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31 May 2019

From the editors — Picture that
News and notes
Wikimania and trustee elections
In the media
Politics, lawsuits and baseball
Discussion report
Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia
Arbitration report
ArbCom forges ahead
Traffic report
Dark marvels, thrones, a vile serial killer biopic, that's entertainment!
Technology report
Lots of Bots
News from the WMF
Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey
Recent research
Wikipedia more useful than academic journals, but is it stealing the news?
Essay
Paid editing
From the archives
FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
 


2019-05-31

Picture that

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By Smallbones

An anniversary hit us right between the eyes just before deadline: June 16 marks the fifth anniversary of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changing its terms of use to ban undeclared paid editing.

This Tuesday, Ad Age revealed that employees of Leo Burnett Tailor Made replaced photos in Wikipedia articles on a dozen national parks and similar sites, with photos of the same sites featuring models wearing clothing from The North Face, complete with the company's logo. The employees who replaced the photos did not declare their paid status on Wikipedia. They violated Wikipedia policies that prohibit advertising, marketing, promotion, and public relations content, as well as the WMF's terms of use. I am not a lawyer, but it looks like they also violated the Federal Trade Commission's rules against deceptive advertising.

The undeclared paid editors then bragged about it in a video now posted on Ad Age. Other news coverage that includes the video are "North Face tried to scam Wikipedia to get its products to the top of Google search" in The Verge and "Wikipedia is mad at The North Face for 'unethically' manipulating pages" in Dazed. The WMF reacted quickly and appropriately with "Let's talk about The North Face defacing Wikipedia".

The North Face's paid editors were honest to the extent that their intentions as stated in the video were perfectly clear. They wanted to use Wikipedia – while avoiding the scrutiny of Wikipedia's editors and administrators – to reach the top of Google searches for images of those outdoor sites for marketing purposes.

They were not honest when they said that they were "collaborating with Wikipedia".

Ad Age, in a new story, reports that The North Face has apologized via twitter:

"We believe deeply in Wikipedia's mission and integrity – and apologise for engaging in activity inconsistent with those principles. Effective immediately, we have ended the campaign and moving forward, we'll strive to do better and commit to ensuring that our teams and vendors are better trained on Wikipedia's site policies."

We hope to hear more from The North Face.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the terms of use change that banned undeclared paid editing, the next issue of The Signpost will focus on how paid editing affects our encyclopedia. We want to hear from editors, administrators, arbitrators, bureaucrats, WMF employees and board members. We want to hear from all sides of the issue, including those who oppose paid editing, those who support it, and paid editors – both declared and undeclared. And most of all we want to hear from ordinary Wikipedia editors.

We also invite The North Face to publish an apology here, addressed directly to Wikipedia editors and readers.

We want to know how to fix a system of dealing with paid editors that has not been working very well. We want to know:

  • How paid editing affects your work on Wikipedia.
  • Has the ban on undeclared paid editing affected your ability to add encyclopedic information?
  • Have you interacted with paid editors? How effective has it been?
  • What are your ideas on solving the problem?

Send article length submissions to Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions. If you want to simply write a paragraph, please add it to the comments below. If you want to submit material confidentially, please email me directly.


2019-05-31

Dark marvels, thrones, a vile serial killer biopic, that's entertainment!

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By Igordebraga, A lad insane and Stormy clouds
This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga (April 28 to May 4, May 12 to 18), A lad insane and Stormy clouds (May 5 to 11).

The Report is dark and full of Marvels (April 28 to May 4, 2019)

Top 25 most viewed articles of the week

Avengers: Endgame is understandably still dominating the public consciousness (and for those who haven't seen it, there are possibly some spoilers below, countering some fake ones from last Report), along with Game of Thrones, which is back for its last season. Who back in 1999 would've predicted a world so fixated on superhero movies and fantasy TV shows? There only a few subjects here not related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the HBO series: a deceased director and the dramatization of a crime story.

For the week of April 28 to May 4, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image About
1 Avengers: Endgame 7,096,505
Marvel Studios has built such a foothold with fans that they don't complain about enduring a 3 hour film. A time travel story that ends with an all-out epic battle for the fate of the universe, Endgame might not be perfect, but gives plenty of comedy, emotion and action along with a good closure on what was built in 11 years and 21 movies. And who knows what comes next? Seriously, aside from Spider-Man: Far From Home this July, two movies are set for 2020, but they don't even have Wikipedia pages yet. One might be the Black Widow solo film set to start shooting in June, though whoever saw Endgame will wonder what will appear in that.
2 List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films 2,405,799
3 List of highest-grossing films 2,322,787
After a single weekend, Endgame (#1) already entered the top 10 on this list with a whopping $1.3 billion! So movie fans will certainly start sort of a "can Endgame beat Avatar?" watch. It's a tall but feasible order, even once the movie slows down with May's other big releases.
4 Game of Thrones (season 8) 1,921,398
This writer was one of a huge crowd that tuned in to watch "The Long Night" on HBO and was frustrated at how it was a dark, foggy and mostly incomprehensible mess (a rerun with my mom, and the TV pre-emptively adjusted to 100% brightness, had no problems, so who knows what happened with the original broadcast?), though with a great last third that made going through the confusion worth it, leading to a climax that like our #1, had a victorious Stark.
5 Ted Bundy 1,784,380
Netflix already released a documentary featuring this serial killer being interviewed earlier in the year, so the streaming service now offering a movie where Bundy is played by Zac Efron should come as no surprise.
6 Game of Thrones 1,351,359
It's now halfway through the closing season of HBO's adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire (#4), following an episode that had millions attempting to see what had been lauded as the biggest battle ever filmed for television.
7 John Singleton 1,216,251
At just 23, John Singleton started his career at the top with Boyz in the Hood, a surprise hit that also made Singleton both the first African American nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, and also the youngest ever to run for this award. While his following path was a bit questionable, aside from highlights such as the Shaft remake, Singleton still had enough success to warrant a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and received many tributes after his death at the age of 51.
8 Robert Downey Jr. 1,213,867
Back in 2008, Downey guaranteed a career resurrection out of both portraying a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude (which got him an Oscar nomination), and starring in some independent startup's movie as a drunk businessman who survives a terrorist attack. Iron Man upstarted the ongoing superhero dominance (#2, #3), and Downey's Tony Stark is central to the plot of Endgame (#1), all about fixing the actions of...
9 Thanos 1,003,523
..the purple bastard that guaranteed people left Avengers: Infinity War feeling bummed. But his actor Josh Brolin might not be saying his goodbye to Marvel, on the condition that they let him play Cable again in spite of the X-Men movies folding onto the MCU (#10).
10 Marvel Cinematic Universe 886,314
Kevin Feige has been pretty busy since 2007. Thankfully, the end result (#2) is a license to print money (#3).

Expectations (Not Particularly) Subverted (May 5 to 11, 2019)

This week's report, as with the past few, is utterly dominated by the entertainment industry, which should hardly be surprising given the two gargantuan hits currently conquering the zeitgeist on screens big and small. Other entries include a vile serial killer and his biopic, an extremely exuberant and exclusive gala, and the latest member of House Windsor. Not an especially diverse iteration of the report, admittedly, but still an intriguing one.

For the week of May 5 to 11, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image About
1 Avengers: Endgame 4,400,303
Because Marvel fans just can't get enough of their favorite superheroes at the cinema, they have resorted to stalking Wikipedia, either to find out the current box office gross or, if they're like me, to read the plot so they don't have to actually watch it to understand the memes. They've also infiltrated several other articles featured on this list, seemingly competing with Game of Thrones for most related articles. None of them can compete with the British royal family though, setting the record at fifteen last year. (Though Marvel got close once.)
2 Ted Bundy 4,321,338
One of the most infamous and heinous criminals of 20th century America, Ted Bundy has long captivated and caught the public attention courtesy of his charming charismatic demeanour, and the sheer horror of his crimes. As testament to this, with another week in excess of 4 million views, he is a likely lock for the year-end report some four decades after his incarceration, and three after his execution. He is the subject of #18, which thankfully does not end with Samuel L. Jackson telling him about the Unabomber and a team he's assembling.
3 List of highest-grossing films 3,735,837
Expect this list to retain its prominent position on future iterations of the report, as Earth's Mightiest Heroes chase down the phenomenal record set by Dances with Pandorans. At time of writing, the Russo brothers need in the environs of another $300 million in ticket receipts to become the first directors to steal James Cameron's throne since James Cameron, and it is shaping up to be a very tight race indeed, as Captain America et al will have to compete with a dog-loving assassin, everyone's favourite poorly CGI rendered YouTuber, and a blue flame-breathing lizard (not that one) in weeks to come.
4 Chernobyl disaster 1,487,216 Wikipedia is not immune to the driving forces of Reddit, and this entry shows that with a passion. This post on r/todayilearned inspired thousands of readers to flock to this article, as it perhaps in turn may have been inspired by the anniversary of the disaster a couple weeks ago. It may also be due to the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which aired its first episode on May 6.
5 Game of Thrones (season 8) 1,448,829
The other fandom featuring heavily on this list hasn't made it as high in terms of rank, but with three entries overall and one in the top 5, they've certainly done a respectable job. In a year of finales, this one has fewer episodes than its predecessors, yet the incredible screen-writing and payoffs still evidently captivate a plethora of viewers, sending scores to its article.
6 List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films 1,330,540 See #1 and the rest of this tangled Marvel mess.
7 Met Gala 1,119,365
The annual fashion extravaganza took place in the Big Apple during the week, providing a reprieve for those not interested in superheroes or subversion of expectations. A glorious opportunity for grand larceny, the Gala is organized annually by Vogue, and this year the jewel of the New York social scene was themed around camp (#21). Notable guests at the event included Katy Perry, who dressed up as a chandelier (yeah, I don't get it either), and someone who used to be relevant on YouTube.
8 Game of Thrones 990,337
This will probably be on the list for a while.
9 Meghan, Duchess of Sussex 987,526
Last May, the wedding bells rang for Meghan and Prince Harry (#11), sending droves of royal-family watchers to their articles. This year, their marriage has borne fruit, with the announcement of a new royal youngling. Archie Mountbatten-Windsor (#25) is seventh in line to the throne- that may seem distant, but hey, it's closer to the throne than I'll ever be.
10 Cinco de Mayo 842,868
The Mexican victory against the French Empire at the 1862 Battle of Puebla was a great morale-booster for the soldiers and civilians, so although they ended up losing the war, the Mexicans made it a holiday. 120 years later, some American companies decided that a Mexican holiday would be great to drum up some beer sales, and so they did. Now the holiday is celebrated more in the United States than Mexico, with staples of the celebration including beer and guacamole. The beer didn't stop thousands of people from searching up on Wikipedia why exactly they were celebrating, though, bringing it in at the bottom of the top 10 on this list.

End Over End, I'm Reporting (May 12 to 18, 2019)

The most prevalent topics of the week are about ends: the conclusion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Infinity Saga (#1, #4), the last season of Game of Thrones (#3, #7), and people leaving the mortal realm (#2) - on that, there's also a killer (#5) and a tragedy (#6) that ended lives, and an actor (#10) whose views owe to him slaughtering people on screen. There's also a YouTuber seeing his reputation threatened to end (#9), and musicians for all over Europe ending up in the continental contest (#8).

Stop me so I can begin. For the week of May 12 to 18, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank Article Class Views Image About
1 Avengers: Endgame 2,684,351
Our readers don't seem to get tired of reading about the conclusion of Marvel's first batch of movies (with Spider-Man: Far From Home being an epilogue), as the ultimate confrontation with Thanos remains atop the report for the fourth week.
2 Doris Day 2,052,866
Doris Day was a successful singer when she also scored big in the movies - most notably romantic comedies with Rock Hudson, one of whom gave her an Oscar nod; though the Hitchcock classic The Man Who Knew Too Much deserves mention for contributing one of her best known songs, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)". After sitcom The Doris Day Show ended in 1973, she retired from the public eye, focusing more on animal welfare activism with the Doris Day Animal Foundation and the Doris Day Animal League. Day died of a pneumonia at the age of 97.
3 Game of Thrones (season 8) 1,975,784
(spoilers ahead!)
"Take a look to the sky, just before you die
It's the last time you will!"
After all, the penultimate episode had death coming from above once someone decided "I won't take no prisoners, won't spare no lives!" For Whom The Bells Toll? They tolled for everyone. Such circumstances displeased many critics and viewers, making expectations dip a lot for the series finale.
4 List of highest-grossing films 1,930,929
Our #1 is second on this, less than $200 million behind Avatar, showing that once viewers are enthralled by superhero movies for a decade (says something all four Avengers are in the top 10!), they'll come to theaters in enough quantity to beat the once unbelievable sum of $2.7 billion dollars. And who knows if the ever-delayed Avatar 2 (now sharing a parent company with The Avengers) makes even a fraction of that it comes out in 2021? A theme park might not be enough to compensate over a decade away!
5 Ted Bundy 1,706,092
The serial killer featured in two Netflix releases, a documentary and a movie, continues to bring readers to learn about his grotesque life exploits.
6 Chernobyl disaster 1,695,638 HBO is currently airing Chernobyl, a miniseries based on the worst nuclear meltdown ever.
7 Game of Thrones 1,222,041
Following the footsteps of Lost, a show that breaks formulas, gathers a massive following, and then by the final season has lots of people complaining.
8 Eurovision Song Contest 2019 951,999
Europe's yearly musical extravaganza, held in defending champion Israel and won by the Dutch submission "Arcade", whose performer Duncan Laurence is seen to the left.
9 James Charles (Internet personality)[1] 929,723
Well, here's some YouTube drama: Charles, who has a successful make-up channel, was accused by collaborator Tati Westbrook of being a manipulative jerk, lost millions of subscribers, and had his attempt at an apology video earning a spot in the ten most disliked videos ever (once music videos are excluded, it's fourth behind angry Call of Duty fans, PewDiePie asking his viewers to downvote profusely, and last year's underwhelming YT Rewind).
10 Keanu Reeves 905,571
Once he feared his grave would just read "He was Ted". Well, now Ted is only one of the three best-known characters Keanu has played, alongside Neo and John Wick, who just returned to theaters (#12) and beat our #1 to top the box office, making this hilarious Tweet true.
  1. ^ 535,309 from the old name, James Charles (model)

Exclusions

  • These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.


2019-05-31

Politics, lawsuits and baseball

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By Smallbones

You might think that there's nothing inherently political about writing an encyclopedia. You'd be wrong as several of this month's stories in the media show. There are regimes, political parties – or the people that these parties represent – businesses, and just ordinary people who would like to control the information that Wikipedians intend to be available to every single person on the planet. This month's stories range from the international and national to U.S. state and local politics.

Wikipedia v. China, Turkey, and the NSA

  • China blocks all language versions of Wikipedia:
    • The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) first reported that all language versions of Wikipedia were being blocked on May 4, 2019. The Chinese-language version has been blocked since 2015, but blocking all versions is a major escalation.
    • The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) confirmed the block to the BBC on May 14, saying that the block began in April. The WMF followed up three days later on its blog, stating that the blocking impacts "more than 1.3 billion readers, students, professionals, researchers, and more who can no longer access this resource or share their knowledge and achievements with the world. We have not received notice or any indication as to why this current block is occurring and why now."
    • Steven Harrison in Slate tells us "Why China Blocked Wikipedia in All Languages Hint: There’s a big anniversary coming up." The 30th anniversary of the violent end of the Tiananmen Square protests will be marked on June 4. Harrison notes a long history of censoring encyclopedias, starting with religious opposition to Denis Diderot's 18th-century Encyclopédie and the French government's 1752 order to stop its distribution. Previous censorship of Wikipedia by China, Turkey, Iran and Venezuela was also noted. One reason for China blocking all language versions, according to Harrison, is that online translation tools have improved, making it easier for Chinese-speakers to comprehend other language versions.
  • WMF takes Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights:
    • The Wikimedia Foundation announced it is petitioning the ECHR to stop Turkey from blocking Wikipedia. (See our republication of the Wikimedia blog here). Turkey began blocking the Turkish-language version of Wikipedia in April 2017. The WMF has previously challenged the block through discussion with the Turkish authorities, legal action in Turkish courts, and a publicity campaign aimed at the general public. Both the Financial Times and the BBC have reported the story, following the facts in the WMF blog and expressing doubt that Turkey would comply with any ruling against it.
  • Wikipedia and the NSA case

State and local politics

Looks like a duck
  • City & State New York reports that the Wikipedia article on New York State Assemblyman Michael Blake was edited by a paid staffer during Blake's campaign for the office of New York City Public Advocate. The staffer, identified by City & State as the campaign's co-director of communications (hint: he looks like a duck) received $3,000 for his campaign work as a "content creator". The campaign reportedly confirmed the identification and responded in part "the campaign member who made the edits complied with their understanding of the Wikipedia editing rules and provided the expected level of transparency in updating the Assemblyman’s page." Apparently Wikipedians need to inform political campaigns that paid promotional editing is against our rules. Assemblyman Blake did not win the Public Advocate office but is now running for a seat in the U.S. Congress.
  • Lancaster Online reports that the Wikipedia article on Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro was edited by one of his staff who is paid $65,526 annually by taxpayers. Paid staff for Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman were also reported to have edited articles on their bosses.
  • Shapiro
    Shapiro
  • DePasquale
    DePasquale
  • Costa
    Costa
  • Corman
    Corman

Do you have ideas on how Wikipedians can deal with the political pressures shown above? We'd love to see those ideas in the comments section below.

In brief

  • Wikipedia has a Google Translate problem in The Verge describes the difficulties of using Wikipedia's translation software. One of the interesting aspects of this article is that it is written by a Wikipedia administrator. It's good that the media now has another reporter who really knows how Wikipedia works.
Do we still need a Collections Online?
(from Wikimedia Commons)

Gobbler of the month

Gobbler of the month
awarded to
Detroit Tigers
May 2019

In a May 3 tweet starting "Someone update his Wikipedia page" the Detroit Tigers said that their relief pitcher Shane Greene "owned the 9th (inning)" – a nonsense claim that only a PR hack could think was funny. Six minutes later the vandalism appeared on the page, as duly reported by another Tigers' tweet and by Detroit Sports Nation. The vandalism was soon removed. Perhaps the sports blog can be excused for reporting irrelevant vandalism as if it were news. Otherwise, they might need to work hard enough to report a real story. The Detroit Tigers, however, cannot be so easily excused. As a legitimate business that represents the city of Detroit to baseball fans throughout the world, they should not be trying to get cheap publicity by encouraging vandalism on Wikipedia.

There are legitimate ways that sports teams can increase their visibility on Wikipedia. For example, where they own the copyrights, they could donate photos of current players or of historical plays and players to improve the quality of our coverage of their teams. Or they might even post on their own website biographies of new players. If they really wanted to make it easy for Wikipedia editors to cover the team. They could even state on each of those pages "Material on this page is licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0". The quality of sports team coverage on Wikipedia can be increased by making it easy for our editors to cover the team. But the quality will never be increased by encouraging vandalism.

The Tigers have not responded to an e-mail requesting clarification or comment.



Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next week's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page.


2019-05-31

Lots of Bots

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By DannyS712
A Wikipedia bot

Bot tasks

Admin bots
  • AnomieBOT III was approved to unblock 19966 indefinitely blocked IP addresses.
Recently approved tasks
Current requests for approval
Open
In trial
Trial complete

Latest tech news

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2019 #19, #21, & #22. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

  • The report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.
  • Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [1]
  • The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [2]
  • Advanced item The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [3]
  • File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [4][5]
  • Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [6][7]
  • Advanced item Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [8][9]
Meetings
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting takes place every Wednesday from 4:00–5:00 p.m. UTC. See how to join here.


2019-05-31

Paid editing

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By Staff
Paid editing is a topic that comes to the forefront every six months or so, after the latest horrendous disclosures. This essay is part of our continuing series of influential essays on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Paid editing (essay) was begun in January 2011 and 38 editors have contributed to it. - S

In paid editing, an editor is given consideration (usually money) in exchange for creating or editing a Wikipedia article for an individual or entity. This is the meaning of "paid editing" that is used through the rest of the piece. The goal of this essay is to provide advice on what to do when it comes to Paid Editing & Wikipedia.

Policies and guidelines

Per the WP:PAID policy, if you are being paid for your contributions to Wikipedia, you must declare who is paying you, who the client is, and any other relevant role or relationship. This is required by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use and by Wikipedia policy. You can do this on your user page, on the article talk page using the {{connected contributor (paid)}} template, and during any discussion about the topic elsewhere. You can also make a statement in the edit summary of any paid contribution.

Per the WP:COI guideline, you are very strongly discouraged from editing mainspace; instead you should post content proposals on the Talk pages of existing articles (with disclosure), and you should put new articles through WP:AFC (with disclosure) -- in each case, so that the content can be reviewed with your specific COI in mind, prior to the content being published.

Per the COI guideline, paid editors must respect the volunteer nature of the project and keep discussions concise.

And you are still obligated to follow all the content and behavior policies. Just disclosing and not editing directly, is not enough. You cannot be present at an article only to advocate for your client - you remain obligated to follow WP:PROMO, WP:NPOV, and the rest of the policies and guidelines.

Why is this done?

Love of money has been said to be "the root of all evil"

Corporations and certain individuals have special interest in Wikipedia for its marketability and popularity. SEOs, PR, & marketers love Wikipedia because on major search engines, it is usually (if not always) on the first page of a search, and they want to exploit that. They think that they can advertise on Wikipedia and believe that Wikipedia is no different than Facebook or Twitter. Of course, this is what Wikipedia is not, but more often than not they don't understand that there are rules and policies that Wikipedia has. They just fly by the notion that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Editors are usually employed either because the client or entity does not know how to edit Wikipedia, or need experienced editors to push their POV without scrutiny. Although, on the other hand, paid editing has been said to encourage people to edit pages that otherwise would be ignored.

Why you shouldn't do it

Paid editing is generally frowned upon in the community. There are also some editors who very strongly disapprove of paid editing, and others who do not care about it and focus only content.

But please be aware that the general sentiment is uncomfortable with paid editing, at best. It is tolerated. Rightly or wrongly, paid editors are often viewed with suspicion or even hostility by many members of the Wikipedia community. An established editor who makes the decision to edit articles for pay can expect to face a negative reaction once that is disclosed by the editor or by others.

Community trust

While there is no community policy on retaining advanced user rights while editing for pay, retaining some of those rights after you start editing for pay, or trying to obtain them if you already edit for pay, may be controversial, especially if those permissions involve new content such as the autopatrolled and new page reviewer user groups[1] or the ability to delete pages, as administrators can do.

Examples of people in positions of trust who received money for editing Wikipedia, which in turn generated controversy within Wikipedia and in the media, have included the Gibraltarpedia incident involving a trustee of WMF UK who used Wikipedia itself and WP:GLAM for public relations, and the Wifione matter, which involved an administrator. The community has debated whether administrators should be formally barred from editing for pay at least twice (once in 2015 and again in 2017), and has failed to reach consensus on this.

Real life consequences

Please keep in mind that WP:Wikipedia is in the real world. To the extent you have disclosed your real world identity, the controversies around paid editing in Wikipedia may attach to you. (Your identity remains strictly protected by WP:OUTING, just as everyone's is). Likewise, the reputation of your client may be affected. If you are not aware of it, please do see the article Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia, which describes coverage in the media of people and companies who tried to use Wikipedia to manage their reputations.

Please also be aware that paid editors sometimes don't get paid. This is a risk all freelancers run, of course.

Disruptive behavior

While editors who take pay (and other conflicted editors) can provide useful content, their behavior tends to become disruptive, since they are driven by their external interests to get the content they want into WP, and opposition to that effort feels worse than it would usually. You might find yourself acting badly in ways that would surprise even you, if you were not the person actually in the conflicted situation. Conflict of interest does this to people, without them being aware of it. So it is not just content that tends to gets skewed, but behavior as well. If you decide to edit for pay, please try to be extra self-aware and to be mindful of how you are dealing with other people.

If you do it, here is some advice

  1. Find out who specifically you are working for. Ask for the name of the individual, the name of the company he/she works for (if applicable), and what articles he/she wants you to edit/create. Ask if this individual is a registered user on Wikipedia, if so, make note (for compliance with wp:OUT and wp:COI purposes).
  2. Do not sign a non-disclosure agreement or work through a website that requires non-disclosure. Disclosure of your employer, client and affiliations is mandatory and you are prohibited from editing if you can't disclose these.
  3. Announce your intentions. See the recommendations in the Conflict of Interest guideline.


Things to note

Transparency

We here at Wikipedia like transparency, honesty, and a neutral point of view. Here are some red flags to watch out for. If your contact --

-- do not accept the job. Instead, be a good editor and report at WP:ANI, and at the respective talk pages of article(s) in question, that someone is attempting to hire you for nontransparent editing. By doing this, you deter the shady individual or entity and help promote an unbiased and credible encyclopedia.

Employees and contractors

See Vonage (talk) for an example of stealth COI edits, detected by a Reddit user.[2]

Public relations people are paid editors

Paid is paid. There have been efforts to establish a public-relations code of conduct for editing at Wikipedia.[Link?] While some PR staff or agencies may act in good faith, by disclosing their COI at their User or User talk pages, and discussing changes at specific articles, others have steadfastly failed to do so.

Lawyers are paid editors

Paid is paid. It is unknown if lawyers or law practices have even been approached about, or have discussed, a code of conduct for editing Wikipedia (efforts to reach out to attorneys have failed).

See SPI RRIESQ and Talk:Laura Kightlinger

See also

References

  1. ^ Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers, Conflict of Interest-of a different kind
  2. ^ "Did Vonage try to sterilize its Wikipedia article?". r/Wikipedia. Reddit. Retrieved July 9, 2015.


Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-05-31/Opinion


2019-05-31

Wikimania and trustee elections

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By Smallbones

Wikimania in Stockholm

The Aula Magna building

Wikimania 2019 will be held in Stockholm from August 16 to 18 with a preconference on August 14 and 15. The venue is the Aula Magna building at Stockholm University. The theme of the conference is "Stronger together: Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals", based around the sustainability goals defined by the United Nations in 2015.

The program format has been redesigned this year: topics and leaders have been selected for more than a dozen tracks, or "spaces". Individual presentation proposals are selected by the leaders of the spaces. Submissions are due June 9.

The registration process involves both Eventbrite and PayPal. The "early bird" prices for the main three-day conference will be US$175, and are available only until May 31. A limited number of hotel rooms are available at 1195 Swedish krona (about US$125) per night.

Board of Trustees election

Two affiliate-selected trustees will be elected on May 31 to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. This is the first trustee election that gives user groups a vote, rather than just chapters and the single thematic organization. About 107 user groups, 41 chapters and Amical Wikimedia – the thematic organization – have a single vote each. The votes will be tallied using single transferable vote (STV) method using a Droop quota.

Eleven candidates appear on the ballot: Yuri Astrakhan, Shani Evenstein, Christophe Henner, Reda Kerbouche, Richard Knipel, Taweetham Limpanuparb, Maor Malul, Douglas Scott, Gerald Shields, Nataliia Tymkiv, and Kayode Yussuf.

Results will be announced before Wikimania, and must be approved by the Board of Trustees.

Administrator updates

Additional contributor: DannyS712

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-05-31/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-05-31/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-05-31/In focus


2019-05-31

ArbCom forges ahead

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By DannyS712

Cases

ARCA

As of publication, the Committee has four open requests for clarification or amendment: a request for clarification regarding Palestine–Israel articles, a request for clarification regarding BLP issues on British politics articles, an amendment request relating to DS alerts, and an amendment request regarding Arbitration Enforcement decisions.

Team shake-up

This month, BU Rob13 decided to step down from the Arbitration Committee, as well as "semi-retire" from Wikipedia as a whole. On a brighter note, Bradv was appointed as a full clerk of the Committee. The bot that they have created, ArbClerkBot, was also approved by the Bot Approvals Group.

In the aftermath of the Committee's amendment to its standard provision for appeals and modifications, Ivanvector decided to resign as a checkuser.

Both BU Rob13 and Ivanvector have written essays related to their decisions:

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-05-31/Humour

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