Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-18/News and notes

The Wikimedia Foundation has amended its terms of use to ban editing for pay without disclosing an employer or affiliation on any of its websites—including all Wikipedias and sister projects. The broad scope of these changes, which potentially go beyond regulating only paid advocacy, will force the WMF to selectively enforce them to avoid ensnaring well-meaning editors.

The new clause, "Paid contributions without disclosure", went into effect immediately. It is placed under "refraining from certain activities" and reads, in full:

The only major difference from the originally proposed amendment is an opt-out clause, which came about in an extensive community discussion. It allows WMF projects to adopt an alternative disclosure policy if there is clear community consensus for it, similar to the licensing policy's exemption doctrine policy for fair-use content. The WMF-led vote was inspired in part by English Wikipedia editor. WMF legal counsel Stephen LaPorte stated that the goal was to create a "simple" process when "a project has consensus on a better alternative."

The language of this paragraph is already being put to use by Wikimedia Commons, whose users are currently voting in large numbers to void the effect of the default rule on the site. According to the proposer, the "very special nature" of the Commons means that they need to "adopt a policy that allows paid contributions without any disclosure whatsoever. / ... content submitted by users who receive compensation for it ... is often of excellent quality and educational value."

Aside from this single clause, the broadness of the overall terms-of-use update has survived from the opening proposal—the WMF's first major move against paid editing—rather than just paid advocacy. Under the English Wikipedia's policies, paid advocacy occurs when someone is "paid to promote something or someone on Wikipedia". Paid editing encompasses all of that and more, being broadly defined as "accepting money to edit Wikipedia", but this is not always a negative action: "transparency and neutrality are key".

Objections to the amendment have been raised on the talk page designated to discussing it. Andy Mabbett commented that "If I am paid to deliver that training, and make edits during it, such as posting welcome templates, or fixing formatting errors in trainees' edits to articles, I now have to declare that I've been employed to do so. I even have to declare if I'm simply provided with lunch ("an exchange of money, goods, or services"; no exceptions are listed.) Ditto an editathon participant who is given a copy of the GLAM's guidebook, or a free pass to an attraction for which there is usually a charge." Luis Villa, the WMF's deputy general counsel, replied: "the purpose of the terms is not to catch users who make occasional good-faith mistakes; we think most users, most of the time, will do the right thing. At the same time, since this is a general terms of use, we can’t lay out every potential case ahead of time."

Editors have also raised objections to altering the Wikimedia-wide terms of use to address what they see as an English-Wikipedia-specific problem. The Commons proposal directly states that "the issue of paid contributions isn't ... as touchy for us as it is on (the English) Wikipedia", since "we do not, for instance, require our content to be neutral, and highly value original works created by our own users." On the Wikimedia-l mailing list, Risker skewered the change:

These Wikipedias include the fourth-largest and fast-growing Swedish Wikipedia.

It appears that the WMF is crafting the amendment in broad terms to avoid another Wiki-PR situation, in which a public relations company created, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients using a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts. While the WMF insisted that Wiki-PR had breached the Foundation's terms of use (and Wiki-PR privately admitted to doing so), this relied on the "engaging in false statements, impersonation, or fraud" clause, specifically referring to part of the third bullet-point: "misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive". It does not directly refer to paid editing or advocacy.

The wide scope of this amendment will cover a large number of good-faith editors—but it also grants the WMF's legal team a weapon that they will selectively enforce against bad-faith actors, such as the former Wiki-PR.

In brief

 * Wikipedia Library expands with new JSTOR accounts, others: Multiple new account signups for Wikimedia content creators have opened up courtesy of The Wikipedia Library. Chief among these is an expansion in the JSTOR program, adding an additional 400 accounts. Interest in the program is at (as of publishing time) 367 accounts, with requests dating to 2012, when a partnership providing 100 accounts was first announced. Credo Reference has given an extra 200 accounts. New entries to the Library include the British Newspaper Archive, which has digitized a large number of British and Irish newspapers from the 18th through early 20th century, and Keesings World News Archives, which has in-house summaries of many of the world's events since 1931. The Library is also offering a new intern position, where students will be hired by partner libraries to create content with the resources available to them at the partner.
 * Wikimedia engineering report: The May 2014 engineering report from the Wikimedia Foundation has been published in summary, wiki, and blog forms.
 * April board minutes: The WMF has published the minutes of the the Board of Trustees meeting held on 25 April 2014. Highlights include an investment policy (comprising three tiers: an operating fund, a short-term reserve fund, and a long-term reserve fund), along with the previously announced approvals of the privacy policy and paid contributions amendment to the terms of use.
 * Tablet design gets a makeover: The WMF's mobile team has released a new design for tablet users. Based on their mobile design, the new look has received criticism on the blog post announcing the change.
 * Think Like a Freak: The authors of the popular Freakonomics have lauded Wikipedia in their new work Think Like a Freak, p. 215: "Let's also raise a glass to Wikipedia. It has improved immeasurably over the years that we have been writing books; it is extraordinarily valuable as a first stop to discover primary sources on nearly any topic. Thanks to all those who have contributed to it intellectually, financially, or otherwise."
 * ICANN: Top Level Design, LLC, with the support of the WMF, is proposing that two-letter domains for .wiki be released for linking to Wikipedia. .wiki is part of the expansion in generic top-level domains on the Internet, but ICANN has decided to initially withhold xx.wiki addresses. Top Level Design is asking ICANN to release the 179 two-letter language identifiers used by the various-language Wikipedias to the WMF, so that es.wiki will redirect to the Spanish Wikipedia, vi.wiki to the Vietnamese, and so on.