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WP:COI+

I posted here about WP:COI+ once before, but there's been a lot of development over the past months to make it a more streamlined proposal. I'd love you to take a look and leave feedback.

I intend for COI+ to seek a middle ground between the current ambiguity of WP:COI and the severity of Bright Line prohibitions on any direct editing. This is particularly important because the community has identified that there is some problem with WP:COI but also found no consensus to outright ban paid editing.

• The 2009 RfC to ban paid editing closed with no consensus.
• The 2012 RfC on COI closed with no consensus as well.
• For as many people who have supported a prohibition on direct editing there is another editor who calls COI a distraction and cites WP:NPOV as the only relevant policy.

For those reasons, I simply don't believe that Bright Line will ever gain consensus. I also happen to think it's not ideal, as it could drive paid advocates under ground, it has no requirement for disclosure, and it offers no reasonable assurance to paid advocates of a timely response to their suggested changes.

COI+ is designed to address each of those concerns:

• COI+ would appeal to paid advocates by welcoming them to the community, educating them about our mission and policies, and guiding them towards constructive interaction;
• COI+ would require disclosure--in triplicate--on user pages, relevant article talk pages, and with links to COI declarations in comment signatures
• COI+ would set a 1 month time limit on edit requests: if no editor even responded to a paid advocate's suggestions or proposed changes within a month--after going through talk pages, help boards, noticeboards, and OTRS--then a paid advocate could make a change directly, if they left clear notice on the article talk page and at the COI noticeboard.

I am drafting a Signpost op-ed introducing COI+ to run in the next month or two, with an RfC to follow. At first COI+ would merely be an aspirational, voluntary agreement. It could, however, be a bridge forward towards a more comprehensive, instructive, and hopefully effective guideline for COI editors and particularly paid advocates. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about it. Ocaasi 17:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Er, well, you're probably not going to win over too many hearts and minds here by talking about "the severity of Bright Line prohibitions on any direct editing". Bright Line is an extremely liberal and lax policy, which allows the Misplaced Pages to be gamed shamelessly. A more reasonable policy would be "If you are being paid to engage in reputation management for a client, you should instead go away now. Go corrupt Yelp or somebody else".

Framing the issue in this way reminds me a bit of the Sunday morning talk shows -- you know, "Today we have a conservative who maintains that poor people should be shot like dogs, and a liberal who holds that they should only be imprisoned at hard labor". This is not a useful discussion to have, I don't think.

Of course you are correct that this can't be stopped. After all, it's a wiki. Anyone can write whatever they want for any reason they want. (There are some exceptions, but even these are not absolute.) However, rather than just throwing up our hands, we should fight, I would say. "Driv paid advocates underground", if it were possible, would certainly be a good start and a far sight better than allowing them into the clubhouse, for instance.

I mean, I'll look at it, but if you're looking for ways to "appeal to paid advocates by welcoming them to the community" and offer "reasonable assurance to paid advocates of a timely response" (sorry, Mr Peabody sir, we'll clean up your article right away) and so on, I think you're more likely to get a positive response at the Cooperation project.

Sorry to be discouraging, but my experience is that "disclosure" has essentially zero value here. If this was a newspaper or magazine or other entity with an editorial staff, then "Full disclosure: I was paid big bucks by the subject to write the following material" would be grounds for instant rejection. However, it's different here. For one thing, the biggest contingent of editors here are Americans, and as the saying goes "the business of American is business"; private entities are especially valorized here. Beyond that, we have, even more than America in general, a large contingent of people who are eager to carry water for private entities -- whether they are libertarians, babbits manque, kids who are naive and/or just flattered by the opportunity, or whatever. Disclosing that one is a paid agent is not going to get the response "Hmmm, I wonder what this person is leaving out or spinning" from a lot of people; they'll take the material at face value even so. So speaking just for myself, no, I don't think disclosure is particularly helpful, although a number of people do hold that it's helpful, so I could be wrong about that. Herostratus (talk) 03:01, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I understand your position. I still hold that disclosure is better than the alternative and we will especially attract constructive corporate/for-profit editors with that stance. In fact, several COI editors I talk tell me that their job/company/ethics board/membership organization formally requires disclosure. I don't see why we wouldn't want to take advantage of that. As for Bright Line being too 'lax', well the community has never found consensus for even that, so what's the chance they'll find consensus for something even more stand-offish? COI+ has a chance of actually being supported by the community. What matters to me is that it's a significant improvement over the current state of affairs--which is admittedly vague and toothless--not that it's perfect. I still want you to comment at the proposal talk page, and ultimately in the RfC. Cheers, Ocaasi 05:29, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on whether disclosure is better than the alternative, then. I don't agree that there's no consensus for Bright Line and don't think you should say that. Let me ask you instead: show me where the community has, at any time or in any place shown consensus -- that is, general agreement, or at any rate a clear and large supermajority -- for the idea that paid agents should edit articles directly specifically for the purpose of enhancing their clients reputation. You can't. The community has expressed no such consensus. Framing the issue in ways that conceal this is not helpful, and you should probably stop doing that, I'd say.

It is true that some -- many, probably -- members and associates of this WikiProject do support the idea that paid agents should be allowed here, but if and only if they go disclose their position, in one way or another. However, you shouldn't misunderstand this; it's only a tactical position. It's not as if these people aren't hated and feared; they are. The only disagreement is over the best way, tactically, to control them. Herostratus (talk) 07:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm content with agreeably disagreeing, but I do think we're somewhat closer than it appears. Bright line prohibitions on any direct editing failed to gain consensus in both the 2009 RfC and the 2012 RfC. That's just a fact, albeit an unfortunate one from your perspective. As for consensus that paid agents should edit articles to enhance their clients reputation, that's not even wrong, because it's obviously banned by WP:NPOV and WP:NOT. The question is, are 'paid agents' prohibited from making a neutral, well-sourced contribution? The answer WP:COI provides is "No. But they are 'very' strongly discouraged from doing any editing." That is why I believe COI+ is arguably more strict than WP:COI. I understand the tactical position and I have no qualms with being pragmatic. I also want to avoid harm to Misplaced Pages, I just have a different idea about how to accomplish that. I also think it's harmful when public relations professionals say, I tried to Misplaced Pages to fix an error and I was banned/reverted/ignored. I think we can make some improvements to turn those conflicts into opportunities. Thanks for voicing your disagreement so conscientiously. Cheers, Ocaasi 07:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I think you're misapprehending a key fact: It's generally impossible to get consensus on anything here. One definition of "consensus" is "unanimity". We don't use that strict a definition, but we do use something akin to "general agreement". That can be taken to mean more or less "most everyone, not counting a few bitter-enders, trolls, people who just don't get it, and maybe a very small scattering of others". Well good luck getting that for a major policy proposal. In the early days it was different, but the last really major proposal I remember going through was WP:BLP, and that was -- what, six? -- years ago, and it was heavily pushed by the foundation and addressed a problem that was both clearly bad and possibly existential, plus SlimVirigin is very good at politics I guess. Now, this does not apply to minor policy points, or to points that might seem minor (such as someone slipping a word into a policy that substantially changes the meaning), or low-attendance forums such as policies on how Mongolian is to be transliterated. None of these apply to COI+, though.

To drill down more specifically, in order to get COI+ accepted as a policy, you will need to meet one of these four criteria:

1. Consensus, which is (to simplify) basically everyone agreeing. Well that is not going to happen.
2. Or a supermajority agreeing. This is iffy because of the possibility of sockpupppets, outside interests (single-purpose accounts), general confusion, and other things. The definition of a "supermajority" varies (I think there's some material on this somewhere) but I think it's around 67% to 75% depending on the case. The more important the case the higher a supermajority required, I believe. Well you're not going to get 75% of Wikipedians to agree on anything, so that's out.
3. Or a clear preponderance of argument such that most any reasonable and informed person would agree that one side has the superior argument. That's not going to happen here.
4. Or an out-of-process action such as person closing the proposal with a decision even though none of the above is met. This can and does happen with minor issues but cannot happen with a major and well-attended and fraught issue like COI+.

So none of this is going to happen, I would bet. However, discussing it is good and useful. It's good to raise the point and this fine work, and I'm not denying that.

Here's something else: given the above, I could if I wished propose a policy along the lines of "Paid advocacy editing, including direct editing of articles, shall be allowed. Certain restrictions will presumably apply, and we will propose those later, but we want to establish this basic point first".

Well of course that would fail, and I could then say "Well, look, the community very clearly declined to accept the proposition that paid advocacy editing of articles should be allowed under any conditions". Probably I should do this, just to stop you from saying the converse ("the community very clearly declined to accept the proposition that paid advocacy editing of articles should not be allowed").

You see what I'm saying? You see what I did there? Now up to this point I'm willing to grant that you just didn't realize this point and were not intentionally gaming the issue for polemical purposes. However, now that I've pointed this, you don't have this excuse anymore, so you can stop doing that now.

If you don't, then I will have to drop other tasks and go ahead and advance a proposal along the lines of "Paid advocacy editing, including direct editing of articles, shall be allowed. Certain restrictions will presumably apply, and we will propose those later, but we want to establish this basic point first", and then after it fails maybe you (and others) will stop doing that. Hopefully I won't have to go through this pointless and time-consuming exercise. Herostratus (talk) 16:16, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm far, far too politically naive to have anticipated that tactic. And if I appeared to do so it would be out of obtuseness not intent. I actually like, believe, support, and understand COI+. I haven't thought past the RfC except to think that if it gets rejected for conflicting with WP:COI than I'd have to propose it in a different RfC altogether which seeks to clarify the policy and resolve the discrepancy. Really, I'm a bit nauseated by those kinds of tactics and I don't plan to engage in them. I will continue advocating for what I think is the best policy but not with tricks. I believe that COI+ has a chance because the alternative is infinite conflict. The camps are entrenched, the on-the-ground problem grows, and nothing is changing. COI+ is a voluntary protocol to try out a way out of that mess. If it works, great, maybe it could influence policy. If it fails, that's fine, maybe I can influence policy. In any case, I actually like your hypothetical RfC proposal and it's basically exactly what I would seek should COI+ fail on policy grounds. I agree that consensus is hard especially for controversial subjects but I crafted COI+ to be at least tolerable by all sides. So that they can say at least,"Well, I don't like it, but I prefer it to the impassable status quo." I'm a pragmatist, and I think this is something we can do better without harming our core principles. Just my approach, others will try theirs, I just think mine could actually work and gain 'consensus'. Ocaasi 18:31, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, I see where you are coming from, in one sense: you are genuinely trying to craft a proposal that will achieve consensus and be adopted. This is admirable, and a lot better than sniping from the sidelines or just proposing vague ideas without doing the hard of work of crafting an actual reasonable proposal, which is what a lot editors do. So so far so good, and congratulations and a hat tip for that. Speaking just for myself, I think your prospects for success are dim, per the four numbered points I outlined above. I could be wrong about that, though.

Beyond that, I myself don't support COI+. But then I am pretty far left on this matter, and other good-faith watchers of this page might think it's the best compromise that can be achieved. I wish you good luck on a personal level as a hard-working, thoughtful, well-spoken, and apparently nice editor (more of which we can always use). I can't wish you good luck on actually shepherding the proposal through to adoption, though, as I oppose it on the merits.

As far as my other, smaller point above (the the failure of the community to accept Bright Line as a policy doesn't really mean anything), I (think I) understand where you are coming from: the community has declined to support Bright Line, so you are like "OK that's a dead letter, so let's see what we can do that we can get adopted". That's a reasonable response. I'm just saying that if the sequence of events had played out such that it been proposed (and rejected, as I think likely) that paid-agent direct editing of articles was to be permitted at all, ever, then we'd be in a different place. I suppose then you might be like "OK direct editing is a dead letter, so let's see if we can maybe craft a Bright-Line-type solution that can be adopted". You'd do this, I guess, if your main motivation was to construct whatever solution is adoptable and thus end the uncertainty and bickering.

If this does describe you, you probably have a technocratic bent ("Let's just solve the problem"), which I personally find admirable generally. Most people aren't that way, so I dunno how far you're going to get with this, though. Herostratus (talk) 02:43, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Herostratus. There is rarely consensus for anything - COI least of all - and it is not a tactic, but a good point that there is no consensus for or against the Bright Line. In my view, it is much more productive to give editors "advice" based on real-world legal precedence than for Misplaced Pages to seek to "regulate" or "enforce" itself. We can hardly enforce our own policies anywhere that is not closely watched, neither alone enforce standards in the real-world.

Ocaasi's efforts like COI+ are extremely sympathetic, while Herostratus is aggressive. Hero's tactics would not only drive paid editing underground, but essentially stand by articles that are shameless attack pages and tell those the articles represent they have no recourse.

Consensus is impossible. What is needed is compromise between editors like Ocaasi and Hero, so we can figure out what is most practical in most cases. CorporateM (Talk) 15:04, 20 January 2013 (UTC) (Frequent COI contributor)

Yelp!

Hm.

I'll have more to say about this presently. Herostratus (talk) 05:02, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The more I have to say is this: this inspired me to create {{Corrupt (organization)}}, which we probably ought to deploy.

If it was up to just me, I'd love to add something along the lines of "Some Wikipedians abhor this situation and feel that actions such as boycotting the offending organizations are in order", but I suppose that, though the statement is certainly true, this might be a bridge too far. Maybe not though. Herostratus (talk) 05:10, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Boycotting? That sounds rather excessive to me.

I tried tweaking the wording slightly; often the most problematic promotional editing is by the subject of an article rather than somebody they explicitly hired to promote them. There's not much point having a template with dire warnings of the problems of promotion, if it's not applicable to some of the worst self-promoting articles. (And having two very similar templates would create new problems needlessly). Does the new wording look OK? bobrayner (talk) 12:46, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Tone down the goals?

Can we make the goals and principles a little tamer? I hesitated to put my name on here because I don't really agree with a lot of that stuff, even though I support collaboration in investigating and remediating secretive paid advocacy. Gigs (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Tone down? I think not. I think this: if an editor is paid to do so, they should be proud and declare it, in each and every edit summary {"$e" or "Paid edit"), or get out (btw, don't edit articles not paid for - pro is pro, after all). I'm so far right on this, I think this project is weak, and COI+ is even weaker, and everyone at CU who professes "we don't fish" and elects not to root out paid and COI editors and socks should be replaced, because they are, each and every one of them, betraying and undermining Misplaced Pages's independence and credibility. Tone down nothing. --Lexein (talk) 12:46, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Cannot tell if Poe's Law....but whatever the case, disallowing someone from working on most articles because they happened to be a so-called 'paid editor' is 100% contrary to the entire point of Misplaced Pages. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:35, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Lexein, I think this wikiproject could be a valuable way to collaborate in investigation and monitoring of covert paid editing. As you said, SPI/CU often won't do it, as they don't consider it within their scope. COIN fills part of that role, but I think there are other ways we can improve on that. But having such extremist stated goals undermines that I think. People aren't going to want to be associated with this and its extremist platform, which isn't even entirely self-coherent (is the problem overt editing or covert?). I know I was very reluctant to even get involved here because of it. Gigs (talk) 14:20, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, if a wide range of opinions isn't allowed, why ask questions? I think Misplaced Pages has the right to strongly defend itself against opportunist manipulation, overt or covert. Two recent events inform my opinion, I can write about them publicly or privately. --Lexein (talk) 15:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure it's allowed, but that kind of stuff is better in an essay than as the goals of a Wikiproject. I think focusing on extremism here is going to damage the credibility of the Wikiproject and its real potential as a tool to coordinate investigations and remediation of covert and abusive biased editing. A lot of editors interested in this topic area are going to wind up "working both sides of the fence" in the future as we have more promotional editors disclosing and wanting to do the right thing. I'm a prime example of this. I'm one of the primary drafters of the latest proposal on paid advocacy, yet I'm working with some declared COI editors as we speak. Gigs (talk) 16:37, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Well Gigs you have a point in that the pages need to be updated and some material clarified so forth (I hope to do some work on that presently). To answer your specific question ("is the problem overt editing or covert?"), I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd say both. (For an analogy, imagine that some people in your state are giving bribes to judges under the table, while others are giving bribes openly (imagine for this thought experiment that they can do this). Would it be helpful to frame the situation as "Well, is the problem the covert bribery, or the open bribery? After all, it can't be both". I wouldn't find that a helpful way to frame the situation.)

Now, what we do have here are, to borrow from Margaret Thatcher, "wets" and "drys". "Drys" believe that paid reputation-management editing should be excoriated, its practitioners shamed and driven from the Misplaced Pages in disgrace (while recognizing that this not possible and the net effect will be just to drive it underground, but for various reasons believing that this is still the best course.)

"Wets" also believe that in an ideal world we would drive aid reputation-management editing from the Wikipeia, but since it's not possible, it's better to encourage paid reputation-management editors to self-declare (and offer some incentives for this), so that at least they can be monitored. So in that sense Wets are in favor of allowing overt editing, but only for tactical reasons as the lesser of two evils. But wets and drys both disdain paid reputation-management editors, I'd think it safe to say.

I see where you're coming from, though. If I'm guessing correctly, you see open and declared paid reputation-management editing as nothing to much worry about (or maybe even a positive good), but covert paid reputation-management editing as a problem, a problem worth tracking. Hmmm. You're wetter than wet, but the help and support of people like you would be valuable, yes. I'll consider how to address your point of view in the coming days.

One problem is that we're not really set up here to deal with covert paid reputation-management editing, here on the Misplaced Pages. There are plenty of editors who are pretty obviously corrupt, but its not something that you can say out loud, so I dunno. One can't say, "look at X, Y, and Z, it's stone-cold obvious that User:CorruptHack is corrupt". We are enjoined to assume good faith, and if the user proclaims innocence, there's no where much to go with that information. (We could follow him around and clean up after him, is all). There's not even really a place to go and say "it defies credibility that person is not corrupt, ban him" because there isn't really any rule against being corrupt. There should be, but probably never will be, so I don't know... I've suggested before that this sort of thing needs to be done off-wiki, maybe...

I'm looking at the SlimVirgin thing, and one thing I have a big problem with is "Paid advocates may suggest changes on article talk pages". In practice, this devolves to "Paid advocates may post a completely new, entirely re-written version of their client's article, which presents their client in an entirely favorable light, on the articles talk page. Paid advocates may include in this new version such GA-worthy enticements as plenty of properly formatted refs, lots of attractive pictures, proper sectioning and formatting and professional-level prose and so forth. Paid advocates may then be assured that some other editor will happily post the new version (perhaps with unimportant changes) over the existing article, and Bob's your uncle. Paid advocate need not concern himself over the second editors motivation -- whether he valorizes private entities generally, or is naive and credible, or just likes to please, or was seduced by the all the GA-level goodies, or whatever -- but is free to enjoy his well-earned steak dinner in good conscience." Herostratus (talk) 02:22, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

That's a reasonable summary. If I'm wetter than wet though, the community at large must be "fully immersed", since a lot of people consider even my positions radical. Meanwhile the goal statements on this project are so far dry that they would even ban things like the reward board if taken literally. Gigs (talk) 18:20, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll take a look at that presently. Herostratus (talk) 06:17, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Though perhaps not with his tone specifically, I agree with Hero on a second count to an extent. I think there is honorable work to do here and the "steak dinner" comment is not representative of the size of corporate Misplaced Pages budgets (I'll give you a hint, zero companies have a dedicated budget for Misplaced Pages). Wikipedians frequently say companies have "millions of dollars to throw at the problem" when in actuality the worst behavior comes from people that are paid $20.

A company could have a generally negative reputation and through cherry-picking, etc. write what appears to be a neutral article, but is in actuality quite bias. For example, I came across the Lifelock article a while back. I could see how - if the article didn't exist - it could be written in a much more favorable light and the editor reviewing it at AfC would be none the wiser. Disclosure is a step in the right direction, but it's not a fix-all.

The re-writes are done by someone like WWBTOO or myself, but the majority of PR participation is not done this way and I don't think it's representative to focus on editors like us, which are a small minority.

I agree with Hero that editors are not customer service for PR and making promises on timeline is not appropriate, unless of course it is an issue of defamation or clear factual errors, where we should feel a greater responsibility to make sure Misplaced Pages is accurate and fair.

I think there is a sense that Misplaced Pages's neutrality is so holy, that even the slightest skew from neutral is an offense, but in practice articles on companies is a junk-yard and editors themselves have bias that often exceeds that of a paid editor. A GA article may still have very minor issues of bias, but its neutrality would still far exceed that of most company articles. CorporateM (Talk) 15:32, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I think CorporateM has made a really good point here. The worst behaviour that I've seen emerge from COI editing has been from the kind of editor you can hire for $5 on certain websites where "freelancers" tout their IT skills - I've seen copyvio, drastic distortion of what sources say, &c. However, this has been on articles about relatively obscure topics. When RandomMegacorp decides to ask somebody to spend a week improving their article, that person is much more likely to follow en.wikipedia's rules. bobrayner (talk) 15:55, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, you're right. I think that far and away the most slanting in Misplaced Pages is probably by unpaid folks who just have a person point of view. Several areas where people feel strongly -- religious, political, ethnic, etc. are prone to this. Of course, that's entirely out of the purview of this page, and I don't have much to say about that. (Although I'd be very surprised if there was no significant money in play on Israeli-Palestinian issues.)

And then, there are people who have a grudge against a particular company. (I've suggested a sort of BLP for companies to address this (here: User:Herostratus/Articles about extant organizations), but I've not really pushed it and it hasn't gained any traction yet. Anybody who wants to is invited to popularize it.) That's a problem I suppose, but is outside the scope of this page, although it is involved in the discussion, since this is used as a reason for the needed presence of paid editors. This is a reasonable point (one that I don't buy, but reasonable). But not our concern here, directly. (There are also people who are not paid but are just very enthusiastic and supportive of a particular company, or private companies as a class; again, out of our direct scope, I guess.)

And finally, there are plenty of editors who are obviously working as paid reputation-management editors, who don't declare themselves as such. This is a problem, and we are kind of limited to what we can do with those editors. But we can deal with their edits, and I think in some cases we can cite reasonable cause to believe that they're flacking, and move against them. Much more importantly, we can move against their clients, against the corrupting as well as the corrupt... by opening the possibility that we will make them famous. (Not all of them, but one of them. We don't know -- and more importantly, they can't know -- which one, but someday a notable entity may well engage in egregious, toxic, covert, and yet incontrovertibly obvious behavior such that this might come into play. We'll see. But any covert contractor who doesn't discuss this downside possibility with their client is engaging in misfeasance (or malfeasance) so egregious as to constitute a glaring tort, I would think. Something for people to think about, maybe.

Anyway, getting off topic, but as to following Misplaced Pages's rules when engaging in corrupt behavior is not really a plus in my book. I'd much rather see obvious slanting, misciting of sources, overly promotional tone, and other bush-league tricks. Much more likely to be found and corrected, and better than the subtle slantings of the real pro.

Oh well, the world is changing. Check this out: . If this is the future, though, I'd much rather see us follow The Atlantic and directly sell space (and articles) to corporations directly, and pocket the funds ourselves. There's no gain for use when the funds flow to third parties. Herostratus (talk) 22:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Rather than labeling the skew as more offensive, because it is mild, I would call it tolerable, when it is in fact within tolerable limits. Even FAs may have some bias and there is no article anywhere, nor any editor that is purely neutral, because neutrality is an impossible ideal we merely strive for.

However, to what extent such bias is in fact "tolerable" is something that varies widely depending on who you ask. I think you are correct to point out the difference, because intentional bias for money is more offensive than personal bias, and whether such bias is in fact "intentional" is difficult to measure. CorporateM (Talk) 20:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

images

Just made these for useboxes etc. Herostratus (talk) 02:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Template

Made a new template. Haven't deployed it yet, and welcoming discussion and improvements from any quarter. It is called {{Corrupt (organization)}} and looks like this: {{Corrupt (organization)}} It's currently up for deletion, here, in case anyone's interested. (I don't know if this notice constitutes canvassing, but I'm crossposting over atWP:COOPERATION also so I think that's OK). Herostratus (talk) 16:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

eLance

I just took a stroll through eLance. I understand that we routinely get very poor work from editors hired on the site. I actually did submit myself for one, where it appeared there was a legitimate need and the company suggested they were both notable and cared about honesty/integrity. However, I wonder if editors from PaidWatch and/or COOP should be watching eLance for stuff like this.

How would we handle it? Submit a proposal for $0. Tell them if there is genuine defamation, we will handle it for free. Why should anyone need to hire someone to get rid of defamation on Misplaced Pages? We should care about this.

On the other hand, often the Co calls it defamation, when it is actually the case that the facts reflect poorly on them. In any case, it seems likely they will hire a paid editor to whitewash the page and an editor willing to intervene has a shot at changing their path. CorporateM (Talk) 15:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC) (frequent COI contributor)

I am going to suggest we seriously consider it. Obviously, it would best be implemented by individuals--we do not need a WP policy for it. . I would not be willing to do it myself, because i simply do not want to appear in any way on that site. But others might want to think about it. DGG ( talk ) 06:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I have an eLance listing. Writers who took the assignment linked to above, in late February, were: "Jive Pepper", "Barbara Peterson", "Casey Shea", and "Fergus M." The employer, who claimed their Misplaced Pages article was being used to defame them, is a corporation based in London. That's all I can tell you.

I'll be glad to do similar investigative work for any of you; but I'm too busy in my paying jobs to spend all day trolling eLance for this kind of crap. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:42, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Name II

Not having any objections at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Paid Advocacy Watch/Archive 2#Name, and seeing as the previous renaming was a movement out of my userspace without my knowledge or consent, and seeing as that other project is named "Cooperation", I figure that we too need a little more sporty moniker, so I've moved this from "WikiProject Paid Advocacy Watch" to "WikiProject Integrity". Discussion welcome. Also intend to update a little bit. Herostratus (talk) 01:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

some tweaks

I made a bunch of tweaky edits. Mostly just updates, but also an intro section. I think I toned it down a bit from the "Founding Principles" page, which I also edited to note that it's just an essay by the founder and not a controlling document. Changes, suggestions, complaints welcome. Herostratus (talk) 03:49, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Copyright ownership in Elance paid to hire contracts

In most paid to hire contracts in Elance the copyright is owned by employer not by the paid editors who post on site. In simple terms if you order a private work the contractor cannot sell it to someone else.Elance Service Agreement and as per this It states Owner of the Copyright in a Work Made for Hire .If a work is made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is the initial owner of the copyright unless both parties involved have signed a written agreement to the contrary.This issue also appears to have raised here regarding Arturo at BP and also in paid to hire in general. Is it not right that there work copyrighted to the Individual or the Company and in that is it not imperative that WP:ORTS permission be is needed from the copyright owner of the work.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 07:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

In this Elance Ad someone wants a Misplaced Pages page to be created do not think it has been created.But a line states in the Ad All content will remain copyright of myself. Integrity is a key focus on this job as well. One needs to sign into Elance to read the last 2 lines. Most Elance ads ask for wiki pages to be created and the paid editors will be clicking the Save button and not the copyright owner and thus have not agreed to licensing under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 09:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The response is here.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm. My assumption is by clicking "Save Page" you are donating your work irrevocably under our licensing terms, and this supersedes any prior agreement or contract. But Moonridden girl writes "What would happen is that the company would contact the WMF and issue a takedown for the content. WMF would comply, and the material would be taken down." I assume that Moonriddengirl knows what she's talking about. I don't know if she's saying we would do this a practical matter to avoid possible litigation, or that we are actually required to and would lose any litigation if we didn't. This raises a couple of questions, one being, what if the material has become intertwined with other editor's contributions, another being, if this applies to corporations and their agents I don't see why it wouldn't apply to anyone else. All you would need is a signed piece of paper saying that copyright of your contributions devolves to (say) your brother. Then if you leave the Misplaced Pages in a huff, your brother could brandish the paper and demand that all of your 35,000 edits be removed, and we'd have to. This seems non-optimal. I'll ask her to clarify.

In addition, WP:ISU says "Misplaced Pages's policy is that usernames should not be shared between more than one individual". The meaning of "shared between" is open to interpretation I guess. User:MegaCorpPRDepartment is not allowed, and certainly any account to which more than one person knows the password is not allowed. Even if only one person holds the password, but another person has the practical right to say "Type this stuff I wrote into the Misplaced Pages" then that is also multiple control and not allowed, I'm pretty sure. (If a second party has only general oversight but can't require the account holder to type any specific text, it's murkier, and maybe allowed, but I don't think that this has ever been decided.) Herostratus (talk) 04:08, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

the company is hiring the editor to insert material in Misplaced Pages . The intent of the company is to have the material stay in, not have it removed, and they can only do this by giving a free license. They would nonetheless own the copyright (or the editor would if such is the agreement) They own it in the same way as I have a copyright in everything I contribute here, and you do in everything you contribute. This doesn't affect the license, which is not revocable. The ownership doesn't matter. Having licensed it to us, they cannot ask for its deletion as a copyvio. If someone were to claim that the person who contributed it did not actually own it or have authority to license it, that's the same as any other copyvio. DGG ( talk ) 23:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

If I'm understanding Moonriddengirl correctly, the typist's implied licensing to us does not supersede the prior contract ("Everything you write belongs to me, your employer"), and in fact the company can, if it for some reason changes its mind and is unable to remove the material through normal means, ask the WMF to have the material removed (via Notice and take down and we are bound to comply. This right of removal does not apply to normal editors, because (if I'm getting this right) for us there is no superseding contract and our donation was freely and properly made can't be reneged on. So this extra level of complication actually gives hiring corporations more control over their donation than we have.

One result of this is that only most, and not all, of our material is actually free to reuse, at least technically, and we shouldn't state or imply otherwise. (As a practical matter any downstream user getting in trouble is unlikely, but you never know.) This is a huge deal, and another reason why these kind of complex webs of obligation are very problematic.

I think that talk page posts etc. are licensed the same as article edits. And my take is that if the person typing the material is not free to donate his work to use, then de facto he is not in full control of the account. And that's not allowed. So anyone is doing work for hire, certainly if openly proclaimed and probably if reasonably inferred, the account should be blocked on sight. Even if he's only editing talk pages.

I don't know if this point would gain much traction, but if not, we should certainly stop stating or implying that our material is always free to reuse. Herostratus (talk) 02:15, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

In work for hire done by a paid Editor the content will have removed if the Contracter( ex Elance Ad giver) objects and it has been done in one case ie if refuses to licence it under CC-BY-SA and the GFDL only the copyright owner can do it.Any user can post content only if he holds the copyright or has necessary permission from WP:ORTS or the work is not copyrighted.

Herostratus appears to be right here. As Moonriddengirl wrote

That was not a case of a work for hire situation. That was a person who had assigned rights in his work to his publisher and then tried to license them later to us as well. I've been trying to explain "agency" to Herostratus, but I'm not sure I'm communicating that clearly enough as he doesn't seem to really be following it. In terms of compliance with DMCAs, yes, of course we comply. We're legally subject to OCILLA. --Moonriddengirl 15:34, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

BP has been rewriting BP

It seems that BP has been rewriting the article about itself since last July, with the help of a small number of editors who agreed to insert the company's drafts. The result is that BP has written around 44 percent of the article. See here for a description of what happened.

Smallbones has started a discussion about it at WT:COI with a view to introducing a change in the guideline to make sure this can't happen again. The section begins at Misplaced Pages talk:Conflict of interest#BP and large company editing in general, and there are proposals for change at Misplaced Pages talk:Conflict of interest#BP's rewrite of the article about itself. Input would be much appreciated. Many thanks, SlimVirgin 21:55, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, but what about the article in question? Would it be justified to revert to the pre-BP version? This seems arguably reasonable.

As to your point (at those other forums) about BP's reputation. Someday the right situation will come up for a Make Them Famous campaign. There are some companies that would not like to be known first in people's minds at "that company that tried to subvert the Misplaced Pages", and the example would be instructive to others. I don't know as this would apply to BP, since they're very large and can laugh that sort of thing off, I suppose. Herostratus (talk) 04:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, see the talk page there for a discussion. The test is the editing, not who does it. I do not se why wes hould have the least objection to their writing the article, as long as they do a proper job of it and don't try to exercise ownership against other editors. That they are using the talk page shows their willingness to abide by our policies. That responsible editors accept the material shows that it isn't blatantly promotional or self-serving or whitewashing. (I have not myself been involved in approving the material--I usually prefer to work with whatever ends up in mainspace, and leave the talk page approval part of COI patrolling to others. Personally, I think the danger from advocates against the company's policies is even greater, since they don't usually self-identify & bear no personal or corporate responsibility. If BP were to subvert WP in a crude fashion, they would certainly not shrug off the publicity. Even governments don't. If someone wanted to smear BP in a crude fashion, the editor involved is essentially invulnerable to outside criticism. If the decision of other editors is not in favor of one's preferred view, the other editors are not necessarily editing in bad faith. DGG ( talk ) 23:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is, there are plenty of editors who are willing to copy and past promotional material into an article with little overview. There are a number of possible motivations for this, I think. Some editors are libertarians (or just pro-business conservatives) and are by nature eager to valorize private entities as a matter of principle. Some may think the Bright Line is bureaucratic hogwash and are willing to help another fellow get around it. Some may be naive. Some may just like to please and be helpful to a fellow person. And since there's money on the table, it'd be foolish to discount the possibility of underhanded dealing. Who knows why editors do this? But they do. Herostratus (talk) 02:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

And those editors are then considered responsible for the content that they move over. So if you can actually prove that any of it is promotional, please do. Silverseren 17:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Well you've hit the nail on the head, Silver seren. It's very difficult to "prove" anything in this world. And of course this can be exploited, and an open volunteer-led organization such as ours is particularly vulnerable to this. Kudos to you for realizing this, I suppose. However, rather than "proof" most people use preponderance of evidence or the reasonable man standard in judging most situations.

I think a reasonable man would conclude that there are some editors here who are not overt paid agents but who are willing, for whatever reason, to insert promotional material into articles with no oversight. This is too bad, and you're really not supposed to edit here if you have an agenda that supersedes the five pillars, but there are all kinds of people in the world and we're pretty open. Obviously this sort of thing subverts the intent of Bright Line and NPOV in general and damages the Wikiepedia's reputation, but what are you going to do? Take the hit and hope SS Misplaced Pages has enough watertight compartments, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 16:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Keep in mind that stock holders want their companies to look good. BP's stock fell by half after the spill and if I remember correctly, one in five people in the UK owned stock. Gandydancer (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's see, half the value of BP is... hold on while I calculate this... a whole lot of money. That has no bearing the situation I'm talking about (I hope!), which is editors carrying water for entities such as BP for free. Seems a little odd to me, but I can understand the psychology behind it. After all, BP is very rich and large and powerful and successful, and those are very attractive attributes. So enh, you know: people. Herostratus (talk) 03:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

So what is the copyright status of work done for hire?

This a request for comments and not votes and no "decision" is anticipated. I'm trying to figure out the answer to two questions:

1. It's generally universal with employment and work-for-hire contracts that the copyright for work produced belongs to the employer. So, if an edit is made to the Misplaced Pages by a person working for hire, is the material released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (like normal edits) or not?
2. If it's not, does it matter?

Obviously lawyers and persons versed in the law are especially invited to help work this out! But I'm pretty sure that these are not questions that can be answered definitely Yes or No. "Laws are predictions about what a judge will do" and this may be one of those cases where even judges might differ. This is why, even though we're going to ask the WMF legal team its opinion, other informed opinions may be useful also. If there is a case that someone can point to and say "Absolutely incontrovertibly X, per A vs B, and no judge would rule otherwise" or something, that'd be great and we can shut this down. I haven't found anything like that yet. (This talk page discussion is what motivated me to initiate this RfC, and it contains some useful discussion.) Herostratus (talk) 05:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Quick brief responses

(This is where Oppose/Support "votes" might go in some RfC's, but we're not looking for that here.)

• INAL (I am Not A Lawyer) but I've been around the track a little and my best guess is that if it came to a ruling in a court of law then No it's not released and all rights to use of the text would remain with the employer. I'll expound more in the section below. No it doesn't matter much to me (I'm not really a copyright hard-liner), but it could, and I'll also expound in the appropriate section below.

Extended discussion (first question)

It very clearly says on each edit page "By clicking the Save page button, you... irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL." (You, the editor, still retain the copyright, and certain rights, but for practical purposes your contribution is more or less released into the wild, providing reusers follow certain guidelines.) But that does not apply to copyrighted text. You certainly cannot paste in some copyrighted text and say "Well, yes the text was copyrighted, but when I clicked "Save page" I released it under CC-BY-SA 3.0, and that supersedes any previous status, unfortunately for the previous copyright holder". You won't get very far with that argument.

Well, work done for hire is also copyrighted by someone other than the actual typist. It is copyrighted by the employer (unless special provisions otherwise are made in the contract, which is almost never done). This also applies to work done as a salaried employee as part of one's job duties.

For legal purposes, there is little difference between a person typing some text into the Misplaced Pages as work for hire, and a person typing in a verbatim copy of the company's web page, or any other copyrighted material, I think. (A judge might make a distinction, but who knows?) In all those cases, the text is not released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 because the person clicking the "Save changes" button didn't have to right to make that donation.

This seems right to me. There could be the argument of implied consent maybe, but I'm not sure that it'd be informed consent. Did the employer consider, for instance, that releasing the work allows a satirical attack site to reuse the work he paid for and owns the copyright to, and there's nothing he can do about it? I'd like to see a signed document by the copyright holder releasing under CC-BY-SA 3.0 if I were judging the case.

(It's possible for the company to release the text under CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Misplaced Pages:Requesting copyright permission but this is assuming that this has not been done, and then there's the question of whether blanket coverage ("We release everything typed by our Agent X") would suffice or whether each edit would have to be released.)

Whether, as a practical matter, this is worth considering, is a different matter, for the section below. Herostratus (talk) 05:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree with your conclusion of "In all those cases, the text is not released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 because the person clicking the "Save changes" button didn't have to right to make that donation" for reasons explained repeatedly in the discussion on this at my talk page. The same contract that creates the "work for hire" situation creates agency, by which the person who writes and posts the content here licenses the content on behalf of the employer. --Moonriddengirl 15:41, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
• I firmly stand behind Moonriddengirl here. The notion that someone would be hired for the explicit purpose of writing text on a medium that is prominently known to be under a free license yet somehow not be entitled to produce that very text is nonsensical. There is a very remote risk that this may not be understood when very small organizations commission freelance editors for short term actions. Such situations are best dealt on a pragmatical case-by-case basis. MLauba 12:44, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Extended discussion (second question)

So, assuming that the copyright does remain with the employer, does it matter?

Well, certainly the employer has the right to ask have the material removed if he changes his mind (and can't get the material removed through the normal editing process). He'd send a takedown request to the WMF and the WMF would almost certainly comply, per the terms of Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act; we would be bound to comply, I think. the law is complicated, and we could maybe not comply (not sure) or comply and fight back with a counter-notice to reverse the takedown order. It's pretty unlikely that we'd do that in a case like this though, since it's not at all clear that we'd win, so as a practical matter: we'd comply.

The same ability to issue a takedown could be used against to anyone reusing the material, too.

But look. How likely is this? Not very. After all, the text is probably something that the employer likes. If it was written by his agent, it probably doesn't make the employer look bad, and so why would he ever want it removed or mind if anyone reuses it?

On the hand, you never know. Looking at the recent BP contretemps, what if BP was feeling embarrassed and wanted the whole thing to go away? They could require that all the edits by their agent (including talk page edits) go down the memory hole and be oversighted. They could make the same requirement of any magazine or newspaper that had copied large sections of their agent's work for demonstration purposes (probably to the surprise of those papers who had probably assumed that all Misplaced Pages material was available under CC-BY-SA 3.0). In fact, they could even sue those papers (but not us) for copyvio and damages, but they would almost certainly not get very far because the reuser was working in good faith ignorance of the copyright status. Still, being sued by BP is probably not much fun even if you win.

All this is probably vanishingly unlikely I guess. The fact that certain tracts of text in Misplaced Pages are actually under a completely different copyright regime than most of our text (and that these two types of texts are indistinguishable) makes me a little uneasy, though. That there is text that is (at least technically) copyvio in some articles and that we know this and allow it makes me a little uneasy, too. It just seems a little too close to "Yes it's copyvio but I'm sure the person wouldn't mind" and all that. But I suppose as a practical matter this is not likely to actually cause a problem down the road. Herostratus (talk) 05:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

• Copyright does remain with the employer, just as copyright with the paragraphs above remains with you. You, too, have the right to send in a takedown notice per OCILLA, and we may or may not fight back. The certain tracts of text in Misplaced Pages under a completely different copyright regime are those rampant tracts which were added by people without right to them - not those in work-for-hire contracts, but straightforward copy-pastes. The solution to all this risk to our reusers? Stop being crowd-sourced or stop licensing our content for reuse. Neither of these are prices I'm willing to pay. :/ Instead, I try to focus my efforts on cleaning up the content added illegally to protect us and our reusers. We could sure use more help with that, at WP:CP. --Moonriddengirl 15:46, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
• As has been pointed out in the course of this discussion multiple times, the whole argument here is based on a confusion between copyright and licensing. As this whole scenario and second question hinge on this confusion, it is very simply moot. MLauba 12:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Extended discussion (third question)

As long as we're here, the unasked third question, if the answer to the first two are No and Yes, is, should we make any changes to address this? A reasonable answer is "No, we've gotten along fine so far". Another answer might be, well why not label the affected paragraphs, e.g.:

This does ugly things up a bit, but it clarifies the copyright status, which is maybe a service to reusers. This may be a WMF issue, but maybe not. Herostratus (talk) 05:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Since the answer to the first question is Yes and that moots the second one, the third question is moot as well. MLauba 12:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• This seems like a solution looking for a problem. Editors explictly state they "agree to the Terms of Use, and irrevocably agree to release contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL."

Relevant employer-employee contracts will vary on a case-by-case basis. In some cases releasing text under a CC license will be prohibited, in some it will be tolerated, in others it may be positively encouraged. Where it is functionally impossible to distinguish between an edit where a person agreeing to the explicitly stated conditions is doing so correctly or incorrectly, the only thing we can do is trust the editor. If such a copyvio were reported after the fact there are existing procedures to clean this up. LukeSurl 20:14, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe that since they are editing for someone else they will know what they are putting in, whether or not they are following the CC BY-SA Depends on what the person hiring them has told them to put in. Oftentimes those hired to write a piece that would quickly die at G11 hands do put in something that's copyrighted. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 20:49, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

DYKs for sale

FYI . There's a discussion on the Wales talk page. Coretheapple (talk) 16:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the Wales discussion to which you refer. User:Noraft (the one responsible for developing the Daphne Oseña-Paez article) admits who he is but claims that his personal account differs from his PR account. For USD 400, I could research and write articles; and here I've been just doing it for the sake of knowledge. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Coretheapple (talk) 17:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. When you said "Wales" I assumed "a place in Briton" not "Jimbo." I've since tagged the page in question with Template:Connected contributor to announce the COI problem. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, sorry for the confusion. Coretheapple (talk) 18:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Project name Duplication

WP:INTEGRITY leads to Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Text-source integrity.Can we change ours back to paidwatch ?Can we fix redirect to our project ? Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, this is a example of the good shortcut words being used up as the Misplaced Pages ages. In some cases, a good shortcut word is used for an obscure purpose, but in this case WP:INTEGRITY points to source-text integrity which is pretty important. We can consider changing our name when that other project changes their name to Wikiproject:Paid Advocacy Enablement or somesuch, I'd say. I added a hatnote at WP:INTEGRITY and also made a shortcut WP:WPINTEGRITY, if that helps. Herostratus (talk) 14:28, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Paid editing

I don't know if this is the right place to list this, but for many months now LinkedIn has been running an ad for a company that specializes in paid editing of Misplaced Pages. Invertzoo (talk) 22:06, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I saw a similar ad, possibly for the same company, in the New York Times a few weeks ago. Coretheapple (talk) 14:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Right, thanks. One of the things we can do is keep a directory of stuff like this, at the External Links section on the project page. At least that's useful for keeping track of stuff,for future reference and whatnot. I encourage anyone to add useful links to that section. Herostratus (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

You are correct.

"Writing articles that comply with the stringent rules of Misplaced Pages has become the work of experts. WikiExperts™, as its name suggests, has a team of Misplaced Pages professionals, who can represent your company in a positive, but objective manner. To protect your Misplaced Pages presence, WikiExperts has also introduced a 24/7 monitoring and repair service. When erroneous content is spotted, the changes will be undone by our staff. Your Misplaced Pages presence is completely safe against those who would misuse the website, if you entrust it to us. WikiExperts is the safe haven for your Misplaced Pages presence."

They trademarked WikiExperts. They are a safe harbor, I mean haven. Sigh. They use a seedy payment rovider, Plimus a BlueSnap company which is down for maintenance or repairs at the moment. WikiExperts offers a bona fide SSL connection, with cert auth registered to a location in Milpitas, California. I can't say the same about their payment provider, which is committing VeriSign and other seal abuse, see BlueSnap Ecommerce footer, bottom right

I have run across their CEO before, Alex Konanykhin, who otherwise seemed like a decent sort. I referred to him obliquely below, as I hesitate to "out" people who (even though "out" already) behave nicely, as it is obnoxious when done thoughtlessly. He wrote this about editing Misplaced Pages. I hadn't seen the WikiExperts website before (that URL reminds me of the website that we always giggle about on Stack Overflow, ExpertSexchange; idle aside). Alex has another, much more modest website, which was what I had seen in the past. His 2nd in command is Jay Soshnick, who should know better, as he worked for years for wholesome mainframe companies, IBM and CA! He also says he "founded Adam Jordan Associates - the leading executive search firm in the Enterprise Software Industry". (I never heard of it, but that doesn't mean much, as I don't claim to know EVERYTHING, only lots of things). It is a shame, as he looks like a nice Jewish man, good husband material, though probably too old for me but one never knows, well, maybe one does, given his current activities. I would guess that the actual Misplaced Pages editor-for-hire is employee Ellie Shoja, based on her biography. She is beautiful. --FeralOink (talk) 06:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Eyes on the behavior of Jmh649

I'm a fairly new editor, but I'm confident that independent experienced editors will find Jmh649's actions significantly harmful to Misplaced Pages.

Please see his recent edits in Cancer (second paragraph), the associated Talk, and his probable collusion with a few other editors (admin or steward?).32cllou (talk) 02:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

PS, I have been solicited, and declined, to be a paid editor. I immediately hid my email address from view.32cllou (talk) 02:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

PSS, please review the current edit by Zad68, and compare his text to his reference text.]  : "Approximately five to ten percent of cancers are entirely hereditary." The citation says essentially the opposite.32cllou (talk) 02:41, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

This isn't an appropriate location to resolve content disputes. Please use the article Talk page. There are further options available at WP:DR. Zad68 02:47, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

My concern has more to do with the pattern of abuse and collusion than the subject Cancer. Fixing the underlying problem is tantamount to improving a lead paragraph (currently not in accordance with Misplaced Pages guidelines, and the utilized references).32cllou (talk) 05:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Additional set of eyes for comments on COI policy page

I have my discussion on what I found to be an issue. My edits have been getting reverted by multiple users, but there's been no consensus building effort by the opponents. Would someone take a look at the Conflict of interest policy talk page and provide feedback ? Cantaloupe2 (talk) 11:54, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Your edits get reverted because people think they are not an improvement. There is already a consensus, and that consensus is that your edits should be rejected. "Consensus building" is not a mechanism for you to advance your preferred position over everybody else's. bobrayner (talk) 13:40, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Lasik article

A negative paid advocacy against Lasik this Ad here dated Sept 4 with a Title Need Master Misplaced Pages Publisher To Put Up Content That Won't Get Deleted!

• If you look at the following Misplaced Pages.org pages that inform, update and educate the public on LASIK, there is still much of the entire LASIK story missing. For example, Dr. Waxler who approved LASIK filed a petition to end LASIK and begin a Criminal Investigation into those in the FDA and in the industry that continue to "fabricate safety study data" and hide "bad outcomes" that should be reported to the FDA daily, but are instead ignored. We need information like this, that shows the public the rest of the LASIK story and exposes that Dr. Waxler and others are also being ignored by the industry and now by Misplaced Pages.org is "deleting any negative references made." Please, ONLY MASTER WIKI PUBLISHERS that know how to get and keep important factual information up in front of the public to protect the public. Please contact us if you are qualified and can back it up. Thank you.

The paid editing is being done by User:Muhammad Ali Khalid who also created the Morris Waxler article.Waxler who once approved Lasik is campaigning against it against this .It has apparently reached here. In the Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Dean Andrew Kantis other person involved in the Anti Lasik Campaign. Sad paid editing has come to Medical articles.His COI first came up here Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Morris_Waxler then User:Muhammad Ali Khalid is asked politely about his COI here but sadly gives a incorrect response. The Editor has another account to do other paid editing User:Just A Common Guy also does paid editing listed to him.He is aided by a few SPA accounts a editor and an editor with a COI in the Lasik article.But as per as this case Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet_investigations/Morning277 we need more evidence to file a SPA a group of Paid editor editing together is not enough.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 00:10, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks for FYI. I have posted on WT:MED to try and recruit some volunteers to help reverse the non NPOV damage done to the LASIK article. Morris Waxler article also needs to be deleted imo. Lesion (talk) 09:08, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

AfD'd Morris Waxler . Lesion (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Alexbrn boldly took on LASIK and hammered it into shape. Does anyone know if any other medical articles were affected by this campaign? I'm thinking about the pages for the side-effects of LASIK, they might have undue weight too. Lesion (talk) 18:53, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The elance job seemed to focus on specific articles around LASIK; I think we've got them all. This differs from the usual POV-pushing campaign which could leak into lots of nearby articles; if somebody's paid to do a job, they'll do that job, and won't spend their weekends spreading it ever further... bobrayner (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, thank you! Lesion (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Appreciate this being brought to our attention. This illustrates how paid editing can be deployed against companies, products and people as well as on behalf of them. Coretheapple (talk) 22:56, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The editor in question, and his socks, need to have their contributions examined closely. I see a few are up for deletion. Since this person made no disclosure we can only guess as to which ones are paid work. Coretheapple (talk) 00:10, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Lasik or Laser Eye Surgery is one of most popular surgeries with over 28 million surgeries done worldwide and one of the most viewed medical articles with 47000 views this month alone and paid negative advocacy to state it is dangerous clearly misleads the readers on a very important medical topic.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 22:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

List of paid editors?

Is there a list somewhere of paid editors? That is, editors who have declared that they edit for pay or on behalf of specific employers? If so, or if one can be compiled, I think that it would be greatly helpful in tracking the scope of paid editing for the Foundation or Jimbo, in case they plan to do something about it. Coretheapple (talk) 16:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Few paid editors are likely to want their name on a list whose only purpose is to follow round paid editors regardless of the quality of their edits. If harassment & sniping were less likely, a list might be more practical. bobrayner (talk) 16:42, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

We need to have some way of ascertaining the scope of paid editing, and the impact it is having on the project. The most direct way is to list the editors who engage in that activity. If they are harassed as a result, it can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Without a list like that, paid editing will forever remain in the shadows, which of course is where its practitioners want it to be. Coretheapple (talk) 17:24, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

There's a list at the Paid Editor Registry. How comprehensive and up to date it is I don't know. It's here: Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Integrity/Editor Registry, and there's a link to it on the main page. Of course, pages here have to conform to all Misplaced Pages rules so we can only list editors who self-identify or who are slam-dunk obvious. Stuff like this could be done better on a site set up off the Misplaced Pages. But the person running such a site would have to be pretty good, and a site that turned into a circus would a problem. I certainly don't have the resources or energy to do it. Herostratus (talk) 03:36, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

What if an editor self-identifies outside of Misplaced Pages? That appears to be the case with the Lasik situation. Coretheapple (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

PR Week article

Media related observations

There's an article at PR Week about the Wiki-PR thing. It's here, but behind a paywall, but WO has reproduced at their website, here (you have to scroll down past several screens of nonsense). I don't usually recommend reading WO except for the strong-minded since the level of vitriol there is high and that's depressing, and a fair amount of what's posted there is suspect, but they probably copied the PR Week article accurately.

To summarize:

• Wiki-PR CEO Jordan French says that of course there's a problem with PR firms editing the Misplaced Pages. That doesn't apply to his firm though since they're only here to serve humanity.
• French also says that Wiki-PR doesn't perform advocacy because they don't promote their clients but only correct inaccuracies, libel, and bias.
• French implies that he would promote clients if he could but that "doesn't make any business sense" because "that just gets reverted anyway". To the extent that that's true it indicates that the Misplaced Pages is functioning properly.
• French concluded the interview by ascending bodily to heaven on a golden chariot reserved only for those whose souls are truly pure. (OK, I made that last part up.)

Here's something interesting: French claims that they've signed up clients since the Daily Dot story broke and presumably because of it. Viacom and Priceline are "recent" clients (it's not clear if they're post-Daily Dot clients, but it's implied). Of course there's nothing we can do about Viacom, but if Priceline signed up with Wiki-PR after the Morning277 story broke and because of it that's pretty close to a declaration of war on the Misplaced Pages by Priceline, which would be an interesting move by Priceline. However, the circumstances and timing of Priceline signing up with Wiki-PR, or even if they actually did, are not established. Herostratus (talk) 04:12, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Huh, here's something else. It's from the Vice magazine article apparently (which I haven't read yet): "As far as whether Morning277 is connected to Wiki-PR, French said he couldn't really comment, given that it's unclear whether there is private litigation (or forthcoming private litigation) between the admin who blocked Misplaced Pages user Morning277 and the actual person behind the Morning277 account." I love stuff like that: if Morning277 isn't connected with Wiki-PR then there'd be no earthly reason for litigation involving Morning277 to have anything to do with whether French could comment, so I think we can take that as "Yes". Anyway, I assume that somebody's blowing smoke here, either French or Morning277. Sure hope so, although getting between Morning277 and a steak dinner is probably not the safest, judging by what he's written in his various articles. (Morning277 posts at WO under his real name; I'm not sure it's kosher to list it here though.) Herostratus (talk) 04:43, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I happened to wander by on other business, and noticed this section. I found a nice NPOV media item about recent Wiki-PR activities, Misplaced Pages investigates... that is not behind a pay wall. It is a good article, and is consistent with Herostratus's entry. The publisher is the Wall Street Journal, but the article is in German. It is in the WSJ DE version, and I can't find an English-language equivalent. However, it machine-translates very nicely into English, especially the coverage of Jordan French's activities.

Per WSJ, the salient points, translated ad hoc by Google ML and me,

• "the suspicious goings on seem to have to do with a Public Relations company named Wiki PR"
• In an emailed reply to WSJ reporter inquiry, the chief of Wiki PR, Jordan French, said that he advises customers on how they can comply with the rules of Misplaced Pages. "We follow the rules," French wrote. "We have paid editing and unpaid interest work... Our primary goal is to improve Misplaced Pages."
• "The Chartered Institute for Public Relations, an association of the PR industry, has now created a guide to the handling of PR people with Misplaced Pages entries."
• Daily Dot is mentioned lightly, as is the WikiScanner incident. There is no mention of Viacom, nor Priceline.

Time stamp is 22 October 2013. --FeralOink (talk) 05:40, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Additional media related discussion

I found the source, no pay wall, and in English! Misplaced Pages Probes Suspicious Promotional Articles. I think that WSJ did the work, and the rest used it as a foundation (with the exception of Daily Dot). Morning277 drama is described; full text of Jordan French's unctuous communiqué is reproduced too.

• "Senior Misplaced Pages administrators closed the sockpuppet investigation after concluding that we were paid editors paying other editors...We do pay hundreds of other editors for their work"
• "We say “no” to clients frequently– in a rigid effort to avoid promoting or advertising. We routinely temper client expectations on promotionalism and advertising and spend boundless time explaining Misplaced Pages’s editorial standards... professionally monitor a page."
• "Most of our arrangements are for Misplaced Pages consulting at an hourly or flat-fee rate for a period of time."
• This is so presumptuous! "What we do is get Misplaced Pages to enforce the rules so our clients are presented accurately" and "We’re always monitoring Misplaced Pages’s official policies to ensure compliance."
• I hope this is untrue: "Designing a market and eco-system can be very difficult, though Misplaced Pages’s leadership has done a pretty good job." A market? What does that mean???
  • You suggested I comment: it does indeed show that Wiki-PR does not understand WP. Taking these points on their letter you last mentioned in turn:

The point of the first comment is that they claims these other editors they hire are not sockpuppets. They do not accept that we consider meatpuppetry to be the same, and treat it similarly.

Second, I'm sure they reject clients at the very low end, but they are insufficiently stringent. Too many of their articles have been of borderline notability at best, though some few of their subjects have been actually notable.

Ihey probably do consult as well as write, presumably sometimes advising the clients to pay them for an article.

It is of benefit to WP that they tell us about abusive editing--such editing does exist and we must deal with it; the problem is they do not do it as they should, on the talk page

I think they refer to the market for writing and monitoring WP articles. They are correct that designing one is very difficult. They're businessmen and use business jargon; this is unexceptionable, as long as they don't use it on WP

Additionally, they claim they are not engaging in advocacy--but they do not seem to realise the very broad sense we use that term. But there is an overlap between advocacy and information, and that overlap is a proper area for them to operate provided they do it very cautiously and properly and declare it. They follow none of those 3 strictures. It is quite possible that they in good faith think they are doing so, in which case it's a question of competence and not listening. DGG ( talk ) 17:45, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and here's the Chartered Institute for Public Relations's manual on how to improve Misplaced Pages articles PDF. "Chartered"... chartered by whom? --FeralOink (talk) 06:42, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

See Chartered (professional). They're chartered by the UK as is normal in that country for national professional organisations. The actual advice they offer is in my opinion not just unexceptional, but very conservative--it would be suitable even for those organisations under intense public scrutiny. They do not mention for example the possibility of using the AfC process. Did you notice any problems with their document? DGG ( talk ) 17:45, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello, DGG! It is so nice to see you. Thank you! I acknowledge and appreciate your cordial response. I would guess that this, "there is an overlap between advocacy and information, and that overlap is a proper area for them to operate provided they do it very cautiously and properly and declare it. They follow none of those 3 strictures. It is quite possible that they in good faith think they are doing so, in which case it's a question of competence and not listening" is unlikely, given the following.

Jordan M. French is ethically loathsome. He is an attorney, or former attorney, as I don't know if he is a member of any U.S. state's bar. I'd guess Missouri, as that's where he clerked for federal or maybe circuit judges. He was employed by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), after being graduated from law school, and also was employed at a law firm, though not as a partner. He now owns and runs a thriving Misplaced Pages based company. He even employs sales associates, presumably to solicit business from corporate customers and others who may be in need of his company's services, to create, maintain and monitor relevant Misplaced Pages entries. I wonder if he has received venture capital funding yet? His business model seems quite viable, compared to most Web 2.0–type companies.

You see, I infer that he and his staff are business intermediaries, like so much of the widely acclaimed "knowledge economy" today. Wiki-PR employees, despite their growing numbers (obs ≥ 12), seem to contract out the actual work of editing Misplaced Pages in the style of Task Rabbit and Amazon Mechanical Turk, owned and operated by that "robber baron" of the Internet, JBezos, who is such a notorious NON-advocate of unions, organized labor and fair treatment for workers. Guess what this probably means? Jordan French, Juris Doctor of Missouri and formerly of FERC, can serve as the central clearinghouse for fee-based Misplaced Pages editing jobs, which are then offered in the style of garment worker, mid-Industrial Revolution type piece work to English-literate but impoverished individuals in Bangladesh, India, North Africa, eastern Europe and the U.S.A., thanks to the relentless labor arbitrage made possible by malignant privateer abuse of the Internet. (All content obtained within 15 minutes' worth of searching on LinkedIn, Google and Bing.) --FeralOink (talk) 04:35, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I doubt the scale of the operation is that large, nor that they have that degree of domination. The barriers to entry in this particular niche are very low. There is no infrastructure that needs capital.

In any case, I think more helpful in our present situation to state matters the way I do. The purpose of WP is not directly to bring down the capitalist system. DGG ( talk ) 17:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh, DGG! Don't be silly! I laughed, as no one has EVER suggested that I advocate actions that would indirectly or "directly bring down the capitalist system". I am a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, MBA in finance. I worked as an employee, prop trader for Industrial Bank of Japan (futures and options-on-futures on U.S. government securities ONLY. We observed Glass-Steagall!) Capitalism is exemplified by efficient, liquid and transparent markets such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and NYSE of 1935 to 2000. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, former U.S. Dept of Labor Secretary Robert Reich and brave Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke (who is free of any business, political or other principal agent-fraught connections unlike his predecessors and perfidious contemporaries) are my heros. Guess where my earlier observations about "relentless labor arbitrage" originated? Morgan Stanley! Yes, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter expressed those concerns in March 2006. Morgan Stanley is hardly against the capitalist system!

Why do you doubt the scale of Jordan French's operations? He is advertising heavily for additional sales associates. He is an attorney, clerked for several U.S. district judges, and worked for one of the most powerful, important U.S. governmental entities, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. (I am not suggesting any veiled influence or current relationship between Jordan and FERC. FERC is unsullied. And FERC can be forgiven for hiring Jordan. I think, but am not certain, that his father worked as a Professional Engineer for them. Also, FERC had the good sense to dismiss Jordan French, or encourage him to leave of his own volition.) I am certain that he is eminently qualified to run a thriving Misplaced Pages ecosystem company. If I were asked to make a suggestion about a promising investment or VC portfolio addition, I might recommend an equity stake in Jordan's company, rather than the non-differentiable, banal plethora of movie, food, book and music recommendation services, or lame startup's with a dot ly ccTLD that are merely thinly disguised personal data harvesting web apps.

Jordan's Wiki-PR is especially disturbing to me. There are other Wiki article writing companies that I have run across, but none provoke the same disquieting feeling of unease (yet). For example, consider At first I thought, ugh. But there's a difference! This guy has an internet presence that clearly identifies his activities related to Misplaced Pages. He writes about it, and he comments in public venues about Misplaced Pages editing. He edits Misplaced Pages himself. He voluntarily discloses this, without leaving promotional links, broken English or spammy machine translated verbiage. His website is functional but not slick.

There are examples of potential COI editing, yet veracity of contributed content is excellent and NPOV obeyed. There is no advocacy, no edge case WP UNDUE e.g. the auto cunnilingus horror and absurd genetic anomaly articles where there are fewer than 50 known cases to have ever been confirmed yet there is... well, just look for yourself. I don't want to be overly specific about the good editors, so will offer two vague yet documented examples. One of Warren Buffett's many nieces makes edits on one or two of her family members' BLPs. It is obvious that she loves her family, but her edits are compliant with WP rules. INET makes edits to neglected but important economist BLPs and BDPs (biographies of dead people :o) articles. They are terse, use good quality tertiary and secondary sources. When INET makes the slightest error w.r.t. WP policy, they don't need to be told twice! No sneaky reverts, no vanity press citation references, no framed or scraped Wordpress dot com hosted blogs in the external links. No Tripod, no Youtube videos, no Facebook group pages. No Weebly!

Please, DGG, do not infer that my tone is intentionally antagonistic. Some feminists on Twitter accuse me of being passive-aggressive/ snarky to them; perhaps they are correct. That is not my intent here, though. I am an emotional, sometimes high-strung woman, which does not diminish me, nor my commentary. I trust and respect your erudition and benevolent intent. Stack Overflow is good, Yelp is not. Chemists, systems administrators, librarians and friendly gun owners are good. Neo-liberals, education privateers and life coaches are not. Functional socialists, pro-union Republicans and attorneys who work on retainer are usually trustworthy. The New Deal and the U.S. Dept of Agriculture are good. Morgan Guaranty Trust was good. JP Morgan is not.

• Be right back with inline links! --FeralOink (talk) 08:28, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I prefer not to talk on-wiki about RW politics or economics or for that matter other RW issues, except to make whatever jokes seem possible. People who have inferred my own actual views have sometimes been absurdly wrong. (People who talk with me off wiki, that's another matter.)

I work equally well here with people whom I chance to know share my ideological views, and those who I would , if put to it, class as the enemy along any of several dimensions. I find most people here can similarly work with people regardless of how they would interact elsewhere. I consequently meant to say that I find it more helpful to discuss matters here in as narrow terms as possible, with the possible exception of a commitment to free culture, because that is the basis of our own existence.

I judge the evil of an editor by the results, not the motivation. I do not necessarily feel that writing for money will produce bad results, but I have seen that it often does. I also share a certain disquiet about a basically volunteer operation gettting professionalized. And I am also aware that I could make money here, as could many of us, and perhaps have a certain jealousy towards those who actually do so--especially those who do it by producing work of much lower quality than I would.

The pervasiveness of COI is inevitable, and I have realized since the day I came here that non-financial COI is by far the greater danger. But financial interests are in by comparison so obvious and unequivocal, that people find it easy to concentrate on them. DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't understand what RW meant. "Right-wing"? The only reason that I mentioned any of that, my entire diatribe, was because you advised me that the

"The purpose of WP is not directly to bring down the capitalist system."

I don't want to bring down the capitalist system! That kind of shocked me. I hope that the purpose of WP is not to directly or indirectly bring down the capitalist system. I do not believe that it is. I am sincerely, not snarky, sorry that my diatribe of outrage had political and economic overtones. The subject at hand,

1. COI conflict of interest editing involving exchange of money and
2. scaled consequence on public perception due to the widespread use of Misplaced Pages and the blind faith* that many users of the Internet have in it,

is of an inherently political and economic nature. I agree with you about not discussing politics or economics gratuitously in the venue of WP in general. You said,

"RW politics or economics or for that matter other RW issues, except to make whatever jokes seem possible."

(Deep breath, brace yourself for a bit more.) Many issues are not clearly right wing or left wing in the USA. The denigration of public school teachers, hostility toward teacher's unions, dismantling of the public education system in favor of private charters (but no religion allowed!), usurpation of state's rights with a standardized curriculum set by scions of the liberal progressive elite, who are elevated to lofty positions of federal government based on caprice and connections rather than merit, all of which is to be funded by yet more taxes with decreasing governmental accountability for use, well, that is an example. Neither RW nor LW, or maybe both. Best not to make jokes at the RW. Or take the high ground, and make jokes at RW, LW, one and all, like 4chan, but milder. Hammurabi said it best. I don't refer to Biblical interpretation, but rather the cuneiform inscriptions on his stele.

• It isn't ours, nor Jimmy Wales' fault that they have such blind faith in "The Misplaced Pages"! The worst incidents of citing questionable Misplaced Pages content that I observe are drawn from Misplaced Pages articles that have massive tags and warnings. I would always proceed with caution when I saw those banners, years before doing any editing.--FeralOink (talk) 12:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages market eco-system?

I don't understand! What is Wiki Strategies?
"Wiki Strategies provides consulting services for organizations engaging with Misplaced Pages"

Wiki Strategies is not alone in helping clients engage with online communities? They are consultants? That nice WikiWomen lady, Sarah Stierch, is there. I don't understand.

"We are proud to recommend the following consultants; in fact, we often call upon their expertise ourselves. John Wallin co-founded WikiStrategies in 2009; sold his interest in 2011 and is now an independent consultant."

Sold his interest, as in... private equity? Who is this Stella Yu?! She only "serves" the MOST uber-menschen at the rarified pinnacle of the corporate hierarchy, specifically, the CEO (and whatever "Chief Communications" and "Chief Marketing" officers are) of the U.S.A.'s Fortune 500 companies, with advice on "ethical practices" of Misplaced Pages conflict resolution,

"STELLARESULTS is a reputation management firm that serves Chief Executive Officers, Chief Communications Officers and Chief Marketing Officers of Fortune 500 corporations by helping them better understand Misplaced Pages’s valuable role of providing useful information to influence decision making. She advises on ethical practices of Misplaced Pages page development, content editing, monitoring, corporate policy, and conflict resolution."

She should change her ad copy, as Fortune 500 and other companies have a CEO, COO, CFO and either a CTO or CIO. (A Chief Communications Officer is more likely to be found in a navy, merchant marine or the U.S. Coast Guard.) Regardless, it is creepy that someone would be advertising their Misplaced Pages paid services like this. Do you have any idea of the rate at which such services would be compensated? We're not talking about a $20 meal, as they did in the paid editing proposal, more like a flat fee that is THREE orders of magnitude greater. The ironic thing is that there is very little interest in editing such individuals' BLPs. For example, I have updated the BLP of Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, without any issues of contention. I don't like his behavior, e.g. that sound-proofed, multi-million dollar Manhattan love nest where he liaises with his young Asian musician mistress and a dozen other women (see article, NPOV sources!), but I wanted check for content that was potentially libelous, or gratuitously ridiculed the people of North Korea. Note that Schmidt did NOT ridicule the people of North Korea. I thought I would be reverted and meet all sorts of resistance. Nope! That article, like many CEO-type BLPs, and not-living biographies, was too-brief and not 100% current, but decent. Similarly, other captains of industry, like Bill and Thomas Ayers' father, who was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago for decades, an enormously important person, narrowly escaped Speedy Deletion as not notable! --FeralOink (talk) 05:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia in the UK does research too Measuring Public Relations Misplaced Pages Engagement links to Public Relations... PDF Nice URL, "Intelligence PRJournal". Also, UK Wikimedia Resources for PR and more from the The Public Relations Society of America PRSA Statement on CIPR Misplaced Pages Guidelines,

"While PRSA fully understands and supports the notion that public relations professionals must respect and follow the Misplaced Pages policies and procedures as they now stand, we also broadly support the movement for change that is currently underway, led by Phil Gomes, the CREWE Facebook group and other individuals. We believe that opportunities for change exist that will benefit not only the public relations profession, but that will provide tangible benefits to Misplaced Pages..."

Emphasis mine. --FeralOink (talk) 07:19, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

again, we can only judge by the results. If they mean what they say, the change that is under way to monitor Paid editor actions more closely is indeed of benefit to ethical PR firms, to WP, and the people who use it. The idea that we can or should prohibit paid editing is absurd--we would only drive it underground. The only things I would add to our correct strategy is 1/ to say that to do without disclosure is grounds for banning, and 2/to permit those editing on behalf of an outside entity to use the entity names, as long as they are certified as authentic by a known individual-- the German WP system), DGG ( talk ) 17:11, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

It's not absurd at all. The "drive it underground" argument treats paid editors like pornographers or drug dealers, not like businessmen. Paid editing exists now because the rules are weak. If banned, the supply of editors willing to do it will dry up and the problem will be gone. Surely there will still be small companies and officials that continue to want to write about themselves; we see that every day and will continue to do so no matter what rules are or not posted. But if we stop welcoming paid editors with open arms and an everything goes libertarian philosophy, the paid editing industry will be eradicated. This isn't a societal problem, it is a business model. Coretheapple (talk) 13:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Greetings, Coretheapple! I don't want "an everything goes libertarian philosophy" for Misplaced Pages either! The edifice is fragile; in my opinion, we are coasting on the selfless efforts of our (sorry, that's presumptuous, I should say "my") Misplaced Pages predecessors. There are some exceptionally skilled, highly educated WP editors who are actively employed (and very highly compensated) in the non-WP world. Some may even be libertarians! But they work for Misplaced Pages for free. If paid editing gets out of control, I doubt that they will stick around. Nor will others. --FeralOink (talk) 03:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I used "libertarian" in the broad sense, and not as an identification with any party or political organization. Yes, your points are very important regarding editor retention. At this point I think that's what's happened is that the subject has been over-discussed, inconclusively, in at least a half-dozen forums and that we are approaching a point of diminishing returns. Coretheapple (talk) 15:45, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Useful automated tool

I just wanted to mentioned that the automated tool called STiki, while designed for vandalism, also picks up COI edits. Editors interested in monitoring such practices may want to download and use it. It would be nice if someone acquainted with the technology could design a tool that would focus entirely on COI edits, but this seems to do the job. Coretheapple (talk) 21:09, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Elance ad .Looking for a Misplaced Pages ADMIN Level ninja to help REMOVE pages and edit.

We are having disputes with Misplaced Pages and want our pages deleted . Need someone with success in Misplaced Pages, editing and getting things removed, and sticking.The ad is here.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 20:30, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh swell. Herostratus (talk) 22:05, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

New name

Not sure if anybody is much watching this, but we need a new name. We need a new name because Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Cooperation needs a new name. I originally named this project "Paid Editing Watch" because that's far more accurate, but since that other project went all markety with "Cooperation" I moved to "Integrity" because what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. However, both names are poor, and we should stick to neutral descriptive names.

This came to a head because Misplaced Pages:Co-op wasn't able to get the full range of redirects it wanted, but for me the last straw was seeing this scholarly study where the authors, fooled by the name, stuck Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Cooperation in with Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Editor Retention and so on. This sort of confusion is not helpful to anybody, so even though neither project is very active I'm going to ask the community to change the names of both similtaneously (that's only fair). WikiProject Cooperation I'm not sure what to suggest (belying their name, they didn't really cooperate with this initiative), but for this one...

I don't think that going back to "Paid Editing Watch" is good because "Paid Editing" is too broad and can be taken to include GLAM grants and Dear Old Professor Smith who is editing in his field of expertise during normal work hours and so is arguably technically being "paid" to edit (believe me, this confuses people, and of course for others its a useful red herring to obfuscate the issues). So I'm suggesting one of these two:

• Wikiproject Commercial Editing Watch
• Wikiproject Paid Advocacy Watch

Or something else if there's something better. I like the first, they're about equal really. Normally this would be a Requested Move but I'm thinking of initiating an ] for a bigger audience. Herostratus (talk) 22:05, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Elance Link Spam Ad

Our website provides a "Critic Score" for Bollywood movies. We are looking for someone to update the Misplaced Pages pages of some recent Bollywood movies with a reference to our website and the score our website provides (like Rotten Tomatoes). We believe this score would be a very informative tool to determine how critically liked an Indian movie is. We have a list of 100 Misplaced Pages pages we need updating. There only needs to be a single reference on each page. This is the Elance Ad.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 00:30, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

That's probably SahiNahi. There are not - yet - any links to it from articles on en.wiki. bobrayner (talk) 01:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

How do you know it's SahiNahi? See this. -C759 (talk) 01:54, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Misplaced Pages struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussing of linking to other sites

There is a discussing about disallowing linking to other sites here Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#Other_contact_information

This is a change that may disallow this page Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Integrity/Editor_Registry Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:46, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Elance / Odesk

Agree to take down accounts involved in undisclosed paid editing. All one needs to do is notify them. Will go through a bunch soon. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:51, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical industry

Could we please have additional eyes and thoughts at Talk:Pharmaceutical industry#Questionable deletions? The editor who has made most of the listed deletions admits to working in the pharma industry. EllenCT (talk) 13:06, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Fiverr business

A sock puppet army is operating from this account Have reported. More people reporting may help. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:22, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Notice of RfC

There is an RfC related to paid editing, which was just amended. See Wikipedia_talk:Harassment#RfC:_Links_related_to_paid_editing.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 15:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

NYPD Blue-link

"Computers operating on the New York Police Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been used to alter Misplaced Pages pages containing details of alleged police brutality, a review by Capital has revealed." -- http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/03/8563947/edits-wikipedia-pages-bell-garner-diallo-traced-1-police-plaza

97.122.124.15 (talk) 18:02, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

A new essay WP:COIducks and Notice of Miscellany for deletion

The essay was published in mainpage April 3, 2015 and not long after was proposed by Formerly 98 as Miscellany for Deletion

Thank you Atsme☯ 05:17, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes the essay make COI issues worse not better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:21, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be far more useful to focus on one particular thing rather than taking a broad-brush approach. For example "MEDRS and how it can be abused." Coretheapple (talk) 13:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Coretheapple the essay is certainly open to edit suggestions and your input would be greatly appreciated, which is pretty much the invitation I extended to all editors during the development stages of the essay. Atsme☯ 13:32, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Cite error: The named reference Enviro2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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