Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Bounty board (2nd nomination)

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was  Mark as historical Yunshui  雲 &zwj; 水  12:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Bounty board


The offering of monetary awards for editing -- even of monetary contributions to WP or to other good causes-- is contrary to the spirit of a NPOV encyclopedia, and contradicts the basis of a volunteer community. This is a survival from the earlier days of WP, and it's time we grew up about it. As an example of the sort of misbehavior this page can facilitate, see a current discussion on ANB. There was an ealier almost unanimous keep at a MfD in 2011, but I think we are more aware now of the dangers of anything that even approaches encourage paid editing in any manner.

Just as we tolerate but do not encourage paid editing, we cannot forbid such awards, but, just as with paid editing, we should not include it as part of the structure of the encyclopedia.  DGG ( talk ) 23:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Reward board (2nd nomination). --Guy Macon (talk) 13:33, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * To clarify, I think marking as Historical would be a very good idea. I admit I had not thought of that.  DGG ( talk ) 17:23, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The bounty board is a good counter to motivated haters. When haters take over an article that is not of interest to others, there is no counterbalancing force. The availability of a bounty facilitates getting a neutral but uninterested editor over his or her activation energy hump, so to speak. Since bounty is not paid directly to editor, COI issues seem to be somewhat of a non-issue. 99.147.28.113 (talk) 00:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Initial comment before voting I am strongly against paid editing, as I have indicated in a couple of the recent discussions. But the rot has set in deeper than I suspected. You may guess that I am not a big fan of the ethics of capitalism. WP policies seem vague and confused, and there appear to be legions of paid editors. I was suprised this was even countenenced. Now I encounter today, for the first time. this "bounty board" which still appears to be functioning, albeit in a broken-backed fashion, with a few adherents. My idea has been to make the best of a bad job, and use paid editing as an ethically acceptable concept, providing all monies are paid to editors preferential recognised charities. I am unsure what the current consensus is on the two companies mentioned in recent discussions, and the new overarching proposal to ban the practice. My initial thoughts were to reconfigure and re-invent this oddity, so it is a forum for editors and companies to interact. I would advocate the strictest guidelines and monitoring on the relevant pages, and agreements by companies and participating eds to strictly adhere to guidelines which I believe at this moment are being hammered out. Instant banning by any party who breaches NPOV or any WP guidelines. If we legitimise and re-invent it, it may stop the practice from being driven underground. I have no illusions that it can be stopped. My recently rediscovered Jewish ethical sense is telling me that if money is involved, lets at least help the wider community. If any companies who have a moral compass still, wish to adhere to this, then I do not see it as a blow to WP. I am still thinking about this, so this in no way reflects my eventual vote. Cheers for reading this wall of text. Irondome (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical Close down. Beyond DGG's arguments, it is largely unused. And to counter 99.147's argument, could also be used to promote bias. Resolute 00:13, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical, since the BB has become open to misinterpretation and WP is now at a watershed about paid editing.  Mini  apolis  01:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical, as essentially unused for years and years.  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 01:53, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your excellent and well0motivated intentions with the board; but its dangers exist nevertheless. Look at it from this perspective: The wider community is the world in general, and we help it in a particular fashion: by writing NPOV articles about all notable parts of it.  This is immensely more important than any small sums of money involved here, and we should not let money interfere with it one way or another. (Where money might be relevant is if we had difficulty raising money to support WP, but we don't--the value of a NPOV encyclopedia is sufficiently well recognized that in practice people send us  more money than we are organized enough to spend wisely.)  DGG ( talk ) 02:45, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * An interesting point. But I meant the wider community in its totality, who do not have either a laptop or a job. Many ex WP users among them I am sure, who cannot even afford to go online anymore. The local foodbank for instance would be a wonderful recipient. I take your point though, in terms of our differing perceptions of the term "community" just in this point in our discussion. I appreciate your kind words. I am very sincere about this. Let money be useful for once, even if it is a small amount. £100 buys a lot of food. We have foodbanks here in the UK too. Let us do a little good. Taking it from companies may even improve the flavour of the food, for those who know! Irondome (talk) 02:49, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * On major problem I see with the "give it to charity" proposal: A $100 bounty paid to a pro-abstinence charity for improving abortion is likely to attract a different crowd of editors than $100 paid to a orgaisation promoting contraceptive based sex education. Somewhat of a extreme example, but it gets the point across (and what about $100 to a specific charity for improving the article on ha charity? Not likely to attract much negative criticism) MChesterMC (talk) 15:14, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Mark historical. Something old like this should never be deleted for routine reasons like DGG mentions (really the only good reasons to delete it are either newly copyvios/other illegal content, or histmerges and other housekeeping), since deletion would obscure our history.  I see no problem with the idea of the page, but it's simply not being used — aside from spam, the removal of an expired bounty, and DGG's deletion nomination, there's been exactly one edit to this page since April.  We still have bounties from 2006 on the page!  Anything this old and little-used is badly stale; there's no good reason to keep it active.  Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment I hear you and I noted extreme lack of usage too. But I am thinking, lets just re-invent the thing. We have an ideal preexisting WP board for any evolutionary changes in the way we deal with paid editing. Its an Ideal place for willing companies to sign up, members also, a place to put our new codes of practice if decided, lots of stuff. Please see my argument from an ethical perspective above. I do hear your concerns as to its present state. Let's think out the box maybe. Cheers! Irondome (talk) 03:25, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't care how good of an idea it is — nobody's using it, and there's no real chance of revitalising it. If you want to see something like this work, you'll have to start an entirely new board and pitch it as something new.  Let's see how others respond to your proposal, about which I have no solid opinion.  Nyttend (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yep. Rebuilding it from the ground up. Co-ordinating a host of new guidelines that may come into force, persuading the foundation, persuading our colleagues to redifine our concept of paid editing to a more humanist level, getting the right companies for the right reasons, and getting it to consensus-agreed causes. But I would be up for trying it. Irondome (talk) 03:55, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if you're willing to try, I have no objections. Nyttend (talk) 05:22, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 *  Mark historial Close Down - Might as well. I don't even think this was of much use anyhow if you look at Bounty board/Expired and claimed bounties as a frame of reference. GamerPro64  03:50, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Changed my vote to Close Down per SmokeyJoe. GamerPro64  16:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical per above: unused and not a good idea in the current editing environment. For what it's worth, I've hopefully fixed the link to the administrators' noticeboard discussion in the nomination statement. Graham 87 06:23, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems not. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:58, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical. I think the bounty board was a good idea for an experiment back when I created it, but I don't think it's useful anymore. Any revamp that would make it more effective for improving articles would also have unwanted side effects. I think it's best to view it as one step along the way to figuring out how to encourage people to edit in your area of interest. – Quadell (talk) 12:20, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * To clarify, either Closed down or Historical would be fine. (I don't think the Historical tag implies that it can be recreated.) – Quadell (talk) 15:21, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not familiar with "marked historical" but would concur in that only if it means the board dead and can't be revived. Coretheapple (talk) 12:27, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, anything deleted can be restored, but yes, "mark historical" means that we shut the board down and mark it as obsolete, but we keep the page for historical purposes. Resolute 13:40, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose While I can imagine extreme examples which border on abuse (I'll offer $1000 if someone can add this external link to 50 articles and make them stick) most of these bounties are for getting articles to GA or FA status, with no qualification on content. I have no opposition to a clarification of what is allowed versus not allowed, but I see no reason to shut something down simply because one can imagine how it might be abused.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  14:45, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Historical It never really got off the ground.  The idea of paid editing is really not a bad one inherently.  Most open source projects have some kind of corporate involvement (even if it's just employing one of the lead developers full time), without any issues.  That said, Wikipedia has become too big, with too few neutral editors, for every contribution to be reviewed in the way that open source changes are reviewed.  This is also a consequence of our radically open philosophy, since most software projects have relatively few committers that can make changes; here anyone can commit changes.   I don't think we have the resources to actually manage our own paid editing forum, and the creation of such a thing, in the modern context, would be very controversial.  We should not abuse a project from our early days for these new purposes. Gigs (talk) 17:32, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 *  Historical Closed down Only eight bounties have ever been claimed. It makes us look stupid telling people that paid editing is forbidden whilst at the same time telling them that it is ok. SmartSE (talk) 20:25, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Since when has paid editing been forbidden? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 13:16, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Historical or delete, since it is a failed footnote to the project. It is no longer active, there is very little value that it brings to the project, and the potential for misunderstanding is great.  --TeaDrinker (talk) 22:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark Historical As per DGG and  Smartse.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 06:43, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Uh, folks, what about the Reward board? There, editors can earn actual physical rewards for themselves, although the rewards are more often barnstars. If we must forbid any sort of tangible rewards for editing because money is evil, fine, but I'd like to see some sort of mechanism for incentivizing improvements to certain articles retained. --BDD (talk) 17:16, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes I think we need to need to start a MFD on that too. SmartSE (talk) 11:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree; as things stand now, it's the same slippery slope.  Mini  apolis  15:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep per SPhilbrick. There's no point trying to regulate editors motivated by greed when we do almost nothing about editors motivated by bias. Let the free market fix this problem. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 00:46, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Tag with Closed down. It is awkward, and more likely to cause problems than to be useful.  Prefer Closed down over Historical because Historical implies that it was archived due to inactivity, which implies that any enthusiastic individual can restart it.  Do not delete becuase it is part of our history, and because deleting bad ideas dooms us to repeat them.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:09, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that that is a much better solution and I think most of those who have !voted historical would have chosen this if it had been mentioned earlier. SmartSE (talk) 11:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Closed Down tag per Smartse - We're basically telling everyone Paid editing's forbidden yet we're telling them it's fine....  With the WikiPR business going on I assumed Paid editing was forbidden. "Schoolboy Error" Apologies!  Davey 2010  T  15:42 17:52, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep open. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a deletion rationale. Please stop trying to create a market for Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia. It has disastrous consequences. Has anyone read the news? Or done a google news search for Wikipedia lately? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 19:44, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Man this bounty board is such a great place. I can't wait to make some money editing! Wait, while you guys are saving the encyclopedia, could you please block all accounts listed under Category:Wikimedia Foundation staff. They are all paid editors. And please block all accounts working (or even proposing) on Individual engagement grants (including me.) God forbid anyone make a penny serving the public interest on this website. Brilliant, everyone, brilliant. Thanks for saving the encyclopedia! You guys make me proud to be a Wikipedian. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 12:58, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Closed Down tag per Smartse. This "Bounty board" violates NPOV and legitimizes paid editing. It needs to be shut asap. Jus  da  fax   23:31, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark Historical. I just got back, out of town a couple of days. What is the mood on the boards? Is there a consensus to ban all paid edding? If so I support a complete ban. This wierd anachronism is the least of our problems, in that hardly any activity has ever been registered. If the charity option is an no-go (see above) then get rid all paid editing. Period. It will kill WP as we know it if the rot continues. Irondome (talk) 00:25, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * There may be a consensus to outright explicitly ban paid editing, is in not obvious to me. Some oppose, preferring to regulate and control, starting with mandatory disclosure.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * One of the fundamental problems with consensus is that vested interests can be very loud and effectively filibuster. I'm not saying that all who favor allowing paid editing are themselves paid editors, but I do wonder how many are.  Gigs (talk) 17:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Question. Who here that has their panties in a wad about paid editing has been reading the recent Signpost coverage such as Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-02/News and notes and Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-23/News and notes and has evaluated the quality of the grant requests for the millions of dollars of community money chapters want for paid bureaucracy? See FDC portal/Proposals/Community/Review. I look forward to seeing everyone's ideas on all those grant proposals. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 13:10, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * O lawd. I really should read pages. This is to raise money for the WP:WMF? Hmmmmmm.... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 13:14, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it's to take money the WMF has gotten from donations and give it out to people, because they collect far more than they need for operations.  And to those like Biosthmors who are hinting that there's hypocrisy here, be mindful that some people such as myself are just as suspect of these projects as they are of corporate paid editing. Gigs (talk) 17:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. I had no idea the WMF would do that, but the word corporate? Why did you have to use that word? You and Russel Brand have an unhealthy focus, IMO. ;-) Paid advocacy is the bad thing, just like advocacy is. I could care less about paid editing. I'd do it. In fact, I think it's more ethical than volunteer editing. At least someone is being rewarded for creating value in society. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 18:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As it is, the WMF has helped fund jobs for bureaucrats around the globe on the brand value provided by volunteer labor. How is that ethical? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 18:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But hey, I was offered free travel to go to some conference recently, so it's not like it doesn't come without its perks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 18:35, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, excuse the word corporate. I use it to refer to the particular type of paid editing that most object to.  If it helps, I'm a moderate-to-severe libertarian, so I don't mean it in a derogatory way.  Gigs (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Biosthmors. Dude. "I think [paid editing] is more ethical than volunteer editing." Either you don't really believe that and are just talking jive (and should stop), or you do, in which case you don't believe in the basic foundation of this project, and you probably shouldn't get very much involved in governance discussions like this one (if you even want to be here at all, which I can't see why you would). Either way, you're pushing into troll territory, and please don't do that, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 21:40, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As a general rule, isn't is more fair to be compensated when adding value to society than to not be compensated? Why is this controversial? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 22:17, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by "fair" or where "fair" enters into this. If you think it's "unfair" or unethical that you weren't paid for the above post and your other contributions, then stop doing doing it and go find a site where you are paid. Obviously most of the things we do to add value to society aren't compensated. When I hold the door open for a person I don't follow it up with "that'll be fifteen cents, buddy" and so on. You can call that stupid and naive I guess, but to call it immoral is just bizarre. Herostratus (talk) 23:20, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Close, marking as historical or closed as appropriate. Per DGG. In addition, the existence of the board is confusing to editors and that's not helpful when we're trying to discuss the issue of paid advocacy editing, because "But what about the Bounty Board" comes up and that unhelpfully complicates the issue. It's not helpful to us when reporters can point to the existence of this board (since it's not really a good representation of the Wikipedia overall). It probably generates very little net activity, just shifts edits from "What I'm interested in, or feel needs to be done" to "What's on the Bounty Board" and so there's no gain to balance the problems. Herostratus (talk) 21:57, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical or close down this little-used historical anomaly per above. I don't see any positive argument for keeping it going.  Logical Cowboy (talk) 05:25, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well I plan on submitting a new proposal on the board. Might that influence your thinking, Logical Cowboy? It will relate to the backlog at Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006, and I think I'd like for the person to get a dollar for each article they fix (without leaving it also eligible for one source or refimprove). This would be a reward that is currently capped at 962 USD, because that is how many articles are in the backlog from 7 years ago. I wouldn't want anything to slow down potential improvement in this 7 year old backlog, would you? That's 962 negative advertisements about the volunteer community and the potential quality of those Wikipedia articles. Imagine how many people a day see that Wikipedia has been sitting on its ass for 7 years in regards to these articles. It's not exactly going to encourage people to look at the project highly if they see all those negative advertisements, is it? Let's let that get cleared. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 10:13, 29 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Blank the bounty list and mark historical. Contradicts the current strong feeling of wikipedia about paid editing. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep unchanged: I can see why people are bothered by the idea of offering money to the Wikimedia Foundation in exchange for changes to Wikipedia, but if it happens through this page, at least it's in the public eye. &mdash; rybec   18:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Close it down. Herostratus nailed at the reward board MfD when he wrote "The existence of the board is not helpful for us in figuring out the larger (and very important!) question of how to handle paid advocacy editing generally, because in discussions of the matter, the existence of this board then raises the question 'Well, but what about the Reward Board?' For some people it's a source of genuine confusion, for others a useful red herring to obfuscate the issue or score a point; in both cases an unhelpful distraction from the heart of the matter." --Guy Macon (talk) 16:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

More Detailed Proposal
Assuming that the consensus turns out to be "mark historical/close down", how do we best accomplish that?

We want this to remain accessible to anyone studying the history of Wikipedia, but we don't want to treat it like the usual "this never really took off" historical page, but rather we want it to be clear that we decided to shut it down and stop advertising bounties.

We want to avoid new use of the valuable 5-letter redirect WP:BOUNTY to send newbies to a now-historical page.

Also, we don't want to enshrine some bounty offers just because someone put "None" in the expiration box in 2006, nor do we want someone with an axe to grind about paid editing coming along and adding a new bounty.

Because of these factors, I propose the following:

Comments? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:46, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Move all bounty offers to Bounty board/Expired and claimed bounties.
 * Mark the page with the usual historical template, modified to specify that new bounty offers are not allowed.
 * Apply full protection to the page and to the Expired and claimed bounties subpage.
 * Set up an archive bot to archive any talk page comments older than 30 days, and apply semi-protection and level one pending changes protection to the talk page.
 * Of the four redirects that point to this page, keep Wikipedia:Bounty Board and Wikipedia:Bountyboard as is, and redirect Wikipedia:BOUNTY and Wikipedia:Bounty to Paid editing (essay) (or somewhere else - this is open for discussion) I will personally crawl through all the pages that link to those two and intelligently fix the links so that they go to the page that makes the most sense.
 * Sounds good (including the redirect target).  Mini  apolis  01:06, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It does to me also. An intelligent and well thought-through routeway that covers all aspects of this WP artifact, including future encounters with it by the community. Nice one. Irondome (talk) 01:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Disagree with anything but blanking everything replaced with brief summary. Whoever wants to dig in history, can look into article history. No need to enshrine something which was a no-go, both because it died of natural cause and it is against sentiment about paid editing. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree. It may have a future use as a template for my charity option thought, see above. I am working over the issues critiquing the idea mentioned in the above thread by some community members, and will propose something in the near future, Real life allowing. Do not airbrush it out of WP history. It may be torn down and reborn as an ethical tool. I will keep you posted. In the meantime, let's put it in the historical freezer. Cheers Irondome (talk) 01:55, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose: Suburban Express have set 15 November as the expiration date for their request; that's not an unreasonably long time, so let their request run its course unless it violates a Wikipedia policy. I also disagree with the majority view that this page should be marked as failed or historical. I didn't look carefully at the eight completed requests, but if they were to bring those eight articles to Good Article or Featured Article quality, that is sufficient success to justify keeping the bounty page. Someone might post something I don't like, but that isn't a proper reason to shut down the forum. If the Wikimedia Foundation can be bribed for as little as $300, closing the bounty page won't fix the problem. If this page is closed down and the shortcut is changed, the WP:Reward board would be the most suitable place to point it. &mdash; rybec   03:07, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No, we're not going to slant an article to suit a company's wishes. Also, I've written 13 1/2 FAs and 70 GAs without the need for a bounty. The board is pretty much unused and serves no necessary purpose. Resolute 03:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: You say "we don't want to treat it like the usual 'this never really took off' historical page"... but it never really took off. It is a historical page. (When was the last time someone claimed a bounty?) You say "rather we want it to be clear that we decided to shut it down and stop advertising bounties", but that's only one reason people are voting to retire the bounty board. The other, totally valid, reason is that it has proven to not be particularly useful in encouraging editing in an area you want work in. If it's not useful and it's not being used, let's call a duck a duck and say it's historical. If retiring the bounty board also helps to avoid the appearance that Wikipedia encourages COI paid editing, well, that's a bonus. – Quadell (talk) 14:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep The Bounty Board is a positive way to foster the development of the project, both through improving encyclopedic coverage and enriching the Wikimedia Foundation. It's clear that some editors are on a crusade against paid editing that will be unsuccessful in banning the practice altogether. This piecemeal approach shouldn't be allowed to run around the clear consensus that has been expressed at much better-attended RfCs. If an individual editor is using the board in a way that flouts our policies and guidelines, take him or her to ANI or something. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially when it's not clear that there's much bathwater to begin with. --BDD (talk) 18:06, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * but the boards have not acted to substantially benefit the project.  DGG ( talk ) 20:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * This is just not a good idea in the spirit of the wiki. Close it down, replace by an explanation why this has been shown not to work, and lock if necessary.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  01:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per my comment at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Reward board (2nd nomination). I do however support a merge of bounty and reward boards. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:02, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. I see no evidence of harm here. Getting articles up to a good standard requires them to present a balanced view of the subject, not to introduce POV; I really don't see how NPOV would be harmed by paying editors directly at all, provided they're being paid for "make this a good article by Wikipedia's standards" rather than "make this a good article from the point of view of the article subject". I'm pretty sure most for-profit encyclopedias manage to pay their writers and editors without it introducing a fundamental bias. —me_and 16:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * But there's a fundamental difference between the writers and editors of (say) Britannica's article on ExxonMobile being paid by Britannica and them being paid by ExxonMobile. Do you see the difference? Britannica would not allow the latter -- neither would Collier's or Americana or Encarta, when they existed. Can you think of some reasons why they didn't and don't? If not, I can help you with that. Herostratus (talk) 17:03, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No editors are paid from the offers on this page. Rather, the money goes to the Wikimedia Foundation, who own the Wikipedia servers. &mdash; rybec   21:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Close down or mark historical, it is not serving much purpose and is instead (along with the Reward Board) distracting from the important discussions regarding paid editing. Neutron (talk) 19:30, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Close down a page that has been around for over eight years because it's distracting from some discussions started a few weeks ago? Um... --BDD (talk) 20:29, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Mark historical I have no problems with paid advertising (as long as it follows Wikipdeia guidelines), but a look thru the history of this page shows this idea never really caught on. And deleting it would remove evidence explaining it didn't work. -- llywrch (talk) 22:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Mark historical most of it looks pretty stale, and a casual reader might mistake it for still being active. I'd move all requests to the Bounty board/Expired and claimed bounties, and clarify the reasons. I am of two minds otherwise, but agree I am uncomfortable with frank money rewards (rather than prizes). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.