Wikipedia talk:COI+/Archive 3

Writing a proposed guideline
DGG suggested that Ocassi move this to userspace if he doesn't want to let others edit it. I'd have no problem with something that was started in userspace being moved here, but given that it was started here, I'm not sure it's legitimate to move it to userspace for the sole purpose of securing exclusive editing rights to it -- particularly not if it's going to be announced in the Signpost as a proposed guideline.

Proposed guidelines have to be open for editing by the community so that there is time for a consensus version (the version that becomes the guideline) to emerge. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * There have now been three major groups of changes by you, each one fundamentally altering COI+ as it was intended and written over several months. You did so without proposing those changes on the talk page as requested, and without engaging the discussion about your specific changes which is amply detailed above.  For those reasons, I believe that reverting your changes again is appropriate.  Also, it needs to be repeated this is a proposal, not a guideline.  Moreover, this is not even aspiring to be a guideline but a voluntary agreement.  As one of the central questions of the RfC is whether COI+ is within policy, major changes on those grounds are inappropriate and should instead be voiced in the RfC.  Userfying the draft is not necessary either, as it has been worked on over many weeks by multiple editors who engaged on the talk page.  Although I have been the primary writer I have incorporated many suggestions by others.  If the spirit of the document cannot be kept intact by changes prior to the RfC, then the right approach is to wait for the RfC to express your disapproval, not to overhaul the document against the consensus of those who wrote it. Ocaasit &#124; c 01:51, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * You reverted the first two attempts I made to edit, so there has really only been one. What I have done (diff) is (a) reduce the wordiness, which served to make the key points of the proposal less obvious; (b) added a summary-style section about the COI guideline; (c) added a brief section on the purpose of Wikipedia, and something about that to the lead; (c) removed the encouragement to paid advocates to edit articles directly, because it conflicts with the guideline; (d) and various other copy edits (removing personal website, adding links to policies, etc).


 * You seem to the only person who has made significant edits to the page, except for me today (and my earlier reverted attempts). Everyone else who has commented is in favour of paid editing, so far as I can see. A proposal like this has to be open for editing so that a consensus version emerges; otherwise it is just an essay and will have no force at all. Also, it can't state or imply (even as an essay) that it's consistent with the COI guideline, when it isn't. See WP:NOPAY, which is really quite clear.


 * As for the RfC aspect, my concern is that the way it is at the moment worded (see the hidden section on this talk page) is misleading and in places factually incorrect. So I am asking you please, given that this is a major issue that is being discussed in the media, to gain consensus here for any RfC question in advance of posting it.


 * It is, in effect, a poll about whether to allow direct editing of articles by paid advocates, so that question needs to be asked clearly and prominently to make sure Wikipedians know what they are being asked. It should not be hidden within hundreds of words of what (I'm sorry to say) looked to me like PR-speak. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * A major dilemma within Wikipedia is that the consensus model makes it very difficult to make any concrete decisions, especially where editors are unlikely to ever agree, however the lack of any decisions on this issue are even more harmful than making the wrong one.


 * What is needed is for editors from all sides to work together in an intelligent and civil manner and reach compromise. Just as a COI is instructed to put their bias aside, we can put our personal views aside and focus on a logical calculation of what will maximize the outcome for Wikipedia and its readers - we can accept and understand arguments we don't agree with and accommodate them anyway.


 * In my view, everything we do and decide on COI has only two objectives: Discourage bad edits/behavior that disservice our readers & encourage/allow good edits/behavior that is an asset to our readers. These two objectives are a good way to focus the discussion.


 * Two side-notes: (1) Can someone link me to the RfC? I will not vote, but would like to read. (2) If multiple editors would find it valuable, I would be interested in working on an alternate version using the same concept, but with a different approach. I like the idea, but would do it entirely differently. Corporate 13:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I would like to see what you come up with, but I'd hesitate to encourage you to spend a lot of time on something that might be entirely provisional. For me, the key issues are:


 * (1) that insofar as our readers trust us, it's because they believe we are independent volunteers who are at least trying to be neutral; that trust is precious and paid advocacy will destroy it;


 * (2) that volunteer editors will for the most part not want to work alongside editors who are being paid; the more paid advocacy takes hold, the more existing editors will drift away, and new volunteers will not be recruited;


 * (3) that paid advocates are paid not to be neutral; the job of a paid advocate is to be exactly the opposite of what a Wikipedian tries to be. Therefore the two positions are entirely incompatible. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:38, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * In the real-world a certification is used to evaluate the skill-set (and in this case ethics) of vendors. Sure, I would love to just sign up and go around telling people I'm "community certified," with nothing more than a ~ on this page. The current version would serve as nothing more than allowing any COI editor to boast that they are "endorsed" and it focuses on creating stringent rules that don't exist.


 * I would focus more on what certification is in the real-world. It should require consensus for any single editor to earn certification based on a review of their work and/or a completion of a class. Establishing the criteria is easy - establish our expectations for COI and our preferences and use COI+ to provide incentive to follow that behavior.


 * DGG says I am an editor that has done COI relatively well, but I would protest that were I to apply for certification, I should fail. His standards are low, because it is in comparison to a horrific status quo. When we set higher standards, we will receive better work.


 * When COI+ results in hundreds of GA articles on companies - that would be success. It raises serious questions like whether the Wikipedia community wants to get involved in manipulating the market for paid editing to its advantage, which should be discussed head-on, instead of without realizing that's where this would go. Your three points above should be involved in the certification criteria. For example, that their work requires minimal effort from volunteers who don't want to be slaves to COIs, that they are neutral and so on. Corporate 19:06, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Consensus
I'd just like to point out that WP:Policies and guidelines clearly states: "Most commonly, editors use a Request for comments (RfC) to determine consensus for a newly proposed policy or guideline." I believe this is consistent with the stance that while improvements and suggestions to COI+ are encouraged, consensus on the proposal is not needed to actually hold an RfC, as the very purpose of the RfC is to determine consensus. I really do welcome strenuous objections on the talk page... If COI+ is supported by the community, I'll feel much better about it knowing that it went through a full vetting. Ocaasit &#124; c 05:11, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Polling is a pretty terrible way to build consensus; it almost always is counterproductive to real consensus. Consensus is indeed built, it's not something that needs to be determined, except in cases where an issue has been hashed to death, everyone understands the issue and has a good shared, sophisticated, vocabulary, and we just want to see where everyone stands.  POLL sums it up better IMO...


 * "while novice users sometimes think they should make a 'motion' on some issue and 'call for votes,' but this is not the case. No guideline has ever been enacted through a vote. Polling is rarely helpful in the development of policies or guidelines, and may be counterproductive."


 * I think I'm going to strike "novice" from that sentence, because lately, it seem that attitude has infected users of all experience levels. As my earlier message indicates, I don't believe we've even hit the stage of discussions on this issue where we have common definitions to work from. Without those, I don't think people can properly express what their positions are, or even develop reasoned positions through discourse.   That's why I think polling on COI proposals is especially a poor idea, at least until nuanced and widely-accepted definitions can be hammed out.  I'm going to be disappointed if you widely market this while it still has ambiguous definitions as pointed out by Slimvirgin above.  I think you will set the useful discourse on this issue further back, and undermine the work that some of us are trying to do to develop a common vocabulary.


 * I know that you are anxious to strike while the iron is hot on this issue, but please at least consider my position, and consider working with us over at WT:COI. I'm trying to build a solid foundation so that we can get consensus on guidelines like this one, and pushing forward without a solid foundation in share vocabulary is going to cause both this to fail, and confuse the issue more for any future discussions.   I'm sorry for the wall of text, I usually don't do this. Gigs (talk) 14:05, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've invited editors to comment here for months. I've talked to anyone I know about this to get feedback and suggestions.  I've discussed it with editors who like it, hate it, want to join it, think it will destroy Wikipedia.  This is not a hasty endeavor.  My problem with what's happening at WP:COI is that while a much needed trimming took place, so has the injection of a presumptuous, overly broad, and tautological term, "paid advocacy".  That should be removed pending general clarification and then replaced with a language and definition that actually has consensus.  I am willing to wait on this and to work with you and others.  SlimVirgin did a masterful job as usual of trimming the fat, but I would like her to step back from actually stating her views of policy in the text until we have a solid agreement about what we mean to say and how to say it. Ocaasit &#124; c 14:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well then come over there and talk about it. I don't think the term "paid advocacy" is necessarily a problem.  It's a term that Jimbo has used a lot, and we already have mention of advocacy in WP:SOAP.  Put the blame where the blame is due, as well, I was the one that rewrote the financial COI section, not SlimVirgin, and I'm absolutely open to further discussion and refinement, as long as we accomplish my goal of making a clearer distinction between "paid editing" which can be benign, and "PR/Marketing/Advocacy/Whatever" which nearly everyone agrees is a much less desirable thing.  I'm absolutely in favor of using terms that are meaningful and that have consensus definitions, and that's where I'm focusing the discussions over there the best I can.  Gigs (talk) 14:26, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see you have. That's what I get for coming over here before I finish my coffee. I will reply to you over there on the issue. Thanks for getting involved, and I think it's very promising that there does seem to be a minimum consensus that we do need to nail these definitions down before we can have productive conversations. Gigs (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Just tossing it around
Obviously I have a potential COI with the topic, but this is just a quick toss up of how I would approach this, which from my perspective is more direct. "The Big Questions" (see below) are the ones that we should be discussing (without me), rather than minute details of the project page. This is not focused on the process, which belongs in an instructional document, but on what a certification actually is, which is validation of an individual's skills and on the outcomes of their work here, rather than of their intentions.

Objective

Today very few companies have any way of evaluating the ethics and expertise of a Wikipedia consultant, which leads many companies to hire less reputable vendors accidentally, ultimately to Wikipedia's dismay. Certification validates an individual's skills and in this case ethics and encourages organizations to hire a certified editor, which has a demonstrated track-record of creating high-quality articles and following preferred behavior. In this way certification can be a means to encourage companies to use editors that follow our rules and put a consultant's purse-strings in the hands of the community. It also creates an immense incentive for COI editors to do right by Wikipedia in order to maintain their certification.

This project would be a success when its members collectively create hundreds of GA articles, earn the trust and respect of the community and become the de facto pool of editors any organization with good intentions would use.

Tactics


 * Any editor may choose to use a user box "This editor aspires to be COI+ certified" which may - over time - be something editors will recognize as a good sign.


 * Consensus after review of their contributions and behavior is required for "This editor is a COI+ certified apprentice" based on a set of criteria. The criteria is based on burden on the community's resources, quality of work, behavior, how they deal with contentious content and so on. They should create C or B class articles at least half the time.


 * A COI+ master certified editor creates GA articles at least half the time and is the highest designation.


 * COI+ certified helper - this editor has a track record of contributing images, citations, and other help that is valuable to Wikipedia without making major content contributions.


 * Problems may result in a certification being taken away or demoted.

The Big Questions

This raises some pretty significant underlying questions and these underlying questions are the most important to discuss and build a consensus decision around.
 * Does the Wikipedia community want to get involved in manipulating the market for paid COI editing to our benefit?
 * Are we comfortable with a certification that may imply "endorsement" of editors that do consistently follow our rules and create quality, neutral content.

Just my quick toss up of throwing it out there. I am not advocating for or against it - I have mixed opinions myself - but I think if a certification is proposed, this is the kind of thing it should be.Corporate 16:05, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Requested review and comments
Ocaasi asked me to review and provide any comments. Honored and happy to do so.

Particularly good stuff
 * A large amount of excellently thought out and much needed material. Many paid editors are looking for some extra guidance guidance and this represents a large amount of excellent work to provide that. And something like this material need to be added to the guidelines or prominent suggestions.   To space-weight that properly, I'll repeat it.


 * A large amount of excellently thought out and much needed material. Many paid editors are looking for some extra guidance guidance and this represents a large amount of excellent work to provide that. And something like this material need to be added to the guidelines or prominent suggestions.

Little stuff

If this got adopted en-masse, there are a lot of little changes I'd suggest or make, the bigger issues aside.

Not-good stuff Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:04, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The proposed process (the only input being into the design of it, not on a decision whether or not to make it a guideline) is not right.
 * The real topic of this isn't COI, it's "paid editing". This is broader than the most egregious form (paid advocacy) and narrower and off-target from the best definition (which includes editing driven by unpaid advocacy)  Maybe just a COI title would be fine, but it is repeated throughout the article.  And so it is promulgating one of the worst of the many definitions of COI that have been swirling around, and conflicts with the excellent bolded definition at the beginning of wp:coi.
 * It is a substantial overlap with wp:coi which inherently would be a mess if it became a guideline.

German court ruling
Just noting here the Munich court ruling in May that users who edit articles as agents for companies may be breaking the law in Europe. The court ruled that such edits, if made to influence customers, count as covert advertising because readers can't be expected to search user or talk pages to find the COI disclosure. As such the edits violate European fair trading law (see the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive).

The case arose because a user was sued by a competitor over edits made to an article on the German Wikipedia. The judgment is here. The British Advertising Standards Authority reached a similar decision in June. They found that tweets from two footballers had been "agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team," but were not identified as Nike marketing communications, and as such violated the ASA's rules. See Mike Sweney, "Nike becomes first UK company to have Twitter campaign banned", The Guardian, 20 June 2012.

The court ruling obviously affects this proposal. We can't advise editors to do something that could expose them to a lawsuit. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment
If we keep banning and frowning upon paid editors, we just drive them underground. How many paid editing sites and advertisers have you seen, who offer editing services for a price? I suggest we either develop a strong enough technology to drive them all out or we simply allow them to edit with proviso everything is open. The moment it turns out you are paid-editing an article without disclosing it, you get banned for life; with periodic checkusers on your banned account to find similar accounts around later on. But if you openly disclose that you are a paid-editor; I dont see why the community needs to frown upon your actions. Just needs to be a little bit cautious; but nothing more. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 14:30, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Post-1 month direct editing permission
I'm removing this controversial piece of the proposal for now. Although I think that it is optimal and fair, I want to get things moving here and it appears that taking out that part is the best way to do so at the moment. I still think it's reasonable for COI+ followers to ask, what happens if no one responds to me within 1 month and for us to have an answer. While I think "leave notice at COI noticeboard and the article's talk page and make the change yourself" should be considered, it is ok to raise it again down the road, once COI+ has shown some uptake among paid editors. Curious to hear any thoughts. Best, Ocaasit &#124; c 00:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely with what you've just said. In the interest of making progress, I'd favor pursuing a "disclose and propose; don't edit directly" approach for COI+. Once the edit button is pressed it can quickly become a slippery slope. That clear distinction of refraining from direct editing -- at least in the beginning -- will help COI+ get the traction it needs to move forward. Cheers, Jeff Bedford (talk | COI declaration) 01:19, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Individual Engagement Grant proposal
I've proposed an individual engagement grant related to improving and expanding usage of WP:PSCOI and WP:COI+ as tools for outreach to and oversight of paid editors. I'd appreciate any feedback here. Cheers, Ocaasit &#124; c 23:04, 15 February 2013 (UTC)