts in some area from editing is overrated. If an edit has no relevance to a specific product or company, it's probably not going to raise a paid editing issue. I've run into paid editing on Carhartt, Skyy Vodka, Better Place, and Carnival Cruises. In each case, an editor appeared who focused on adding hype and deleting cited negative info, and edited few or no other articles. It's not that hard to see such patterns. John Nagle (talk) 19:59, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Disclosing financial COI in signature
I think it would be good to require an editor with a financial conflict of interest, as defined in this proposal, to disclose that fact in their signature with text that says "(paid)" or "(PAID)", linking to a subpage in their userspace (or a section on their main userpage) that identifies their sponsor(s). This would maximize transparency, so that someone reading a discussion in which that editor participated would be able to weigh that editor's statements and their sponsors' interests accordingly. Thoughts? alanyst17:18, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
People may not have a COI about every issue they edit about, so unless it's an SPA we can't ask people to add it to their sigs. I think we need to focus like a laser on producing a very simple policy. SlimVirgin17:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Editors can create alternate accounts, which can be used when they have a conflict of interest (or when they don't). This isn't a bad idea. Coretheapple (talk) 17:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Running with that idea (probably way out of scope), what about a special class of account—which might be an alternate, for those who also edit as volunteers—in which names have a distinctive prefix or suffix (say, “$$$”), and that doesn’t get auto-confirmed? One advantage to the paid editor from using such an account: page-histories would be easier to scan for billing purposes. ;) —Odysseus147918:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Another better (imo) option would be to incorporate it into MediaWiki - with a usergroup PR personnel with the userrights no-review This person is unable to automatically review edits to pages protected with Pending ChangesPR personnel Edits made by this person are listed in ], maybe others if anyone thinks of them. That way it'd be like PC, have a central place to review edits. ~Charmlet23:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
We could insist that they add an "A" for "Advocate" to their sig, and to avoid confusion with the regular part of the sig, it should be in bold, and red.--SPhilbrick(Talk)15:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I have made this proposed change, which prescribes how a financial conflict of interest must be disclosed. (It also makes a small clarification to exclude intangible benefits, such as an expectation of glory in the afterlife or a feeling of gratification for having informed the world of the plight of the lesser bottle-nosed fruit fly, from those that would trigger the FCOI. That sort of advocacy is also generally undesirable but not the problem this proposed policy aims to address.) I immediately reverted it so we could discuss it without giving the appearance of an edit war.
I appreciate SlimVirgin's desire to keep the proposal minimalist and laser-focused, and I've tried to keep my changes in that vein, but I believe it's important to provide a clear way for an editor to conform to the requirements if they have such a conflict of interest. Simply stating that the editor must disclose their COI does not sufficiently set the expectation for how frequently and prominently it should be made.
Regarding SlimVirgin's other point about people not having a COI about every issue they edit about: I agree, but if an editor does have a financial COI then it's better for their signature to disclose that every place they leave a comment, and let the other readers and participants of those discussions determine for themselves whether the COI is relevant to those particular remarks. That way there's no chance of arguing over whether COI should have been disclosed at a particular discussion when it wasn't. alanyst18:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Oops, I forgot that my proposed change also added proposing new articles at AfC alongside making edit requests. I understand this is opposed by some and didn't mean to slide that in without notice. alanyst19:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Flow isn't going to support blinking rainbow sigs, but, last I heard, it would still be possible to add plain text sigs that do not match the account name ("Alice Expert" instead of "Aexpert"), so presumably the plain text "Alice Expert (paid)" would be possible, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I object to these changes. I think blocking AfC and attempting to mandate signature use are booh mistakes. DES20:27, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem with requiring disclosure in a signature is that the most important disclosure is linked to mainspace edits. There is no requirement for any editor to ever sign. If we look for disclosures in signatures, we may not look close enough at mainspace edits. The problem with requiring a alternate account with disclosure in the username, well it might work, but be careful that we might be teaching sock puppetry. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Why stop with labels? Why can't we force every paid editor to put in front of their username this: THIS IS A PAID EDITOR. DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING THIS EDITOR SAID SERIOUSLY, HE IS BEING PAID BY A PR FIRM. BEWARE OF COI. IF YOU SEE THIS EDITOR PLEASE BLOCK HIM/HER Would then you be happy? sarcasm of course KonveyorBelt00:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps a userbox with the wording, "This user has received to create articles on Misplaced Pages" or "This user has created paid articles on Misplaced Pages"?--Aurictalk15:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I think it is bad idea, as I identify on my Userpage I am working for Moldflow (a software company that develop software for plastic industry) that is now subsidiary of Autodesk. I never edited Moldflow or Autodesk articles but I did a few edits on plastic and CFD-related articles there I might have a borderline COI. The bulk of my edits are on politics, history and culture of Russia as well as general administrative work. Should I really tell every vandal I have warned or blocked that I am doing it on behalf of my employer? I really do not think so Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I believe signature disclosure, strongly enforced, has worked very well on the German Misplaced Pages. We are muddling in the sands thinking we can just ban paid advocacy at the stroke of a pen: it's not possible. Exposure and control are the sane way to handle this. Tony(talk) 01:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Can you explain how it works in German wikipedia? Does it mean that everybody should disclose the name of their employer in the signature? Alex Bakharev (talk) 02:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
This all seems to run counter to the general policy to block anyone that has a signature that suggests they are working for an organization or company! To be honest, these editors are declaring their COI in their signature, but get rapidly blocked. If they come back again, it is under an opaque username and no-one is the wiser. Sionk (talk) 14:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
There is little possibility that either disclosing paid advocacy (more on what this means exactly in a moment), or prohibiting paid advocates, can work. There are pragmatic difficulties with detection, and with the mechanics of disclosure, and evasion attempts, and so on. Those are covered reasonably well above. But the more fundamental problem is definitional and methinks inherent. Here is an examle: I work in the food industry, so I cannot edit any articles related to cooking, ingredients, kitchen equipment, farms, restaurants, or of course foods. I use computers, and drive vehicles, for business and pleasure, plus own stock in electronics and automotive firms -- I can edit nothing about those industries. My parents run a brokerage, so I cannot edit any articles about stocks, bonds, forex, t-bills, investing, inflation, hedging, options, mutual funds, monetary policy. My spouse is currently hospitalized with a chronic disease, so I cannot write anything about health, hospitals, medicine. My fully-grown oldest child is running for office, so I cannot write anything about politics, policy, legislation, bureaus, government. My youngest child is graduating from high school and going on to university, so I cannot write anything about education... and they are in a band, so I cannot edit anything about music, lest I badmouth the competition. As a citizen of my nation, I cannot edit articles related to wars; as a citizen of my planet, I cannot edit articles related to the environment, nor the cosmos. WP:COI is just a subset of WP:NPOV, and there is a very fuzzy line between them. Objectivity means the ability to separate oneself from bias; it is essential for scientists, philosophers, and wikipedians. My sig would have 88 words just to explain my *direct* WP:COI, not counting one-hop indirections like my kid's pop band. I realize the proposal is intended to be narrowly tailored to editing for a formal employer, but the slope is a lot more slippery than that... I would say, inherently slippery. Better to admit we have bias, and in some cases (more than might be apparent at first glance as the list above shows) some feasibly-plausible source of financial incentives to push a particular POV. The trick is to resist, not to regulate. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Adding my voice to others here. Everyone has some sort of COI. I work as an engineer in a reasonably controversial area and you can bet there'd be a stink if someone found I was editing pages related to it. But my employer has never asked me to edit WP and in fact would probably be a bit worried if I was doing so on company time. Do I have a financial COI that I need to declare in my sig? I could certainly benefit financially if WP said nice things about my industry. And everyone is in the same position. Even someone on benefits has a financial COI when editing pages related to welfare policy. Someone who lives on charity handouts has a financial COI when editing pages related to charity funding. For most people, the COI will be very narrow and unrelated to 99% of their edits, so having the COI declared in their sig doesn't help to identify whether their edits are worrying or not GoldenRing (talk) 15:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
No paid advocacy vs. No Personal Attacks
I find it ironic that this proposal shares its initialism with WP:NPA, which states:
Do not make personal attacks anywhere in Misplaced Pages. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks do not help make a point; they only hurt the Misplaced Pages community and deter users from helping to create a good encyclopedia.
The entire focus of this proposal, and indeed all efforts to directly address the problem of edits made by editors with a COI, is of the on the contributor variety rather than on content. This entire approach is arguably a violation of at least the spirit of WP:NPA, if not the actual explicit intent.
I'm serious. The whole idea underlying WP:NPA is to put aside WHO is editing and WHY they are editing, and instead focus on the WHAT of the edit itself as objectively as reasonably possible, and comment on that without regard to WHO made the edit, or WHY they made the edit. Trying to ban or even monitor COI editing ignores WP:NPA and instead encourages a Witch-hunt based on the absurd precepts of Thoughtcrime. It's an initiative that moves WP towards pointless bickering, infighting, and, ultimately, implosion.
The problem of COI editing can never be eliminated. But it can be mitigated to a reasonable level along with all biased editing, by focusing on our content-governing policies and guidelines (notability, sourcing, NPOV, etc.) and enforcing those. Let's keep the eye on the ball folks, building and maintaining an outstanding encyclopedia, rather than get distracted by nonsense like trying to address the problem of COI editing directly. It's never going to work, and, if we try, WP will only suffer.
There is only one WP:NPA, and it's a good one. Let's keep it, and ditch this one. The intent is good, but it's wrong-headed. --B2C22:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
+1 Very well said. Egregious cases of corporate shills are easily detected and easily dealt with. Anyone who's actually going to edit in a partisan, bad-faith manner isn't going to play by the rules being discussed here, whether we call it an essay, policy, or divine law. I've edited articles on organizations that have employed me. Would it have been better if someone with no connection to one of those organizations made the same edits? I guess, maybe, in some abstract way. I'd like to assume most of us are grownups who are aware of our potential conflicts and behave accordingly. When that doesn't happen, we deal with it. If WP:N, WP:REF, and WP:NPOV are being observed, I don't care who's doing the editing. --BDD (talk) 22:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Strangely, I think it is an appropriate comparison, because this policy has a potential of a high degree of false positives being used to take a minority group of editors and cast them in extremely negative light with guilt by association. Heck, I've been accused of doing these kind of edits myself simply for starting a new article about a company I thought was interesting. I agree with the parent post of this thread that accusing somebody of paid advocacy when that information isn't volunteered is tantamount to a personal attack on the credibility of the user in question. Just like being called a Jew in Nazi Germany, and the end result by demanding they get banned is almost the same in terms of them being declared "dead to the community". We really need to be much more open and willing to let anybody edit... as is supposedly claimed by this community. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:38, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anything in your post makes Niteshifts statement it in any way comparable or acceptable. It's a form of guilt by association and Reductio ad Hitlerum, and is inherently fallacious reasoning, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Some COIs are easily verifiable, but pointing them out would, unfortunately, constitute outing under current P&Gs. What distinguishes witch hunts from these cases is evidence, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Identifying potential COI is a wide-spread practice in democratic societies, it is not a form of personal attack but it helps to decrease the level of hostility. Currently we treat edits by sockpuppets of banned users quite differently from edits by editors in good standing. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We have great policies that work pretty well for discussions among editors. Sometimes, people get out of hand, and they will not give it a rest. However paid editors are paid to never give in. They are paid to work through every policy, every medium, every forum to ensure that a lawsuit against their client is not mentioned in the lead of the article, for example. How many volunteers want to spend their time, hours per day, arguing back and forth on the talk page with someone who is paid to never change his or her mind, particularly about topics that are not really that important to the editor? This editor got so frustrated with paid editors he almost stopped editing entirely. Focusing on the contributions, not the contributor is fine, but if the contributions are bad (and they usually are), allowing paid editing condemns volunteers to spending hours arguing with people paid to never change their mind. Paid editing is obnoxious and toxic to a volunteer project. --TeaDrinker (talk) 00:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
CONTEST: worst example of COI editing ever!
So, I wonder. If COI editing is such a serious problem, I wonder if we couldn't have a contest to identify the worst problems ever caused by COI editing. All entries should include:
A summary of what happened, including what the problematic edit/s was/were, how long they were in the article before they were identified, how they were identified as problematic, how they were identified as being the product of COI editing, etc.
The very worst would be in articles now deleted. I know of one in particular, an article created by the subject. Being about a living person, I don't think it's wise or necessary to get into this kind of thing. Coretheapple (talk) 22:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
But articles like that one are usually easily dispensed with per notability. Wasn't that the primary basis for deletion in this case? The point is it doesn't matter WHO posted the inappropriate article, or whether that person had a COI. Regardless of WHO or WHY, the WHAT justified deletion. Right? --B2C20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh, here's one that doesn't involve BLPs. I posted it on Jimbo's talk page and am copying it below:
This PR Newswire release re "Obamacare" & Misplaced Pages just came to my attention. It reads in relevant part:
"The Obamacare debate resulted in a legislative impasse and a government shutdown as both parties pour millions into promoting and defending their position. This time, however, the war of words is not limited to Congress and the news media. One of the new battlegrounds is Misplaced Pages, where every word in the 13,000-word Obamacare article is bitterly fought over." . . . 'This editorial war on Misplaced Pages is pretty representative of the high impact Misplaced Pages profiles now play in forming public opinion about political issues, brands, products, corporations. The stakes are often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so we find ourselves quite busy helping our clients achieve their objective on Misplaced Pages, while adhering to Misplaced Pages's notoriously complex rules and practices,' said Alex Konanykhin, CEO of www.WikiExperts.us, the leading Misplaced Pages visibility agency."
If they really are "adhering to Misplaced Pages's notoriously complex rules and practices," why is it a problem? If they aren't, isn't that the problem, rather than some money changing hands? --BDD (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
It’s certainly in their interest to make that claim, because it’s the principal basis of their pitch to prospective clients. Their website, to their credit IMO, gives high prominence to WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:NOT, and so on, the message being that they can better ensure our standards are met than clients can do on their own. I also note they guarantee only that their articles will survive for a month, not that the content will reflect the client’s wishes. I don’t mean to downplay the issue of disclosure—about which I saw nothing (in an admittedly brief surf through the site)–but otherwise I found their presentation hard to fault. Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with you, and I’m concerned that accusations of paid editing could become a form of ad hominem that’s perceived to have backing in policy.—Odysseus147900:11, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
If their articles will survive for a month? That will not be enough for them If they are deleted, and if the edit history of the paid editor is unavailable, then the client will ask for their money back, will be unlikely to pay again, and will not be recommending the service. If they attempt to keep client money on the basis of an article surviving one month plus one day, then there goes their reputation.
Having read most others' comments, I am still convinced that paid editing is an issue that can be managed, and that the real problem is undisclosed paid editors using undisclosed disposable accounts, probably one per client, probably with accounts used in successful paid article creation being disclosed in late negotiation for new clients. I suggest a small step, not a knee jerk overreaction, of merely requiring disclosure on each account, under threat of ] deletion of all their work, a threat that targets their cash flow.
When these professional paid editors are disclosed, cataloged, and reviewable, then we can see the extent of the problem. Currently, we are probably suffering an extreme biased view because we catch the worst first. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Worst I came across IMO was on Brian Engel. The article-subject was a non-notable publicist for oil & gas companies. He had a massive article with 33 citations, but almost everything about the article was misleading. I would rank such deceit as more offensive than just promotional writing, which is often easy to cleanup, or other non-notable articles that are easier to detect. When the article has 33 cites, editors presume it is notable and properly sourced, when it wasn't actually. CorporateM (Talk) 01:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
The whole Aaron Klein affair — he set up a sockpuppet account that had been content for a while to simply self-promote himself on his own article. Later, he engaged in what he later called investigative journalism by edit warring Birther material into the main Obama article until he got himself blocked, then he wrote a misleading third person account about the incident as if he did not know who was operating the account, exposing Misplaced Pages's supposed pro-Obama bias. The story got picked up by the conservative blogosphere and a few major mainstream sources, who encouraged their minions to come to Misplaced Pages to set things straight. The articles were overwhelmed for days with angry Republican conspiracy theorists, leading indirectly to a lot more sockpuppets, dozens of blocked accounts, and a botched arbitration case. The COI editing had been going on for months; it took a few days for Misplaced Pages editors and a few real world journalists to piece together what was going on after the news articles. The conservative press denied the whole thing, despite the fact that it's all in the edit records. Sorry, no diffs, the arbcom case ran to megabytes. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
A while back I caught (and identified) an employee of American Apparel trying to whitewash Misplaced Pages's accounts of the CEO's well-documented sex scandals. I had to remind them what happens when well known people get caught gaming their Misplaced Pages articles, this was an era where that kind of story was news fodder. That worked. Interestingly, I don't think the proposed policy would have stopped either of these. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ted Cruz might qualify as a case in point here. The single greatest contributor (a Cruz crusader), (one of his/her monikers was "Exclusive Agent") was edit-warring under multiple monikers and IP addresses. Shortly after that person was blocked, a new Wikipedian arose who continually deleted such uncontroversial phrases such as the fact that Canada was Cruz's place of birth and that he was widely seen as bearing some responsible for the 2013 government shutdown. Anyone entering the page to inject a well-documented fact was met with immediate resistance and removal of the material. Despite the fact that one or two editors reversed the new Cruz advocates' revert, the person continually removed the material. A paid political partisan who is engaged in editing as a full time endeavor (particularly working in tandem with his or her own sockpuppet or misguided and passionate supporters) can easily exhaust the average informed person trying to add a few simple facts to the page. In such cases, the whole article is biased. What does one do? You can't prove it but you can smell it. Is it ad hominem to ask about conflicts of interest and if one does, should the editor be required to answer?Scholarlyarticles (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
The Advocacy essay you link to refers to policy that governs content. The actual text of the proposed BrightLine policy is about contributor, not content and seems to do exactly what you are proposing...Jytdog (talk) 10:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't know about Advocacy, as that is an essay, but I was not aware of the paid editing policy proposal. That's a good point. It is more specific and seems like a common-sense way to proceed. I don't understand why that's not being discussed. While it may not be adopted, my feeling is that if Misplaced Pages want to reject a paid editing policy proposal that would be routine and uncontroversial everywhere else, so be it. Coretheapple (talk) 14:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Disclosure wording
Multiple User's above have said we can/should "require disclosure." I have therefore cribbed this from Protecting our Neutrality (see google archive here ) and modified it for Misplaced Pages.
On their User page, on subject article talk pages, and when commenting on any conflict of interest related policy/guideline discussion page:
Users must disclose the fact that they have received or will receive anything that could be construed as a payment to the User for favorable coverage or for avoiding unfavorable coverage of article subjects the User is working on. This includes money, gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other benefits from individuals or organizations covered (or likely to be covered) by the User in a Misplaced Pages article.
Users must disclose the fact of payment or compensation (not the amount) of any sort from individuals or organizations (including through intermediaries) who are the subject of coverage (positive, negative, or neutral) the User is to provide, edit, prepare or supervise on Misplaced Pages.
The notices given subject to the above must be kept indefinitely in place, even after your work has ended.
Disclosure is this - on their userpage, clearly, at the top, set off from the rest of the style. Same on talkpage. Preferably a username with PR in it, or another similar way to determine that. Furthermore, as I proposed above, I support software changes to add userrights that would form a PR personnel group which would include getting autopatrolled, but not having their edits auto-reviewed under PC, as well as putting their mainspace edits on Special:PRedits or similar. Furthermore, their signature should accurately display their username (with the PR part). If the usergroup is added, it's likely that it'd be enough disclosure, and a talkpagepost/signature disclosure would be overboard. ~Charmlet00:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
The above seems reasonable. It is enough that we know that they are a paid editor. We can then see from there edits what their bias is. There is no need to specifically identify the editor, or the client. The client will in obvious enough.
I'm thinking that requiring an alternative account suffixed with "(Paid)", or similar, is a good way to go. I would expect that this suffix should be appended to the persons main wikipedia account. I expect that all half rate paid editors and better have main Misplaced Pages accounts with substantial mainspace edit history. I expect that the clients are often aware of the multiple account use of the paid editor, at least the more successful alternative accounts.
Accounts should be linked both ways. I expect that a paid editor may create and article and maintain it during employment, but down the track may choose to maintain the article, their past work, as an ordinary unpaid editor. We should not assume a defined line exists between paid edits and unpaid edits. We should not assume that paid editors are not otherwise ethical Misplaced Pages volunteers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Marketing guy here as mentioned above. If anyone cares to dig it up, the Federal Trade Commission has some great common sense advice about disclosures. Rather than having prescriptive rules, they say that the disclosure must be "clear and conspicuous". The disclosure's effectiveness is based on whether the average reader (editors in this case) would get its meaning. Smokey is on-target; I contribute about 50% volunteer and 50% COI and I have in some cases maintained articles as a volunteer where any financial incentive was years prior. It is not so easy to separate the two. Also, as I have learned first-hand, any list of COI articles becomes a target list for harassment. I have not seen any COI disclosures that were not sufficient, except those that were not made at all, which I would consider the primary target. On the contrary, sometimes they disclose too much and I want them to get to the point regarding the actual article.CorporateM (Talk) 01:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd rather drop the "for favorable coverage or for avoiding unfavorable coverage". Any edit, other than the reversion of blatant vandalism, should probably require the editor to have disclosed a financial COI in regard to that article. I'm worried that it will raise defences along the lines of "I was only hired to make sure it was neutral", which might be better avoided. - Bilby (talk) 01:19, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I've just started Misplaced Pages:Bright lines - which is tackling the same idea, but from the other end of the telescope, so we are looking at the editing results, rather than assuming bad motives of some well meaning professionals. This is simply a quick start to get ideas flowing. I'm off out now, so won't be able to get back to it for a bit. SilkTork14:00, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
We don't even have a consensus for what "banned" means. Blocked or site banned? To all those who encourage PR firm editing: a pox on your pet articles! May the paid editors spin them for you against your will. Doctalk14:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
"Banned" means WP:BAN. I don't like the idea of a bright-line banning policy. Banning is an extraordinary remedy, similar to outlawry, whereby the community (or ArbCom, or Jimbo) decides that said person shall not contribute to Misplaced Pages, and all edits by said person shall be reverted on sight. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 14:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
These are the exact opposite of "bright lines". A bright line states incontrovertibly that if you do X, the response shall be Y regardless of the circumstantial nuances. Instead these "bright lines" currently say:
Any user will be banned from the project if, after an appropriate warning, they repeatedly and deliberately edit or amend an article to do any one of these:
And so on. These need to be watertight if they are to be proposed as "bright lines" underlying this proposed policy change Jebus98916:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Any user will be banned from the project if, after an appropriate warning, they repeatedly and deliberately edit or amend an article to do any one of these
So what does this mean? What is an appropriate warning?
Insert false information
If someone mistakenly edits the article with a non reliable source, can he be banned?
*Inappropriately disparage the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the disparagement
Inappropriately praise the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the praise
Same concerns as above.
Remove or suppress reliably sourced information that appropriately balances praise or disparagement in an article
Forgive me if I cannot always be up to speed with all Wiki rubrics but I read this on the project page "Subject-matter experts
Nothing in this policy should be interpreted to mean that subject-matter experts should not contribute to Misplaced Pages in their area of expertise. Like all other editors, subject-matter experts should simply make sure that their external financial relationships in the field do not interfere with their primary role on Misplaced Pages."
I really struggle to get my head around this. Wiki seeks great involvement from GLAM organisations. Almost by definition a curator is hired for their expertise in a subject which they are expected to share. One of the most obvious ways to do this is to generate Wiki content. I don't see it as COI. It only becomes COI in my book when the amount of renumeration you received changes because of a wiki entry. So a £20k p/a curator should be able to write for Wiki with no COI as a subject professional. Only if by writing for Wiki his £20k becomes £22k do I think there would be a COI. IMHO we have to allow curators to do what they are good at so long as they do it not for MORE money and they do it impartially without the i word. If we cannot sort this out you will have the paradox that a volunteer curator could edit wiki and a salaried curator should not. Or that a salaried curator should only edit where there is no subject relation to their employer which is nonsense. In hard terms do you want National Railway Museum curators who know about objects in their care to make properly referenced contributions or not? The example could be repeated a 1000 times.
Perhaps by setting my example about the amount of k beside the first quote I can see a route through because do they not amount to the same thing? Welcome the curator's content so long as in all respects it meet's wiki standards and the person does not gain ADDITIONAL finance through what they wrote. Robertforsythe (talk) 16:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I share Robert's concern here. I am personally aware of academics and librarians that are operating with significant grant $$$ to explore SEO strategies to develop greater exposure to digital collections and digital archives owned by major institutions. Such archives are money making machines for most institutions, so exposure is to their existence and content is essential. One of the avenues being undertaking by the researchers is the creation of or modification of Misplaced Pages articles that contain content from or reference digital archives. The sole purpose of such Misplaced Pages work is to explore SEO strategies via DBpedia and such for greater exposure of digital collections and archives. Is this paid advocacy? These researchers and librarians are adding content to Misplaced Pages that as far as my experience goes has always met WP norms, yet they are being paid, via grant $$ to do just that. Will they be banned under this proposal? --Mike Cline (talk) 19:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Changing the goalposts without actually addressing the problem
This edit changes the goalposts. It does not, however, address the key issue with this proposed policy. It still is all about the contributor, and not the content; it actually worsens things because of the failure to define "subject matter expert". What constitutes a subject matter expert? Does having worked for a specific advocacy position as a volunteer for 20 years make one an SME? Does it require proof of one's scholarly expertise? What if the SME works for a for-profit company instead of in the scholarly sector? Those who remember back to the Essjay controversy, where a longtime administrator claimed certain scholarly credentials, have to realise that absent some sort of verification process which would by necessity require that individuals publicly identify themselves and link to their real-world identity, there is no way to verify credentials or expertise. Let's not start going for policies that result in a cure worse than the disease. Risker (talk) 16:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I think it just adds more vagueness to an already vague policy, and could still fail to allow scholars to edit in their subject of expertise. If a researcher is funded by grants, increasing awareness of their field may help them get additional grants in the future. And the section still does not make it clear whether such an "external financial relationship" would be okay or not. Even if it isn't intended to do this, the vagueness leaves it open to some abuse. I can easily predict a scenario:
<Expert> writes balanced, well-sourced article
<Crackpot> adds nonsense conspiracy theory to it
<Expert> reverts
<Crackpot> reverts: "Your career is based on people believing your mainstream 'science', I'm trying to make it NPOV, you're violating WP:PAID"
<Crackpot> starts noticeboard threads ad infinitum accusing <Expert> of paid editing
<Expert> realizes he has better things to do with his time and quits.
That's a typically Wikipedian debasement of the word "expert". Let's head it off by stipulating that "expert" refers to someone with generally recognized scholarly qualifications in a subject area. MastCell19:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Only kidding a bit here, but I'll venture to say my mechanic understands the working of automobiles at least as well as someone with a P.Eng. Which one would be the expert? Risker (talk) 05:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
If you prefer, we could replace "scholarly qualifications" with "scholarly or technical qualifications". In practice, I doubt that anyone would complain about a mechanic editing automotive articles, regardless of what's written in policy. MastCell18:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that would help either. The problem is that many COI editors claim to be experts - and probably are - that's why they started a business in x industry; because they understood that industry at an expert level enough to develop a profitable business. We see this all the time at the Skateboarding WikiProject. Those building new companies or releasing new technologies or promoting some new fad are overwhelmingly subject matter "experts" and many would pass even the loosest definition having won competitions or spent x years as sponsored professionals. Academic expertise should be an applicable "out" in "academic" areas like science. But "technical" expertise is something that almost anyone can claim. I couldn't care less if a PhD student writes an article about a particular frog for which his faculty has received research $$. I have a problem when a guy who skated as a pro in the early 90s uses his "expertise" to spam WP with advertising for his new skateboard. Same for "expert" programmers who make that claim to promo their latest non-notable software distro. I would hope that the WP community has enough sense to differentiate between an academic who might be paid to conduct research and then chooses to share some of that research with WP and a promo-spammer who cries "expert" as an excuse to promote a commercial endeavour.
Beyond that, what qualifies as an appropriate area of expertise? Can someone with a Creative Writing degree spam with impunity from an Elance account because they are a "writing expert" in general? What about an MBA who could claim to be an expert on "business, in general" and spam away? Stalwart11108:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
The answer is application of WP:PROVEIT and the prohibition on original research. It shouldn't make a difference whether a legitimate or self-avowed expert makes an edit on a contentious issue as long as the facts in the edit are traceable to acceptable source material. We already prohibit "facts" from self-published sources, so that CoI is diminished in its significance by proper application of PROVEIT. However, I'd like to support the proposed policy because it removes the issue of legions of paid activists/wonks (whether corporate or political party activists doesn't really matter) swamping WP with unbalanced articles with great reference lists.loupgarous (talk) 21:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I might have understated the difficulty of identifying who's a paid activist in that last post. But this is just one more tool to deal with a chronic and pervasive problem in Misplaced Pages - corporately (or activist organization) - employed editors who just type the copy from their press releases verbatim into Misplaced Pages articles. It doesn't solve every issue, but it could sure help in some cases. You don't throw your hammer away because you can't drill neat little holes with it. You get a drill motor and some bits, and keep your hammer for when you need to drive nails. loupgarous (talk) 03:57, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
There are already two super-effective tools for dealing with that: WP:CSD#G11 and WP:CSD#G12. This wouldn't prevent it from occurring in the first place, which is really the only hole. WilyD16:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
A thought experiment on how this proposal will deprecate the outing policy
So, let's say I edit an article on a business, and User:ImPerfect accuses me of obvious bias and accuses me of being a paid editor. Given the fact that I've been around here for a long time, there's a fair chance that everyone will just roll their eyes. But what if it's not me they accuse, but someone who's only been around for a year? Or someone who specialises in editing articles on certain topics that include this business? Or a completely new editor? How do these editors defend themselves when accused of having a financial conflict of interest? And what standard of evidence are we going to require to "let them off"? Will they have to prove, somehow or other, that they don't have a COI? How do they do that? What standard of proof will be required from the accuser?
My concern here is that this policy makes it far, far too easy to launch the accusation based on an edit that someone doesn't agree with (or frankly, that does not agree with the accuser's point of view), and it is nearly impossible to defend against such an accusation. It will encourage sleuthing around off-wiki and actively attempting to link pseudonymous accounts (either by username or IP) to real-world identities, thus essentially washing out our WP:OUTING policy. I can foresee those who want to remove opposition to their editing researching their opponents in other venues and coming up with statements like "Your pension plan owns 500,000 shares of this company! You do so have a conflict!" (For the record: if someone's sleuthing about me, I haven't the funniest notion where my pension plan invests; however, if I successfully ran for any level of government in Canada, I'd have to find out and would have to declare it as part of my financial disclosure. This isn't a far-fetched example.) For the editor accused of COI, there is no way that they can respond without revealing personal information, even if they are completely innocent and are being falsely accused.
This policy is in direct conflict with at least one of our oldest and most strongly defended behavioural policies. Now, there are things to be said in favour of rethinking the outing policy; however, this policy cannot go forward in isolation without a broad community consultation on whether or not we want to retain the outing policy. Risker (talk) 05:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Nicely put. Although I am not greatly in favor of anonymous/pseudonymous editing, I think that is probably a far greater priority for most editors than the few cases of COI, which to be honest seem not to be a major issue. Greglocock (talk) 05:55, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
{ec}Am I missing something or are you implying that a simple accusation made without any grounds or proof would produce a "guilty until proven innocent" situation in the above scenario. Unless there is evidence produced that requires refuting, it would seem that there would be nothing but a baseless accusation that should be subject to WP:HARASSMENT via WP:BOOMERANG. I don't see where a necessity to reveal personal information on the part of someone subject to a falsely accussation would arise.
The main goal of this initiative would appear to aim at keeping everything above board by promoting transparency through necessitating disclosure, while restricting the scope of participation of those with a COI to prevent the occurrence of related problems.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑06:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ubikwit, where's the proof coming from? If an editor hasn't posted onwiki info that suggests a COI, then it's going to have to come from off-wiki sleuthing...or it could just be made up out of thin air, for all we know. But how many users who value what little online privacy they have are really going to say to an accuser, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Nope. They're going to walk away from that article, and quite likely from the project entirely. What would you do if you were confronted with someone accusing you of COI? This is a thought experiment, and I encourage all editors to really think about how they would respond, and how they think the project should deal with such accusations. Risker (talk) 06:19, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
How is anything proven here? I have sympathy with the view that a rule that is hard to enforce is unworkable, but that is not a reason to have no declaration of intent on whether paid advocacy is welcome. While paid editing does not bother some people who believe they would continue contributing regardless, the idea of working alongside paid PR spinners does bother many other volunteers. Having a policy, even if unworkable in many cases, would at least serve to maintain the volunteer ethic. I don't mind battling a POV pusher because there are generally sufficient good editors available to ensure that eventually there will be a good outcome for the encyclopedia. However, if it is established that paid editing is like apple pie, it would be very unproductive to battle a tag team of new editors who are indistinguishable from paid PR hacks. It's like WP:Child protection—essentially no one cares if a pro-pedophilia activist edits Misplaced Pages (we don't require a declaration from each new editor), but if there are grounds for thinking that someone is such an activist, they will be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 06:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Johnuniq, how are you, personally, going to deal with a COI accusation if this proposal passes? Today, you can shrug your shoulders and ignore it and keep doing what you're doing. If this passes, you will need to address the issue. It's really that simple. So how do you see yourself doing so? Do you support the idea of sleuthing through the internet figuring out who people are and then using that information to attempt to prove COI? Remember, we banned an admin for doing that, but it would not be possible to stop people doing that very thing, and posting it onwiki, if this is passed. Risker (talk) 07:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
How would I deal with it if accused of paid advocacy? I would ask which of my edits gave that appearance, and whether there is any trend in my edits that led to that conclusion. How would I deal with an editor I suspected of paid advocacy? I'd grind my teeth and wonder why I was volunteering to help them. I do not support the idea of indiscriminate sleuthing, nor of outing, but gathering public information as in the recent wikipr case seems desirable in order to gauge what needs to be done. Johnuniq (talk) 08:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Risker, if someone accused me of having a COI I would inquire as to the basis of the accusation. If, by some obtuse definition of what a COI encompasses I was determined to have a COI, I would thenceforth simply declare that I had a COI.
I wouldn't be editing as a PR hack to begin with, so I would simply point to WP:YESPOV and sources if someone complained on the basis of my POV.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑10:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ah, it's apparent that the editors who've tried this so far have never really been accused of editing in a seriously bad way, and so really don't know what a pain it is to defend oneself. Let's be more specific here in the example.
You are accused of paid advocacy because you have edited an article about a company. Your intention was to clean it up and reflect current information. The article was 40 paragraphs long when you started, 18 paragraphs of which were in the "Controversies" section. There was no section about employee relations. You have added a section identifying that the company was ranked in the top 500 employers for the last three years, with links to the respected independent body that made that ranking as well as to a respected business magazine that reported this. You have reduced the "controversies" section to four paragraphs, eliminating anecdotal stories sourced to local news sources but expanding the information on the major controversies by improving references to high quality national-level sources and adding well-referenced information on the company's response to those major controversies. You are accused of paid advocacy.
I'm not sure where you've been, Jehochman. This happens now, and has been happening since before I was a regular editor. If the target is a new account (aka "SPA") the response ranges from just reverting them (often with the summary "vandalism") or accused of COI, or blocked/banned/checked for socks. If they're more experienced, the community response is more likely to shrug it off, unless the editor making the accusation is an admin or longer term editor. We have to keep in mind that there's good evidence that experienced editors are also working for some of the "edits for hire" organizations, so the good faith that experience once had may no longer be applicable. See also Mike Cline's story below. Risker (talk) 13:22, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't see much of a scope for changing my initial response, because the second scenario still is based on an unsubstantiated accusation. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused, correct?
Accordingly, if it is simply a case of a POV dispute, that is where the focus should be shifted, and that is the manner in which I would attempt to channel the dispute. Were there an actual COI involved, again, I would disclose it and abide by the pertinent COI policies that were on the books.
Maybe there should be a two tier COI system implemented, one that has discretionary sanctions for hotly contested articles, restring COI editors to Talk pages, and one that simply requires disclosure and allows editing in article space until a problem arises, at which time the discretionary sanctions version could be applied.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑14:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think you might be missing my point, Ubikwit. The way that the COI will be "proven" will be sleuthing for your personal information online and through other dimensions, like calling your boss. Speaking as someone who's been through this or seen it happen to others because of my Arbcom role, I can assure you it is not pleasant, and that pretty much everyone can be found and a way to force an editor off an article (if not the entire project) can be found. This proposal encourages exactly that kind of behaviour; after all, it's based on not publicly disclosing one's COI, so that means going after non-public info to prove one's point. Otherwise, why would we even be bothering? Risker (talk) 17:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how that could possibly be a concern. However, if people are worried about witch hunts, then that can be dealt with by inserting strong language prohibiting such behavior. In the longer version of this proposal there is "no investigations" language that, I think, is pretty strong and which I've just strengthened further, to take this off the table. Coretheapple (talk) 17:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
You realise now that you have made the policy unenforceable and unpoliceable by taking that out. This increasingly is coming across as "Something must be done!!! This is Something!!! Therefore We Must Do It!!!" Creating an unenforceable policy is probably the worst thing we can do. Six months from now when it's identified that an IP from somebody's workplace edited the article on that employer, we'll take an even bigger publicity hit than some people think we're getting now. Risker (talk) 20:55, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Let the policy be unenforceable. It shouldn't be a policy in the first place and it encourages witch hunts at noticeboards. KonveyorBelt21:00, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
If we can be more than usually cynical for a moment, an unenforceable (or unenforced) policy has an advantage over a non-existent one: whenever there is a media outcry about someone editing an article, we can say "How dare those horrible people violate our policy!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Paid Advocacy (COI) will always trump NPOV and Notability
Risker has it right here and I am living proof of the scenario described. When I first started editing WP in early 2007 of course I started editing on what I knew about—Strategic Planning. As any new editor, I was learning the ropes, the rules, and the norms of the community. Unfortunately, because I worked for a company that consulted in the corporate Strategy arena, my edits about a particular strategy process the company used were immediately attacked as COI with some vicious accusations, especially from a new editor perspective. Despite the fact that I openly conceded the COI, I was evil and proving otherwise wasn’t an option. NPOV or Notability of the topics was no longer relevant despite ample evidence to the contrary. and . I survived the encounter, learned some lessons and became an otherwise productive editor and admin in the WP community. Unfortunately for the encyclopedia, six years later, the great majority of the articles related to strategy are pretty poor and will probably remain so as long as any strategy expert (who probably is employed in some way in the strategic planning business) is considered evil, has a COI, and couldn’t possibly contribute anything on strategy that is well sourced, NPOV and notable. This whole proposal validates my assertion that COI clearly trumps NPOV and Notability policy/guidelines. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
My experience was exactly the same when I started editing search engine optimization. After I got sick and tired of being accused of COI and I stopped editing that article. It used to be featured. Now it's a former featured article.. Jehochman13:33, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
In that case, it might be a good idea to limit the scope to the Talk pages and use of the {Request edit} template, thereby preventing any hard feelings by eliminating the source of conflict beforehand.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑14:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Isn't that what the evil and manipulative BP rep did? Or so we're told on Jimbo's talk page. Clearly that can't be allowed either because there are too many wikipediots who would fall for it. I think the responsibility for approving COI edits should rest only with Jimbo and perhaps the ArbCom. Someone not using his real name (talk) 15:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh heavens, not ArbCom, ever. Aside from the fact that it's specifically out of scope for Arbcom (we definitively do not deal directly with content), the last thing the committee needs is more work. I speak as someone who's been an arbitrator for 5 years and has been trying to find a way to offload last-chance ban/block appeals for most of that time. And Jimbo, for all of his experience, simply is not available anywhere near enough to do that, and as a WMF Trustee could be perceived to be "approving" edits in a way that could put the WMF's Section 230 immunity at risk.
About 4 years ago, Arbcom tried to create an editorial advisor subcommittee, which was intended to get spun off to be a community-selected group that could review content decisions (kind of the content equivalent of Arbcom), but that got ripped apart pretty quickly. They would be ideal if they existed, but they don't.... I'll try to find some links tonight. Risker (talk) 15:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I actually think these rules make the kind of concerns raised here either to deal with, because they set forth the narrow circumstances in which COI exists. If you are a former official of XYZ Corp., there is nothing to prohibit your writing about it. In my view, the rules are weak and leave out a lot. Contrary to some of what I've read on this page, they don't sanction vigilantism. Overall I think they are neutral and perhaps even slightly harmful in terms of reducing COI situations, for, yes, they do not cover situations in which a corporate PR person acts as a kind of straw boss, dominating the talk pages of the articles. Yet evidently the idea of any kind of COI prohibition flies in the face of a kind of libertarian ethos prevalent among Misplaced Pages editors. Coretheapple (talk) 19:42, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ironically, I'd be a lot more concerned about the former official editing than I would be the current PR person. The current PR person usually has more of a professional reputation to maintain, and he knows a misstep can hurt the company. Former official? much more likely to edit in revenge in a manner we might not observe. Risker (talk) 23:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
The "former employee" usually knows where all of the skeletons are buried in any particular enterprise, which is why companies are very eager to discredit any complaints this person makes. K7L (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Paid editors vs. advocates and experts
Bemused by the oppose !voters above who seem to conflate paid editors with experts, I figured it may be worth discussing the differences a bit. In my mind, there is a world of difference between advocates and experts in general and paid advocates. An advocate or expert is someone who is paid for their work that is not connected to Misplaced Pages. For example, if someone who is paid by "Motherboards-r-us" to solder circuit boards (or whatever it is they do to circuit boards) and then chooses to write about the process on Misplaced Pages then it is likely that they're going to have a view point about soldering as well as about Motherboards-r-us and that person is, in some sense, an advocate (for or against) the company and an expert on soldering motherboards. But that's ok because he or she is not being rewarded or punished for whatever they write on Misplaced Pages. On the other hand, someone who is paid by Motherboards-r-us to write either about their company or about soldering is paid for what they end up writing. If they write unfavorably about the company, forget to mention the importance of Motherboards-r-us in their article on circuit board soldering, or give an honestly held but negative opinion about the company, they would likely be out of a job because that's what they're being paid to do.
To me, these are very different animals because of the purpose behind the payment. All of us have opinions and all of us are advocates for those opinions. Some of us have stronger opinions than others but all of us try to shape articles so that they are in concordance with our beliefs, hunt for sources that support what we say, and try to convince others that what we are adding is balanced and neutral. A paid editor is advocating what someone else wants them to push and their livelihood directly depends on how well they push that viewpoint. An unpaid editor is advocating what they personally believe or think to be correct and their livelihood does not directly depend on what they write out here. That is a world of difference. Money changes everything. --regentspark (comment) 13:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely. It the lengths that some of the comments go to in order to conflate the two, thereby obfuscating the issue and obstructing progress toward addressing the concerns, is curious.
It could be summed up by stating that the money received by paid advocates to influence the reading public through Misplaced Pages has a direct impact on their disposition toward the ultimate content of the article in question. Money supersedes reason when one's livelihood is based on producing a text that is first and foremost intended to be persuasive in a PR manner, not informative in an encyclopedic manner.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑14:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Re: "is curious"... indeed! They must be stealth advocates for stealth advocacy! I say Jimbo should ban them forthwith! Or the least he can do is expel the ArbCom members who dare oppose him on this bright idea! Someone not using his real name (talk) 14:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
This kind of distinction is clear only if you don't think about it very much. As a professional astronomer, I'm definitely paid explicitly to inform the public about astronomy - by giving public talks, demonstrations, speaking to reporters, whatnot, which would include things like writing newspaper articles or for Misplaced Pages. The amount of money made available both by private donors, and the main source of funding, government science agencies (and hell, undergraduate tuition by students enrolled in astronomy/physics programmes) comes directly from public interest in astronomy, generated by things such as quality articles on Misplaced Pages. When I made this image, I was definitely being paid generally to do so, but, of course, nobody complained because the image is reasonably neutral, and encyclopaedic, and useful (and widely used, even though I didn't add it to a single article). In practice, there's paid editor whose goals align with Misplaced Pages's, and paid editor whose goals align against Misplaced Pages's; the problem isn't the person, or whether they're being paid, it's whether they're purpose is to write a neutral encyclopaedia or not. WilyD14:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I guess the difference between being a paid expert and a promoter. If you were to write about the observatory or whatever it is to work at, then that would be promotion. So would using wikipedia to promote your own book, something some editors have done repeatedly, and, apparently, been banned repeatedly for. It can be a bit of a fuzzy line when, for instance, perhaps someone who is the sole person to recently study a given subject in their book tries to influence the content in our article related to that subject. And, yeah, the rest of you, don't laugh. I know particularly in topics like, for instance, specific religious subjects related to Papua New Guinea and other areas have had reference articles written about them by individuals chosen to do on the basis of their being pretty much the only living academic to have actively studied the subject. In those kinds of areas, it can be a problem. John Carter (talk) 00:57, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Except, of course, that merely writing about where you work doesn't automagically make it promotion. You could easily write that it's a shithole. And sure, if I were to run around promoting my book (I suppose my Ph.D. thesis is a book, of sorts) - it wouldn't be acceptable. But if you were to run around promoting my book, it would be exactly as unacceptable. When I made the image I used as an example, I used data from Murray and Dermott - I'm not Murray (nor Dermott), but if I were, it would still be appropriate for me to use (because Murray & Dermott is an authoritative text). The New Guinean religion isn't a particularly bizarre example; this article leans really heavily on Donald Smith's book, because it's by far the most in depth and authoritative reference on the subject. The article wouldn't be any worse if it was identical, but I was Donald Smith. Promotion is bad, but focussing on paid promotion ignores ~99% of the problem (and really, legitimises it by suggesting it's getting paid that the bad part of promotion, rather than co-opting Misplaced Pages and working against our goals. WilyD08:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Don't be absurd as in reductio ad absurdum; reputable publishers don't view any of that as adressable conflict of interest, and neither would Misplaced Pages. But on the other hand, if YOU view it as a personal conflict of interest, that is your own personal ethics that you have to deal with. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Reputable publishers wouldn't view it as a problematic conflict of interest, nor should Misplaced Pages. You're absolutely correct. That's half of why this is a terrible policy proposal. WilyD16:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Counter proposal - mandatory disclosure and simplified sanctions
Rather than outright banning users with financial interests from editing relevant articles, I believe that a better option would be to allow such editing, but put measures into place to make abuse easier to detect and prevent:
Editors with financial interests in the field in which they editwith a financial conflict of interest as defined in this proposal, who are editing articles relevant to this conflict of interest should be required to publicly disclose this in some manner decided by the community (e.g. a header/footer/userbox on their user page, something in edit summaries, a technical flag similar to the minor edit flag, etc - I'm not sure what the best approach would be)
Editors with a COI should be required to adhere to a 1-revert-rule on relevant articles except for reverting edits which are unquestionably vandalism and should be prohibited from restoring reverted edits altogether. This would be enforcible by any administrator blocking and/or topic banning the user.
If there is evidence of abuse any uninvolved administrator may issue a finite, targeted, topic ban of increasing length per violation, similar to current blocks for vandalism. If stronger sanctions are warranted a community discussion at ANI could establish a wider and/or indefinite topic ban.
If a user feels an unfair restriction was placed upon them by an individual administrator, they can appeal the topic ban to ANI. Community topic bans could be appealed in the normal manner.
I fully agree that COIs must be declared, but I think there are better alternatives than an outright ban on such edits. --W.D.Graham16:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
What does "financial interests in the field in which they edit" mean? Does that mean a physician who edits articles about medical topics? An advertiser editing about the magazine or TV station that carries their adverts? A computer programmer who writes about programming topics? A geography student (intending on a career in the field) who edits on geographical topics? A journalist who edits on subjects they get also paid to write about? Who decides on the boundaries, and how are they enforced? This is going to massively increase requirements for people to identify themselves before editing Misplaced Pages, and many people won't feel comfortable doing this. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, to clarify, I meant by the same definition used in the original proposal - although it might be worth considering extending it to rival organisations. --W.D.Graham16:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We do have the {{connected contributor}} template that can be (or should be) posted on talk pages. It is superior. E.g., the language of the template is neutral and assumes good faith. It avoids the value-laden the "paid editor" or "paid advocate" phrasing and recognizes that edits are in fact contributions. – S. Rich (talk) 17:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think this should not eliminate anonymity even for the COI cases, just a little bit limiting it. If I am an employee of the subject of the article, I do not have to disclose my name and job title but just put (possibly templated notice) on the talk page "I, %username%, has a conflict of interests as an employee of the article's subject" or "I am a contractor receiving money for creating comprehensive article about the subject" or "I know the subject of of the article in real life", etc. I do not think it eliminates anonymity and certainly it does not make an editor an "expert" on the subject - they certainly are still suppose to provide reliable sources and attributions for all their statements. I cannot imagine situation somebody would falsely claim to have a COI but we certainly do not intend verify their claims Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I fail to see how such a policy of even requiring disclosure could happen? I agree that it is in the best interest of those who are editing jointly in some article that you can and indeed should be strongly encouraged to disclose biases (regardless of if it is paid, a part of your political or religious beliefs, or even purely cultural differences from other editors) in the interest of trying to write better articles. Somebody who is cooperative *may* make some disclosure about their biases on a voluntary basis and as a result cooperate to be better. Making demands saying they must disclose any COI is simply unworkable. Heck, changing the playing field and change WP:3RR to become WP:1RR is similarly over the top. Note that I've seen religious differences in some articles turn into holy edit wars that would make paid advocates pale in comparison, so this isn't something strictly dealing with somebody getting paid to edit. If an editor is generally well behaved and cooperating with other users with only some occasional brain farts and hot tempers flaring as an exception rather than a rule, they are just being like other ordinary contributors to Misplaced Pages and should be treated just like... assuming good faith and all of the rest of the pillars of this community. I certainly don't understand why somebody needs to be treated differently other than as a pattern of bad behavior for that individual editor... aka through ArbCom actions or something similar. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
We are talking about real significant COI as been the subject of the article or being a PR contractor for the subject or being an employee of the subject, I think in those case 1RR is quite sensible restriction, if the proposal can have unintended consequences like scientists limiting in their ability to edit science-related articles it should be reworded after we agree in principle Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I once saw that freelancer.com site has a special section for wiki editing. People get paid for planting specific information or removing specific information or for resurrection of deleted articles, etc. On one forum somebody claimed that those offers received numerous resumes from administrators and even bureaucrats. I am terrified from a possibility that some administrator would unsalt an article of marginally notable commercial entity for a bribe, etc. The proposal would still allow people to get money for creating wiki content but gives the community some checks and balances Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that "financial interests" is still way too vague. So a grant-funded researcher will be limited to 1RR against crackpot pseudoscience/conspiracy POV pushers who don't have a "financial interest"? And this still has the problem of focusing on the contributor, not the content. Not to mention, as Robert Horning notes, basically throwing AGF out the window. Mr.Z-man21:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think I worded the suggestion badly so I've clarified what I meant - I'm not suggesting that the scope of the proposal be expanded in any way, just that the measures taken be reduced. @David, I'm not looking to start a second !vote, just thought an alternative idea might spark some discussion of other options. --W.D.Graham21:30, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
You are tweaking the wording but still avoiding how somebody who chooses not to disclose this information would be coerced into making this disclosure, or even how they could be identified independently as having a conflict of interest? The people who volunteer this kind of information are most definitely not the people you need to be worried about (for the most part). If anything, they are usually ignorant of policies but usually teachable and would show a large degree of self-restraint once they have basic standard policies (like WP:FIVE) explained in a sympathetic discussion. In other words, this policy wouldn't even be needed except for people that won't disclose their conflicts of interest, and those users who try to avoid that kind of disclosure would otherwise be hard or impossible to detect except through extraordinary means (like tracing IP address or issuing a subpoena with the backing of a government court or agency to the ISP involved). --Robert Horning (talk) 22:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely right. But the original proposal has exactly the same problem - if they don't disclose the information we've got no way to establish it. By toning it down a few more users might be willing to work within the system. Users who don't disclose will slip through the net either way. --W.D.Graham23:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I think the wording can be adjusted to prevent unintended consequences, we need some community agreement in principle to start working on the idea Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I would support something like this. Having a guideline requiring disclosure and making it harder to edit war would encourage many people to abide by it even if it wasn't possible to detect violations in many cases. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
What is the point of adopting a policy that is unenforceable and is acknowledged as such by the supporters before it is even adopted in the first place? It won't make it harder to start any edit wars, and it would strongly discourage people who should be helping Misplaced Pages from even being involved in the first place. It sounds like trying to make a rule that is there deliberately to smack somebody down once they've been outed... something that is also currently against policy for a very good reason. --Robert Horning (talk) 05:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Hypothetical (but not really all that hypothetical) situations
In adopting an updated policy or guideline on paid or COI editing, we need to make sure that it addresses the types of situation that frequently come up in this area, and does so in a way that accords with how we want these situations to be handled, and with common sense. Below are some hypothetical situations—but mostly derived from actual situations I am aware of over the years—in which an editor could be accused of having a paid interest or COI. How do we want to address them? Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:48, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Example 1:
I am an experienced Misplaced Pages editor, perhaps an administrator. A friend is an author who has published several novels that are still in print. He does not have a Misplaced Pages article, and would like to have one. Knowing that I'm active on Misplaced Pages, he asks me to create an article for him, and gives me information about his background and books to include in the article. There is no question in my mind that the author meets the applicable notability guideline.
May I write the article? Do I have to disclose anything if I do write the article? If my friend offers to take me to dinner to thank me for agreeing to write the article, may I accept?
Example 2:
I work at a university library. The library contains archival and manuscript collections of the personal papers of dozens of historical and literary figures, which are of interest to scholars. Our collections are underutilized, and we would like to have more visitors use them. I want to add a short paragraph to the Misplaced Pages article of each person whose papers our library holds, mentioning that his or her papers are at our facility and providing a link to the online finding aid. May I do so?
Example 3:
I'm the public relations manager for one of two newspapers in a mid-sized city. The other newspaper has a well-written Misplaced Pages article, which was created several years ago. My newspaper, which has about the same circulation and level of prominence, does not have an article. The owner wishes it did. What are my options?
Example 4:
I'm the mayor of a small city. I have a Misplaced Pages article, but it's a couple of years old and seriously out of date. I post on the talkpage asking if someone will update my article, and I provide neutral, verifiable information to update it with, but no one does the updating. May I update it myself? If I'm not supposed to but I do anyway, what happens?
Example 5:
I'm in marketing at a large law firm with an existing article. A famous lawyer joins our firm. Can I edit the article to mention this increase in our ranks? What if I am the famous lawyer myself? A member of the lawyer's family? One of the lawyer's clients?
Discussion of examples
These are interesting hypotheticals, thanks for posing them. My feelings are as follows:
Example 1: I don't see the problem here. Eliminating this kind of conduct just goes too far. The Wiki editor has no financial interest.
Example 2: Same. If there's a problem with this I don't see it.
Example 3: Here, the owner of the newspaper wants to use a paid editor to influence the editorial balance of Misplaced Pages. No, paid editors should not be allowed to do that. Whether an article appears in Misplaced Pages, and the amount of attention given to each subject, should not be based upon the desire of the subject to publicize his operation. But there's nothing wrong with the owner appearing on the talk page to make suggestions as to updated content.
Example 4. Very much the same as No. 3, I think. Same solution.
Example 5. Same as 3. The lawyer himself or his family? No. Too close; direct financial interest. Client? I don't see the problem.
Your responses to 3 and 4 show how ludicrous the "Champions of an unbiased encyclopedia" are. People like you actively encourage bias and inaccuracy. If two newspapers are notable, they should both have articles, period. I don't care who writes them. If the PR manager writes a non-neutral article, we have a problem, but that deals with a different policy. The same thing goes for the mayor. If the information is outdated, and nobody is willing to correct it, the subject should be allowed to correct it himself if it is neutral and sourced. RyanVesey20:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm OK with throwing out the conflict of interest rules entirely. They're not enforced, and the "community," as I've said before, has its collective head so far up its rectum on this subject that the whole thing is pretty much an exercise in futility. But if Misplaced Pages is to become, officially, a hotbed of "let's write an article about our beloved company, but cherry-pick our sources so that it seems neutral," we need to provide Misplaced Pages's readers with an appropriate disclosure visible at the top or bottom of every article. It would need to convey to readers that the article may contain content written in whole or in part by the subject of the article. As we all know, there are businesses out there that make a good living selling such services to the public. Hence I think that we owe to readers, who may not be aware of that, to be cognizant. Don't you agree? Coretheapple (talk) 01:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Some excellent examples. My responses:
Request from a friend - The approach I would take here is to draft the article in a sandbox first, and then ask others to look at it, including the author in question. I would also (asking the author first) disclose that I know the author and that they had asked for the article to be drafted. depending on the subsequent discussion, I would then move the article to mainspace, and/or make changes as needed. Disclosure is probably not required here, but ethically I think it is (this is a matter of personal ethics, rather than Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines).
Institution employee - This one is simple. Rather than paragraphs in the articles in question, I would explain to the employee that this may give undue weight to that institution and its archives, and that the most that should be added is information in the external links. The account's user pages, and ideally the edit summaries should disclose that the editor is adding information on behalf of an institution. Even more ideally, the institution would in addition use other means to encourage researchers to use their collections, and the researchers would then publish articles and/or books that would then be used as sources for the articles.
PR manager for an organisation - Here, the PR manager needs to be absolutely open at all stages. A key step is to work to make sources available (e.g. good history section on their website, current information pages on their website, locate published histories of their organisation (here, a newspaper), and so on). Then make a request (on or off wiki) for a Misplaced Pages editor willing to write an article. The article creation or creation request (if submitting through AfC) should disclose both who made the request and the work done to open up and make sources available on the history of the organisation. The job of a PR manager in this case is to get material placed in sources that can then be used for the Misplaced Pages article. Not to have material placed directly in Misplaced Pages.
Biography of a living person. Employ a PR manager (or delegate to an employee with that responsibility) and take the approach above (for number 3). The PR person then posts to the talk page first. If no response then edit article but disclose who you are and why you are editing. If you handle your own PR, that is more difficult, but mostly the same approach.
Marketing employee - the marketing employee should ask the company's PR department to deal with this. The famous person should not make the edit. Family member may do so unwittingly, but shouldn't really. Clients? Er, depends how that impacts the client-lawyer relationship.
In practice, of course, all the above does happen (all the time, every day, all across Misplaced Pages), but ideally the above is what should happen. Being more open and welcoming to those who openly disclose such matters would help. Carcharoth (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that those are good examples, and Cacharoth's suggested approach to each respective situation is sensible.
It seems to me that the WikiExperts scenario is of a different order, however. WikiExperts is attempting to facilitate the injection of corporate money into Misplaced Pages in a manner that would parallel the unbridled flow of corporate money into American electoral politics with similar results.
Misplaced Pages is a non-profit, public interest project, and the way I see it, the incursion of undisclosed corporate funding in relation to creating and editing articles associated with a commercial (largely corporate) interest is, by definition, corrosive on the public-interest non-profit status and character of Misplaced Pages.
That scenario is somewhat outside of the frame of the above-presented more normal examples of a potential COI. It seems to me that mandatory disclosure, at the very least, is necessary to keep the likes of WikiExperts in perpetual check, so to speak, under the watchful eye of those in the community that take an interest in scrutinizing edits made by such entities.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑07:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
If I could add an Example 6 which came up only a few days ago: A previously public facility is obviously notable because of its place as a historical location and as the host location of a number of significant events. However, it was determined that said facility was a drain on the public purse and it was sold off to private interests. The new owners now operate the facility as a commercial venture but the WP article about the facility makes no mention of the sale or the new operation. The new owners notice and would like to update the article with information about the sale, the new venture, some information about renovations to the historic facility since the purchase and a link to the website of the commercial venture that currently operates there (which includes a range of historic photos of the facility provided by the local library). The owners are technical historical restoration "experts" and bought the facility confident that their expertise would allow them to successfully restore it. Should they register an account a go for it? Stalwart11108:39, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that these are good examples, and it may be useful to include them on guideline pages. My thought is that, in each case, the overriding principal would be that such editors forego all advocacy. It is a fine line, but where there is any question, it is better for a paid/volunteer/unpaid advocate to back down. That would include such editors recusing from controversies, declining to participate in consensus votes, avoiding anything that remotely smacks of PoV-pushing and adhering to WP:Weight to avoid giving undue prominence to details within an article and relying only on WP:RS to avoid pushing views that could be construed as self-interested. Sticking to "Just the facts, ma'am" is unlikely to be a problem, and relying on citations that are removed from any association with the article's subject is going to go far in tamping down advocacy (as is not objecting to other reliably-sourced information that may not fit the PoV or agenda of the article's subject). • Astynax19:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
This proposal in a nutshell
If you have a COI, never edit yourself, ask others.
This is WP:CREEP. We're a wiki, not a bureaucracy. If edits are against the rules, we revert them. If the editor insists on behaving disruptively, we deal with it. I'd support requiring vandals to submit their edits for approval, though. Paradoctor (talk) 21:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
LOL. Yes, and vandals should also be required to identify themselves, preferably in their signatures. --B2C06:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
It is absolutely painful to enter into discussions with paid editors. The problem is not that the edits are clearly against the rules and can be reverted, it is that they are reverted, and then you enter into a month-long "discussion" with someone who is paid to never change their mind, and can spend 8 hours a day replying. Anyone with time on the project can relate to such nonsense, whether or not with paid editors, but anything we can do to cut down on the number of such "discussions" is a step in the right direction. This policy allows volunteers to get on with editing. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:11, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
A truly terrible idea
An idea based on the American principal of frontier justice, if we can't actually fix a problem, hang whomever we catch. The problem we are insufficiently determined and skilled to fix is that of bad editing, which arises from a variety of sources--so we pick on one identifiable class, people who are often trying, however ineptly, to do what they think they ought to, and put them in a situation where everything them might rightly want to do is made ridiculously difficult.
Making this a policy is much too prescriptive. Some people with such COI can and do edit perfectly properly, and if they do so openly and avoce-board with a declaration of their COI, they should not only be permitted, but encouraged to do so--as long as they do it properly, and are prepared to take the possible criticism if they don't. I would never encourage a beginner to try it, because the odds of doing it wrong are much too great, and it can be a very uncomfortable experience. Some of the paid editors I know follow the bright line rule even when they needn't--if they want to be cautious that's fine also. And I always suggest it (or even insist on it) for a promotional editor -- paid or unpaid -- whoi is heaving difficulty writing a nonpromotional article.
This rule as proposed would lead to endless quibbling about what counts as "paid" editing, and would inhibit the excellent work of most of the Wikipedians in Residence, forcing people to double check the work of those editors who are already known to be fully responsible.
Anyway, this misses the point that this sort of editing is only mildly harmful, as compared to the direct harm that can be done by advocacy editing for a cause, of which the very worse examples are those done by volunteers., not paid editors. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree. Edits which violate Misplaced Pages's core policies should be removed or improved, regardless of the reasons they were placed there. If I find bad information, I do not care if the editor got paid to introduce it, did so as a vandal, or is trying to change the conversation by giving undue weight to minor sources . . . I do not care because I assume good faith about all editors, so it's more important to just fix the problem and move on. This is entirely like a nanny state and will not change much; knowing the motivation for an edit does not matter one whit. We have policies aplenty to address this.--~TPW19:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I concur. A terrible idea. Having said that, however, can anyone point to an issue that has arisen because of paid advocacy?--Nowa (talk) 16:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. I do not think payment is important. What matters is COI. An important point in these discussions: what is COI, exactly? WP:COI tells: "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Misplaced Pages, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." Yes, I agree, although this is different from real life definition of COI (there are different guidelines for different organizations). One can easily imagine a situation that an experienced wikipedian was paid to create a page about his favorite uncle or about latest work by his boss (no, this is not me), but he knows the rules and care as much about Wikipeda as about his real life business. Does it mean he has at all any COI? No - according to this definition, because advancing the project is as important to him as anything else. He can easily create a page about his uncle per rules if his uncle fits our notability criteria, or tell his uncle: "no, this is terrible idea, you do not fit our notability rules, and the article will be deleted". Or one can easily imagine another editor who is not paid, acts on his own, but has his own outside interest (a political bias) that is hundred times more important to him than advancing goals of the project... Hence he has huge COI. My very best wishes (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
My very best wishes summed up perfectly the reason this RfC is full of bullshit and add my !vote as a big honking OPPOSE. How has this proposal gotten this far? "I had a discussion at a noticeboard, people hated it, I'll do an RfC!"Camelbinky (talk) 23:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Begs the question
This policy begs the question: "Why is unpaid advocacy allowed?" Unless there's a good answer to that, I don't see how this can make any sense. WilyD09:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
In fact, unpaid POV advocacy may be the bigger problem. Those who do it are motivated by something stronger than money, or they wouldn't be doing it. Those who vandalize are a subset of unpaid POV advocacy. Not getting paid doesn't seem to slow them down, and they can be persistent.~ Desertroadbob (talk) 11:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I also can see unpaid advocacy as an equally serious problem. There are people who are not employees or hires, yet who do benefit indirectly: e.g., franchisees, licensees, volunteers, and others who receive no direct payments or who get other, non-monetary benefits. Members of non-commercial organizations (clubs, religions, trade associations, political parties, etc.) also tend to often wander into PoV-pushing and battling for their causes. We do actually want to hear and get input from such people, but in my opinion this becomes a problem once they and their compatriots cross the line into dominating or thwarting the forging of editor consensus or challenging reliable sources. They should generally excuse themselves from controversies and recuse themselves from responses on RfCs, consensus votes, etc. • Astynax18:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
The vast majority of edit wars are probably attributable to unpaid advocates. I speak as someone who nearly succumbed to the urge to get into a revert war with another editor who was one of the legion of WP editors sanitizing Misplaced Pages from unpleasant facts regarding foreign political contributions to and Senatorial nonfeasance of the current occupant of a large white house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. I was a relatively new editor at the time, and on being counselled by a wiser editor that reflexive reverts to an edit aren't vandalism, just slunk away from the conflict. I ought to have found a way to get some balance into the articles; consensus is beautiful when it works, and I've seen it happen even in contentious issues here, even helped make it happen. A modest proposal: require that EVERY edit and revert be documented in the Talk page of an article. It provides a valuable basis for formation of consensus among editors and a means for smoking out CoIs without an inflexible bright-line policy.loupgarous (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I, too, agree that non-paid advocacy is a huge problem, but that is one that Misplaced Pages has to live with as long as there is a lack of will to enhance and enforce the content policies.
When something like a "WikiExperts" shows up, however, such an entity should be capable of being precluded, by policy, from engaging in editing conducted on the basis of explicitly declared aims to commercialize Misplaced Pages.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑20:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Unpaid advocacy is a problem, but so is paid advocacy. That fact that this policy does not address the former does not limit its utility in addressing the latter. People who are advocates go through tremendous mental gymnastics to convince themselves they are not biased. I had one paid editor tell me that being paid to edit an article to achieve a particular outcome for a client is not in violation of the COI guideline, because he might have the same opinion himself. He was eventually blocked, but it took months and multiple editors and administrators. This policy is an objective criteria which is hard to get around, and makes Misplaced Pages better for volunteers. --TeaDrinker (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Shameless plug for an opposing essay
The essay is at Misplaced Pages:Don't cry COI. It is an alternate viewpoint to this one and I think is the more sensible of the two. Perhaps if this proposal fails it can be submitted as an opposing proposal.Discuss it here or on its talk page. KonveyorBelt16:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
As it happens...
I was under the impression that this "proposal" was basically already policy. It may not be stated in its own right, but it is definitely spelled out in several other policies which would often overlap the issue. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it is to some extent, although COI is currently just a guideline. I would rather see COI and Edit warring clarified (and COI elevated to Policy) rather than throwing in something that will make policy more difficult for editors to grasp. The real problem is enforcement. Paid and unpaid advocates in pushing their agendas have run roughshod over constructive editors and even admins. They have more resources to throw into edit warring, and constructive editors and admins often throw in the towel rather than commit the time and energy required to resist motivated PoV-pushers. As has already been stated above, part of the solution is to insist that edits ONLY summarize and are cited to reliable sources. Material that is not cited to reliable sources may already be removed (though edit warriors continually reinsert), and where edits are supported by weak sources, better reliable (and independent) references should always carry the day—but I think the frustration behind this proposal is that summarizing what reliable sources say is ignored or resisted by editors with an agenda (whether paid or not) and enforcement is time-consuming and often ineffective. I would rather see the "bright line" drawn at resistance to accepting edits based in reliable, independent sources; with guidelines for enforcement when warriors choose to ignore our encyclopedic purpose of summarizing what reliable sources say. Paid and unpaid advocates can make and likely have contributed constructive input, but it is when they cross into PoV-pushing that they become a problem. I believe it would be better to focus on the behavior, even when it is disguised/subtle but persistent, and better enforcement. • Astynax08:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Identifying a paid editor isn't a personal attack, nor does it run contrary to it. Niteshift36 (talk) 21:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
