User talk:Николай Эйхвальд

Common sense suggests that if someone plans an online mischief, they will not use the name under which they are well-known elsewhere (Николай Эйхвальд is very well-known in Russian Misplaced Pages and has practically no reputation here, so using his unified account for the contribution in question did not bring any benefits and IMO clearly demonstrates good intent). So I would tend to simply WP:AGF here.

If anyone else would bother to read this discussion:

the (very impolite, IMHO) question stems from an off-wiki attack piece (in Russian) by Gruznov, a well-known paid editor. There is no information there on the alleged payments and even no direct assertion, just insinuations (Google does an OK job translating Russian in an off-wiki piece);
Николай Эйхвальд wrote way over 5000 articles in Russian Misplaced Pages, with multiple articles of the year, 64 featured and countless good ones (see his Russian user page for details). He certainly deserves at least some common courtesy. I am not surprised that he ignores the question.

Викидим (talk) 03:07, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

A great positive contribution is not an indulgence.Thank you for attaching Gruznov's article. Nikolay was not in the habit of translating his articles into English, but here he suddenly did. The presence of an English-language article is often included in the "service package" of agencies parasitizing on Misplaced Pages. Based on good intentions, considering the ignoring of my request, I can only assume that, as in the case of Leonrid, this was not a matter of paid participation, but of a conflict of interest — writing an article at a friendly request. ·Carn·!? 11:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I have been recently asked - by the powers that be of Russian Misplaced Pages - in no uncertain terms - to refrain from trying to protect some of the most productive editors of Russian Misplaced Pages from IMHO senseless attacks by their opponents who write very few articles themselves. So I have decided to no longer do it and will not comment on the merits here. I still think that the style of your original question goes against the very core of WP:AGF and common courtesy that in any human endeavor is generally extended to fellow workers. The well-known events of the last week clearly confirmed the Stein's Law ("If something cannot go on forever, it will stop"), so the current obsession with the very process of fighting in Russian Misplaced Pages will most likely eventually subside, too. See you then. Викидим (talk) 17:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

No one is against productive authors, you just have to differentiate when you are a journalist and write in the style of a press release, and when you are a Misplaced Pages editor. You can even do this from one account, you just have to declare what edits were made in what capacity. ·Carn·!? 15:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I'll try to explain my position once again, one last time:

When an editor E (WP:Exopedian) had created 5000 articles (including tens of featured ones), their contribution almost certainly contains few articles that might look like WP:COI, simply due to the effect of long tail. To an editor M (WP:Metapedian) who wrote, say, 5 articles, the existence of these outliers would be a "proof" of COI, as their own long tail is simply non-existent due to the very paucity of their encyclopedic effort, and the resulting lack of ability to understand why would E choose such a topic. Note that the absence of COI is impossible to prove: who on Earth would give E a certificate of being a non-paid contributor? Therefore, the overall volume of contributions is very important: if 2 out 5 articles M contributed to Misplaced Pages had seen some PR activity (by other editors), the COI suspicion can be reasonably discussed. If, however, contributions in 5 out of 5000 new articles (and 100K+ edits) intersect with the proven PR activity of other editors, this most likely is just an effect of statistics. So, accusing E of COI requires much stronger proof than a few edits that can possibly be interpreted as controversial.
The #1 is the basis of my position: no, M cannot start attacking E based on just few edits where they don't understand E's motives; a very solid proof of COI is required in case of an editor with extraordinary large contribution. IMHO, instead of throwing mud at E, M should simply WP:AGF and concentrate on writing their own articles. By the time they cross the 5000 threshold, they might finally understand how some of their own innocent edits can be potentially misinterpreted as paid editing, and (hopefully) smarten up.

For the avoidance of doubt, I personally have never earned (or tried to earn) a red cent through my Misplaced Pages activities, although even at my modest level of 1000 articles in Russian Misplaced Pages I would expect that a (very) few edits might look unexpected (pun intended) to some M. <tongue in cheek>I would love to attribute this situation to my stellar character, although</tongue in cheek> I do not mind fellow Ms to cynically attribute this to either "he simply cannot sell himself", or "they simply cannot afford him" causes. To me, the situation here reeks of WP:WIKIHOUNDING in pursuit of Николай Эйхвальд. Викидим (talk) 07:09, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Since I want to protect Nikolai from negative consequences, I want him to be responsible when declaring his paid contribution to Misplaced Pages. You are right that this, if any, is a small part of his contribution and should not affect his reputation in the community as a respected author. In en.wp Nikolai Eichwald created only redirect Secure Tolerance, which goes to article Viatcheslav Kantor. In ru.wp there is not only consensus that his edits about Kantor worsened the article, there is new cases of supposedly paid edits are being discussed. I hope that there will be no negative consequences for Nikolai because of this. But this is not quite the right place to discuss activities in Russian Misplaced Pages. What have he done in en.wp? Not much. He removed the mention of Putin from the preamble. Further in the text, he greatly weakened the claims about their connection. Information about such an acquaintance is toxic in the Western world, it is an element of "reputation whitewashing". This was reverted by Thenightaway. ·Carn·!? 07:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

As I have stated above, I gave up on attempts to help hounded editors in Russian Misplaced Pages. I also gave up on editing there until the members of a very small, but highly cohesive, collective come to their individual senses and switch to writing articles (or scripts or whatever content they can write). I fully understand that a chance of seeing such conversion in my lifetime is slim: these users are most likely two-three times younger than me, never saw the Soviet system in action and thus cannot understand my aversion to their ways of building the consensus.

God had given Russian Misplaced Pages a gift, a very productive editor E that is also very soft-spoken. Over the years he accumulated over 150K edits and 5 thousand new articles with tens of featured ones. Going through these contributions with a fine comb, it should be easy to find one where he removed Putin's name (and probably one where he - oh horror! - added it). If someone (say, M) cares about actually writing an encyclopedia, they would think that E who is hard-working, mostly avoids conflicts and generally abstains from political topics is immensely useful to the project, and thus better be left unmolested. So this caring M will revert the few changes they dislike and engage with this very reasonable E on the talk pages, as we are all encouraged by Jimmy to do. But no, instead of this trivial and sane actions I see repeated accusations of paid editing. Each time E patiently states that he does not accept monies for editing, not a shred of evidence is offered by accusers, except for total of 10 (?) edits (out of 150K) that 5-6 people who achieved the "consensus" that you have mentioned in your reply simply do not like.

If this posse succeeds in pushing yet another top contributor out of Russian Misplaced Pages (many reasonable people would have snapped - and quite a few did - much earlier), to replace E many new editors (hundreds?) will have to be recruited: the initiator of the last attack ru:ВП:ФА#Николай Эйхвальд, предположительно скрываемый платный вклад в Газпром нефть has all of five (!) articles under his belt.

This is my last communication with you on this subject. Викидим (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2024 (UTC)