User:Theonesean/WikiMoney revival


 * "Wikipedia [...] will be hard-pressed to significantly improve until it can figure out how to attract more talented and dedicated editors with different interests and backgrounds from around the world. In the end, it's conceivable that will require more paid editing, not less." - Will Oremus, Slate

There are a variety of important tasks on Wikipedia that don't get done because not enough people are interested in doing them. This results in backlogs and systemic bias. One way to combat this is with a marketplace where Wikipedians can be incentivized with small amounts of real money (micropayments) to work on tasks that they normally wouldn't.

We will create a marketplace website off-wiki where employers can offer contracts, and contractors (Wikipedians) can create profiles describing their skills. The website is operated by a nonprofit collective of trusted Wikipedians, and will not use any Wikimedia Foundation trademarks. Contractors will be paid either in Bitcoins or in "Wikicoins."

Bitcoins
Advantages:
 * Currency exchange marketplaces are already set up to convert real world currencies to and from Bitcoins easily.
 * Bitcoin micropayment systems like Coinbase allow Bitcoin exchanges of any size with no transaction fees (they make their money on deposits and withdrawals, a 1% fee).
 * Bitcoins are divisible up to 0.00000001 BTC, roughly 0.0001 US cents. This makes even very small micropayments (token payments) possible, which are appropriate for some tasks.

Disadvantages:
 * Volatile - if employers/contractors do not cash out quickly, they might lose their money.

Wikicoins
Wikicoins, a custom currency which would be used solely by our website, can avoid the volatility of Bitcoins by pegging their value to the US dollar or Euro with a fixed exchange rate. The main disadvantage of this approach is that we would have to implement and fund mechanisms to buy and sell Wikicoins. Depending on exactly how this is done, there may be substantial transaction fees and/or large fixed fees associated with this.

Dealing with evil employers
Today, Wikipedia is frequently targeted by sinister, exploitative public relations (PR) firms who manipulate policy and the community and circumvent technical restrictions to attempt to force their client's content onto Wikipedia. We discourage these noxious elements from abusing our service with three main mechanisms:
 * Price ceilings: Payments would be kept artificially low (with a maximum in the range of 50-100 USD). Without the ability to set pay large amounts, most editors will not seriously consider offers that ask them to violate policy.
 * Transparency: As an open market, all negotiations would take place in public and be subject to scrutiny by the community. Inclusion of private contact information like e-mail addresses would be forbidden.
 * Moderation: Trusted moderators from the Wikipedia community would be tasked with deleting offers that advocate policy violations, and banning users who make or respond to these offers.
 * In particular, offering to pay users to advocate a specific position in an on-wiki discussion (WP:CANVASSING) would be prohibited and lead to banning.

Dealing with conflict of interest
To deal with concerns regarding conflict of interest, two main approaches would be used:


 * Price ceilings: As mentioned above.
 * Providing notice: Users who take and complete contracts must keep a list of these contracts on their user page or a subpage linked from their user page. The page must link to the contracts on the marketplace website.

Disclaimers and dispute resolution
Employers should receive a prominent message reminding them that contractors cannot guarantee that content will be accepted by the community. It may be heavily edited, merged, or deleted. They are not entitled to a refund if this occurs.

In some cases employers and contractors may have disputes, for example if work was partially completed. In this case the parties can appeal to the marketplace website, who holds the funds in escrow, to make a final determination.

Recruiting
A big challenge is recruiting users to use a third-party service that has no official affiliation with the Wikimedia Foundation. We must be careful to be respectful and avoid spamming the project with unwanted links to our service. Here are a few mechanisms that we could employ:
 * Employers recruit contractors on user talk pages: Whenever employers post a new contract, we ask them to advertise their contract to a small number of users who work in that area on their user talk pages. They include an external link to the site.
 * Userboxes: Users would be able to place userboxes on their user page indicating either that they are interested in Bitcoin contracts, or are not interested in Bitcoin contracts. This would allow us to better target interested users and avoid spamming uninterested ones. The "are interested" userbox could also link to the website.
 * Contractors must register to be paid: By requiring contractors to register before they're paid, we build a database of users with emails who have done at least one contract and may be interested in doing more. We ask them to list specific areas they're interested in contracting in, and can send them notification emails when a new contract in their areas of interest is posted.
 * Requiring notice on userpages: We require users to link to any past contracts they have engaged in on their user page. In addition to declaring any potential conflict of interest, these also advertise the website.
 * Occasionally at on-wiki forums like The Signpost, Village pump thread, etc.
 * Web advertisement: Many organizations have an interest in improving Wikipedia's coverage in specific areas. Web advertisements can help us reach them in order to recruit more employers.

On copyright
In some nations, like the United States, contractors retain rights to their own work, in the absence of a contract to the contrary. In these nations, editors would release their work under CC-BY-SA when clicking "Save page," just as they always have.

In some other nations, the rights to the work of contractors is automatically transferred to employers. For this reason, we will require all employers on the marketplace website to release all work by contractors under the CC-BY-SA license.

On attribution
The general expectation would be that Wikipedians who take on contracts continue to edit under their normal user accounts, while providing notice of their employer on their user page. Employers do not receive any attribution or credit in article histories or in the contractor's username.

Committed developers

 * User:Theonesean
 * User:Dcoetzee - I can also help moderate the site

Possible technologies to leverage

 * Model after software development contracting websites like eLance, oDesk
 * Federated identity: Allowing login with a user's Google/Facebook/OpenID account makes registration quick and easy.
 * Kubelance - open source eLance clone, costs $90 to get source code
 * WordPress Job Board Themes And Plugins
 * OzLancer - a commercial eLance clone, expensive, discontinued

Assorted thoughts

 * We need an awesome name with an available domain name. "WikiMoney" is not an awesome name.
 * Should we enable employers to offer WMF donations in lieu of payment? What about barter? (e.g. goods, personal favors)
 * Since this project will largely be conducted off-wiki, it doesn't require broad consensus and doesn't need to be formally proposed at WP:VPP or any other page on-wiki.
 * If the site becomes too big and popular to fund out-of-pocket, small transaction fees could pay for hosting and bandwidth.
 * The site is clearly targeted more at established Wikipedians who already have substantial volunteer edits. Should this be enforced? Should we take applications for contractors and not permit newbies to do it?