Misplaced Pages

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Thoughts on paid advocacy

Hi Jimbo, and whoever else may be interested,

First, I wanted to thank you, Jimbo, for your concerns with paid advocacy. I think you've taken a very helpful stance. I just wanted to follow with some thoughts; I'm sure others have written all this before, but anyway:

In academic publishing, if the author of a paper has received or will receive tangible benefits from someone who has a financial interest in the subject of the paper, this conflict of interest is supposed to be noted clearly within the paper. Not to do so is academic fraud. For encyclopedias this is not even an issue: Authors of entries are always supposed to be independent of conflict of interest for the subject of their entries. This is because encyclopedias are not supposed to be position or argumentative papers, but general, neutral accounts. Conflicts of interest have always been recognized in the academic world as undermining this neutrality to such an extent that it is rigorously avoided. For example, if it was discovered that Robert Duce accepted money from the aerosol industry in order to write the entry "Aerosols" in the Springer Encyclopedia of World Climatology, he would be rightly scandalized, and his department at Texas A&M would try to remove him as best as they could. We should keep this encyclopedia at the same high standard.

Paid advocacy editors have responded that Misplaced Pages already has policies to keep things neutral and that their edits— or those of the responsible ones among them at least —are kept within these policies. This response is a non-starter. Every academic encyclopedia has neutrality as an editorial standard, but their editors still do not accept authors with a conflict of interest. We should not fail to learn from the best practices of the academic world.

Paid advocacy editors cannot produce even a single example where an effective paid editor has produced an overall negative impression for the firm or a client of the firm which pays this editor. Of course this is the case: If such a paid editor is going to produce a negative impression of the benefactor, then the benefactor has no interest in paying out money for such a service. Overall unbiased editing from such paid editors is a contradiction. A necessary condition for the continued practice of paying editors to produce content about oneself or one's clients is that there be a systemic bias in the production of content. Neutral editors have no effective mechanism for dealing with this biased production apart from banning it: Neutral editors are volunteers who can only act in their free time, the paid editors have as much time as their pay can afford them.

Claims that the community here is divided on whether to maintain the high standards of academic publishing are suspicious. The community is that body of neutral editors who are here to write an encyclopedia collaboratively. The editors who are paid to produce content concerning a benefactor, insofar as they take that role, are not part of this community. As such they are not here to work collaboratively, but are rather here to benefit themselves. What percentage of those who want to allow, and indeed expand the number of, encyclopedia articles written with a conflict of interest are actually part of the community, and what percentage are themselves paid editors? That is hard to answer. Instead of counting votes on what practices to take up, we should look to the academic world, which has soundly rejected conflict-of-interest writing. Thanks for reading. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:59, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. This is all completely wonderful. The analogy is a very useful and helpful one.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:26, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

No academic journal allows anonymous editors to vandalize articles after publication. We are not the same. Jehochman 19:27, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

It's an analogy, a very valid one. I'm sure you aren't suggesting that the solution to vandalism is to allow undisclosed paid advocacy editing by pr flacks. That doesn't even begin to make sense.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I did not assert that undisclosed paid advocacy editing should be allowed. It is manifest bad faith by you to falsely attribute things to me. Please let me speak for myself. Jehochman 19:38, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't falsely attribute anything to you.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

If Misplaced Pages has a page about me, but I am only semi-notable, and very few people watch my page, vandalism to my page might go unnoticed for a long time. If I see that somebody has inserted malicious content into my page, I can fix it in 10 seconds myself. Are you suggesting I should go through a time consuming bureaucracy instead? No, Jimmy, your assertion that Misplaced Pages is a site where anybody can post slander and the subject (and only the subject) cannot respond, is what makes no sense. Jehochman 19:36, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Your analogy is completely broken. Misplaced Pages is not an encyclopedia with a paid editorial staff that ensures accuracy and article quality. Britanica does not put out half baked articles about people, businesses and organizations the way we do. If a person, business or organization is harmed by one of our half baked articles, they have every right to self-help, as long as they are transparent, respectful, and helpful. We need to define what steps they can take to help themselves. Jehochman 19:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point of the analogy if you think he is arguing that we should not allow people the "right to self-help". Or that you think he is not saying that we should define what steps they can take to help themselves. The point is that we can and should define those steps in such a way that people aren't forced into very risky (for their reputations and ours) paid advocacy editing. As it turns out, this is quite easy - the cries that we have to allow this kind of nonsense because there is nothing else to be done about it flies in the face of the reality of how we work every day.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Three is nothing risky about reverting vandalism to one's own page. So, some editing is allowed. You are mixing up paid advocacy with paid editing. The two are not equivalent. Jehochman 19:40, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not mixing up paid advocacy with paid editing. Indeed, for a while I have been leading the charge for people to stop talking about paid editing or using the term because it really really confuses the issue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:52, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Above you agreed that for an employee to change a description of the company from 80,000 employees to 87,000 employees should be prohibited. This might be considered paid editing, but to call it paid advocacy is to stretch the concept beyond all useful meaning. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:49, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Not sure anybody will see this any more, but I think that you all miss an important point when comparing WP with academic journals or academic encyclopedias: those can prohibit paid advocacy editing very effectively. No anonymous users can edit their content (for better or for worse). We cannot effectively police this, if paid advocacy editors go underground. --Randykitty (talk) 09:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The policy would largely be preventative in nature, not about policing. Several editors have pointed to extant laws and regulations governing advertising on the Internet and disclosure, which would pertain to Misplaced Pages, and WMF has issued a statement declaring that paid advocacy editing is already prohibited by the Terms of Use.

Promulgating a clearer policy statement at the community level would add force to the above and provide increased visibility as well as system-wide coherence to the deterrence measures.--Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 11:00, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Okay, I think we have each clarified our positions and understood each other. Why don't we have a "no paid editing of articles" policy? What about all the edge cases, such as scholarships? The lack of a page I can point to makes it very hard to educate interested parties about the proper way to do things. I can live with any policy, but what is difficult is trying to abide by an amorphous standard. Jehochman 20:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I feel like, and just said this in email, you're a bit behind on the discussions. Scholarships are not edge cases but perfectly acceptable. "Paid editing" is not the appropriate term to use because it mixes up too many different things. The preferred term is "paid advocacy editing"

- "paid" to clarify that we are narrowing the discussion to a particular type of conflict of interest (there can be others, but that's not what we are talking about.

-"advocacy" to clarify that we aren't talking about people who are being paid to improve articles in their field of expertise, etc.

-"editing" to clarify that we aren't talking about engaging with us on talk pages, by OTRS, etc. but editing the articles directly

By narrowing the conversation to this, we can make clear that we aren't at this time concerned with questions about scholarships, or questions about POV pushing partisans of other kinds, etc. We are talking about one particular problem only, a real one, and one which we have the opportunity to do something useful about.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:17, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

"Paid advocacy editing" is your preferred term, Jimmy, and while I think your preference for it is absolutely sensible, the complicated nuances that you're trying to capture by using it are exactly the problem. No offense, but it's hard not to get the impression that you're not entirely sure what you're campaigning against. --SB_Johnny | ✌ 23:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

No, I am being very clear and precise about what I'm campaigning against. Precise language and clear definitions solve problems of ambiguity. I am asking people to stop using vague terms like "paid editing" that clump different kinds of things together and focus on a single, specific, and very precise problem: paid advocacy editing, as I have explained it up above. Does that clear things up for you?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:33, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't actually need anything cleared up for my own part. I just don't think your ever-more-specific neologisms are getting your message across very effectively. Someone smarter than me might come up with a good sound-bitish word that says "don't edit wikipedia to polish your image ("you" referring to either an actual person or the "corporate person" we talk about these days). --SB_Johnny | ✌ 23:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Atethnekos makes a comparison to academic journals and traditional encyclopedias, which usually have clearly identified editors (granted, some encyclopedias withheld author names from the public). Authors of Misplaced Pages are mostly anonymous, editing under pen names or as IPs. There are good reasons for Misplaced Pages editors to seek anonymity, such as to avoid harassment from those who disagree with their edits or their actions. The only way to sanction or limit the work of a paid editor is if the editor deliberately or inadvertently discloses his real identity, or if someone violates WP:OUTING via off-wiki sleuthing, based on facts the editor let slip. A ban on paid editing may inspire a warm fuzzy feeling in the belief that it preserves the purity of the encyclopedia, but it seems inconsistent with allowing anonymous editing. It will hamper only the very honest or the very naive conflict-of-interest editor or paid editor. The only benefit I see of a "No paid editing" policy is that it would prevent anyone from advertising as a writer-for- hire his Misplaced Pages credentials, such as having a large number of featured articles and good articles, and thousands of edits, and positions of responsibility such as being an administrator. Edison (talk) 20:43, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The main problem with the comparison to academic publishing is that in academic publishing there are checks and balances that keep the journal from just throwing in a couple of random falsehoods or misleading statements about someone. Mostly, the fact that the journal knows that it or the writers it publishes will be held responsible for them. In Misplaced Pages anyone can toss in a random fake fact on a page and have it sit there for months when the subject is of marginal interest and the page is not watched very heavily. Journals won't do that, even online ones, so there's no need for subjects to edit in order to fix it. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:58, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

If we cannot prevent such conflict of interest editors from creating content on Misplaced Pages pages (as is done in other encyclopedias), then at least we can clearly disclose the conflict of interest in the article (as is done in other academic publications): Here's a template which can be placed on the top of such articles:

Template:Coi hatnote

Really, the inclusion of such a notice is the minimum we should do if the article is being created with a conflict of interest. Merely placing a disclosure on a user page which the average reader of an article will never see, is pointless. I do hope however that people will agree that including such a notice is worse than just not allowing such editing in the first place. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of templates - mostly they just sit there for years and uglify the page. I also don't think it would work as far as making the ads on article pages legal - e.g. in the "clear and conspicuous" part of the Dot Com Disclosure rules of the FTC, they go on about how scrolling the page to get to a disclosure is bad (if not outright banned),that the disclosure has to be in close proximity to the claim (edit) and that the disclosure has to be clear and conspicuous on all platforms used, e.g. on mobile phones. Pretty hard to do on Misplaced Pages.

Somebody is bound to say here that Misplaced Pages doesn't allow ads, so this situation couldn't possibly come up. To the contrary - the FTC is very broad in its definition of ads, and there are thousands of Misplaced Pages articles that have ads in them by the FTC definition.

It's also very unclear how a disclosure would work on a Misplaced Pages page. For example, say an endorser wrote "XXX corp's products all meet industry safety standards," (clearly an ad by FTC standards if the editor is paid) then a non-paid editor adds "applicable" after "meet," and then another editor writes "according to a November 2009 study." Is the disclosure still going to be accurate? How about after 3 years of additional edits - both pro and con?

BTW, there is situation here that you might not expect. According to the way most editors here understand WP:NPOV, this sentence would be NPOV if there is a citation, say to a NY Times article, that discusses the study. Not so with the FTC, if the study was paid for by XXX corp, that must be disclosed "clearly and conspicuously" and in close proximity to the claim.

FWIW, my reading of how the minimum disclosure according to FTC rules would read on Misplaced Pages would be something like this, (Advert), where the link goes to a page that lists the advertiser and the editor and explains that he's been paid. I don't think any true Wikipedian wants something like that in an article. Phil Gomes above, thinks that if the disclosure "craps up" the user experience, then the paid advocate can rely on edit summaries, talk page disclosures, etc. to be the proper disclosure. That clearly is not the case, the FTC says if proper disclosures can't be made, that the ad can't be included. In short, we'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to make Misplaced Pages safe for advertisers. I certainly don't want to do that. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:54, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I would agree with all of this. The legal issues are beyond me. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 17:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

(ec reply to Atethnekos) The idea of paid editors staying to the talk page is that a neutral editor will then come along and review the work, making any necessary corrections ("Sure, updating the number of employees is fine; no, we can't say that Example Corp. is a great place to work and makes the best widgets in the world. We can give a more neutral presentation of those two awards you put in sources for though..."). At that point, it's that reviewing editor who's ultimately responsible for what goes in the article, and we don't need a warning template on the article. The trouble comes when Example Corp. edits the article directly, and decides the mention of those two highly-publicized product liability lawsuits isn't really necessary, is it? That's where COI editing causes trouble. Seraphimblade 23:02, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I would only suggest using the notice when such a editor actually writes part of the article. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 17:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

You're re-inventing the wheel a little, as there is already Template:COI.

One of the interesting thing about that template is that it regularly has paid advocates running to multiple Misplaced Pages helpdesks to ask how to get it removed from "their" article. There's nothing that gets paid advocates' attention so quickly as something that might be perceived as bad publicity for their client/themselves (e.g. a huge orange COI template at the top of the article).

Having said that, once the COI issues are resolved - which means an independent editor not just checking the language and structure and emphasis for neutrality, but also checking the sources provided do support the statements made, and also doing a bit of internet searching to look for encyclopedicly acceptable negative points of view that may have been omitted - then the COI template should be removed.

That's why I suggested earlier that there should be a template making clearer, that a COI-infested article needs such an independent review, and suggesting places to look for it. Like I said, paid advocates move to talk pages very quickly when upset in this way. And once they do so, they can also be told, "and now that it's fixed, you should stay off the article itself."

Just to add, mainly for User:Atethnekos, the essay Misplaced Pages:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing is one that I've always found a particularly powerful and relevant exposition of why people/organisations should think twice before COI editing. Although its title suggests that it's mainly about articles about people, there's also a fair bit of focus an entire section later in it that's on companies. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:53, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree complete with Atethnekos, and especially applaud his points concerning the need for disclosure within the body of an article that has been impacted by paid editing. While it's nice to read the rare sensible talk page post on this topic, I nevertheless am convinced that efforts to influence the community to see the light on this subject are fruitless, and that nothing will be done unless there is action by the WMF, making paid editing as verboten as NPOV is required in all projects. Coretheapple (talk) 16:28, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has legal counsel. I suggest that if there's a genuine question about whether FCC requirements for disclosure are incompatible with Misplaced Pages editing, Misplaced Pages needs to get a legal opinion from them. Otherwise we shouldn't be making policy decisions based on such legal claims. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know anything about FTC (I think you mean that) disclosure rules. The purpose should be not only to make disclosure legal but to far exceed any such rules, to inform readers when articles in Misplaced Pages are influenced in a material way by corporate subjects. This would include creation of articles based upon text provided by the company, and the companies providing text that is adopted in the articles by other editors. Coretheapple (talk) 16:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a minor point, the US rules really are at least primarily FCC, not FTC, rules. They have to do with the laws and regulations enacted by Congress after the payola and free-plugging scandals, involving undisclosed advertising on network TV and radio. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

My point is this. Misplaced Pages should be a leader in transparency. On this issue, Misplaced Pages is not just lagging behind, but has its priorities backwards. Its loyalty is not to the reader but to the contributor, no matter who that contributor is, and after that to the subject, with the reader a distant third. When it comes to COI, the contributor has only voluntary COI behavioral guidelines, the subject has the ability to influence the article about itself in ways that would be unheard of in academia or the real-world media, and there is zero disclosure of all of this to readers. Coretheapple (talk) 16:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

@Atethnekos I like your analogy. You overstate slightly what happens in academia: an expert in a field may have a career built on their own school of thought; and may well be asked to write the overview article on their field, even though they have a clear COI. And sometimes the expert in a practical area is the lead scientist at an institution or company; that employment does not invalidate their research, though they are expected to note that affiliation. These are known weaknesses in the modern academic process; we should strive to eventually do better, but please note that some of these problems are unsolved in academia as well.

@Coretheapple I love your take on the issue. We should find ways to lead in transparency; until we have much better tools for helping readers and other editors see these facets of an article, we should limit predictable sources of bias and capture sources of COI. We already have casual ways to do this for unpaid advocacy and zeal: the # of advocates on either side of a popular issue often balance out. For paid advocacy, if we allow channels for payment to thrive, the side with money can easily drown out the other; which is why we should make special efforts to catch that bias, and create policy that gives its opponents extra leverage. – SJ + 21:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Well thank you. I think that Atethnekos deserves major and massive props for raising the analogy of academic research. There are a considerable number of Misplaced Pages editors who are acquainted with that field of endeavor, and perhaps may be the nucleus of a counter-paid-editing insurgency. It is important for Misplaced Pages editors to know how totally out of step Misplaced Pages is with the rest of the world on COI, and how dreadful its COI standards, such as they are, would be if employed elsewhere in the real world. I have actually heard on several occasions the pro-paid-editing excuse-mongers condemn as "extremists" those of us who believe that standard practice in these issues be deployed at Misplaced Pages. On the contrary, it is Misplaced Pages and its welcome mat for paid editing that is the outlier and the extremist. Welcome as this breath of fresh air certainly is, my feelings on the subject, the need for initiative taken by the Foundation, remain the same. Coretheapple (talk) 22:26, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

PROPOSAL: Let's make lemonade out of paid advocacy editing lemons

I oppose all rules against paid advocacy editing. All editing is subject to the biases of the editor in question. I don't understand why we need to identify and treat paid advocacy differently from any other kind of bias. We already have policies, guidelines, practices and mechanisms for dealing with article content that is problematic due to editor bias. We revert. We balance. We fix. We find sources. We modify. Etc. Etc. Etc. Addressing paid advocacy editing as a distinct problem is quintessential WP:CREEP.

As others have noted Atethnekos' analogy with academic paper and other encyclopedia standards and policies fails at the gate. Every WP article is written by a disorganized and usually unidentified panoply of mostly anonymous editors all with unknown biases and viewpoints. The essence of Misplaced Pages is that articles come out remarkably well despite this - precisely because we allow such a diverse group to edit each article. Democrats and Republicans edit US political articles. Theists and atheists edit religious articles. Socialists and anarchists edit government articles. People with inherent biases as well as pay-influenced biases edit all kinds of articles... so what?

Paid advocacy editing is GOOD for Misplaced Pages. We are always looking for help to increase and improve content. Paid advocacy editors are not the WHOLE solution, but they can be a healthy and productive important PART of the WHOLE solution. Let's harness that resource rather than try to defeat it in vain.

I propose we make lemonade out of paid advocacy editing lemons. Instead of banning paid advocacy editing, or trying to restrict it, or pretend requiring disclosure it going to work or even help, let's drop it all. Let's embrace paid advocacy editing. Let's encourage them to produce their content - and then all unpaid editors have to do, where needed, is put in the parts to balance it out, rather than do all of it.

Enough with the hand wringing. It's pointless, distracting, and ultimately harmful to WP. Let's focus on content, not on the editor (WP:NPA). It's about the WHAT, not the WHO or WHY. --B2C 21:08, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more about Atethnekos' posting, as it would be considered self-evident and "stating the obvious" anywhere but in a discussion of paid editing on Misplaced Pages. That is not a reflection on the logic and good sense of his position, but on the blind spot that Misplaced Pages editors have on this very issue. I certainly agree that the point of view that you express is very much the general position taken by Misplaced Pages editors on this issue, which is precisely why the Foundation needs to deal with it as a matter of self-preservation. Coretheapple (talk) 21:24, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

No. It's not true that, "every WP article is written by a disorganized and usually unidentified panoply of mostly anonymous editors." Some have one, or a specific few who make any substantive edit. Moreover, editors are asked regularly to disclose why they want an edit. Many honestly say so. More editors do so in their edit summaries. So, it is untrue that we never care about why. In addition, it is common legal and ethical practice to disclose financial COI on and off the pedia for written work already. That is one reason why there are already examples of financial COI disclosure among Wikipedians. Wikipedians are honest people (I think) and asked to be honest with one another with respect to matters of content for our readers, and honest to our readers, to the best of their ability, and they are expected to be generally competent in that respect. It is generally helpful, as many of our policies do, to make expectations of how much information is enough and right, explicit, in a given situation.Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:46, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Your proposal reminds me rather of the claim that academic writers don't need to worry about conflicts of interest because the papers are peer reviewed. Authors with financial conflicts of interest (which they are required to declare, but sometimes don't) are shown, over and over, to reach conclusions which are favorable to their financial backer. This is not a small effect, meta-analyses have found the probability of a favorable finding is 3.5-4 times higher when the authors are being paid (Okike et al 2008. "Industry sponsored research" Injury 39:666-80). This is after editors check over the paper and after peers review the paper, this strong bias remains. Editors and academics who do peer review read papers thoroughly, are experts in the field, and still do not spot what might be going wrong. Pretending that we can spot bad research every time and weed it out, so the author's biases don't matter, is demonstrably contrary to reality.

The problem on Misplaced Pages is compounded in that we don't have a large bank of experts eager to check over the work of others. We do not submit each article for peer review by three experts before it goes live. In the case of peer review, each of those experts also can recommend against publication, which the editor usually accepts. With those already-inadequate safeguards missing on Misplaced Pages, we can expect paid advocacy to bring an even heavier swing in the direction of the financiers. This is not theoretical, this is evidence. We know that allowing paid editing on Misplaced Pages will bring a NPOV in favor of the paid interests.

We can talk about the likely effects of paid editing--disheartening the volunteer editors who are now asked to proofread, copyedit, and research to improve articles that people are being paid to maintain, for example--but your suggestion that NPOV can be spotted and easily removed is simply and demonstrably false. --TeaDrinker (talk) 22:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't imagine a worse proposal than B2C's. Turn the encyclopedia over to corporations (but volunteers will still be allowed to edit) and everything will turn out ok. Pure and utter nonsense. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:59, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

What is nonsense is the claim that my proposal will "turn the encyclopedia over to corporations". It's delusional to believe that rules governing COI in general or paid advocacy editing in particular can make any kind of significant difference. Therefore the influence of corporations is going to be about the same with or without those rules.

What my proposal will do is put the focus of the community where it should be, directed at encyclopedia content, instead of on pointless handwringing about turning over the encyclopedia to corporations and futile efforts to try to regulate that directly. In fact, I submit that corporate influence will be curbed much more effectively with my proposal, because we will have more time and resources available to enforcing and verifying important content-related policies like NPOV, Notability, Reliable Sources, BLP, etc., which is just as effective at curbing paid advocacy editing as editing under any other bias. --B2C 06:06, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Born2cycle (talk · contribs), lets imagine that any edit made is thoroughly checked by no fewer than four independent editors, all of whom spend hours checking the material, and all of whom have a strong background in the content. Only when they reach consensus that the edit should go live does it actually go live. And if the final decision is to not allow the edit, it does not see the light of day. No appeals, it is done. While I don't propose such a system (Wiki means quick), it would certainly address concerns people have about editors being paid, right?

This is the system that we have in academia, the system of peer review. Yet with all of these checks and all of this oversight, substantial bias still makes it in. Why is that? The editorial process is not one of cut and dry, obvious facts. It is full of careful examination, judgement calls, and fine balances. When someone is paid, their judgement on these matters is, consciously or unconsciously, flawed. We all do it, and anyone can objectively find these effects.

On Misplaced Pages, we do not operate with anything close to the safeguards found in peer review. We operate with non-experts, who may or may not check someone's work (and almost always after it has gone live). Even the minimal safeguards proposed--disclosure of COI, require the work be checked by at least one editor before the edit goes live--are still likely to allow money to dictate content on Misplaced Pages, it just limits the effect to cut out the most egregious examples. This is the experience of academic research: When people are paid, their editorial judgement is compromised, and with a monumental effort to minimize that bias, what slips through is still substantial.

Your solution, it seems to me, is to suggest that with more discussion, we can in fact have greater monitoring and safeguarding than academia. This is demonstrably not the case. We do not have enough volunteers to ask them to debate endlessly with people who are paid to not change their minds. Editors are the most important resource Misplaced Pages has, and it is foolish to ask them to pursue fruitless tasks, nor can we retain editors if we willingly and intentionally send them on snipe hunts.

I started by reply with a discussion of what Misplaced Pages can learn from the Academic experience of people with conflicts of interest. Let me close with a parallel system which operates like you suggest. In court, there are teams of advocates who argue and debate as you suggest. They are all paid, of course, so we don't have the worry that prosecutors are paid while defense counsel is unpaid. However there is another feature in which Misplaced Pages differs from a courtroom--Misplaced Pages does not have a judge or jury. If your vision of Misplaced Pages were taken to a courtroom, cases would only end when one lawyer convinced opposing counsel that their position was correct. This vision, I am sure you can well imagine, would make discussions endless if the counselors take their roles as advocates seriously. The only way for such a judgeless system to work is if both lawyers refuse to become advocates for their positions and hold the interest of justice to be paramount. That is how Misplaced Pages operates: we demand that everyone put writing the encyclopedia first, not their job, their political beliefs, their religion, or anything else. People do this very imperfectly, but we must hold it as an ideal. We can not operate as advocates because our system does not allow for such intransigence. We must all put the encyclopedia first, or the system stops working, we stop writing an encyclopedia, and we become a debating society. --TeaDrinker (talk) 13:06, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

In Misplaced Pages, the reader is often an afterthought, and that is exemplified by the fact that there is no disclosure of article contributors' COI to readers. One has to hunt through talk pages, or talk page archives, or sometimes even user pages, sometimes finding admissions of COI and sometimes not. Article subjeccts can even create articles through the Articles for Creation process. Imagine DuPont hiring "objective" researchers for an academic paper, supplying the text and the sources, one of its contractors writing and submitting the article, and that fact not being reflected in the published paper. That is accepted practice at Misplaced Pages, and suggestions that the COI be disclosed to readers is invariably greeted with gasps of horror and expressions of derision by established editors. Coretheapple (talk) 14:16, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

"uggestions that the COI be disclosed to readers is invariably greeted with gasps of horror and expressions of derision by established editors." On Mr. Wales's page in early 2012, anti-disclosure users expressed unwillingness to discuss the suggestion in the context of articles about political campaigning, and Mr. Wales offered no response.. Good to see Wales and others engaging now. We surely have a duty of disclosure to readers. Writegeist (talk) 16:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The idea of encouraging paid advocacy editing in order to improve the quality of Misplaced Pages is a genuinely terrible idea. Responsible volunteer editors who value the quality of Misplaced Pages have a very hard job to do as it is, to deal not only with vandalism (often obvious) but also, more insidiously, with unpaid POV-pushing. Do we really think that we can also burden them with identifying and correcting for paid POV-pushing, and expect them to take up that burden? The idea that a core of volunteer editors will willingly correct not only for unpaid POV-pushing but for paid POV-pushing is absurdly idealistic and unrealistic. I understand that its proponent means well, because he probably thinks that he and others could deal with that burden. We have enough of an issue of editor retention without expecting a small core of volunteer editors to correct for a well-financed group of paid POV-pushers. Just because the proponent means well doesn't mean that the idea will work well. It is a terrible idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

And "Paid advocacy editing is GOOD for Misplaced Pages" is at best a spectacularly naive comment. Writegeist (talk) 18:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

What he or she meant, which, as you say, is spectacularly naive, is apparently that Misplaced Pages is largely edited by fools, and that welcoming paid advocacy editing would bring in a new class of educated, well-informed editors. He or she apparently thinks that the work required to correct for deliberate bias is less than the work required to compensate for unpaid POV pushing and for ignorance. That is a noble idealistic viewpoint that has extreme faith in the ability of a small core of volunteer editors to correct for deliberate as well as unintended bias. Sometimes it isn't enough to be noble and idealistic, when the effect of imposing that nobility and idealism on our volunteer editors would be to burn them out correcting deliberate bias. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Robert McClenon (talk · contribs), don't forget that the paid advocates some wish to discourage from editing are part of the correction process. Not every edit they make will be problematic due to their bias - the vast majority is likely not to be. Further, as any other editors, they will also be reading and correcting errors made by others. I believe, perhaps idealistically as you surmise, that the net contribution from each such paid advocate is likely to be positive, and probably by a substantial margin. In other words, we're much better off with paid advocacy editors than without them, just as we are much better off with editors who are biased in other ways than we are without them. --B2C 21:30, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Every edit from a paid advocacy editor will fall into one of two classes, those that come from declared paid advocacy editors, and those that come from undeclared paid advocacy editors. Those that come from declared paid advocacy editors are known to be problematic. That does not mean that they are known to be biased, but that they are known to be problematic. They therefore create additional work for the volunteer editors. Those that come from undeclared paid advocacy editors are not known to be questionable, and thus are more subtly corrupting. They may go unrecognized for months. Volunteer editors don't have the time and resources that paid advocacy editors do. Volunteer editors will be overwhelmed with work of undoing biased edits. Will volunteer editors really be willing to spend 40 hours a week undoing intentionally biased edits? Why shouldn't corporations have their paid advocacy editors spend 40 hours a week introducing bias? I am not sure that I agree that we are better off with unpaid POV-pushing editors. Those editors require a disproportionate amount of attention at the noticeboards, at the ArbCom, and at Arbitration Enforcement. I certainly do not think that we are better off with paid POV-pushing editors. Do you really think that volunteer editors will spring up out of nowhere to take up the additional work caused by removing bias that editors are paid to introduce? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Robert McClenon (talk · contribs), I suggest you underestimate the amount of bias with which ALL editors edit.

I see no reason to believe that the bias and problems in a given amount of Misplaced Pages article editing by paid advocacy editors should create more work for other editors (those other editors also being paid as well as volunteer) than does the bias and problems in a comparable amount of typical Misplaced Pages article editing by volunteer editors. At least no reason for this has been presented here or in other discussions on this topic in which I've participated.

TeaDrinker (talk · contribs), I think the courtroom analogy you drew above is quite apt. You say the difference is that we do not have a judge/jury, but we actually do have something comparable. It's called other editors, and the various conflict resolution mechanisms we have.

Misplaced Pages will always be an imperfect work in progress. That is its nature. And part of that is because many edits are made unreviewed and unnoticed. But not every edit needs to be reviewed. Sooner or later the whole article is read and reviewed, and problems are caught or resolved. But yes, sometimes they aren't, and problematic content can remain, sometimes for years. This isn't the end of the world, as some seem to think. Most people know this, or should know this, about Misplaced Pages. This is why we require citations - so statements and claims can be easily verified, and dubious material without citation is subject to removal, immediately.

Misplaced Pages is not perfect, but we have many mechanisms that allow it to maintain a certain reasonable standard of reliability and balance, and there is no reason these mechanisms should be any less effective with content created by paid advocacy editing than any other content.

I'm so passionate about this issue because a lack of faith in our ability to reasonably manage paid advocacy editing with our existing content integrity maintenance mechanisms indicates a general lack of faith in those mechanisms. To see experienced editors express this lack of faith in something that reflects the very essence of Misplaced Pages is quite disappointing, to say the least. --B2C 22:56, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

In the view of this "other editor" you have lost in your attempt to make Misplaced Pages a battleground. I'm calling it. It is over. It is done. You have lost. Do you accept my judgement? Of course, if I were really a judge, you would have to. On Misplaced Pages, you don't. You're welcome to continue discussing. No matter who comes along and tells you you're done, you can continue discussing.

That said, some things you say are rather disturbing. You assert as fact that Misplaced Pages already operates as a battleground, as a courtroom, not that you're asserting it should. What should be the case is. of course, your opinion. It is, however, the fact that it currently does not. It would be wise to remember that Misplaced Pages policy currently prohibits what you are proposing. --TeaDrinker (talk) 00:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

B2C says to me and to the other editors who strongly oppose permitting paid advocacy editors that we are showing a lack of faith in our existing content integrity maintenance mechanisms. I don't have "faith" in those mechanisms. I rely on what I see. What I see is that those mechanisms usually but not always work, and that they are often pushed to the limits of their ability to work. B2C appears to be asking us to have "faith" that those mechanisms can continue to work when further pushed beyond what some of us think are their limits. It is true that editors do have biases, but some editors, the best ones that we have, actually try to compensate for or minimize those biases. Even as it is, Misplaced Pages doesn't handle dispute resolution as well as we would like it to, and volunteer editors spend a lot of time and energy dealing with biases.

You say that there is no reason to think that paid advocacy editors will create more work for volunteer editors than typical volunteer editors by biased editors does, and that at least no reason has been presented to that effect. Here is a reason. The typical volunteer editor doesn't volunteer 40 hours a week to Misplaced Pages, and the typical volunteer editor who tries to maintain neutrality against unpaid POV-pushers isn't trying to deal with editors who spend 40 hours a week introducing POV and bias. Allowing professional paid POV-pushers would increase the amount of work for the volunteers beyond the burnout point. You may have "faith" that the "mechanisms", really, work by volunteers, can deal with full-time paid bias. I, indeed, don't have "faith" that those mechanisms will expand to take up the load imposed by paid advocacy editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:10, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

It is impossible to make lemonade from rotten lemons - no amount of added sugar can fix it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. There is a label on products, such as anti-freeze, that contain methanol (wood alcohol). It says, among other things, "Cannot be made non-poisonous", to dispute myths that there are ways to make it into ethanol (grain alcohol). The warning says: "Cannot be made non-poisonous." Can deliberately biased editing be made non-corrupting? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:10, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Dodger67 (talk · contribs) and Robert McClenon (talk · contribs), the notion that the bias likely to be expressed in the contributions of a paid advocacy editors is "rotten" in a way that the bias likely to be expressed in the contributions of volunteer editors is not suggests a failure to realize the extent to which all people (and thus all editors) are subject to bias. There is simply no reason to believe that the bias of an editor paid to advocate for a given interest is likely to be more problematic than the bias of a partisan editing a political article, the bias of a theist or an atheist editing an article on the subject of religion, a resident of either of two countries that tend to have significantly different views on a topic editing an article about that topic, a fan of a sports team editing an article about that team, or one about its rival, a male or female, homosexual or heterosexual, editing an article that involves sexuality, etc., etc. Assuming people tend to follow their personal (and inherently biased) views and interests to decide what to edit, I'd venture to say that vast majority of edits on Misplaced Pages are made by people who are biased about that content to a degree comparable of that in a paid advocacy editor. If paid advocacy editing was anywhere near as a big a problem as the hand-wringers suggest, Misplaced Pages would be an utter failure. --B2C 23:10, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the most useful way to address your argument is to put it in a real-world perspective. Misplaced Pages does not operate in isolation; it is part of the a vast network of information-dispensing operations, ranging from medical journals to the New York Times. It may not be the most prestigious information-dispensing mechanism but it is certainly the one with the highest visibility, in the sense that Misplaced Pages articles automatically rise to the top or near top of Google results. Viewed from that perspective, what you are saying is completely nonsensical. Of course having a financial conflict of interest is inherently problematic. Of course it has to be disclosed to readers. Of course it has to be curbed or prohibited. It cannot be overemphasized or repeated too often that Misplaced Pages is the only information outlet of any significance on the Internet that openly sanctions, and even welcomes, contributors with conflicts of interest and does not disclose those conflicts to readers. Coretheapple (talk) 23:54, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd even go so far as to make this analogy: I think that paid editing is a cancer, a malignancy that has the potential to destroy Misplaced Pages's credibility. All that Misplaced Pages or any publishing outlet has is its credibility. If readers come to believe that Misplaced Pages articles are frequently sponsored or drafted by the subjects of those articles, its credibility will be destroyed. The reason is that the ethos that you are reflecting in your proposal is a unique one, certainly common here, very "Misplaced Pages-ish," but totally an outlier from a real-world perspective. The ethos that paid editing is to be welcomed, that conflicts of interest are minor and manageable, that corporate p.r. representatives and corporate officials are valued contributors whose work needs to be judged without regard to who they are-- that attitude would not pass the laugh test anywhere but on this website. Coretheapple (talk) 00:05, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

"Faith in Mechanisms" Comment

I will reply to B2C's criticism stating that those of us who oppose paid advocacy editing show a disappointing lack of faith in the integrity maintenance mechanisms of Misplaced Pages. I am not aware of a Misplaced Pages policy that states that we should have faith in those mechanisms. What we should do is to assume good faith on the part of other editors, in particular, to assume that other editors are here to build an encyclopedia by a collaborative editing process. When we conclude that editors are not here to build an encyclopedia that satisfies the neutral point of view, those editors are blocked or banned. The assumption of good faith is rebuttable, disprovable. Experience has shown that some editors do not contribute positively to the collaborative building of the encyclopedia, and in dealing with them, the integrity maintenance mechanisms include blocks and bans, so as not to burn out the volunteer editors who try to maintain quality. We know in advance that paid advocacy editors, while here to build an encyclopedia, are not here to build the encyclopedia that Misplaced Pages mostly is, and that we want it to be. Faith in the integrity maintenance mechanisms is based, to a very large part, on the assumption that our editors are acting in the good faith that we assume that they are. Indeed, I do not have faith that our volunteer editors have the time and commitment to clean up bias introduced by paid advocacy editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Question About Topic Bans

I have a question for B2C. B2C says that paid advocacy editing is actually good for Misplaced Pages because it is knowledgeable editing and its errors can be corrected. I have already disagreed. However, I have a question to put the issue in perspective. Editors who are chronic POV-pushers or otherwise complicate editing in a particular area are often topic-banned from the area, either by the ArbCom or by "community consensus" at the noticeboards. Do you think that the practice of topic-banning POV-pushers is counter-productive, and that these editors are also good for Misplaced Pages because their edits can be corrected? Alternatively, is there a special reason why volunteer POV-pushers on hobbyhorses are bad for Misplaced Pages but paid POV-pushers will be good for Misplaced Pages? I am prepared to reply, but I first would like to know whether you think that volunteer POV-pushers are also good for Misplaced Pages and are underappreciated, or whether there is something special about the benefit of paid POV-pushers. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

You are purposefully misrepresenting B2C's position. The whole point of what they stated is that we have those banning processes in place where necessary. However, we only do the bans when the editor's editing is directly shown to be problematic. I see numerous claims that paid editors editing will always be non-neutral in content, yet I have yet to ever see that be substantiated. In fact, all I see is that the main editors involved in being against paid editors are themselves extremely biased anti-company editors that negatively slant our articles about companies. They do far more damage to our articles than open paid editors ever have or likely ever will. (And that is one point I disagree with B2C on. I think declarations of COI are appropriate. That at least allows paid editors to be far more truthful than any other editor, because they acknowledge their COIs, while almost all editors do not. It makes the open paid editors far better editors and, in my opinion, people than everyone else on here). Silverseren 03:35, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I am sure that B2C will be along shortly to clarify his point of view, so it seems unnecessary to debate what he does and does not believe. However I will note that there is good evidence that being paid alters judgement. The evidence I presented above, in a metastudy of studies on the effect of declared COI on academic publication, found the probability of coming to a conclusion in favor of the funding agency went up by a factor of 3.5-4 when a conflict of interest was present and declared. That is with an extensive peer review process, and that is with a journal editor who can rule decisively if he or she thinks the paper is flawed, and that is with the work being focused on an objective, factual question. On Misplaced Pages, we deal in editorial judgement calls, we have no ultimate authority, most of us volunteers are not experts in the subjects we review, and most edits are very minimally checked. All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion that paid advocates will introduce a slant in favor of those who pay. It is demonstrated. --TeaDrinker (talk) 04:51, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, being paid alters judgement. So does joining Scientology, believing in Astrology, being against gun control, being for gun control, or any number of other reasons for advocacy editing. I could make a case for Misplaced Pages being harmed more by religious or political advocacy editing than by paid advocacy editing (but see below for why I think this might change).

There are however, a couple of things that are special about paid advocacy editing which IMO require extra care.

First, Scientology cannot do anything to suddenly have ten times more followers. They are already doing the best they can and the pool of potential converts is resistant.

Paid advocacy editing, on the other hand, can easily gain as many paid advocacy editors as desired by simply paying more. Think of the difference between getting emails advocating politics or religion vs. emails about online pharmacies. The first is annoying, but self limiting; the second gets bigger and bigger as long as it remains profitable. Our article on Email spam gives numbers like 200 billion spam messages sent per day and 97% of all emails being unwanted. I think Jimbo is right to be especially concerned over something that could grow exponentially.

Second, we really cannot do anything to convince most religion or politics advocates to change their ways other than blocking or banning them, but we can make big changes in how paid advocacy editors operate. If it becomes well known that the advocacy editors who don't edit articles directly but instead make talk page requests get better results and that the sneaky kind of paid advocacy editor usually gets reverted, the customers will naturally go with the service that gets the best results. We can make that happen, but again it takes special care. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:17, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

That's what i've been working on for more than a year now. And it gets rather difficult to show that being open and discussing things is the better way to go when you get people being rude and nasty to them because of it. I mean, if you look at some of the now archived discussions heres, you can see things being said that, in any other situation, would be something brought to the incident board because of a violation of civility. Not that the community ever does anything about that anymore as it is anyways. Silverseren 08:29, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Did any of these cases involve a paid advocate who doesn't create or edit articles? If a paid advocate follows Misplaced Pages:Best practices for editors with close associations (which as far as I can tell lines up nicely with Jimbo's position) and someone is abusive towards him, we can and should defend the paid advocate, just as we should with anyone who stays within the rules. (note that I used the term "paid advocate", not "paid advocacy editor. The difference is important. See the link to Jimbo's position above). --Guy Macon (talk) 15:44, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

An example of a responsible paid advocate is User:Arturo at BP, for instance, who posts to talk pages, and does result in improvement of the encyclopedia. I have not known editors to be abusive to him. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:03, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

All the editors I deal with don't edit articles. Some of them may do minor edit changes here and there, but I try to get them to stay away from even that. Silverseren 19:19, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Follow-Up to Question

I asked about topic-banning of POV pushers because I wanted to know whether B2C, who thinks that paid advocacy editing is good for Misplaced Pages, also thinks that unpaid biased editing is good for Misplaced Pages. If he or she thinks that both are good for Misplaced Pages, because both are subject to the correction process in which we should have so much "faith", that is consistent, and can then say that POV-pushers should not be topic-banned. If B2C thinks that unpaid POV pushers should continue to be topic-banned, but that paid advocacy editors should be encouraged, then I would like to know what the difference is. That is why I asked the question. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC) I object strongly to the allegation of bad faith, in being accused of deliberately misrepresenting another editor's position. I am waiting for an apology for the allegation. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Isn't the assumption that a paid editor wants to bias an article, rather than make it neutral and properly represent the company or organization in question, an allegation of bad faith? Silverseren 06:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Indeed it is. The whole negative 'tude towards paid advocacy editors is contrary to the very essence of what makes WP successful. --B2C 22:50, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Robert McClenon (talk · contribs), I don't think any kind of biased editing is good in and of itself for WP, including paid advocacy editing. But I do believe discouraging biased editors, including paid advocacy editors, is bad for WP. BIG DIFFERENCE.

My assumption is that the vast majority of just about any editor's edits improve WP. In fact, a good paid advocacy editor will make sure this is true, to establish credibility.

I don't think it's a good idea to identify bias, paid or not. Journalists are biased by their political and religious affiliations, etc., but they typically don't reveal these biases. It would be unprofessional. We should not require anyone to reveal their bias. Instead, we should emphasize the need for everyone to edit from an NPOV perspective.

The analogy with academic work fails per WP:NOR. Academic papers are by definition original research. Any biases are important and useful to declare. But WP editors, like journalists, are not creating new material. We are simply assembling information that is already out there, in reliable sources, properly cited, presented in a balanced fashion from an NPOV.

Can a paid advocacy editor get away with inserting or deleting something inappropriately once in a while? Sure, anyone can. But the vast majority of their edits must be consistent with our content-specific policies and guidelines, or they will be discovered. Therefore, by definition, either they will be caught, like a vandal, or their contributions will be a net positive for WP, by definition. It's all good. So why the hand-wringing? --B2C 22:48, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Review articles in academia (which attempt to summarize existing literature, not expand it) still have to include conflicts of interest. In fact, they are even more important because review articles involve more judgement calls about characterizing the existing research and contextualizing it, with various emphasis. That is rather like Misplaced Pages, in that it is full of editorial judgement calls. --TeaDrinker (talk) 23:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I abhor pre-emptive punishment. As such, I oppose requiring paid advocacy editors, who have not demonstrated any problematic behavior, to "out" themselves, as a kind of Yellow badge. It creates a situation where that person's edits and comments will not be judged objectively, but as the contributions of a biased person, even when that's not warranted. When the same edit or comment is put under a different light because of WHO made the edit or comment, that's neither fair nor good for WP, especially when there is no reason for this. Paid advocacy editors are under the same pressure as any other biased editors to contribute in accordance with NPOV, Notability, WP:IRS, etc. In 99% of the cases, that should be good enough.

Just treat paid advocacy editors like everyone else. If their edits are problematic, revert and bring attention them. If a pattern of problematic behavior develops, we have mechanisms for that. Other than that, let's focus on improving the encyclopedia, with the help of paid advocacy editors... --B2C 01:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

An interesting blog

There's an interesting blog on the subject of payed editing. Jimbo, could you please respond to that blog and comment on the ultimate fate of Misplaced Pages in regards to payed (or commercial) editing? Thanks. 24.4.37.209 (talk) 19:10, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, look, a comment by a banned editor. I've taken the liberty of striking out your comment. Silverseren 19:13, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

If one of Wikipediocracy's meatpuppet editors that aren't banned want to post a link here, then that would be fine. But you should know better than letting one of the banned people do it. Silverseren 19:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the value in encouraging their spam, myself. Resolute 19:20, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages would be much better off, if Wikipedians stop seeing in each and every IP a banned editor, and an enemy of the state. Also remember your famous "Comment on the contributions, not the contributor"?

Spam? it's not a spam at all. That blog is read no matter what, and my post provides Jimbo with an opportunity to respond to it.

I guess Jimbo could menage his talk himself. Thanks.24.4.37.209 (talk) 19:27, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Indian and Pakistani village cleanup

Anybody reading this might be interested in the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

• Some background about Indo-Pak cleanup: For years, the general cleanup of Indo-Pak articles has been a major effort, but soon afterward, numerous various editors have been blogging in the village/town articles, to list trivia or promoting the local pharmacy, stores, or townspeople. At times, it seems only a matter of mere weeks before a major article goes from near "good article" level to become, yet again, a blog page full of trivia or repeated details, written in Awkward, MixED-Case repeated TEXT repeated with "some,unusual.punctuation" in sections. Consequently, there have been serious proposals to limit coverage of small villages as members of a list-page, either in a table, or list of small paragraphs, where the whole page is limited to control or deter the typical blogging. See recent proposals:

• Topic: "WT:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#Indian and Pakistani villages"

An example of a blogged-style village article:

• Former blogged village article: ...Naya_Lahore&oldid=577023362

Instead of blog-prone targets, the page "Naya Lahore" would be merged/redirected into a list-style page, to clamp down on blog-style updates. Anyone who says Misplaced Pages is full of only techno-speak articles, films or TV shows, is completely out-of-touch with the thousands of village or local townspeople pages. Any questions? -Wikid77 (talk) 14:41, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd hate to see articles, that otherwise could stand on their own, being lumped as lists or thrown away for the fact of what is happening. Treat this as it is- vandalism. Punish the editor, not the article. Zero tolerance for this type of abuse of wp:NOT. We're not a blog, not a advertisement for local businesses, not a travel guide. An editor, whether autoconfirmed or IP or admin, you block them for this spamming and you clean up the vandalism. Give me a list of every single article you're worried about and an admin who will block anyone I report for these violations and I'll watch list them all and report every single violation to that admin. Find me that admin whose willing to do it, and I'll make sure these articles are safe.Camelbinky (talk) 17:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

@Camelbinky, if you want to submit an RfA, perhaps we could get a group to support your nomination, beginning early on a Monday of your choice when more people are active. (Plus also get several admins to work with you.) There are thousands of these IndoPak articles, and cleanup of the large pages often needs 500-800 changes of phrases, spelling, format, or removal of duplicate text. I rewrote "Gurdwara" one time, but it drifted again. Is wp:PC Pending Changes ready (or capable) of detering the blog-style updates to so many pages? I wrote Template:Fixcaps to re-typeset whole paragraphs into lowercase text, but unless the blogging is reduced, I suspect many of the cleanup editors think it is a lost cause. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Punishing an editor for adding content which he thought he was adding in good faith (even if diabolical) isn't going to change the fact that similar other native people of these countries are going to come along and readd unsourced crap to the articles. The sheer number of articles on Indian villages which are not being monitored or cared for makes it a massive magnet for rubbish which will mostly be off the radar. There are millions of people with Internet access who having thousands upon thousands of empty/unsourced articles who will continue to add things, i know this having cleaned up a lot of the Karnataka towns and villages and unless I really monitor changes a lot of them have since badly degraded again with long lists of schools and businesses and frequent use of "famous", glorifying the locals and local landmarks and often writing in capital letters and leaving email address/contacts. We have thousands of articles like Naya Lahore which instantly need blasting free and are damaging to the encyclopedia. Redirecting to sourced lists would help monitor the situation and put off ips from adding long lists and I think it is the best solution until somebody can come along and write a proper sourced article. Most other countries don't have this problem because they edit their own language wikipedias or have low Internet access but Indian and Pakistan, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh and Sri Lanka really form the bulk of the problem on here and the articles are generally the worst on wikipedia. Leaving the sort of content that Naha had in thousands of articles is lazy and naive that anything is going to change. Nobody is going to edit thousands of articles and fully expand and source however notable. The sensible thing is to blast away the garbage, redirect to lists by district which have a column for a summary of villages until a fluent well-meaning editor can come along and write a proper article and put it on their watchlist. No encyclopedia which states that it is trying to be of the highest quality would accept thousands of entries like ...Naya_Lahore&oldid=577023362 this. We need to take more responsibility for this area of the project which is by far the worst I've seen across the website.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:16, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

So a long blathery rambling article in broken English was replaced by a one sentence stub, with no mention of schools, industry, demographics or climate. I doubt that would have happened had it been a crummy article about a town of 15,000 in the US or the UK. Even the long list of local schools, based on someone's original research and local knowledge (most with no articles and with common names) would be hard to research and reference, especially with non-English sources and transliteration. Ideally the millions of English-speaking bilingual natives of the countries would join a project to improve the articles, since they could access and comprehend local government databases and news sources. Merging articles to lists when there is a possibility of improving them seems harsh, since some good info is lost along with the blather, chit-chat, signed statements and fractured English. If a great many articles created by good-faith editors with limited English and little concern for referencing were reduced to entries in a list, awaiting capable writers with good English skills, there is no assurance that the writers who re-created the article would be any better than the original article creators and expanders. Would we have different standards for articles about entities in different parts of the world? But neither notability nor basic verification is satisfied by stubs such as Chak 356 which just states that some numbered and apparently unnamed sub-village populated place is in some geographic district. The block I live on might be more deserving of a stand-alone article. Dr. Blofeld's proposal has some appeal. Edison (talk) 23:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a good example of how patchy village article coverage is. The village's name is partially explained in Chak 128 NB (tagged unsourced for five years), but other "Chak *" articles don't mention it either. Folding articles like these into lists would allow contextual information of this kind to be entered only once yet apply to numerous places. — Scott • talk 21:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Get numerous editors to help cleanup: (edit conflict) Perhaps if we make a plan, with wp:RS reliable sources to expand stubs, then more editors might help. For "Naya Lahore" then I have found sources for "Nawan Lahore" but are they considered reliable(?):

• NewsTrackIndia.com: has Latitude: 31.3167, Longitude: 72.7333
• CARE.edu.pk: Child Care School (CCS) has history from early 20th century

Part of the problem, for this specific town is the name "Lahore" being the big capital city of Punjab, Pakistan, so even with 15,000 population, Nawan Lahore gets confused in search-engine or data-scraping results. Perhaps other towns, with more-unique names, would be easier to find sources. Anyway, the idea is to find some typical sources, for these Pakistan towns, then get more people to help, and they could deter blogging of the local pharmacy, various hardware shops, and list of "famous" uncles in town. Otherwise, "Naya Lahore" was trimmed last year, 27 November 2012, but a one-edit registered user restored the blog text on 1 March 2013 (dif451, only edit of User:Shan668, contribs), and so the lists of schools, stores, and famous uncles had survived for most of the year. Overall, we might use a hybrid plan, to redirect villages of 500 people into a list, but watchlist the larger town pages to deter blogging. Let's find some good Pakistan sources. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:11/23:59, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

@Edison. The idea isn't to redirect articles which have meaningful sourced content which can't fit in a list, but the redirect all of the junk articles and one liners until somebody can write a decent article. For articles on the more notable towns and cities if they're really bad I'd suggest incubating or trying to clean them up as they are and introduce new sources. Having worked on pretty much every country in the world on here, India and Pakistan are definitely a unique case given the number than stray into English wikipedia with access to the Internet and a poor command of English and what sort of content is appropriate. I suggest some sort of controlled growth for it in which lists can be monitored and until a fluent speaker capable of writing a decent article with sources can branch out again and write something and monitor it, then it seems the most sensible thing to do whilst drastically reducing the target for vandalism and good faith incoherent nonsense. The problem is only going to get worse in the next decade as Internet access increases in many developing world countries and it's a problem which needs to start being discussed and worked towards addressing now. Before long the sheer number with access in developing world countries who have very basic English skills will continue to add to the problem and it'll grow more and more out of control across all developing world articles, not such settlements, and not just Pakistan and India. Bangladesh is already showing an increased problem I'm finding. I wonder if Jimbo has thought about that, and that while wikipedia becomes increasingly globalized, sometimes this might be a bad thing for quality of content being added. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Dr B., the general issues have been discussed before but I'm not hunting for the threads. I think that the most recent substantial discussion was around the time that WMF were on a mission to spread the Misplaced Pages gospel in India, so I guess that is 18 - 24 months ago. Jimbo opened a Wikiconference there (Mumbai?) around the same time. Nothing has changed in the interim (except for the anticipated increase in poor content). - Sitush (talk) 14:20, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to try to make a model list for one district at List of populated places in Adilabad district. May take a week or two to complete but I want to demonstrate how much better it is to reduce the redundancies and shoddy articles in favour of something like this. Somebody feel free to continue to add the coordinates for Madaram onwards♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Focus on verifiability then sources: As typical with other articles, the blog-style text tends to be over 95% accurate about Pakistan villages, once the related sources can be found to verify the claims. Removal of wp:PEACOCK promotional text can be kept limited, without gutting the pages. We need more sources, and more editors, such as wp:GOCE, to help reduce the tangent text. I see now how FallingRain.com is used as a wp:RS reliable source for Pakistan town names, coordinates, and elevation ft/m, but the Pakistan government websites might be offline, when trying to check the population or district/tehsil sections. There are 2 opposing, severe problems: the lists of town shops and people are excessive, but blanking of text has removed tehsil names, road connections, nearby towns, local industry, and notable residents which sources could confirm. We just need more editors (some blocked now) to help recover from the lack of cleanup during the past year. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Most articles are redundant though in that they contain either nothing or just the standard temples/school lists and something about a river. They;re better put in a list with a summary until somebody can write a fuller sourced article with some actual interesting info about the places.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• I strongly concur with this. We'd not be losing anything with this move except a giant magnet for well-meant but junk additions. — Scott • talk 16:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Beware issues of discrimination: Several people have commented, during prior months, about how funneling the current articles into lists could be seen as discriminatory, rather than a practical reduction in blogging which is typically reduced, in other pages, by warnings or blocks. The reasoning is very clear: if we want to reduce text about schools or temples, then remember that College Station, Texas, was just a railroad stop for a school, which became Texas A&M University, and Cambridge, Massachusetts (at Boston) covers a smaller area than many towns, but Cambridge became the site of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Radcliff College. Likewise, a person could create a list of 109 small churches in Venice, Italy. I do not want to deter people from writing, "Mahatma Gandhi stopped at this town and gave an early speech about..." any more than rejecting, "Guiseppe Verdi was inspired in this small Italian town to write the opera music for...". Remember Jhang (in central Pakistan) is larger than New Orleans, Tampa, Redondo Beach, CA, Salisbury (England), or Nice (France). What is lacking is a collection of sources which can support claims of when a school is in session, to verify the population of the town triples or such. However, a small town which has a technical college serving an area of 60,000 people will likely have sources to confirm, so we need to beware deleting too much text about schools, or churches, or temples. Having the extra town-list pages is a great addition to Misplaced Pages, but gutting of the current articles seems too severe. -Wikid77 00:01/15:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• So we include something because it might be truly notable one day? When something is notable it can be written up and presumably there will be sources to do so. Are you aware of just how much misrepresentation happens on Indo-Pak articles even when sources do exist? Given that, no source certainly should mean no mention. - Sitush (talk) 00:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Those towns and their templates, or churches, are notable, if can just find the sources (some in Urdu or Punjabi language?). Due to the British Raj, there should be many early sources in English as well. -Wikid77 15:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Per the fact that Misplaced Pages IS a gazeteer, yes ALL villages, towns, cities are by default notable. Some commenting here need to realize that. There is however a difference between being notable for inclusion and having sources available to create an article. Just because something meets notability guidelines does not mean it can be written from a technical aspect of having sources so there is something to write. A village or city does not need something notable about it to have an article, but it does need sources. As long as a source can be found that shows- that the place exists (most important), the population and location (next important), then a stub is warrented if it is assumed more sources are LIKELY. If other sources are less likely a list is acceptable along with other "villages in..." whatever the next higher geographic/political designation is.Camelbinky (talk) 01:04, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

No-one is saying that we should delete everything related to village X or Y. The point is that if all we know is that it exists then that is all we will say; and that the easiest way to maintain such articles - limiting the likelihood of puffery etc - is to contain them in a list that cites the official document verifying existence. There are real issues with variant names due to transliteration from the > 20 official languages and also official inconsistencies, and there can be even bigger problems with finding non-user generated location information beyond a generic area (tehsil or district). Worse, I've seen "villages" of India on Misplaced Pages that appear to have no official record even in the census or district-level documentation: they would appear to be "folk areas" akin to Ahirwal (although Ahirwal actually is verifiable as such and isn't a village). Over a thousand of these were deleted by PMDrive1061 (talk · contribs) some time ago and it was around that time that I got heartily fed up of the whole thing. If experienced members of the India project - many of whom are from India - are aware of the problems then surely it behoves us to listen to them?

You are the second person I've seen who has claimed that Misplaced Pages is a gazetteer but I'm struggling to find evidence that it is intended to be so in a manner that requires an article for each place. My struggle may be a case of familiarity with policies etc breeding a sort of contempt or it may be that the gazetteer claim is self-reinforcing. I have vaguely mused whether Wikivoyage has some role to play in this nowadays. - Sitush (talk) 06:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

We can start by expanding the lists of villages, but also look for sources in other languages about the history of each larger town. -Wikid77 15:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The proposal does indeed concern villages, not towns. Although in India it can be the case that a village exists inside a town or, at least, locals call it a village. We should welcome correctly paraphrased reliable sources for anything in any language, obviously, but no-one has suggested otherwise. The problem is that this stuff is not sources and that there are not a tremendous number of such sources knocking around in the case of India, where plagiarism, copyright violation and poor fact-checking seem almost to be a way of life among print media and most British Raj sources - including the Imperial Gazetteers - often weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Don't forget that, even now, the culture of India and Pakistan owes much to the oral tradition and literacy rates are not great. The big systemic problem Misplaced Pages faces here is not related to English-language vs. foreign-language sources but rather oral vs. written sources. I don't think we're going to be able to overturn any time soon the consensus that is currently opposed to accepting "what my father told me is true" as a source. - Sitush (talk) 15:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In the past I've suggested we need to integrate a system of "verified interviews with biographic subjects" to allow BLPs to more readily correct misinformation. The same approach would help here - we should make it possible for locals in the towns to self-publish statements to our archives (presently they could write them down on a piece of paper, take a photo and post it to Wikimedia Commons; but let's clear a path for plaintext). Such statements are of course poor sources, not citable for BLPs, but perfectly OK for explaining how a town got its name, how many people live there, etc. It also invites a depth of data to accumulate in case people disagree somewhat on the particulars, and we have no other way to find them out. That said, I expect that as the Internet becomes more accessible, more written sources will turn up than we can possibly imagine. Wnt (talk) 17:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Some combination of Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages Is and User:Rambot make is pretty clear that the early intentions were along the lines of an article for every town. See, e.g.,St. Rosa, Minnesota, which was written almost entirely by bots. WilyD 17:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Slander and personal attacks by Wer900 on this page

• Wer900 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I've taken the liberty of removing a thread, because 8 hours after my initial objection, my name and the associated slanders (without any factual basis) had still not been removed from the discussion, and Wer900 had in fact repeated the canard a second time. If somebody would like to refactor the thread to remove any mention of me (and my objections), please feel free to do so. The thread was described as gibberish , so perhaps it is better left deleted, but that's for you to decide. On all pages, even this one, Misplaced Pages editors are not allowed to make personal attacks or slanderous remarks without verifiable sources in the form of references, diffs or links.

I've never had any memorable interactions with Wer900. Why did Wer900 start complaints about me on this page instead of visiting my talk page first? Why didn't Wer900 notify me? That's a bizarre way to handle a concern. Given the rudeness of Wer900's original post,, and their prior history of slandering other users, posting long screeds, and making unfounded accusations, it appears that Wer900 may be a disruptive editor. On balance I think such editors cause more damage to the community, by way of driving off productive contributors, than any value of their content contributions.

Jimmy is probably offline because he didn't comment on this yet, but I am sure this placeholder will lead him to review this permanent section link. Jehochman 10:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the removal of the thread, which was unproductive, condescending, and insulting.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm a little bummed that the rest of the thread, where there was a discussion of governance, was deleted as well. But I completely understand your objections, Jehochman. The larger conversation about Misplaced Pages, without Wer900's proposal, will continue. Liz 21:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't "slander" you, Jonathan E. Hochman. I stated the facts: you are a paid editor and an administrator, and then I stated my opinion: there is a fundamental incompatibility between these two positions as they stand right now in Misplaced Pages. To Mark Miller and Robert McClenon, I apologized for making a problem out of circumstances that had been resolved. Rather than using your administrative powers to delete the thread and stop discussion entirely, you should let the discussion continue; I already made apologies where they were due, and this was not mentioned at all. Your removal of the comment is the very epitome of what many people call "admin abuse".

Jimmy Wales: this is exactly what I am talking about. Your yes-men want to execute a palace coup and consolidate even more power, whereas I have stated several proposals whereby a proper constitution is issued and you thereafter resume a largely honorary role. I implore you to make the necessary reforms, rather than merely sitting on this talk page and riding the speaking circuit as an absentee ruler.

Of course, Jehochman can continue to perform search engine optimization as a "declared" COI editor. Resolute can continue to flatly state that my proposals are insane. But whenever I or any other common editor has to say something against the elevated and enlightened administrator, this is exactly what happens. Wer900 • talk 23:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

And again, two incorrect statements. No "administrative powers" were used to remove the thread so no "admin abuse" occurred. BTW, I've come up against admins before, sometimes in heated discussions, and nothing like "admin abuse" or any threat of using admin powers untowardly has ever happened. You need to tone down the rhetoric. --NeilN 03:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

No administrative powers of the software were specifically used, but Jehochman still used his authority—the very fact that he was an administrator—to remove an entire thread from discussion that he felt objectionable because it mentioned his paid editing. That is what I meant by admin abuse—shutting down debate by the moral authority of an admin. Wer900 • talk 03:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Search engine optimization entails fixing technical flaws in websites (speed, sloppiness, bugs), improving content, and sometimes helping a client figure out their unique value proposition. It has almost nothing to do with Misplaced Pages, other than that I sometimes point to Misplaced Pages articles as examples of really good content that consequently ranks well in search engines. And yes, I benefited from Misplaced Pages. Being a Misplaced Pages editor has improved my writing skills quite a bit. (Though they are still nothing special.) With the advent of Google Panda, Penguin and now Hummingbird, all the old SEO tricks and shortcuts that you may have heard about (and that I never wasted time with) don't work nearly as well as high quality content. Jehochman 03:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

@NeilN. When an Administrator (dubiously) cites BLP as a reason for removing a thread and then adds "Do not restore. Talk to me." to the edit summary, I believe a reasonable person may conclude that the administrative blocking button is being wielded menacingly. (I have no opinion about the deleted material beyond that observation.) Carrite (talk) 16:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

What a bad-faith assuming comment. Carrite, just because somebody is a Misplaced Pages editor, let alone a Misplaced Pages administrator, does not mean that their name is freely available for slander. We have a rule here that slander can be removed by anybody, including the target of the attack. Unlike others, I edit under my real world identity because I feel that transparency is worth the risk of being harassed or slandered, as happens occasionally. It would be nice if other editors, such as yourself, would take a balanced view of the situation, rather than enabling slander and harassment with poorly thought out comments. Jehochman 16:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

What is your (Jehochman's) point? You say that, unlike others, you edit under your real world name. What point are you making to Carrite (Tim Davenport)? Are you saying that there is a difference between using your real name and having your real name be associated with your pseudonym? I don't understand your point there. Anyway, were you slandered? Either the claims made by Wer900 were true, or they were false, and you know whether they were true or false. If the claims were true, it wasn't slander, only a series of personal attacks (on multiple editors including myself). If the claim made about you was false, then you could have requested an uninvolved admin to redact the slander or an oversighter to suppress the slander. I agree that the deleted passage contained multiple personal attacks, but you haven't made the slander case. Not every personal attack is a slander. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Active guidance from Jimbo: @Wer900, I know some people are frustrated that Jimbo does not always intervene to solve all problems pronto, but he is definitely not an "absentee ruler" as he talks with other people offline or posts advice at other WP discussions. I have already noted his pivotal influence in making major WP articles to edit-preview, or reformat, 3x-4x faster by refering to a faster fork template of the wp:CS1 cite templates as a "harmless experiment" rather than the emergency fix in the few cases as intended. Because Jimbo gave repeated advice about that fast template, I began thinking in terms of other "experimental" templates, which gained enough power to handle most CS1 cite formats 5x faster, while other editors, having read/mentioned Jimbo's prior comments, stopped the TfD deletion of the fast cite templates, and as a result, the huge broken article "Barack Obama" was able to use a fast-cite template to format correctly (and quickly) weeks before the 2012 Presidential Election. From that knowledge, I was able to rewrite the Lua-based CS1 cite templates, when Uncle_G left for 3-month wikibreaks, and completed the Lua transition of those complex, 178-parameter cite templates in March 2013 (based on "experimental" knowledge), to reformat most major articles 2x-3x faster, and explain to MediaWiki developers how Lua was too slow (compared to templates 500/second) to hit the Lua 10-second timeout limit, and some developers quickened the Lua Scribunto interface, within 3 weeks, to run almost 2x faster. When Template:Infobox joined the wp:CS1 cites as Lua, then we got 3x-4x faster edit-previews. Likewise, Jimbo advised the VisualEditor (VE) crew to accept square brackets "]" as an alternate VE wikilink form, but the advice was rejected due to other concerns; however, Jimbo was not merely "sitting on a talk-page" but rather actively offering keen advice to reduce thousands of "" tags entered by confused users. Those are some complex cases of Jimbo actively guiding WP in massively important ways, while also performing other duties for the Foundation. Plus, his shepherding of this talk-page (for years) has provided thousands of users (see: pageview stats) with a rational, alternative discussion (solution) venue, while getting the related advice from Jimbo when he has time, without the uncontrolled insults seen in other discussion pages. Thinking objectively, the use of this talk-page as an wp:ATTACK-page is typically "unproductive" because the insults drive away helpful users and descend into tangents consumed with disparaging remarks. Per wp:FOC: "Focus on content" not the contributors. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

has committed an act of plagiarism (because plagiarism is defined as: "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." by Google, "to use the words or ideas of another person as if they were your own words or ideas" by Merriam-Webster, "the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own." by Oxford Dictionaries, or "plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source." by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, amongst others.)