Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-06/Opinion


 * The following open letter to Elon Musk contains the opinions of its author . These opinions do not necessarily reflect those of The Signpost, its editors or staff, or those of other Wikipedia editors or of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Dear Elon,

Try as I might to assume good faith, it's impossible to do so for your tweets of October 22: "I will give them a billion dollars if they (Wikipedia) change their name to Dickipedia" which was followed up by two tweets "(Please add that to the 🐄💩 on my wiki page)" and "In the interests of accuracy".

The only way to interpret those tweets is that they are intentional insults to all Wikipedians. You are effectively calling me and all Wikipedia editors "dicks" on a platform that you control where millions of people can view the insult within hours. Ten days later the tweets had been viewed 18.5 million times.

And you start with a reminder of your wealth "I will give them a billion dollars", letting us know that you are a big shot. In fact, you are now the richest man in the world, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg. Most people don't like it when some rich person insults them and uses their money to justify the insult.

Some basic Wikipedia rules
A fundamental tenet of Wikipedia, known as "assume good faith" or AGF, instructs us to assume good faith on your part, but that's just not possible in this case. As the saying goes "AGF is not a suicide pact". But there are other fundamental policies that you should know about. First you need to know what you have done wrong, what rules you've broken. That's pretty simple here — the flip side of AGF, "don't be a jerk" is the basis of all of our behavioral rules. Originally this rule was known as "don't be a dick", which might seem more appropriate in this case. But the rule's name was changed after a few years, because naming this policy in a discussion was considered calling someone a dick: a "dickish move" as the argument for changing the title went. You can see the quandary this can cause. It's difficult to even talk about the problem with your tweets. So let's just use the new name: "don't be a jerk". The idea behind that policy is easy to explain. Just view the video shown at the top of this page, that's been included in the policy since March 2018.

Another standard rule that you have violated regards inappropriate canvassing. It simply says that if you have a disagreement about Wikipedia, don't call out to everybody you know who agrees with you to change the disputed article. And don't even think about telling them to put 🐄💩 into an article. You are not the first person to try canvassing like this. Soon after Wikipedia was founded, radio talk show hosts would run out of anything interesting to say, so they would talk about something they disagreed with on Wikipedia. Then they would call on their listeners to vandalize one of our articles. So we were forced to create the "inappropriate canvassing" rule.

I shouldn't pile on by naming all the rules that you may have broken, but your phrase "my wiki page" particularly irks me. The policy you have broken prohibits article ownership. We edit collaboratively. It is not your wiki page — you don't own it. It is Wikipedia's article about you.

There is also a rule about autobiography that you should know about, which contains a literary quote as a perfect explanation about why we need it.

First, the good news
Wikipedians are accustomed to dealing with people who act like jerks and don't follow our rules. The first time you break the rules, you'll usually be let off with a warning. Consider this letter to be a warning.

In fact, there is an interpretation of the rules — and people who will argue this interpretation — that you haven't broken any rules at all. It is implicit in every rule that you have to edit Wikipedia to break the rules. But Wikipedians interpret the rules on a case-by-case basis, and ultimately look to the spirit of any rule, rather than any technicalities. Nothing "implicit" need apply.

There is only one case that I know of where a person who hadn't been proved to have edited Wikipedia has been blocked. This is the case of the paid editing company Wiki-PR, which used hundreds of undeclared paid sockpuppets to insert bias and advertising into articles.

While we blocked all the paid socks, as is normal, we also blocked the company as a whole, including the owners who might not have done any actual editing, and most people associated with the company.

In addition, when the company changed its name to Status Labs the ban still applied to the "new company".

What can you do now?
The most irksome part of your behavior is that you didn't need to do any of it. If you want to influence how an article is presented in our encyclopedia, all you have to do is start editing, while following a few of the basic rules as stated above. Anybody in the world can try to influence how an article is edited if they follow the rules. But please remember that your preferences are not any more important than anybody else's, per "no ownership" and "don't be a jerk".

It's best to create an account first so that people can't track your IP address and so that you can get messages on your own talk page. If you want the username User:ElonMusk, there are some minor procedures to go through so that people won't impersonate you. It's a bit like that blue checkmark as it used to apply on Twitter.

At this point you should read our policies on conflict of interest and paid-editing. If you want to edit the article about yourself, or about the companies you own, you will need to comply with the conflict-of-interest guideline and likely the paid-editing policy, which is also part of the site's terms-of-use.

In short, you should not edit the affected pages. Rather you can just edit the talk page, identify yourself as an editor with a conflict of interest, and make a polite and detailed request of how you want to have the article changed.

You'll likely not want to do this yourself. After all, your time is worth a lot of money. So you are allowed to hire a paid editor to do the same thing for you. There's really only one strict requirement — the paid editor must declare that you are paying them, or that you are the client (or both). There's no anonymity for the employer or the client. Also, it's best that you only hire one paid editor at a time. If they work together, or make another editing mistake, or engage in any type of deception, they'll both likely be blocked as sockpuppets. And please make sure that they realize that they have no special privileges on Wikipedia. They must follow all Wikipedia rules in addition to the paid editing rule.

Review
There's a lot of material covered here, so let's do a quick review. You need to respect the following rules if you want to influence article editing on Wikipedia:


 * 1) Assume good faith
 * Don't be a jerk
 * 1) Neutral point of view
 * 2) inappropriate canvassing
 * 3) no ownership
 * 4) autobiography
 * 5) sockpuppets
 * 6) no advertising
 * 7) conflict of interest and
 * 8) paid-editing

It's really not that hard to understand. I hope you'll join us in improving Wikipedia, while following the rules that apply to everybody.

Sincerely,


 * P.S. – I forgot to thank you for your contribution to the endowment a few years ago. I know how important encyclopedias are to you. Of course your monetary contribution doesn't buy you any special influence in editing.