I recently ran into a situation that reminded me of the discussion on the Orange Moody "shakedowns". In the Orange Moody case the concern was that paid editors appeared to be making unsolicited offers to editors who were the subjects of articles that had recently be deleted or turned down at AfC. The paid editors apparently pitched their services to the other editors via email with the implication that they had some sort of special privileges on-Wiki to get paid article approved. In the worst scenarios, the paid editors would start an AfD on the subject's article or turn the article down at AfC, or vandalize an article already in main-space. In other words, the discussions were about a protection racket or even straight-forward extortion. I should stress that I haven't seen a complete documented example of extortion on-Wiki, but there were enough accounts banned in the Orange Moody scandal to give some credibility to the accusations that were made.
I can't really discuss the recent situation I ran into except to say that it was serious enough that I reported it to the WMF and made sure the person complaining got in contact with them. It did also reinforce my belief that there are shakedowns on Wikipedia. We don't currently have a system of warning new editors about this type of activity, nor do we have an organized system of reporting such activity. After the Orange Moody case there was a special email address for reporting, but I don't believe it is still working. Over at AfC there is a paragraph amid all the instructions there and a link to a general AfC complaint page. We need to do better.
Part of our response might be a new section here. To start off the discussion I'll suggest a new section under "miscellaneous"
Unsolicited contacts from paid editors
Paid editors should not send unsolicited offers to other editors to edit articles for them. They should not state or imply that they have privileges on Wikipedia that allow them to post paid-for articles in main-space. Editors may report such unsolicited offers at ?????
Any solicitation should contain basic information such as:
the full name and permanent e-mail address of your contact
the name of the company he or she works for
the company's website
the full terms of the service offered, as well as
a link to the paid editor's user page showing a paid editing declaration.
No editor should accept such an offer without confirming this information.
This obviously needs work. I'd love to see your suggestions.
Editors offering their services have sent messages to new users participating in AfDs — these new editors presumed to be affiliates to the subject of the article?
"Paid editing houses" have sent messages to experienced users, offering them remuneration in order to vote/act a certain way?
I also don't see what it is you refer to as extortion? Both cases are highly problematic, but neither seems to be extortion. Changing this policy is not done on a whim — and I think we need a good understanding of the issue in order to address it properly. Carl Fredrik talk04:19, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
the people sending the emails are paid editors, most likely paid editing houses
the people receiving the emails are usually newbies or people who have had an "article for creation" rejected, or a main-space article deleted at AfD.
the message is that "we can get the article approved for $$$", with the subtext "and we can make sure that it doesn't get approved if you don't pay."
there have been accusations that some paid editors go beyond this - that they themselves or a colleague have rejected the AfC or given an article the 3rd degree, before contacting the newby editor. Of course, at this point, the accuser doesn't give details - accusing a specific person of extortion could end up in a very nasty lawsuit.
I've seen enough evidence that I strongly believe this type of thing is going on. Perhaps even more important, newbys and some people outside Wikipedia say they believe this type of thing goes on.
Wikipedia has inadvertently made this scam possible for paid editors, it is up to us to stop it.
Including some text in WP:COI is just a part of the overall solution - one which will give some authority to the other parts. But text here will not accomplish anything by itself.
Other parts of the solution probably include having a very visible warning to the newbies, quoting text from WP:COI; having a clear strategy to prevent these schemes, and having a place to confidentially report to the WMF. I believe I can convince the WMF to make themselves available to receive the reports and advise the newbies, if we can handle the other parts.
I'm not sure that a Wikipedia guideline is going to have much impact unless we allow external identities to be associated with Wikipedia accounts, and even then, I think edits by paid proxies will limit any effect. In short, editors shouldn't engage in fraudulent practices: in your example of claimed privileges, well, no editor has the right to post specific article text without being subject to community review and editing. If the WMF or some other person/organization body is going to be pursuing such claims with, for example, the United States Federal Trade Commission, then I agree with doing whatever we can within policy to facilitate such pursuit. But otherwise the community doesn't have any ability to do anything about misleading advertising on its own, beyond blocking accounts and their proxies one by one. Regarding advice for paid editors or for potential clients, we can provide it, but we can't dictate how third parties behave outside of Wikipedia or what their contract terms should be. Plus, it gives a mixed message to strongly discourage conflict of interest editing while also giving instructions on what type of client engagement is acceptable. The first message implies that no form of client engagement is acceptable, while the second message implies that some forms may be. isaacl (talk) 16:25, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
@Isaacl: at this point I'm not looking for reasons that we can't do anything about these schemes. I'm looking for possible solutions. Let me put this to you directly: "What would you say if a newby asked you what he or she should do after being approached by one of these schemes?" Right now I'm just not going to accept answers like "Sorry Charlie, what do you think I can do about it?" I'm looking for answers that can have a real effect, that can help both Wikipedia and the newby. Just accepting the current situation is not in my playbook right now. Smallbones(smalltalk)01:10, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
"at this point I'm not looking for reasons that we can't do anything about these schemes." Wikipedia doesn't operate under a 'we must do something' mantra. You have to convince the community that there is an issue that needs to be fixed before you try to get something changed. As Isaacl points out, you haven't done that.
"Just accepting the current situation is not in my playbook right now." Too bad, you don't own the project, this page, or the guideline. You don't get to decide. If you can't handle it, log off for awhile.--v/r - TP01:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I'm just fine, thank you. I'm not telling other editors to shut up with their opinions and dictating to the community what it's allowed to do based on my moods. Bottom line, not your rodeo. Isaacl can have whatever opinion they want and there is quite literally nothing you can do to stop them.--v/r - TP01:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Isaacl can have any opinion he wants, and so can I. My opinion is that we need to concentrate on what we can do right now. We're not even at a proposal stage yet, so I want to know what we can do, not what we can't do. If you are going to go into your usual mode of personal attacks against me and pure disruption, I'll deal with that later. For now I'll just ignore you. Smallbones(smalltalk)02:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
If Isaacl can have any opinion they want, why are you telling them what you will and will not accept on this page as if you own it?--v/r - TP02:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Can you please bring us up to date on why paid editing is a hot-button issue for you? I'd rather hear your version rather than dig back through old posts. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 20:55, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Never mind. See [1]I wrote it, they posted it. Dennis Lo was written by me and published by someone else who paid me for it.In that same discussion you called it a "form of paid editing." As someone who is an admin and has also done a form of paid editing, I am curious why you can't WP:AGF in my ability to reject a job that couldn't and doesn't meet relevant policies such as WP:GNG and WP:NPOV?Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:35, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
So, what you're saying is, when you cannot convince editors with the strength of your argument, you resort to attacking editors to drive them away from the conversation? This conversation is currently 2-5 against your and Smallbones' proposal. Is your solution to even out the numbers by attacking every single person that disagrees with you? Are you going to accuse every one of them of being a paid editor? Because that is starting to sound like the standard M.O. for you.--v/r - TP21:56, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
"Your and Smallbones' proposal"? If you'd bother to read the discussion you'd find that I have other thoughts in the general area and have not endorsed it. The rest of your post is just nonsense. You are the only editor on this page engaged in personal attacks. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:11, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Actually, the community exonerated any perceived issues about two years ago so by bringing it up against after the community already addressed it, you're attacking me. The community had plenty of participation and found no wrong doing. So, you're welcome to retract your accusations and return to discussing the proposal while leaving your vague threats against "anyone who might relate" at the door.--v/r - TP22:21, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Suggesting that editors who have a "history in this area" not participate is not a "vague threat" or an "accusation." Clearly you do have a history in this area, even if what you did was not considered worth desysoping you at the time.That was the issue at ANI (which was Nov. 2013, not "about two years ago"), whether you should be reconfirmed, it was not an endorsement of editors accepting money from the subject of an article as you did from Mr. Lo. I strongly suggest that you not jump to that conclusion, or that what you did did not create a conflict of interest. So yes, I think you should not participate in this discussion. But clearly you are going to, and you are going to be abusive and disruptive in the process. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:55, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
More WP:IDHT? A reconfirmation was my idea and a single editor, a friend, thought it might be a good idea because it was a new case the community hadn't faced before. An overwhelming majority of editors said it wasn't a problem worth even discussing. If what you got from that was it was about reconfirmation, then you really are further into IDHT behavior that I previously thought. Then we get into the gaslighting: you and Smallbones have both accused me of being disruptive when I defend myself from your baseless attacks and accusations. No, I have every right to participate here, I have every right not to be hounded by you two, and I have every right to give my opinion. You two really need to knock it off before this ends up at a noticeboard. I'm really getting tired of your constant attacks.--v/r - TP23:07, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, right, "attacks" my rear end. Look, you clearly think that what you did was fine. We get that. I'm reading you loud and clear on that. We also get that you're mad. You've made that abundantly clear. There is no point in further discussion. Please drop the WP:STICK as the carcass is starting to smell. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 23:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Wow, more gaslighting. Not only do I think what I did was fine, so did the community. You want the stick dropped? Feel free to drop it. You came here, you made the accusations. I have a right to defend myself from them. There'd be no need to defend myself if the accusations weren't being made. So, by all means, take your advice, quit making the accusations, and it'd be done with.--v/r - TP23:21, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
A half dozen editors on ANI, responding to you asking if you should be desysopped is "the community"? The discussion on Jimbo's talk page [2] was about five times the length of the one you began at ANI, which you framed as whether you should be reconfirmed. That discussion on Jimbo's page speaks for itself. It was anything but a finding that all was "fine." But let's assume for the sake of argument that it went in your favor, and that the ANI discussion did too. Let's also assume that both constituted a ringing endorsement of the fact pattern involved there. If that was the case, such an alarming development would necessitate intervention by the WMF, as it would open the door to administrators going out on the open market to sell their services to clients in any number of ways. In my opinion it would be a circumventing of the paid editing rules, at least now, as I am not sure if the TOU was in existence at the time. I don't know how pervasive it is, but it would need to be stopped in its tracks if so. Again, not personalizing this. You can choose to try to characterize this as a "personal attack" as I notice you do in these discussions, but I am referring here to the act, not the actor. Again, this is off topic, but you can have the last word and beat that dead horse yet again. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:21, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
"In my opinion" - And that's all you've got, your opinion. No consensus, no endorsement by the WMF, no evidence that an actual problem exists. Just your morals, convictions, and opinion. So until you've got consensus behind you, knock it off and quit hounding me. That dozen or so editors at ANI is more involvement than half of the changes you three have pushed through into this policy and called it a "consensus".--v/r - TP12:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Restart
I've said that having something in this guideline will help, but we need to have an overall strategy. My general idea is something like this:
WP:COI outlines the problem and gives all editors something to refer to.
It also warns newbies not to be taken in by the unsolicited offers, and do what any person should do before considering an unsolicited offer - get information on the person or company that is making the offer. This is not saying that if they give personal contact info that the offer is acceptable, only that it's clearly unacceptable if they are not willing to give that info. Many scammers might be scared off at this point - giving out real, checkable contact info is not part of their plan.
A warning page, or perhaps a template/box should be put at AfC and maybe AfD to let newbies know that these schemes have been reported. A key problem is getting these warnings to the right people at the right time. Perhaps the warning box could also be placed at WP:COI and WP:COIN as well. Perhaps a "no-contact from paid editors" template could be set up for user pages - not that I fear getting an unsolicited e-mail from these guys, but if enough people put them on their user pages, newbies would be more likely to see it.
A simple easy confidential contact with the WMF be set up. Right now there is a paragraph at AfC that links to a general talk page for complaints about the AfC process. For everybody's protection, we need confidential reporting to somebody who can deal with something that might be as serious as extortion.
Is there some reason AN/I can't handle this problem? Is it running into the "outing" issue, or what? If they called you, it's not "outing". We've had detailed public discussions before over ads for paid editing. John Nagle (talk) 02:25, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Ultimately something as serious as possible extortion has to be handled confidentially and with a supportive tone. That sounds a lot more like the WMF than AN/I. A major part of the problem is warning the newbies beforehand so they'll know that this type of activity is not acceptable and that they have a place to turn to. Getting the newbies to ask for contact information would be a bonus. That way they'll have something to report other than "I got an email from somebody named Bob - do you think that is their real name?" (those last 8 words are a quote from a recent e-mail I got). I checked out the recent case enough to know that there was a real problem there. So I didn't have an answer anything better than to put them in contact with the WMF. So what should we be able to tell these folks? Smallbones(smalltalk)02:42, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Since I don't know what you have been discussing with WMF, it's hard for me to give a recommendation, but as I said, if someone is going to deal with reports of fraudulent advertising, by all means let's communicate this to editors/readers.
To be consistent with our strong discouragement of paid editing, the recommendation we ought to give to newbies is "Don't hire editors to make edits." (And perhaps "Don't believe anyone who says they can guarantee specific content in a Wikipedia article; they're lying.") Then the rest of it becomes moot. (We should then give newbies a path of how to ensure the article of interest is appropriately updated, but as has been pointed out in many other conversations, edit requests tend to languish indefinitely.)
I don't have a solution for newbies who choose to ignore this strong discouragement, because in that case, I see no reason to believe they will listen to any other advice we have to offer. So while there's probably no harm to newbies to give them advice like "check the credentials of those editors who, by the way, we're telling you not to hire", it feels like it will just eat up a lot of the community's time unnecessarily with wordsmithing that will produce very little change in the newbies' behaviours. isaacl (talk) 03:07, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
For the scenario you described above, I don't think we should recommend that a newbie contacted in that manner ought to vet the paid editor, instead of just saying "no, thank you" and reporting suspicious behaviour. (If an experienced editor wants to prepare a sting, I think they can do it without needing advice from this page.) isaacl (talk) 03:29, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
"Don't hire editors to make edits." and
"Don't believe anyone who says they can guarantee specific content in a Wikipedia article; they're lying." (with some rewording)
are exactly what we should put in this guideline. But newbies aren't going to even read this unless we put it in warnings where they'll see it. So far, it seems that we agree. I don't think we need to bring in the speed of response to edit requests. We don't need to be perfect before we deal with possible extortion. Getting newbies to request real contact information will stop a lot of solicitations before they start. It's not a sting - it's just standard procedure if you get an unsolicited offer. And if the paid editor won't give that info, it's almost equivalent to saying "no, thank you" except for the middle word. Smallbones(smalltalk)03:46, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't see the point in asking them to request real contact information if we are saying they should ignore solicitations in any case. (I don't bother responding to solicitors saying I've won a cruise to provide me credentials.) As has been brought up before, what leads good-faith newbies to use paid editors is either a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's standards of inclusion, or frustration that their attempts to use the system as intended seem to lead nowhere. So we can certainly tell newbies to use the edit request system, but unless we address how to make that system effective, we may not be convincing newbies to not try using paid editors.
As to where to tell newbies not to hire editors, that's a much more difficult problem if they aren't editors. We can start with the scenario of editors who submit articles to the Articles for Creation process. Can a message be placed in an appropriate location within that workflow that editors should not resort to hiring someone to make conflict of interest edits? isaacl (talk) 03:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
We cannot control (or even patrol) what people do off-WP; including something like "don't hire editors to make edits" would be unpoliceable and unenforceable. You would need an RfC to add something like this and I very much doubt it would fly.
About trying to help new editors be smarter consumers... I don't think that is useful to do in the COI guideline, which is something people don't arrive at first thing when they come. Where to fit in consumer education in the midst of all the other information new editors need to learn about the basics of editing (how to use a talk page, how to sign, what a "reliable source" is, what NPOV actually means...etc) is a hard call. Not sure. But that would not go here. Jytdog (talk) 05:23, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I was responding directly to the question what would I tell newbies? It would only be advice and not a policy or a guideline—I said the same thing as you regarding unenforceability and the inability to govern what people do off-site. isaacl (talk) 11:46, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Smallbones, if you have evidence of this occurring - for example, original emails with intact headers - you should consider sending that evidence to the arbcom or functionaries list, and to the WMF. That advice is also a component of a good response to newbies who say they've received such messages. But I emphasize evidence because no one can meaningfully act on your stated strong belief until you provide the basis for that belief. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
So two years after an apparent extortion scheme was uncovered, our only response is to send the scammed editors to this public help page. We've got to do better than that, if only to protect our own reputation. Actually there is a lot more at stake than just our own self-interest. Do we want our hobby to be turned into a forum for extorting people? Do editors really want to participate in that even indirectly?
Perhaps I should state the obvious - extortion is a form of fraud, which is banned by our terms of use. The fraudsters benefit from keeping their targets (or marks) quiet, often by shaming or by threats. This is a form of harassment. Nobody should be against stopping this fraud and harassment.
What we need is 1) a couple paragraphs in WP:COI that will identify this type of unsolicited offer for what it is, 2) a proper system of warning the marks, and 3) encouraging the marks to report the unsolicited offers to the WMF, or other place where they can report confidentially, without being publicly shamed, and where somebody can take serious action when required. Smallbones(smalltalk)15:49, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Several editors have taken issue with your use of "extortion" saying it is alarmist and not representative of what is happening. Furthermore, your claim that "what we need is" jumps the gun. There is still vast, and I mean vast, disagreement with you that there actually is a problem. Not a single editor here has supported that proposal. You are currently 0-5 on convincing anyone that the problem exists. Your citation for the problem is two years old and stale. Your solution for the problem is an unenforceable feel good that has no practical effect on the problem. Instead of trying to railroad everyone else in the conversations, how about backing up and trying to convince people that the problem is 1) A problem, and 2) A solvable problem.--v/r - TP16:17, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Smallbones, no one is saying these are good things; everyone agrees they are bad things. You have not addressed the problem with this being off-wiki behavior that the community cannot regulate via this guideline. We are not helpless - as Opabina suggested, I believe that if Arbcom would be provided evidence that was definitive about EditorX behaving this way off-WP -- and especially if EditorX made related edits in WP -- that Arbcom would indefinitely block EditorX under any number of policies.
TParis the orangemoody thing did happen. I don't doubt that it does happen from time to time. As far as I know, the community never considered whether any policy or guideline should be changed as or after the orangemoody thing emerged, nor if orientation materials should be updated. Are you aware of any such discussion? Jytdog (talk) 16:28, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware it happened although I wasn't around during that period. Doesn't change the fact that only one example has been cited. That doesn't make a trend or a problem that is as much of an alarm as it's being made out to be. That the community never considered a policy change at the time should be taken as an indicator that it's not warranted now. The Wikipedians at the time were aware of such things like policies, they had no reason not to if they wanted to.--v/r - TP17:09, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree that there does not appear to be a Big Crisis now and also find the original presentation unfortunate. But orangemoody was a big deal (hundreds of hours of volunteer time figuring it out and dealing with it, something like 300 accounts blocked and around the same number of article deleted) and you should go read about it if you aren't aware. :) Sounds like you are not aware of any discussion about what we could do differently now that we know about that. OK then. Jytdog (talk) 17:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I know you don't want me to talk about why changing this guidance page won't do anything, but since you keep bringing up changing this page.... I don't understand why you don't want to discuss it, since you said yourself that "text here will not accomplish anything by itself." What can be done within Wikipedia is limited: frankly, you don't need an account to try to fleece unsophisticated readers into paying you money to keep content from being deleted, so there may not even be anyone to block. Addressing this issue requires filing official complaints regarding fraudulent advertising, getting editors with conflicts of interest to understand what they can and cannot influence in Wikipedia, and getting the system for incorporating the legitimate contributions of these editors to run smoothly, so editors aren't tempted to hire someone to solve what, to them, seems like a PR problem. isaacl (talk) 21:49, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
This is far from a single example, e.g. the Independent article from 2015 link above starts out "Hundreds of small British businesses and minor celebrities have been targeted by a sophisticated blackmail scam orchestrated by “rogue editors” at Wikipedia" and they go on to give 10 pretty detailed examples with names and dollars (or pounds) given. The reason there haven't been more examples reported lately is obviously because we don't have a reporting system.
BTW, on rereading the Independent I see evidence there that one of the 10 cases there was done by the same person who tried to scam the person who contacted me. It's really quite remarkable. I'll pass that on to the WMF. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:24, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
The aspect of that, is how/where/when to inform new editors about scamming paid editing offers. Your thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Good question. One idea would be to create an essay, or perhaps a portion of this guideline, that can be made known to new editors in the welcome templates. A kind of "special caution" such as the State Department provides when you travel to a hot spot. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I think we could all agree that a central page linked to at WP:AfC would be one good place, but I think we need more places. Most of the people being victimized are relative newbies and don't know how to sort through a dozen policies and guidelines. I do think that central page should have some text that comes from some "official" source like WP:COI. It also needs a place where a confidential report can be made by the victims. Please, let's have a civilized discussion on this. We need a strategy to deal with this. BTW, it seems to be getting worse (next section in a bit). Smallbones(smalltalk)21:38, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
I can suggest a nice warm place to shove that personal attack. You won't convince anyone with your vague threats, ad hominems, and attempts to silence others.--v/r - TP00:12, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
I can suggest that you study again WP:NPA and re-read your own post and reflect on this discussion in which you self-disclosed that you engaged in a "form of paid editing." Your words. It's not a personal attack or an ad hominem to inquire in civil fashion what a user's background is in paid editing, and you do have such a background, according to your own description. I think it would be better for you to avoid this subject area. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:21, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
It wasn't paid editing and your WP:IDHT attitude for the last 3 years is a personnal attack. Now, if you believe my comment was a personal attack, I'd absolutely LOVE for you to take it to a noticeboard and get more eyes on this. I'd be all for that. Otherwise, I'd suggest you strike it.--v/r - TP21:52, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
IDHT in what sense? Believing my lying eyes? You wrote that you engaged in a "form of paid editing." You did. Your words are located here ("As someone who is an admin and has also done a form of paid editing") Why won't you disclose that, if you insist upon participating in discussions of paid editing? Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
I've never said I engaged in paid editing. I said I was paid to write an article for someone else to post. I have never been paid to edit Wikipedia. Paid editing requires someone to be paid to edit. That has never happened. You've been told that countless times over the years and the community has already discussed it and found no problems. The fact that you still drag it up 3 years later after the community didn't agree with you is WP:IDHT. The community found no problems, only you three. And you continue to ignore that in your zeal to silence people who don't agree with you.--v/r - TP22:25, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Interesting. I had not seen that, and no it is anything but an "exoneration." The question at ANI was whether you should have a recocnfirmation RfA, and I notice that neither Smallbones and Coretheapple, both of whom you obviously despise, did not argue in favor of that. What bothers me in general concerning your participation in this discussion and others like it is that you are emotional about it, and are not upfront about why. And the reason, very clearly, is that you engaged in what you called a "form of paid editing." Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:47, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
@Slimvirgin and Jytdog: I told you both two years ago that this policy and that old persona non grata list at the top of this page would be used by these three to silence editors who disagree with them.--v/r - TP00:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Whatever else can be said in this discussion, I do think that it is a good idea to do more to provide usable information about paid editing to new editors early on. I've been working for some time on a proposal to offer, during account registration, to provide links to such information, for good-faith editors who indicate interest. I've been planning to post a restart of my own about these ideas on this talk page, and I'll do that soon. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:05, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Better still, some kind of information concerning self-written articles in general, as that is the primary problem. While disclosure re paid editing is fine, it is not likely to deter professionals, who are aware that undisclosed paid editing is contrary to the TOU. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:15, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Hm. This is actually a really good point. One wonders how many of the solicited people's articles were rejected exactly because they were the typical (poor) products of COI editing themselves. Jytdog (talk) 18:01, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Smallbones made a point early concerning AfCs and I agree. Also, the language that one gets when one creates an article can include a specific warning against writing about yourself or for pay. Right now all it says is as follows:
Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article.
You can also search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
To experiment, please use the sandbox. To use a wizard to create an article, see the Article wizard.
When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted.
You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Name of New Article. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready.
To this, one can add something like: "You are strongly cautioned not to create articles about yourself, family members, employers, or others with whom you have a conflict of interest," with a link and other language related directly to paid editing and the specific threat that Smallbones highlights above. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 19:36, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Just to be clear: I've re-read Smallbones' suggestion, at the top of this subsection, and I think it is a good idea. That is without prejudice to the ideas discussed immediately above. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 23:47, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Let's try something a bit more moderate
There's got to be something that can be agreed upon here. Let's try this:
Paid editors must properly disclose this guideline and the policy on paid-editing disclosure to their clients. In particular, paid editors must tell clients the following information upon first contact (including in any materials soliciting clients):
Paid editors do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikipedia editing community.
Paid editors are unable to perform any actions that are not available to unpaid volunteer editors.
The Wikipedia editing community strongly discourages paid and conflict-of-interest editingeditors with conflicts of interest (including paid editors) from directly editing articles.
Payment can not guarantee any particular outcome on Wikipedia. Paid articles that violate Wikipedia's policies may be deleted, and paid edits that violate Wikipedia's policies may be reverted.
Paid editors must publicly disclose their employer, client, and affiliation in connection with all paid edits made to Wikipedia.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, so long as it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you've received a solicitation for paid editing work that does not disclose the above, this is a strong indication that the paid editor who has contacted you is not following Wikipedia policy. The message you received is likely a scam, and you are strongly encouraged not to make any payment towork with such individuals. Further, we would appreciate you forwarding any solicitations or emails you've received from such individuals to <> for further investigation.
This is a basic disclosure of what paid editors can and can't do for their potential clients. It will better position clients to decide whether or not to make payments to paid editors. Will it drag any "nefarious" paid editors into the light? Of course not, but they weren't going there anyway. This purely helps the clients of the paid editors who are obeying our guidelines to avoid being blocked on-sight but may be deliberately omitting information for the sake of misleading clients. It also provides a simple check for those who've come in contact with a paid editor to determine whether or not they're following the rules. Is this something people can get behind? Does it need further changes to be palatable as a middle ground? ~ Rob13Talk23:46, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
+1 good job, Rob. Stating clearly how Wikipedia works in this manner is good for the people who might be getting dupped and also good for protecting our reputation. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:00, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Rob, there is still no evidence that this is required. BUT, if it has to be done, then I like the way you've done it. If we're going to add this to WP:COI, which I think it should go to a new Wikipedia-space page, there is a template, {{Connected_contributor_(paid)}} that I think should be linked to it. People who pay to have Wikipedia articles written are likely to read those articles they paid for and a link on those articles drawing them to this could give them some ammo to use against the paid editor and perhaps not pay them. Essentially, if an editor advertises they are obeying all WMF policies and a page like this could prove them wrong, then a client could claim contractual fraud and refuse payment. That might actually be a practical solution tohelp with the problem.--v/r - TP00:10, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I support this idea. I want to suggest one change, for greater accuracy: "The Wikipedia editing community strongly discouragesprohibits undisclosed paid and conflict-of-interest editing." Otherwise, I think that this would be beneficial. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
at a high level, this is difficult in the same way that Smallbone's original proposal was, in that it is attempting to regulate off-WP behavior. We cannot police that at all, and enforcement of it is something only Arbcom could do, and only if people submit stuff to them. Also, advising people not to pay under a contract they make, is not something we should get involved in; saying that there may befraud is more Ok but still dicey. here are some a different version:
Paid editors who freelance or work for public relations firms should tell clients the following information (including in any materials soliciting clients):
They are obligated to follow Wikipedia's conflict of interest management process of disclosure and peer review.
They are obligated to disclose their employer, client, and affiliation in Wikipedia when they are paid or expect to be paid for editing; there is no confidentiality for the client.
Their edits should be peer reviewed to ensure compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines before being submitted, and their edits will be reviewed afterwards through the course of normal work by the Wikipedia community.
They cannot guarantee any outcome in Wikipedia - not that an article will be kept or deleted, nor that any content will remain or be deleted, nor that any tags will remain or be deleted.
They do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editing community, and they have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
They are an editor in good standing and they do not use one-off accounts ("sockpuppets") or edit by proxy.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, so long as it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you've received a solicitation for paid editing work that does not disclose the above, this is a strong indication that the paid editor who has contacted you is not following Wikipedia policy. If a paid editor promises you confidentiality, they are not following Wikipedia policy. If the paid editor cannot show you their userpage in Wikipedia, on which they disclose that they edit for pay and display a list of their clients, they are not following Wikipedia policy; you should be aware that edits by sockpuppets can be deleted simply because they were made by a sockpuppet. Working with such people adds to the risk that you will not get your desired outcome.
If a paid editor promises something contradicted by the above, their offer may be fraud. See Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia for a widely publicized example of paid editing scams. We would appreciate you forwarding any possibly fraudulent solicitations or emails you've received to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for investigation.
This brings this into alignment with the rest of the guideline and past discussions in several ways (for example heading off the old saw objection of GLAM and WMF employees who are paid to edit) . I think it is important to be clear that the client has no confidentiality. I added some other consumer protection language that explains the risks of working with undisclosed paid editors. If we are going to get involved warning against scammers, perhaps we should point to non-scammers..... I imagine the latter will be controversial and am fully prepared for that to be rejected, but i wanted to propose it.
So that would be adding, after "desired outcome", something like:
Either of the proposed texts would be ok with me with a bit of copyediting. They do seem a bit long, but if that's the amount of text it takes to say what we want, it's fine with me. I'll get to the real important points now: The section heading might be Marketing by paid editors and it might be placed as the 1st section under miscellaneous.
Copyediting can be very important. The best copyeditor I know for policies and guidelines is Slim Virgin so, Sarah - can I ask that you take a look at this?
I don't think that we have to be concerned about us enforcing this guideline section - it will be self-enforcing to a large degree. More precisely, if we get the word out to the targeted editors at AfC and hopefully other places, the targets will enforce the rule themselves at least for their own individual cases. I really do want to have something in there about "knowing your business partner". It's just standard business practice to know who you are dealing with, ie actual names and contacts. But to scammers, giving out that information is just poison, and they'll stay away from it as far as possible. It could be as simple as "As with any business transaction, know who you are dealing with in case there are disputes or complaints."
This is probably more appropriate to do at PAID by the way. That is policy and would probably take an RfC. Jytdog (talk) 02:24, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
@Jytdog:I'd be entirely opposed to you linking to that essay in a way that implies it's a negative thing. The community chose to keep that essay and you linking to it after wanting it deleted comes off as petty and vengeful. Furthermore, it'd be entirely disingenuous to link to it in that way implying that that group is in some way shunned by Wikipedias when the opposite is true. Some of our longest and more respected Wikipedians take part in that.--v/r - TP13:04, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
TParis, the linking to it is recommending it. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy in these discussions. Jytdog (talk) 14:41, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
TP, please see above; I would appreciate a reply. Also, this was my !vote at the MfD. You have done me a double mischaracterization here. :( Jytdog (talk) 02:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Alright, I did a bit of wordsmithing to the original proposal (original text struck, new text underlined). In particular, I've moved from "make any payment" to "work with" to avoid giving any advice with legal implications. I doubt paid editing contracts where the editor is violating our Terms of Use are actually enforceable, for the record, since they're effectively a contract offering to perform an illegal service. I'm not a lawyer, though, and you're right we should avoid giving even the appearance of legal advice. To respond to Tryptofish, the point of this is to provide disclosure to the clients who are receiving disclosure. It doesn't make much sense to disclose the fact that not disclosing is against policy, since by the time the editor is disclosing stuff, he's probably playing by the rules. More comments later, have to go. ~ Rob13Talk13:09, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
@TParis: The evidence is mostly in info-en OTRS tickets. I don't handle many info-en tickets, but I've seen at least a dozen article subjects have expressed confusion regarding what services are and aren't available for pay. Some are under the impression Wikipedia is built entirely by paid editors. Some are under the impression that if they pay an editor to edit their page, they have final say on the contents. This is an easy way to educate more article subjects and make it easier for subjects who want to hire an editor to know if that editor is reputable. In my view, it's correcting an asymmetric information problem, at least to some extent. ~ Rob13Talk13:32, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that's something of a red herring anyway. Given the scope of the paid editing problem, there is no reason not to act to prevent a particular practice by paid editing professionals even if not pervasive, so that it does not become a serious problem going forward. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:56, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, Rob. By way of explaining what I previously suggested, I do not actually think that the community "strongly discourages paid and conflict-of-interest editing". One can readily imagine editors who fully disclose their affiliation, perhaps working for a BLP subject, who watch the BLP page, revert vandalism of the page, and suggest content corrections via the article talk page: such users are welcome. But anyway, I can see now that it is premature to be wordsmithing either proposed draft.
I think there's some validity to the concerns that both versions here end up being overly long, as well as the concerns that we do not benefit from giving advice about what to do off-site, and that we generally cannot enforce that offsite. So I'll propose an alternative approach. Basically, what got us to this point in the discussion is the experience of undisclosed paid editors getting into a bad situation where somebody else can extort them over content. But if a paid editor is open about disclosing their status, as they should be doing anyway, it seems to me that they can readily get help under those situations. So it really circles back to the need to discourage undisclosed activity – and we don't need to give advice about what other people should or should not put in their contracts.
So, I suggest that we put somewhere (not sure exactly where) a short statement that Experience has shown that paid editors who fail to follow the disclosure policy have been vulnerable to extortion. This is a compelling reason not to attempt to conduct paid editing without disclosure. The first sentence should be followed by an inline cite, that cites some of those previous reports of attempted extortion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
What is strongly discouraged, is direct paid and conflict-of-interest editing. Directly editing content. I dealt with that in my version. Trypto I don't think you meant to write that paid editors are vulnerable to extortion, did you? :) Jytdog (talk) 22:16, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't want to belabor it, but I was responding to what Rob said to me about his version, not about your version. As for "extortion", I'm getting an uncomfortable feeling that I am misunderstanding something here – what I meant was the kind of "shakedown" referred to in the opening comments at the beginning of this discussion. ("Pay me money, or I'll make sure that the article you created for pay will end up at AfD".) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I was echoing your comment on Rob's version as well - that is why I changed Rob's version as I did. PAID and this guideline both say that direct editing by conflicted/paid editors is strongly discouraged. Neither says that the presence or participation in the community by conflicted/paid editors is strongly discouraged. It is true that their presence is just tolerated, not loved, but the policies and guidelines don't say that. You are correct about the topic , but what you wrote reads to me like paid editors are vulnerable to being extorted, not sometimes the extortionists. a syntax/grammar thing is all. Jytdog (talk) 22:45, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Oh we are reading the OP differently. You read -- "Pay me money, or I'll make sure that the article you created for pay will end up at AfD". I read something orangemoody like, namely "pay me money and I can get your article created" or ".. and I prevent your article from deleted". I see where you are coming from now. Jytdog (talk) 22:53, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, I actually did read it as "and I will prevent your article from being deleted". I guess I particularly had in mind the example cited below: [3]. Following that link to the AfC here: [4], it does kind of look like an editor with at least a COI being shaken down for money, as in, pay me money and I'll get the article that promotes your organization published at en-wiki. I see now what you mean: that the person asking for the money is clearly trying to be a paid editor, and maybe we should warn inexperienced users not to fall for that and pay up – yes, that's right. But I was also seeing it from the perspective that the "victim" was also soliciting help with the page, at the website for the organization (as opposed to asking at something like a WikiProject onsite), which puts them in a bad position here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:17, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Revised: Experience has shown that paid editors who fail to follow the disclosure policy have been vulnerable to extortion. This is a compelling reason not to attempt to conduct paid editing without disclosure. Also, never believe anyone who claims that if you pay them they can provide special editing privileges. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:22, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm aware of no experience that the paid editors are subject to extortion, nor should we be writing into our policies that our own requirements (disclosure) result in people being extorted using them. Discouraging undisclosed editing, in my opinion, is done by bringing the hammer down on undisclosed paid editors – blocking them indefinitely, deleting all their content so they have a lot of angry clients on their hands, etc. There's little we can do at a policy-level to improve that. What we can do is better inform clients of what paid editors can and can't do, which also happens to serve as an easy way for clients to check if the paid editor they're considering working with is following all our policies. I've changed the text of the discouraging bullet point to reflect what I intended, which was discouraging direct editing. ~ Rob13Talk14:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that's reasonable, and I am now much less enthusiastic about my own suggestion, and think that we should go back to focusing on your and Jytdog's versions, with some copyediting for brevity. And thanks for that change, which makes it much clearer. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:37, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: This is the first that OTRS has been mentioned with regard to this. So I don't have to create an account, would you mind doing some short and quick statistics, maybe, about how many of these you get a month? Maybe even identify which ones you suspect are related to Orangemoody? Sorry if I'm asking too much, but it's better than asking you to forward them all to me or to post them here.--v/r - TP12:39, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
@TParis: A month? Not many. Like I said, I don't do many info-en tickets, and when I do it's sporadic. I'm mostly a permissions agent on OTRS. I can say I've seen over a dozen people with confusion around how paid editing works over the course of being an agent. If I had to guess, none were likely to be related to OrangeMoody. In the past week, I had two different subjects shocked when their pages (created by paid editors) were deleted according to our policies, but it's not really possible to extrapolate monthly numbers from that - most tickets aren't closed or viewed by me. Note that I cannot forward tickets to non-OTRS agents or post them here, due to the confidentiality agreement I've signed. I'm bringing up OTRS because it's where our article subjects directly communicate with us, so naturally it's where we often hear about these types of things. ~ Rob13Talk14:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
I mean, I arbitrarily picked a month out of my head. The real question was how prevalent it was. In any case, I've come up on a tangent and it may be helpful here. Our interface lacks informational links. Most of them are functional. I'm wondering if we should add a "Information" heading to our left-navigation. We could include links to WP:N, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:COI, but also a "Have you paid an editor?" link that could link directly to what you've come up with above. As I said earlier, the best way to fight COI editing isn't to write more text on the screen. You need to have a practical effect outside of Wikipedia. And I think if we were to make it easier to find something that explicitly states that not offering your disclosure to a client violates our rules, then we can give clients ammo not to pay the paid editor. That would have real effect at combating this problem. We could also add a link to the "Deleted" screen & the "paid contributor" template. The issue is getting the information to the client, not finger wagging at the paid editor like the rest of this policy does.--v/r - TP14:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
@TParis: Hmm. One problem. I like the idea of linking WP:N, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:OR, and WP:COI from it with an option to toggle off in settings - that's unambiguously a good idea to help new editors. On the other hand, throw "Have you paid an editor?" in the sidebar and suddenly more people will think "Hey, I could get paid to edit Wikipedia?", especially cash-strapped teens that are always looking for a way to make money online. That could be bad. We don't want to actively encourage more paid editing by accident. I would support linking to an informational page for someone who wants an article about themselves. I would say my text could be added to WP:PAID, not COI. ~ Rob13Talk15:41, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
So, essentially, you're worried about WP:BEANS? Fair enough. I'm not saying I'm fully behind this idea. But if I were, this is how I'd go about it. My primary complaint with the policy madness going on at this talk page has been that it will have no practical effect. We could let certain editors have free reign and nothing they'd write would stop paid editing. But your proposal, if made visible enough, could have an effect. You could probably count on my weak support if you moved forward.--v/r - TP15:49, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Just catching up with this. I suggest keeping the caveat short, and condense it if possible to one sentence appealing to the self-interest of the prospective paid editor. Perhaps something like:
Do not edit for pay. Undisclosed paid editing violates the Wikimedia Terms of Use, and articles produced for pay are subject to deletion.
Something like that. Short and sweet. There is no point to ask for paid editors to disclose certain information. It's futile, and the more verbiage the more the central point --- don't do it --- is likely to be lost. Coretheapple (talk) 17:30, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Support I was just catching up, as I said, but I somehow missed the intent of this, which is that this is to be an addition to this guideline. That being the case, I support this or the original; no preference. My initial misimpression was that this was to be a caveat added when one creates an article via an AfC. not blaming anyone but myself guys, but this discussion is just a weeeeeeeeeee bit long...... Coretheapple (talk) 20:59, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that there is clearly enough support for this approach to work with it. I'd like to suggest that Rob and Jytdog try to see if you can agree on a way of combining your two versions, taking the best parts from each. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that Smallbones needs to be a part of that process, given that he originated the idea and has done research into it. Coretheapple (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree with you, and I think that everyone who is interested should be included. All I meant was that the two editors who have two parallel versions might want to see whether they can agree on a compromise. But of course it would still need to be discussed. I just thought that would potentially be a way to move forward more efficiently, but if those two editors don't do it, others of us probably will. Sorry that I wasn't clear about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
User:BU Rob13, taking up Trypto's offer to see if you and I can work out a merge of our versions... please let me explain what drove changes in mine compared to yours:
I try to repeat "The conflict management process of disclosure and peer review" whenever I get the chance, as the way to continually teach everyone that COI exists, that Wikipedia has a COI management process, and what that process is.
Saying that "you cannot have confidentiality" for potential clients is really important in my view. Many black hat paid editors say that they sign CDAs with clients and this is something that clients should know is a protection that they are not actually allowed, and that anybody who offers or agrees to keep the client's identity confidential is a bad actor. If clients were smarter, we would have fewer black hats to deal with.
The advice about checking the paid editor's userpage is another protection for the client and again if clients did this and refused to work with black had paid editors who serially sock, this would be also be better for everybody. That is why I mention this.
I agree that we should say that clients should not believe any paid editor who claims to represent WMF or WP or that he or she has admin or other special powers...
Sorry for my absence. I've revised the 2 texts above to make them shorter. I think we're agreed on the general content, but please continue to revise (and make shorter). Should we have an RfC lasting at least a week (say July 6, after the holiday)? We need to get this to the potential targets, say in a page linked to WP:AfC. We can be more expansive there. Smallbones(smalltalk)04:43, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Proposal 3
In any solicitations to a prospective client or upon first contact with a prospective client, paid editors must disclose the following information:
Paid editors should include the following information in any solicitations sent to prospective clients:
Paid editors do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editing community, and they have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
Paid editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliations on Wikipedia. There is no confidentiality for the client.
Paid edits may be reviewed and revised many times in the normal course of work on Wikipedia. Neither the client nor the paid editor own the article.
Paid editors cannot guarantee any outcome for an article on Wikipedia. It can be revised or deleted by other editors at any time.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, if it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you received a solicitation from a paid editor that does not include this information, we recommend that you not do business with them. They are not following our policies and guidelines. Some of these solicitations have been linked to fraud. See Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia. If you think you’ve received a fraudulent solicitation, please forward it to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for investigation.
I think Proposal 3 is very good. I would tweak the opening language to the following:
"if you are seeking to exploit your Wikipedia account for monetary gain, either by directly editing Wikipedia or some other method that circumvents this policy, you should include the following information in any solicitations sent to prospective clients:"
So you are saying that there could be tag teams of editors doing the solicitations.
How about "Paid editors who send solicitations to prospective clients, and any other editors who participate in or such solicitations, should include the following information in them:"
Indeed. Well this entire policy won't stop the gaming, or most practices for that matter. COI rules (and this is a guideline, not a policy) can't stop any behavior, but simply set forth what people should and shouldn't do. I was thinking of people engaging in practices that don't involve directly editing content - perhaps inducing others to do so for them - and then claiming the rules don't apply to them. For instance, I draft an article on the Acme Finance Company, and am duly paid for that purpose. I ask a pal to create the article (hey, they get a big fat DYK!). I am not a "paid editor" but if anything I'm doing something worse, as I am "laundering" my contribution through a cut-out. Coretheapple (talk) 17:48, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I understand entirely. The key reason to put this into WP:COI however is not so Admins and arbs can enforce it, but so that AfC participants are aware of the problem and can effectively enforce it themselves by ignoring any solicitations that go against this. So it should be simple, understandable at first glance. WP:COI will give warnings to AfC folk some additional strength by being official.
The gaming is a non-issue, but we can just tighten up the wording to be "Any solicitations for paid editing services sent to prospective clients should include the following information:" if we're really concerned about that. I'm not; the whole point is to provide a "check" of whether a business is abiding by our rules, and prospective clients won't even think of the "gaming" possibility when they're making that check, if they do. Having said that, I'm concerned because this latest proposal severely narrows the scope of my initial offering. Originally, I stated that paid editors must provide this information to all clients in first communications. We've now narrowed to just solicitations, which allows paid editors who are contacted by a business looking for such services to avoid disclosing the limits of paid editing. I'd prefer wording like "In any solicitations to a prospective client or upon first contact with a prospective client, paid editors must disclose the following information:" ~ Rob13Talk21:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
At this point, I don't think the wording matters. We're gone down the same path that we've taken for the last half decade and there is no significant improvement. The problem isn't having more bytes in this policy, the problem is making people aware it even exists. I listed three ways to make it more obvious. If you let the clients know what "editing w/in Wikipedia policy" actually means, then you might be able to cut off the funding to the paid editors. That's how you'd actually stop the problem. More bytes on a buried page that 99% of our viewers don't know even exists does nothing but make you all feel better until the next Orangemoody case. Then you're likely to write even more bytes that will do nothing. Make a practical difference, let's focus on how to make Rob's proposal visible to the general public.--v/r - TP22:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I do think that we ought to give some thought as to where this material should best be added, for optimum visibility. I also think that Smallbones' draft for a separate "Scam warning" page will help a lot with visibility. I'm unsure what I think, relatively, about what are now three proposed versions, but broadly, I like all three of them. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I didn't see the "scam warning", but that sounds like a great idea. We really don't even need consensus to get started. We could create an essay-type page.--v/r - TP23:55, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Another idea is that we could try to get services such as elance and freelancer to add the "Avoid a scam" warning on their Wikipedia pages. In fact, Freelancer has a blog. Maybe I could write an article for it.--v/r - TP00:00, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Telling editors what behaviour they must follow outside of Wikipedia isn't effective. As I mentioned above, it's contradictory for us to list a set of expected information to be communicated and at the same time say paid editing is strongly discouraged. I think focus should be placed on warning editors about what claims made by paid editors are bogus, and what editors should do instead of resorting to hiring someone to edit Wikipedia on their behalf to make conflict-of-interest edits. isaacl (talk) 03:50, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Break due to meandering scope of conversation
I'm throwing a break in here because I had a separate idea. This shouldn't replace the idea of a disclosure requirement above, but it speaks to TParis' visibility issue. What if, when you navigated to a page that hasn't yet been created, there was a blurb among all the garbage seen here that stated something along the lines of "Is this you or an organization you represent? See here for information on how Wikipedia determines what articles are included in our encyclopedia." The resulting page could include quite a bit of information on notability, etc. but it could also include a warning regarding paid editing/COI editing. Would this help with our visibility issue? ~ Rob13Talk00:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I really like everything I see in this and the above section. The various text proposals are all similar enough that it really doesn't matter which one we choose - though I like shorter texts. Can we start a weeklong RfC tomorrow (Thurs)?
But the text is just a foundation. Getting the word out to the potential targets is the key. The scam warning can be added to, maybe changed in format to a FAQs, whatever gets the message across best. Putting links to that warning - let's just brainstorm for all the possible places that the targets might see them.
At AfC and their help desk
At WP:COIN
at yet-uncreated or previously-deleted pages as above
"paid editors should not contact this user" boxes for talk pages with a link to the warning
@Smallbones: This is my first encounter with the AfC process. It would help if you could explain what the next step in the process is and how we can comment. I've created articles via drafts in my own space but never through AfC. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 17:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Figureofnine First please note that I've got the link to the warning page up now. Probably the next step would be to decide where else to put these links. I've also got a link to it at the top of my talk page. Please do let me know if you think this will work more generally.
As far as how AfC works in general, I have to say that sometimes it doesn't work very well, though I don't really have good info on it. Sometimes people have said that they suspect that paid editors or their supporters are working there. Sometimes there is a huge backlog. Sometimes it has worked better. I've tended to avoid it.
My general perceptions - but these may need correction
dozens of people propose articles everyday, maybe 30-50% business or paid editing type articles
Maybe half of these never get off the ground after being reviewed once. Maybe 49% are resubmitted without much change half-a-dozen times before they give up.
So maybe 1% eventually get passed and have an article created. About half of those eventually get deleted. Maybe another 25% should be.
As you can see, I'm not very positive on AfC. Perhaps @DGG: or @Kudpung: might give better info?
If I patrol 50 new pages in a 2 hour session, at least 5 or 6 are clear, unambiguous cases of paid editing. This does not mean that they look spammy at all and that I can delete them without further ado, but to any New Page Reviewer who is an adult and has conscientiously read the tutorials, the hallmarks of paid editing are as blatant as an A380 on a Tesco car park. What to do about it, however, is not so easy because the intention to use Wikipedia for promotion has to be demonstrated too; our advantage though, is that ignorance of the law is no protection from it.
Just like there is a bent copper in every police force, it is also sadly clear that there are AfC and New Page reviewers, as well as admins who make money one way or another out of getting articles into the encyclopedia. It can take a long time to flush them out and it has to be done carefully to avoid them from lying low or going underground.
We have one thing on our side that should now discourage paid editing: articles are not referenced until passed by an authorised user. Not perfect, but it's a start and should be off-puttng to the paid SEO 'experts'. Other experiments will be tried shortly, part of which includes modification of some GUI notices, the wizard, and other information pages already - no paid editors or spammers will be left in ignorance. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Of course. Not surprising at all. If anything, I would guess that the rate of paid editing - either directly or otherwise (making money off Wikipedia "one way or the other" as Kudpung says) among admins is higher than that of the "general population." Just as it is in prison, where the "trustees" are historically corrupt. If you follow this subject area you must be aware that quite a few admins are philosophically not simpatico with either this guideline or the efforts to curb paid editing. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:18, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Comparing drafts
I'm finding it difficult to compare and contrast the three versions that have been under discussion, in order to see which parts I think are better or worse, and perhaps other editors are too. Therefore, I've created this side-by-side comparison. Obviously, it's based on the current iterations, as of the time of this edit, so it's all subject to change. I've simply copied each proposal here, without modifying anything. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Proposal 1 (BU Rob13)
Paid editors must properly disclose this guideline and the policy on paid-editing disclosure to their clients. In particular, paid editors must tell clients the following information upon first contact (including in any materials soliciting clients):
*Paid editors do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation or the Wikipedia editing community.
*Paid editors are unable to perform any actions that are not available to unpaid volunteer editors.
*The Wikipedia editing community strongly discourages editors with conflicts of interest (including paid editors) from directly editing articles.
*Payment can not guarantee any particular outcome on Wikipedia. Paid articles that violate Wikipedia's policies may be deleted, and paid edits that violate Wikipedia's policies may be reverted.
*Paid editors must publicly disclose their employer, client, and affiliation in connection with all paid edits made to Wikipedia.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, so long as it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you've received a solicitation for paid editing work that does not disclose the above, this is a strong indication that the paid editor who has contacted you is not following Wikipedia policy. The message you received is likely a scam, and you are strongly encouraged not to work with such individuals. Further, we would appreciate you forwarding any solicitations or emails you've received from such individuals to <> for further investigation.
Proposal 2 (Jytdog)
Paid editors who freelance or work for public relations firms should tell clients the following information (including in any materials soliciting clients):
*They are obligated to follow Wikipedia's conflict of interest management process of disclosure and peer review.
*They are obligated to disclose their employer, client, and affiliation in Wikipedia when they are paid or expect to be paid for editing; there is no confidentiality for the client.
*Their edits should be peer reviewed to ensure compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines before being submitted, and their edits will be reviewed afterwards through the course of normal work by the Wikipedia community.
*They cannot guarantee any outcome in Wikipedia - not that an article will be kept or deleted, nor that any content will remain or be deleted, nor that any tags will remain or be deleted.
*They do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editing community, and they have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
*They are an editor in good standing and they do not use one-off accounts ("sockpuppets") or edit by proxy.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, so long as it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you've received a solicitation for paid editing work that does not disclose the above, this is a strong indication that the paid editor who has contacted you is not following Wikipedia policy. If a paid editor promises you confidentiality, they are not following Wikipedia policy. If the paid editor cannot show you their userpage in Wikipedia, on which they disclose that they edit for pay and display a list of their clients, they are not following Wikipedia policy; you should be aware that edits by sockpuppets can be deleted simply because they were made by a sockpuppet. Working with such people adds to the risk that you will not get your desired outcome.
If a paid editor promises something contradicted by the above, their offer may be fraud. See Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia for a widely publicized example of paid editing scams. We would appreciate you forwarding any possibly fraudulent solicitations or emails you've received to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for investigation.
In any solicitations to a prospective client or upon first contact with a prospective client, paid editors should disclose the following information:
*Paid editors do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editing community, and they have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
*Paid editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliations on Wikipedia. There is no confidentiality for the client.
*Paid edits may be reviewed and revised many times in the normal course of work on Wikipedia. Neither the client nor the paid editor own the article.
*Paid editors cannot guarantee any outcome for an article on Wikipedia. It can be revised or deleted by other editors at any time.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, if it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you received a solicitation from a paid editor that does not include this information, we recommend that you not do business with them. They are not following our policies and guidelines. Some of these solicitations have been linked to fraud. See Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia. If you think you’ve received a fraudulent solicitation, please forward it to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for investigation.
WikiOfficer
I'm not sure if this way posted before, but I found a website Wikiofficer that offers paid editing services. It seems they have listed a few articles that they have created here which may be worth looking into. Darylgolden(talk)Ping when replying13:43, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Interesting. But I'm not sure about those claims of article creation. It says here that the company was created in 2008, yet it claims credit for Aptera Motors. which was created in 2006, though very likely by a paid editor. Note that the quality of the writing on this website is very poor. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:48, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm also sceptical that they wrote the articles they claim to have because the domain was only registered at the end of April: [5]. Some of them sure are/were spammy though it looks as if Jytdog has cleaned some up already. Can't help but smile that someone spamming the site on reddit [6] has led to us clean up here. SmartSE (talk) 12:43, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
...despite any text added to this page. It's almost like they don't care what we write and we need to find ways to have practical effects on the market.--v/r - TP17:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Whenever dealing with this sort of thing, one must be aware of the possibility of a Joe Job. Want to hurt a competitor? Just post a fake claim somewhere that the Wikipedia page about the competitor was paid for. Of course it can work the other way; got caught buying a Wikipedia article? Just claim you were Joe Jobbed. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
This is Proposal 3 discussed several sections above. It comes about because there have been 2 cases reported (to the WMF and to ArbCom) that show that the OrangeMoody scam is still going on. In both cases e-mails sent to the targets are essentially identical to e-mails sent by OrangeMoody in 2015.
There are 2 other suggested texts for this section, but I believe they have the some meaning. My preference for this one is due to 1) it's shorter, and undoubtably 2) egotism (I last edited it). But I would support either of the other 2. It's important to realize that this section will only be meaningful if it is incorporated into an overall strategy to inform possible targets of the scam. Smallbones(smalltalk)19:39, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Although I support the general approach, I'm concerned that it is premature to have this RfC now, because there are multiple versions being proposed, and editors have not really established which one to go with. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I think there is some urgency here since a scam is going on now. A good section on solicitations now is much better than a perfect section in 2 weeks. We can fine tune the section over time, and I'll support that totally. That said, we don't need to wait to link Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning to the AfC landing page and elsewhere. I'll likely put in a one-line link from AfC to the Scam warning page tomorrow on the landing page. Maybe something like:
Warning: There is an on-going scam targeting AfC participants. See the scam warning for detailed information.
I agree with putting up warnings at articles for creation and potentially other locations. I do not feel there is an urgency, though, to modify this guideline. Whether or not it is changed makes no difference to the following fraudulent claims: right now, editors cannot accurately claim to guarantee that an article or content within an article will be kept. They cannot make undisclosed conflict-of-interest edits without violating site policy. They cannot validly claim any authority to control the Wikipedia community. isaacl (talk) 17:27, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Solicitations by paid editors (under the Miscellaneous section)
In any solicitation sent to a prospective client, paid editors should disclose the following information:
Paid editors do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editing community, and they have no authority beyond that of any volunteer editor.
Paid editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliations on Wikipedia. There is no confidentiality for the client.
Paid edits may be reviewed and revised in the normal course of work on Wikipedia. Neither the client nor the paid editor own the article.
Paid editors cannot guarantee any outcome for an article on Wikipedia. It can be revised or deleted by other editors at any time.
Providing a client with a link to this section is appropriate disclosure, if it is done in a neutral and non-deceptive manner.
If you received a solicitation from a paid editor that does not include this information, we recommend that you not do business with them. They are not following our policies and guidelines. Some of these solicitations have been linked to fraud. See Orangemoody editing of Wikipedia. If you think you’ve received a fraudulent solicitation, please forward it to arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for investigation.
Support. Wonderful "starting point", I think it is ready to be put into place. Consensus can modify it from there. I also like that it is short, simple, and to the point. Maybe it should have one or two more options for "If you think you’ve received a fraudulent solicitation"? --Endercase (talk) 06:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Support makes clear to victims what should not be going on, at the least, and the community has their back. At the most, people will have good guidance. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:38, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Support, moved from neutral. I am now so disgusted with the Foundr scam that I have decided that we need to just move ahead with this, and tweak the wording later, per Smallbones. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Neutral for now, as a temporary placeholder pending some reconfiguration of the question. I support the general approach. I'm undecided about which of the 3 versions that are being discussed, or some revised combination thereof, would be the best way to go. For that reason, I don't like treating Proposal 3 as though it were the proposal under consideration. And I note that some editors who have expressed support have also said that Proposal 3 isn't necessarily the best one. It seems to me that there is no need for a "proof of concept", because it is already clear that there is enough support to justify crafting a formal proposal. So I would rather set this informal RfC aside for now, get consensus for one version to present to the community, and only then, have a formal RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Tryptofish, I totally support what you are trying to do, but I also see some urgency here since there is a scam going on now. Let's get one version into the guideline asap (they are all so similar anyway). And then do the fine-tuning. i expect to be able to support all your proposals on this. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Since there is some urgency to this, and since there is essentially no opposition, I've gone ahead and added the text to the guideline. It may take me longer to get everything in order in the warning, links to the warning, etc.
There may still be discussion on the wording - which I encourage. One thing that *may* be worthwhile is recasting it as a policy (e.g. paid editors MUST) and then moving it to the paid disclosure policy. But that would be a long slog. Smallbones(smalltalk)13:44, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
So in general, WP struggles when there are online communities of fans or haters; whole swaths of WP have been taken over by folks like this. I somewhat infamously got into with some of them in the whole RepRap thing (eg this)
With this topic, we definitely have the online advocacy communities, but there is an additional layer here, in that money value of these currencies is driven by supply and demand - by efforts these online advocates put into "mining" new coins and the demand for them. (and they compete with each other for users). So as far as I can tell, financial COI is layered directly on top of the fan/hater advocacy. And we get double layers of pseudonymity, as many of these cryptocurrencies also permit anonymity and protect privacy.
Most of our articles about cryptocurrencies are really awful - full of unsourced or primary-sourced content, and many are edited mostly by SPAs. I have no idea if we can effectively manage COI on these topics.
It is indeed. I've had not one but two bouts of Reddit-based Ethereum brigades wondering what they can do about my evil Wikipedia-rules-knowing ways. I get crypto advocates telling me that me knowing about cryptos and having a negative opinion on their crypto constitutes a COI (I'm about to release a book on cryptocurrencies), but their large holding in it somehow doesn't. I tried to be as helpful as was feasible, but at some point one has to ask if words mean things.
This is manageable if we have enough interested editors who will maintain the sourcing rules. Getting these can be a problem, however.
One problem is the sourcing. The crypto press looks like RSes, but is actually advocacy blogs enthusiastically promoting anything to do with cryptos, because what their readership wants is reassurance that this is the future (and that their Bitcoin holding will go TO THE MOON!!). Even when covering actual news, the journalism tends to be ridiculously sloppy. (I had to double-check every claim.) They write articles about things that have not happened yet and probably won't (and crypto fans then try to use these as RSes to get something a Wikipedia mention) - "talking about" becomes "considering doing," becomes "will do," becomes "is doing." Even if a given claimed event does in fact start, later failure is never documented. The mainstream press assume this is specialist press rather than boosterism, and run stories taking all this at face value. (Do not believe one word of anything you read in the press about Bitcoin and Venezuela.) As the buzzword "Blockchain" has gained currency, they have tended to run blockchain marketers' press releases barely edited, assuming that with all this horseshit there's gotta be a pony. But that's really a rant for the RSN ...
tl;dr if we can get more Wikipedians who know what constitutes an RS and can be bothered with putting up with advocates with a financial interest, I'm sure it'll all be fine, fine - David Gerard (talk) 20:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
As Smallbones can attest, one of the most persistent areas of COI and advocacy, mostly paid, involves binary options and the companies that peddle them. Cryptocurriencies have a cult appeal that probably ratchets up the problem. I hadn't seen these articles but I am not surprised to learn they are problematic. P.S. re the posting, I hope "David Gerard" isn't your real name. Coretheapple (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
That can be a disadvantage in editing articles in controversial areas. I will look into those crypto articles but frankly have as little technical background in them as I do binary options. Coretheapple (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
FYI, There's a short (1.5 page) article in the July-August issue about hiring UPEs. Nothing particularly surprising. The gist is that it probably isn't worth it. There are UPEs working from well-established accounts in addition to throwaway SPAs. And Leonard Kim admits he paid someone to write his; claims someone is trying to "defame" him with a notability template.Geogene (talk) 18:45, 28 June 2017 (UTC) Struck text where I misread part of that piece, am not endorsing everything in that BLP's article history Geogene (talk) 20:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
His picture was previously published here and is missing OTRS.
Is there a link to the article? I looked for it, but all I could find is a piece from Armenia where it looks like the local Wikmedia Chapter sued a paid editing company that named itself "Wikipedia", and won. At least somebody seems to be making progress. Smallbones(smalltalk)00:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
It seems to only be available in print. Looking for it I found this [7] from just last month, which I'm about to email to WMF Legal because it appears to give advice, moral support, and perhaps enticement to people that violate the WMF's ToU. Geogene (talk) 17:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, that goes to show two things: that on such a large wiki project, someone has probably already thought of anything you/I have thought of, and that discussions at Jimbo talk typically devolve into name-calling and tl;dr. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:19, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
After seeing that I reached out to her and we had a few exchanges. I was hoping to educate her a bit on how WP works. Not sure how much of it she got. Jytdog (talk) 20:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
That article was full of self-serving generalizations (eg, "The editors violated every rule in the book (and I know because I read them all), but it didn’t matter.") She's not going to acknowledge anything you say that challenges her perspective. Don't waste your time.--v/r - TP17:00, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Now that the article is online, I see that the founder of, um, Foundr paid $1,300 to Noam Javits (that's the account username, from the page history, so no I'm not outing anybody) to create a mediocre page that has a good chance of winding up at AfD. Someone more industrious than I should start an SPI on that editor, and look at whether the page subject really meets our criteria. In the mean time, I'm enjoying (with the proverbial popcorn) the thought of $1,300 down the drain. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
I am appalled that a checkuser seems to be blowing off the SPI, and I urge anyone interested in this problem to speak in favor of an investigation at the SPI page before it gets closed. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:08, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Something seems amiss. The article says that the editor was paid to create articles on the company and Chan. But I can find no evidence of such a BLP, no AfD either. As for the SPI, there is a discussion on the closing admin's page here.Coretheapple (talk) 21:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Hm - Yeah I just walked through the history of the Foundr article and there was never a WL to an article about Chan, and I found no evidence it had ever been created. The Entrepreneur piece does say "Chan got in touch and agreed to pay $1,300 for pages about both himself and his company." so that is either bad reporting or Chan paid for something he never got. Jytdog (talk) 01:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
This appears to have been resolved. The editor has been identified and a bunch of accounts have been blocked. There are likely still some pages that ought to be deleted on notability grounds. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: We should probably have a COI Investigations page similar to the copyright investigations pages where we can go through each contribution on each of these accounts. But, if I may preempt any notion to run off and create one, this page should only be for investigating confirmed sockpuppets of COI accounts. Not for trying to out users.--v/r - TP20:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
In addition, Paola Diana was created by one of the SPA socks. I did not tag it, because it may be borderline notable, but other editors may want to see if they agree with that or not. DoneDeleted. Also, there are so many pages created by the sockmaster that I just don't have the energy to go through them all, but it would be good if other editors would check those. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:55, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Here is a list of articles created by the sockmaster. If anyone checks these, please edit my comment block and put a {{done}} next to it:
They had 4 article already deleted. I haven't checked the rationales behind why.--v/r - TP13:56, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for that. There are also a lot of what I think look like spammy pages that the sockmaster didn't actually create, but edited significantly, and I checked very few of those myself. Also, there is another list at WP:COIN#Another sockfarm, which everyone interested please see. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:33, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I just prod-ed Beini Da, and did a source search that was unproductive (a few sources that would violate BLP, and not much else). The others in your list look to me to be potentially salvageable. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Per my exchange with TParis at the "cooperation project" page, I wonder if there is any interest in constructing a "consumer guide" aimed at the purchasers of paid editing services? It would be designed to advance the aims of the guideline by discouraging such services, but take the position, "ok, if you're going to buy, look for A, B and C." I can think of a number of things that should go into such a guide, among them that the buyer should insist on access to databases that would be needed to result in a properly sourced article. Also a detailed discussion of how promotional articles are not acceptable and are thus a waste of money, I think that might be worth exploring. Coretheapple (talk) 14:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I think we should start with agreeing upon a best workflow for someone with a conflict of interest. (For instance, the example in the discussion on the other talk page—I assume you mean the discussion you linked to, and not WikiProject Cooperation—had a paid editor directly create an article, but the recommend practice on this page is to use the Articles for Creation workflow.) The community should try to make this process work as smoothly as possible, so it can show that complying with English Wikipedia policies and guidelines isn't too hard and hiring someone isn't essential. But if the persons in question still feel like they'd rather get someone else to take on this task (which, to be fair, is a valid issue to address: not everyone is going to feel comfortable or wish to spend significant time participating in an online community), then they should look for someone who will act as their proxy and follow the same recommended best workflow.
While I think it is a good idea to have guidance on how to verify that the recommended workflow is followed, I think it unlikely to be followed by clients, as those who are seeking a contractor in the first place are likely to want to hand off the requested chores and be done with it. White hat paid editors, though, could try to make their compliance and obvious records for validation a selling point. We need that guild to have a highly visible campaign to show off how they're doing things better!
I think it is important to make the recommended workflow as easy and effective as possible so people will be encouraged to use it directly instead of hiring a professional. But... making the workflow effective is a big problem in a volunteer environment. Maybe some form of community-based binding content mediation, to cut down on the length of arguments and discussion, would help. However that has its own pitfalls that the community so far has not wanted to risk. isaacl (talk) 20:54, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I was thinking of something more consumer-oriented, so as to subtly -- in an article/essay written from the subject's viewpoint -- discourage paid editing by curtailing the demand.
For instance, I'm Frank Hasbeen, a semi-retired executive. I want an article on my glorious career. I google "How to get an article in Wikipedia" and up pops the official Wikipedia consumer guide. It suggests to Mr. Hasbeen that 1. Paid editing is strongly discouraged 2. Notability and sourcing requirements are stringent and 3. He is subject to scams and blackmail, and most importantly, 4. If despite all that you still want to go ahead, you should look for X, Y and Z in a paid editor. You want one with access to databases. You want one who doesn't do paid editing exclusively. Stuff like that. Not preaching at him or her but appealing to their self-interests. Really raising the bar. Hopefully Mr. Hasbeen will decide not to bother, but if he does, he will hire somebody who won't be too much of a drag on the project. Coretheapple (talk) 21:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
This goes back to my earlier comments: there is an inherent contradiction in telling people that paid editing is bad but here's what you should do to hire a paid editor. I'd much prefer the message be as follows: if you think you deserve an article, you should make an honest self-evaluation to see if you meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion. This means finding appropriate sources (which may or may not require database searches). If you've gathered the necessary sources and still think you meet the standards, then put in an article request or create a draft and enter it into the articles for creation queue, noting your conflict of interest. (No need to pay someone for something you can do yourself.) If this sounds too techie for you, then sure, try to find a techie person to help you out (maybe a friend will help you for free, or maybe you'll have to hire someone), but make sure they'll follow this same approach (including indicating a conflict of interest), and ask to preview their work so you can confirm that they did indeed follow recommended practice. isaacl (talk) 01:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I think you've raised good points. The problem is that paid editing is permitted and people do it, and now there is even talk of enshrining it in Wikipedia by a "guild" of paid editors. Coretheapple (talk) 12:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
The message I laid out does not say that paid editing is not permitted. If we're discouraging paid editing, then we should tell people what we want them to do instead of hiring an editor, and if they do hire a paid editor, that editor should follow the same best practices. As I said, I fully appreciate there is a class of editors who won't want to contribute to Wikipedia directly, for a variety of reasons, and would rather hire someone to engage on their behalf with the community. isaacl (talk) 18:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I think the strength in a consumer guide isn't to make a statement on whether paid editing is good or bad. I think the value is in empowering the consumers to make smart choices. If we can educate the consumer on the risks involved with undisclosed paid editing, and the changes of a page being deleted and their money wasted, then they are more likely to go to someone willing to abide by the COI guideline. If consumers are making smart choices, then we can cut off the funding going to the "black market" for Wikipedia articles. This can have practical effect outside of the project. Consumers control the economy here, not us. We need to stop trying to fight the "black market" and start educating the consumers. The consumers will, in turn, impact the market.--v/r - TP22:08, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Well I don't agree with you about fighting the black market - still think that's a good idea - but I'm with you on educating the "consumers," the subjects. I just don't see any downside to that, honestly, and further I don't believe it's an endorsement of paid or COI editing. At the same time we can raise the notability bar on companies; the BIO notability is already pretty stiff and I don't think there's much need for tightening. Coretheapple (talk) 22:39, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
There is no where where we say "paid editing is bad". We strongly discourage direct editing by anyone with a COI due to the risk of bias, and many direct edits by conflicted/PAID editors are revertable based on content policies alone. We require paid editors to disclose.
What I am moving toward supporting, is that we take the next step and inform users that there are paid editors who say they follow PAID and COI, and those who don't follow them (and are even banned), and provide pointers to those who do (pointing to the "statement" for now, the "guild" or WikiProject later, if that comes into being. Jytdog (talk) 13:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
For the sake of concision, I over summarized; my apologies. In any case, I trust you understand my view on the nature of the contradictory message (see my reply to Coretheapple above). WikiProject Integrity currently has a list of paid editors who have stated they follow English Wikipedia policies, so this step is already underway. isaacl (talk) 18:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Part of the issue with the list at WP:Integrity, is that nobody "owns" it. Worthyword's name got on there but that person was indefinitely blocked (see Special:Contributions/Worthywords for continually directly adding promotional crap to WP. One reason I am supporting the notion of a "guild" run by paid editors themselves is that it will be in that group's interest to keep people who say they follow PAID and don't, out of the group. Jytdog (talk) 18:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Well, WP:Integrity needs more volunteers (just like so many other areas in Wikipedia). I've got no issue with paid editors keeping a list, but as the saying goes, trust but verify. If monitoring compliance of paid editors is a concern, then the community (exclusive of paid editors) needs to engage in ongoing vetting. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
i am saying that having a specific list is kind of problematic. members of the guild would be a different kind of thing (btw another person on the WP:integrity list has been indeffed for socking Special:Contributions/Nmwalsh; others have no active editors for a few years now.)... 18:25, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I would suggest giving serious thought to attacking the "demand" angle through some method, to try to discourage people from hiring paid editors. Isaac's points are well taken. I don't see much future in dealing with paid editors on-wiki; we just wind up in the usual circular arguments. Coretheapple (talk) 18:34, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Technically, we're the ones who've hijacked the thread on a guild proposal to talk about a guide for editors with a conflict of interest. Perhaps we should separate the discussion into a separate section? isaacl (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow; a guild membership roster would still be a specific list that someone would have to own the responsibility of checking and updating. Amongst all the people who have posted their concerns on this talk page and elsewhere on this topic, surely a few interested parties can be found to update a community-based list of vetted paid editors, rather than relying solely on a membership list maintained by paid editors. It doesn't have to be checked very frequently, so the workload can easily be spread to multiple persons (one editor checked a week is sufficient). isaacl (talk) 18:42, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Isaacl I appreciate your replying... but I feel you haven't been hearing what I have been proposing, which is not WP:Integrity nor WP:Cooperation. I am talking about a guild of paid editors. Organized by them. Within Wikipedia. They would maintain their own member list. Getting on it would mean signing the statement and following PAID and the other policies and guidelines, and doing anything violating those, would get a person thrown off out of the guild. You wouldn't have people lingering on the list for a year after getting indeffed (and indeed, they might bring a member to ANI if that member violates PAID). It is nothing like a roster of "other people" -- for them, it would be their membership list. They would have a keen interest in keeping bad apples out of their basket. Do you see what I mean? Jytdog (talk) 19:49, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I apologize for not communicating clearly. I did not feel a need to repeat my understanding of your proposal, regarding which I have commented on the other talk page (I've already expressed my support). So to clarify, yes, I fully comprehend that you are proposing a membership group managed by the paid editors. I understand you believe they would have a keen interest in keeping their membership list up to date. (I am not so optimistic, given the low level of activity on the current statement page, but I understand your point of view.) I'm not sure where you're getting the idea of a roster of "other people", as I did not say that; I understand the membership list you are referring to is one maintained by the guild.
My point is that I believe the non-paid editor community should do its part to verify that the membership list remains in compliance with Wikipedia policies. Personally, I think the community is not willing to rely solely on the guild to self-police its membership list. These views are independent of your guild proposal; they simply state that, in my view, separate validation is still required. isaacl (talk) 22:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I want to ask - at a high and initial level, does anybody here oppose the formation of something like a "guild of paid editors" by paid editors, to do the self regulation thing? There is some interest in doing that at the Talk page of the "Statement" and if this balloon is not getting terminally shot down here (and my sense is, that it is not), I want to go to work doing what I can to help them plan and form it, and then at some point bringing it to a more community-wide forum to get validation of the model before it would actually launch.... So just checking for "blockers" (to use the dev terminology) at this very initial starting point. Obviously the details will matter. But just wanted to check in a last time before starting the actual work...Jytdog (talk) 22:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for asking. Have explained before and didn't want to belabor it. If you read self regulation you will see that many industries have a level of self-regulation. The american bar association is cited in our article The ABA operates within the bounds of the law of course, but it has additional rules and ethics, and if you break them, the ABA will throw you out and you can't practice law. Same deal with practicing medicine - you have to be certified by various boards, that are run by the medical profession itself.
If we had something like a guild of paid editors here (this would formalize what it is going with the Statement), people who are part of it would pledge to follow PAID (disclose, not edit directly, and follow the other policies and guidelines) and the members of the guild would a) watch each other, and b) watch non-members, and c) train new members. They would throw out people who violated PAID or who socked, etc. They would also never: a) refuse entry to someone who said they would follow the "rules"; never lobby for changes in policies or guidelines; never implement each other's edits; never advertise their services in WP or chase people here.
Outside of that they would be like other editors, and the guild would give them no special privileges.
The community and WMF could say to the public, "There are paid editors who violate WP's rules and are not members of the WP community, and many of them have been banned and have to lie just to write in Wikipedia - they should be avoided. There are paid editors who are members of the community in good standing; people in the Guild of Paid Editors are examples of that, as far as we know."
There are lots of ways this could go wrong if it is set up wrong (there always are) but there are many potential benefits.
The thing I am most interested in, is starting to influence the market for paid editing. The public has no idea that there are "white hat" paid editors who are different from "black hat" paid editors, and pretty much the only message that WMF and the editing community put out there, is "paid editing is bad." This leaves the market wide open, and it is kind of like Prohibition in the United States where the gangsters are flourishing. Which is kind of foolish. I am not saying that anybody should endorse paid editing but we should make it clear there are "good guys" and "bad guys".
We could point to the "Statement" now, but that is kind of loose not formal, and if the paid editors themselves form the Guild/WikiProject and invest in it working, paid editors in it will have more of a stake in keeping it clean. And we would all have something more substantial to point to as examples than "signatories of the statement" which is kind of flimsy, and I don't know how rigorous the signatories are in throwing people out who violate their pledges.
If this is effective, it will decrease the amount of undisclosed paid editing that happens from the demand side - from people making better choices if they choose to use a paid editor. Jytdog (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
I think that I might have criticized this idea at an MfD in the past, but I've changed my mind, so I now support what you described here. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:18, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Jytdog for the explanation. I don't see the harm in it as long as it adheres closely to this guideline. I am acquainted with self-regulation, and it has had a mixed record in finance and is sometimes referred to as a failure. Perhaps a different form of terminology could be used. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Things are going badly at the Village Pump. I am not sure it was wise to post there but ... so it goes. Jytdog (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I feel like that is my fault (and I was really more concerned with how Jimbo-talk is a bad barometer of the community as a whole). But I suspect that you would have gotten opposition in any case, and it's better to get it earlier than later. (Feel free to check my head on a platter, if you want!) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I chose to do it. The thing with COI /paid editing is that people just react emotionally and it makes it hard to move in any direction and I think i should have had discussions with various folks specifically about the best way to put it before the community, to avoid just this from happening. But on we stumble. Jytdog (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm getting a little off-topic or meta in saying this, but I think it's the intersection of COI and outing that elicits these sympathetic nervous system reactions, but I've repeatedly noticed the same thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Every single paid edit whether it is written neutrally or not, is COI and an attempt to promote a company, a product, a person, or a non-profit. That is not what Wikipedia is for, and it's not what thousands of maintenance workers and bona fide content creators offer their unpaid free time for. The slightest relaxation in our view on paid editing, especially the creation of help/support areas for paid editors will be taken by them as a legitimisation of their activity. We already have plenty who think that by putting a paid editing declaration on their user page means we condone paid editing and give them carte blanche to go ahead and write what is basically blatant spam.
Give these spammers the slightest crack in the plaster and they will soon be chipping away at our rules and guidelines until they've knocked the whole wall down. In collaboration of the community and the WMF a short trial of some new measures is soon going to take place and its analysis will show what kind of effect, if any, it has had on spam (as well as other unwanted content). That, together with the non-indexing of new articles, should go a long way towards negating the SEO advantages for the 'Get me a page on Wikipedia' customers, and reduce the incentive for the 'We'll get you a page on Wikipedia' merchants.
Paid editing is not particularly difficult to detect by experiencedNew Page Reviewers, and spam links slipped into articles should be recognised by recent changes patrollers and Pending Changes Reviewers, and a few software enhancement we are asking for (eg. ORES, and better automatic duplication detection) should do the rest. What is increasing now however, is the number of direct offers of money for work being sent by email to admins from professional rings of socks (so it's already going partly underground). We can only rely on the sysops' integrity to refuse. I understand that measures to combat paid editing will drive it underground, but I think we need to stick to our principles and if we don't yet have such strong principles, it's time we did. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
In no way am I defending spammers, but there really can be situations where paid editors with COIs can be beneficial. That virtually never happens with creation of new pages, which are extremely likely to be spam. But consider a page that we might already have about a clearly notable person or company or group. The page subject hires a paid editor to keep an eye on the page. The paid editor is meticulously transparent about disclosing their status. They watchlist the page and rapidly revert vandalism and BLP violations. They never make content additions to the page, but instead raise issues that concern them on the article talk page, again making clear their paid status, and ask unbiased editors to consider making or not making proposed edits. How can that be a bad thing? Surely, reversion of vandalism and BLP violations is a net positive. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm not saying all paid editing is bad. I'm saying organizing a group of paid editors whom can easily then set up article alerts and form a quid-pro-quo lobby for their content is bad. I can think of no reason why a lobby for paid editors would be a good idea, and I think that's what any such organized group will become. ~ Rob13Talk17:30, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
Understood, thanks. I wasn't replying specifically to you, but more like commenting to this talk section as a whole. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:38, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
User:BU Rob13 one of the ground rules of this thing would be no GANG behavior - no lobbying for each others edits or implementing them or !voting at AfDs to save someone else's paid article or working together to try to change policy. Of course not! I would be among the first to call to indef anybody who did that kind of crap. (and if it got really bad, to MfD the thing, as we have done for other WikiProjects that turned into advocacy groups) The core people in the project would be clueful paid editors (who understand that they are exploiting the volunteer community and act with appropriate respect and care) and it is their best practices that it would be set up to propagate. Jytdog (talk) 23:43, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
There are some very simple facts here.
As long as we retain the model of "anyone can edit" and as long as we protect people's anonymity (both of which we will do for the foreseeable future), we will never be able to prevent paid editing.
Regardless of that, the community has tried several times to reach consensus on banning paid editing in principle, and this has led to massive trainwreck RfCs that have generated no consensus.
There is consensus in the community that COI and paid editing should be managed by disclosure and pre-screening of paid edits (no direct editing)
In the real world there is an active marketplace of people buying and selling paid editing services.
Broad denunciations of paid editing do precisely nothing to affect the market, or whether people buy such services or offer them. We know this because this is all the WMF and the editing community (as much as it "speaks") have said about it from the early days, and the market for paid editing has grown up anyway.
There are (broadly speaking) two categories of paid editors - people who try to follow policy and guidelines, and people who ignore or disdain them. (again, generalization. lots of variations in between)
Any comments on this matter, that are not grounded on these facts, and just unhelpful. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results is not rational behavior. Jytdog (talk) 01:58, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
It's not necessarily the SEO agents who openly advertise their services on the web. There are systematic campaigns going on right now by a ring, or several rings, of socks who have deliberately created accounts in order to use the email system to recruit holders of special rights to accept offers of money to write articles. How do we know that those who comment in favour of condoning paid advocacy aren't already in their pay? Am I expressing bad faith, or just being realistic? Do we do a CU on everyone who comments in a RfC? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:42, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
It is indeed awful. I hate to say this, but I've seen a few clues on-site that this is true. I have zero real evidence, but it's a gut feeling after seeing some things that a small number of users with advanced permissions have posted. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:05, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
Would we consider any source adoptIng the "guild" proposal WP:RS? Why should Wikipedia set lower standards of reliability for articles than we set for sources?
I find the opposition to banning all paid editing (not sanctioned by current Wikipedia programs) puzzling. Perhaps it's provincial of me to expect similar attitudes across the spectrum of Wikipedia editors, especially since public sources of information have developed unequally in each nation. This post is necessarily U.S. centric to an extent because that's where I've always lived.
As a consumer and producer of content (well, past tense for producer), I take the position that trustworthy content depends on excluding, as much as possible, bias (broadly construed). Moreover, the dissemination must be perceived as trustworthy (leaving aside the tendency of a consumer to seek confirmation of bias).
What leads to the judgement trustworthy?
Congruity with other sources and with experience.
Reputation.
Error correction.
Public statement of enforced policies aimed at reducing bias.
Looking from inside the Wikipedia process, I see projects to reduce bias involving nationalism, race, gender, sexuality... projects that are generally supported and that help establish norms for content and for editor interactions. Wikipedia:RS states enforced norms for sources. But I don't see the same recognition of the danger paid editing poses to Wikipedia (loss of reputation), Wikipedia volunteer editors (loss of time and enthusiasm), and users (presention of advertising integrated into articles—loss of information resource utility).
When I have worked in a news organization, the rules of conflict of interest have been quite clear, and enforced. This particular principle is quite ingrained in the news organizations we'd consider WP:RS—organizations we judge mainly by reputation as evidenced in other WP:RS.
Very few, if any, content generators and disseminators we consider WP:RS allow a contributor to accept outside compensation for any work for publication by the WP:RS. Why should Wikipedia? — User:Neonorange (Phil) 00:02, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
