QUOTE(thekohser @ Sun 2nd January 2011, 12:42pm)
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Well, it looks like the Squeaker has finally been indefinitely blocked by Black Kite.
It's the end of an era... (IMG:
smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)
QUOTE
Meanwhile, Jimbo in his ever-familiar way of waffling on everything,
speaks out about paid editing.
Everything clear?
What he seems to be saying is that rewards should only be offered for articles related to (ideally, non-specific)
topic areas, as opposed to specific individual persons or (worse) companies.
On the one hand this is stupid, because an "encyclopedia" shouldn't discriminate against specific entities merely because they might want to be written about. Like it or not, some people might very well want to read stuff about the entities in question, and if those entities are foolish enough to want to have WP articles about themselves, that's their funeral. On the other hand, Jimbo is essentially forced to say this because this is how activist Wikipedians define the site's "integrity" - anti-commercialism appears to be more important to many of them than content
in general, and certainly more important than content about things they despise or, at best, don't care about.
It's easy to perceive this as basic hypocrisy, but in fact it's a kind of spoil-sport politics, with Jimbo trying to use the issue as a way to keep himself involved as a kind of high arbiter - or "spiritual leader," if you will. We know he doesn't care about the fact that people are making money writing articles. He probably understands that Wikipedia's definition of "COI" is ludicrously idiosyncratic, but likely doesn't care about that either. What he
does care about is to ensure that the people who don't like the idea of anyone else making money at article-writing are exposed to it as little as possible.