Cash for spam, functionary involved? Options

[Viridae]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...8#Cash_for_spam

(Perm link)

[MBisanz]

Well if Tarantino's research is correct, it is a simple case of a highly trusted user socking to avoid scrutiny of his edits, and I hope Arbcom and Jimbo deal with it as they see appropriate.

On the issue of paid editing, I was thinking about it on my train ride tonight and I had some thoughts.

We can agree that an article like Arch Coal isn't POV-pushing, biased, etc, despite the commercial intent in its creation. Under the RfC on paid editing, I would list its creation as permitted. But let's say Wikipedia Review kicked off and became highly successful. And Greg was able to afford a staff of people to create all the articles people were paying for. And then someone AFD' one of these articles. If Greg's staff all showed up at the AFD (since presumably they would all be experienced editors by this point), people would call "shenanigans" the same way they did in Scientology, Prem Rawat, CAMERA, etc. I suppose the fear of many people is that by permitting paid editing, it opens the door to paid cabaling on topics. I'm sure it happens now, I've seen enough mysterious new accounts at AFD on spam articles to confirm that, but I believe many in the community still think that maintaining an altruistic outlook as opposed to a for-profit outlook deters commercial abuse.

Greg, any thoughts? How do you maintain the idea of an NPOV, balanced, article when someone(s) has a fiduciary responsibility to promote the interests of their client? Let's say you added an article on Garreth Westwood to Wikipedia, and then it was discovered he had defrauded clients and someone added the news reference to the article. If he complained that now his paid article was harming his interests, you would be stuck in a sticky situation. Do you remove it from the article and hope no one notices or tell him "tough cookies" while he writes out his last check to you?

[Somey]

But let's say Wikipedia Review kicked off and became highly successful. And Greg was able to afford a staff of people to create all the articles people were paying for. And then someone AFD' one of these articles. If Greg's staff all showed up at the AFD (since presumably they would all be experienced editors by this point), people would call "shenanigans" the same way they did in Scientology, Prem Rawat, CAMERA, etc. I suppose the fear of many people is that by permitting paid editing, it opens the door to paid cabaling on topics.

If you assume there's going to be a requirement that all paid editors openly state their affiliation and/or client relationship up front, this might not be a problem... My assumption would be that the AfD "closer" would count all the affiliated votes as one, or ignore them altogether. And that attempts by such a group to "stack the process," if discovered, would be a blockable offense.

As for whether or not such a requirement could actually be effective, that's a different story... My suggestion would be to institute some sort of "Good Wiki-Housekeeping Seal of Approval" which clients of these supposed paid editors would look for, so as to be assured they're not going to be caught doing something sneaky and thus receive bad publicity.

It's an interesting problem, though. The real issue IMO isn't "paid cabalism," it's that already-established WP'ers who consider themselves "altruists" and "free culture" types will be very unhappy having to work on articles directly with people who are being paid. Some will simply disengage and/or quit, but others... I could definitely see some serious drama in the works here.