User:Bilby/Paid editing scenarios

Paid editors represent a complex problem on Wikipedia. Part of the problem is that there is that there is a large grey area, that hits difficulties in distinguishing between COI editing, paid editing and paid advocacy, and the distinction between editors being paid to edit Wikipedia, as opposed to being paid by the company and who edit Wikipedia without it being part of their work requirements. On top of that comes problems of intent - a paid editor could be aiming to promote their employers or remove negative material about them, or they could be simply trying to expand Wikipedia's coverage.

The aim of this essay is to explore use case scenarios to try and work out where the boundaries are.

New articles
When someone is being paid to create a new article about a client, the assumption is that there is an advantage for the client to be covered on Wikipedia. This may not be promotional, but promoting the client would be a reasonable scenario.

Use case scenario 1

 * The director of Company R has noticed that there is a Wikipedia article on a rival company, but no article about them. The director knows that their sales are roughly on a par with the rival company, and so does not see why they do not have an article when their rival does. The director tells someone in Public Relations to fix it, and they create an account called Company R and write a new article. It is deleted 10 minutes later via Categories for Speedy Deletion as A7: No indication of importance. Shortly afterwards the user account is blocked as a violation of the username policy as a role account.

This seems to be a fairly common scenario. It partially emerges from the difference between Wikipedia’s understanding of notability versus that of many people outside of Wikipedia: to someone within the company, it is clear that their company is just as significant as their rival. However, notability is based on coverage in reliable sources rather than sales or market position.

Using the company name does help identify the editor as having a COI, and it may be that it is sometimes used for this purpose. But it runs into problems with the username policy, both as potential spam and as a potential role account, as the one account may be used by more than one person.


 * Assuming that the problem is that they didn’t know the rules, the PR person and the company director agree to place an advertisement online to find someone who understands Wikipedia’s policies and can add their article for them. They are convinced that their company is as notable as their rival, and that they just need someone to handle the policies on Wikipedia, which they do not understand. The respondent has been on Wikipedia for over 14 months, and has auto patrolled status - thus their new articles are not checked as often as those of most other users. The respondent has created several articles for which they have been paid in the past, but have not disclosed their COI, as they are concerned that if the articles are deleted they will not get paid or will have to refund the money. To assist, Public Relations provide a copy of the article which they originally wrote and which was rejected.


 * The editor pastes the article directly into Wikipedia, without changing the content, but adds links to a couple of offline sources which mention the company. The sources are real, but they are paid advertorial by the company concerned. No categories or links are added to the article, as payment is only ensured if the article a) goes on Wikipedia, and b) is not tagged or deleted during the first week. The article remains unnoticed for several months before being tagged as an orphan and needing cleanup.

A paid editor needs to meet the performance requirements, and the ones that turn up on sites such as Freelancer require that the new article remains online for a set period of time. This is likely to encourage either good articles that meet Wikipedia's standards, or more hidden articles, which do not meet the standards, but which do not get noticed. It is also difficult to know the extent of the risk, but it seems viable to surmise that falsifying references or misrepresenting their strength, especially for offline references, may happen - once again, if getting paid is dependent on the survivial of the page, and survival is dependent on the existance of secondary sources, the focus may move from creating articles that meet the requirements to creating articles that appear to meet the requirements, however that may be managed.

An alternative scenario involves the chosen editor being more versed on Wikipedia's policies, or more inclined to stick to them. In this case, the editor would have to a) refuse the job, if the subject did not meet Wikipedia's notablity guideleines; b) create it anyway, but accept the liklihood of deletion; or c) find that the article is notable, and create a viable article. In the case of a) or b), it may be the case that we should presuppose that Company R will then look for a different editor to create it. In the case of C), the question becomes whether or not the editor is able to meet Company R's requirements without sacrificing NPOV.

Use case scenario 2

 * Wikipedia in residence - advantage is in having quality coverage related to the client.'

Use case scenario 3

 * Editor Q works for Company S, and has done so for many years. The editor is not involved in marketing or PR, but looks up Company S on Wikipedia to see what it says. The article has a number of factual errors, such as the wrong CEO (the one listed left in 2008), and mentions their London office, which as closed in 2011, but fails to mention the new office in Cardiff. The editor creates an account (their first) with a non-identifying name, and makes the adjustments as a series of three edits - their first three on Wikipedia. They do not disclose their connection to the subject.

The question here is at what point does the editor gain a conflict of interest that is of concern to Wikipedia, and at what point does their relationship with the subject of the article move into paid editing, and from there into paid advocacy.

Use Case Scenario 3

 * Wikipedia currently has an article about company X, but the focus is on a relatively small number of negative events. These did happen, and are sourced, but the company feels that the article is biased because of this focus. A representative asked on the article’s discussion page for the content to be removed or balanced, but only received one response, stating that the content was sourced and should stay. Representatives tried making changes themselves, but were reverted – the first time because they removed the content, and it was replaced with the edit summary “Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED”; on the second attempt they tried to add their side, but it was removed as unsourced, with a warning on the talk page of the account they used that they were in violation of WP:COI and should not edit the article, but could only make suggestions on the discussion page.