[Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

Fri Oct 6 02:59:40 UTC 2006

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the 
> > encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives 
> > behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve 
> > articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to 
> > avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial 
> > companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for 
> > Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good 
> > article that I can think of.
> 
> No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply 
> unethical if they do.  

Sorry Jimmy, but yeah they are so long as what is contributed follows our content policies (NPOV
being the most important). Remember NPOV? It was developed as a social mechanism to allow
reasonable people of different POVs to work together. Getting paid to edit does not necessarily
mean a person can't be NPOV or follow our policies. 

That said, it does at least have the appearance of impropriety when a person is editing an article
about their employer or a client. That should be frowned on for sure. But banned? Even if it were
possible to do that I think it would be bad in that it tends to give-up on the concept of NPOV as
a social construct. 

We should *certainly* NOT at all try to create a culture where users start to which hunt for
people who get paid to edit. A great many organizations could help us attain our goals by hiring
people to add content in areas where we are now weak. Heck, I think the foundation should do that
for some smaller languages and even in certain areas in larger languages where our coverage
currently sucks. All editors need do is follow our content and social policies. That is it.   

> They are free to pay someone to write whatever 
> they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU 
> FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.

I'm sorry, but that stance is not at all something that will help us attain our goals. 

We should embrace good content at face value and not question the motives for its creation.
Questioning people's motives is placing ideology over substance.  

-- mav

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