QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 7th June 2011, 11:20am)
Take a look at
Slide 11 of this research output that was (obviously) intended to be delivered orally by the presenter, Judd Antin. Antin is a research scientist in the Internet Experiences Group at Yahoo! Research.
QUOTE
"Do you think Wikipedia would be different if people got paid?"
"Oh yeah, I think there'd be a lot of bullshit in there. I think people would just throw a lot of stuff in there thinking, 'I'm getting paid so it really doesn't matter what I'm putting down!' [The way it is now] I think people really put their heart and soul into it because they like doing it."
Where do these crazy notions come from?
That was an older truck driver. Or I'd have said that the ideas come from some kid in a basement somewhere who never worked for a living.
Why in the world would one imagine that someone would pay for a pile of bullshit?
And isn't "putting their heart and soul into it" an indicator of possible bias?
It all depends on what one is being paid for. Anyone being paid to vandalize Wikipedia?
If the payer is a government or large corporation, they might be paid to harass opposing editors.
But if the client is small, paying for a wikiwar would be way expensive. Rather, they will pay for skilled editing, designed to satisfy Wikipedia guidelines, albeit with a possible slant. If they start a war, any slant will get buried in the avalanche. Not what a skilled editor will do.
Wikipedia is
full of slant promoted by editors who imagine themselves neutral. To recognize slant is easiest when one has an opposing POV, that's why diversity in editors is so important, and why the failure of Wikipedia to encourage real consensus-formation is so telling.