Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Fred Bauder]

> -- Forwarded message --
> From: 
> Date: 18 November 2010 18:51
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age
> To: risker...@gmail.com
>
>
> In a message dated 11/18/2010 3:50:30 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> risker...@gmail.com writes:
>
>
> "We are extraordinarily ineffective at providing neutral, well-written,
> relatively complete and well-referenced articles about businesses and
> individuals - even as of this writing we have tens of thousands of
> unreferenced and poorly referenced BLPs - and equally bad at maintaining
> and
> updating them.
>
>
>
>
> I find that mixing to be confusing.  I don't think it's useful to talk
> about
> living people and businesses together in the same section.  Or are you
> claiming that BLP applies to "living businesses" as well
>
> I am deliberately including both of these groups because (a) they are the
> target audience for the WikipediaExperts group discussed in this thread
> and
> (b)  they are the two groups who most frequently complain about poor
> quality
> articles and errors when they are the subject of an article.  While I
> don't
> equate biographical articles with those involving businesses, a poor
> quality
> article is still a poor quality article, and I don't see why we should
> consider it "less serious" just because it's about a business and not a
> person.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> Note: I believe you intended to send this to the entire list, WJhonson;
> if I
> am incorrect, please accept my apologies.
>
> R

An unsuccessful attempt was made to extent the principles of BLP to
organizations at the time BLP was adopted. The same liability problems
exist.

Fred Bauder


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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[FT2]

I drafted this. It still seems the best approach in terms of keeping good
editing and reducing problematic editing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FT2/Commercial_and_paid_editing

FT2

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:05 AM, David Goodman wrote:

> Most current paid editing gets deleted at Speedy, simply because the
> organization has no serious claim to being notable. People who
> deliberately write paid articles on topics they know hopeless are
> unethical; if they write them without knowing, they are incompetent.
> But this sort of thing is not the current problem, for it's no more
> difficult to handle than the even larger amount of similar articles by
> volunteer editors.
>
> The problem with the more competent of the people writing for pay is
> not that they try to flout Wikipedia rules, but that most of them have
> assimilated only the more superficial elements of the technique . They
> do not adequately understand the difference between promotional and
> informative, and they typically include inappropriate content such as
> contact information or a long list of products. But this is  fairly
> easy to spot. It would be easier to spot if they declared their
> status, and I think a rule against paid or other COI editing that we
> do not enforce  is  unproductive-- if it is good editing, we cannot
> detect it, and if it isn't, we do not need the rule any more than with
> bad volunteer editing.
>
> And of course there is the continued existence of the reward board,
> which is in direct contradiction to  policy, but would not be if we
> accepted declared COI or paid editing.
>
> As for the proprietor of this service, I've just been removing from
> the article on him article one of the clear signs of COI/promotional
> editing , the excessive use of his name.
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Risker  wrote:
> > On 18 November 2010 18:33, David Gerard  wrote:
> >
> >> On 18 November 2010 23:09, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> >>
> >> > Am I 'paid editing' when I write articles during 9-5 ?  Is that bad?
> >>
> >>
> >> The problem with paid editing is when it violates content guidelines,
> >> such as NPOV.
> >>
> >> Someone paid to improve the area of linguistics in general? (This has
> >> happened.) Fine by me.
> >>
> >> Someone paid by (say) a museum to write articles on the contents of
> >> their collection? Could risk NPOV, but the idea is probably a net win.
> >> And the photos!
> >>
> >> Someone paid by a company to monitor their article for negative
> >> information and edit it accordingly? Could violate NPOV. The very
> >> proper way to do this is to openly introduce yourself as a PR person
> >> on the talk page, supply information as appropriate and never touch
> >> the article text itself; this can be problematic for you if there's
> >> little actual interest in the article, though, and so little
> >> third-party editor traffic.
> >>
> >> Someone paid by a person to keep rubbish out of their BLP? Trickier.
> >> In a perfect spherical Wikipedia of uniform density in a vacuum, they
> >> shouldn't go near the article on them. In practice, BLPs are our
> >> biggest problems, for reasons I needn't elaborate on. Usually if they
> >> contact i...@wikimedia.org with a BLP issue it gets an experienced
> >> volunteer on the case, and the BLP Noticeboard is an excellent and
> >> effective way to get experienced attention to an article.
> >>
> >> "Paid editing" is, of course, not one thing.
> >>
> >
> >
> > I'll repeat what I said on enwp's Administrator's noticeboard here for a
> > different audience:
> >
> > "We are extraordinarily ineffective at providing neutral, well-written,
> > relatively complete and well-referenced articles about businesses and
> > individuals - even as of this writing we have tens of thousands of
> > unreferenced and poorly referenced BLPs - and equally bad at maintaining
> and
> > updating them. Given this remarkable inefficiency, and the fact that a
> > Wikipedia article is usually a top-5 google hit for most businesses and
> > people, there's plenty of good reason for our subjects to say "enough is
> > enough" and insist on having a decent article. We've all seen the badly
> > written BLPs and the articles about companies where the "controversies"
> > section contains every complaint made in the last 10 years.  We aren't
> doing
> > the job ourselves, and it's unrealistic to think that we can: the
> > article-to-active editor ratio is 1:960 right now[1], and getting higher
> all
> > the time. I'm hard pressed to tell someone that they can't bring in a
> > skilled Wikipedia editor, following our own policies and guidelines, to
> > bring an article they're interested in up to our own stated standards. As
> to
> > COI, one wonders why financial benefit seems to raise all these red
> flags,
> > when undisclosed membership in various organizations, personal beliefs,
> and
> > life experiences may well lead to an even greater COI. "Put it on the
> talk
> > page" only works if (a) someone i

Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Goodman]

Most current paid editing gets deleted at Speedy, simply because the
organization has no serious claim to being notable. People who
deliberately write paid articles on topics they know hopeless are
unethical; if they write them without knowing, they are incompetent.
But this sort of thing is not the current problem, for it's no more
difficult to handle than the even larger amount of similar articles by
volunteer editors.

The problem with the more competent of the people writing for pay is
not that they try to flout Wikipedia rules, but that most of them have
assimilated only the more superficial elements of the technique . They
do not adequately understand the difference between promotional and
informative, and they typically include inappropriate content such as
contact information or a long list of products. But this is  fairly
easy to spot. It would be easier to spot if they declared their
status, and I think a rule against paid or other COI editing that we
do not enforce  is  unproductive-- if it is good editing, we cannot
detect it, and if it isn't, we do not need the rule any more than with
bad volunteer editing.

And of course there is the continued existence of the reward board,
which is in direct contradiction to  policy, but would not be if we
accepted declared COI or paid editing.

As for the proprietor of this service, I've just been removing from
the article on him article one of the clear signs of COI/promotional
editing , the excessive use of his name.


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Risker  wrote:
> On 18 November 2010 18:33, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>> On 18 November 2010 23:09, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>>
>> > Am I 'paid editing' when I write articles during 9-5 ?  Is that bad?
>>
>>
>> The problem with paid editing is when it violates content guidelines,
>> such as NPOV.
>>
>> Someone paid to improve the area of linguistics in general? (This has
>> happened.) Fine by me.
>>
>> Someone paid by (say) a museum to write articles on the contents of
>> their collection? Could risk NPOV, but the idea is probably a net win.
>> And the photos!
>>
>> Someone paid by a company to monitor their article for negative
>> information and edit it accordingly? Could violate NPOV. The very
>> proper way to do this is to openly introduce yourself as a PR person
>> on the talk page, supply information as appropriate and never touch
>> the article text itself; this can be problematic for you if there's
>> little actual interest in the article, though, and so little
>> third-party editor traffic.
>>
>> Someone paid by a person to keep rubbish out of their BLP? Trickier.
>> In a perfect spherical Wikipedia of uniform density in a vacuum, they
>> shouldn't go near the article on them. In practice, BLPs are our
>> biggest problems, for reasons I needn't elaborate on. Usually if they
>> contact i...@wikimedia.org with a BLP issue it gets an experienced
>> volunteer on the case, and the BLP Noticeboard is an excellent and
>> effective way to get experienced attention to an article.
>>
>> "Paid editing" is, of course, not one thing.
>>
>
>
> I'll repeat what I said on enwp's Administrator's noticeboard here for a
> different audience:
>
> "We are extraordinarily ineffective at providing neutral, well-written,
> relatively complete and well-referenced articles about businesses and
> individuals - even as of this writing we have tens of thousands of
> unreferenced and poorly referenced BLPs - and equally bad at maintaining and
> updating them. Given this remarkable inefficiency, and the fact that a
> Wikipedia article is usually a top-5 google hit for most businesses and
> people, there's plenty of good reason for our subjects to say "enough is
> enough" and insist on having a decent article. We've all seen the badly
> written BLPs and the articles about companies where the "controversies"
> section contains every complaint made in the last 10 years.  We aren't doing
> the job ourselves, and it's unrealistic to think that we can: the
> article-to-active editor ratio is 1:960 right now[1], and getting higher all
> the time. I'm hard pressed to tell someone that they can't bring in a
> skilled Wikipedia editor, following our own policies and guidelines, to
> bring an article they're interested in up to our own stated standards. As to
> COI, one wonders why financial benefit seems to raise all these red flags,
> when undisclosed membership in various organizations, personal beliefs, and
> life experiences may well lead to an even greater COI. "Put it on the talk
> page" only works if (a) someone is watching the article, (b) that someone
> doesn't have their own perspective that they feel is more valid, (c) and
> someone is willing to actually edit the article.  Those three conditions
> aren't being met nearly enough (see editor-to-article ratio above). We've
> created the very situation where organizations and people are no longer
> willing to accept that they have to put up with a bad article about
> themselves. And pr

[Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Risker]

-- Forwarded message --
From: 
Date: 18 November 2010 18:51
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age
To: risker...@gmail.com


In a message dated 11/18/2010 3:50:30 PM Pacific Standard Time,
risker...@gmail.com writes:


"We are extraordinarily ineffective at providing neutral, well-written,
relatively complete and well-referenced articles about businesses and
individuals - even as of this writing we have tens of thousands of
unreferenced and poorly referenced BLPs - and equally bad at maintaining and
updating them.




I find that mixing to be confusing.  I don't think it's useful to talk about
living people and businesses together in the same section.  Or are you
claiming that BLP applies to "living businesses" as well

I am deliberately including both of these groups because (a) they are the
target audience for the WikipediaExperts group discussed in this thread and
(b)  they are the two groups who most frequently complain about poor quality
articles and errors when they are the subject of an article.  While I don't
equate biographical articles with those involving businesses, a poor quality
article is still a poor quality article, and I don't see why we should
consider it "less serious" just because it's about a business and not a
person.

Risker/Anne

Note: I believe you intended to send this to the entire list, WJhonson; if I
am incorrect, please accept my apologies.

R
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Re: [Foundation-l] WikiMedia Technical Help Desk

[Łukasz Garczewski]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:56 AM, K. Peachey  wrote:
> Try out http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_Desk and our IRC
> channel (#mediawiki on freenode)

Also, the Mediawiki-l mailing list would be a good place to ask.

Details here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mailing_list

-- 
Łukasz Tor-Garczewski

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Re: [Foundation-l] WikiMedia Technical Help Desk

[K. Peachey]

Try out http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_Desk and our IRC
channel (#mediawiki on freenode)
-Peachey

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[Foundation-l] WikiMedia Technical Help Desk

[WJhonson]

Is there a technical help forum (peer to peer) for the Wikimedia software?

I find myself spending a few hours of digging through PHP code to try to 
make a small extension / correction.  And also at times, I make what I think 
is a brilliant change and would like to share it with other technically 
minded programmers.

Not just one, but a group.  So I can feel that I've done something 
worthwhile, instead of stupid.

W
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Risker]

On 18 November 2010 18:33, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 18 November 2010 23:09, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>
> > Am I 'paid editing' when I write articles during 9-5 ?  Is that bad?
>
>
> The problem with paid editing is when it violates content guidelines,
> such as NPOV.
>
> Someone paid to improve the area of linguistics in general? (This has
> happened.) Fine by me.
>
> Someone paid by (say) a museum to write articles on the contents of
> their collection? Could risk NPOV, but the idea is probably a net win.
> And the photos!
>
> Someone paid by a company to monitor their article for negative
> information and edit it accordingly? Could violate NPOV. The very
> proper way to do this is to openly introduce yourself as a PR person
> on the talk page, supply information as appropriate and never touch
> the article text itself; this can be problematic for you if there's
> little actual interest in the article, though, and so little
> third-party editor traffic.
>
> Someone paid by a person to keep rubbish out of their BLP? Trickier.
> In a perfect spherical Wikipedia of uniform density in a vacuum, they
> shouldn't go near the article on them. In practice, BLPs are our
> biggest problems, for reasons I needn't elaborate on. Usually if they
> contact i...@wikimedia.org with a BLP issue it gets an experienced
> volunteer on the case, and the BLP Noticeboard is an excellent and
> effective way to get experienced attention to an article.
>
> "Paid editing" is, of course, not one thing.
>


I'll repeat what I said on enwp's Administrator's noticeboard here for a
different audience:

"We are extraordinarily ineffective at providing neutral, well-written,
relatively complete and well-referenced articles about businesses and
individuals - even as of this writing we have tens of thousands of
unreferenced and poorly referenced BLPs - and equally bad at maintaining and
updating them. Given this remarkable inefficiency, and the fact that a
Wikipedia article is usually a top-5 google hit for most businesses and
people, there's plenty of good reason for our subjects to say "enough is
enough" and insist on having a decent article. We've all seen the badly
written BLPs and the articles about companies where the "controversies"
section contains every complaint made in the last 10 years.  We aren't doing
the job ourselves, and it's unrealistic to think that we can: the
article-to-active editor ratio is 1:960 right now[1], and getting higher all
the time. I'm hard pressed to tell someone that they can't bring in a
skilled Wikipedia editor, following our own policies and guidelines, to
bring an article they're interested in up to our own stated standards. As to
COI, one wonders why financial benefit seems to raise all these red flags,
when undisclosed membership in various organizations, personal beliefs, and
life experiences may well lead to an even greater COI. "Put it on the talk
page" only works if (a) someone is watching the article, (b) that someone
doesn't have their own perspective that they feel is more valid, (c) and
someone is willing to actually edit the article.  Those three conditions
aren't being met nearly enough (see editor-to-article ratio above). We've
created the very situation where organizations and people are no longer
willing to accept that they have to put up with a bad article about
themselves. And precisely why should they be prevented from improving our
project?"

As to the Volunteer Response Team, they are a very small group of volunteers
who are usually swamped with requests, and they often wind up having to
negotiate with the existing "interested" editors to clear out BLP violations
and clean up the articles to meet our own standards, sometimes having to
fight tooth and nail to do so.  (I should clarify that there is a large
group of volunteers, but only a few who are actually responding to tickets
on a regular basis, not unlike most wiki-projects.) It is challenging for
subjects of articles to find their way to submit a request to have their
article fixed, too.  And remember that 1:960 ratio - even if every active
editor on enwp made it their business to do nothing but maintenance and
improvement of existing articles, we couldn't keep up with the workload.

Risker/Anne

[1] 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Gerard]

On 18 November 2010 23:09, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> Am I 'paid editing' when I write articles during 9-5 ?  Is that bad?


The problem with paid editing is when it violates content guidelines,
such as NPOV.

Someone paid to improve the area of linguistics in general? (This has
happened.) Fine by me.

Someone paid by (say) a museum to write articles on the contents of
their collection? Could risk NPOV, but the idea is probably a net win.
And the photos!

Someone paid by a company to monitor their article for negative
information and edit it accordingly? Could violate NPOV. The very
proper way to do this is to openly introduce yourself as a PR person
on the talk page, supply information as appropriate and never touch
the article text itself; this can be problematic for you if there's
little actual interest in the article, though, and so little
third-party editor traffic.

Someone paid by a person to keep rubbish out of their BLP? Trickier.
In a perfect spherical Wikipedia of uniform density in a vacuum, they
shouldn't go near the article on them. In practice, BLPs are our
biggest problems, for reasons I needn't elaborate on. Usually if they
contact i...@wikimedia.org with a BLP issue it gets an experienced
volunteer on the case, and the BLP Noticeboard is an excellent and
effective way to get experienced attention to an article.

"Paid editing" is, of course, not one thing.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Gerard]

On 18 November 2010 22:37, John Vandenberg  wrote:

>>> Someone on another list discussing this suggested the WMF marketing
>>> monitoring the article about you as a service ...

> Which list is this?


Comcom. Idle chitchat, not a serious suggestion. (I certainly hope.)


> It would be easy to build an RSS feed for a set of articles and 'give'
> that to any fool willing to pay for it.


Ixnay on the oolfay. "Most Valued Customer."


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 2:42 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:
>>>
>>> > Any one signed up yet?
>>> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>>
>> I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
>> http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>>
>> --
>> Amir E. Aharoni
>>
>
> Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> acceptable, even welcome?

We have 'paid editing', 'COI editing' and 'POV editing' happening all
the time.  We deal with it.

We should be less concerned about the motivation, and more concerned
about the output.

A fringe academic pushing their theories is just as bad as a corporate
shill, if not worse.

Am I 'paid editing' when I write articles during 9-5 ?  Is that bad?

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Mono mium]

I've signed up, for the heck of it - I wonder how big of a scam it is.

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:01 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 9:53 AM, masti  wrote:
> > On 11/18/2010 12:30 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >> Any one signed up yet?
> >> http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
> >>
> > I'm not able to find it now but there was an article form marketing/PR
> > professionals to fellow marketeers describing why not to do exactly this
> > what is offered here.
> >
> > The result of such editing is usually not worth ruining the reputation
> > if the articles are marked as spam.
> >
> > What they offer is to write them in a way it will not be easily
> > dicovered. And that is braking our rules.
>
> Where do they say that?
>
> Their code of ethics is much like the OTRS practises.
>
> http://wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>
> Of course our OTRS practises are .. in practise by openly disclosed
> OTRS volunteers, and we have no idea how well wikipediaexperts works
> in practise or who they are in our wikis, editing our articles.
>
> I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt, but someone
> (WMF?) should ask them to provide a sample of their work for review.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 9:53 AM, masti  wrote:
> On 11/18/2010 12:30 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> Any one signed up yet?
>> http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>>
> I'm not able to find it now but there was an article form marketing/PR
> professionals to fellow marketeers describing why not to do exactly this
> what is offered here.
>
> The result of such editing is usually not worth ruining the reputation
> if the articles are marked as spam.
>
> What they offer is to write them in a way it will not be easily
> dicovered. And that is braking our rules.

Where do they say that?

Their code of ethics is much like the OTRS practises.

http://wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html

Of course our OTRS practises are .. in practise by openly disclosed
OTRS volunteers, and we have no idea how well wikipediaexperts works
in practise or who they are in our wikis, editing our articles.

I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt, but someone
(WMF?) should ask them to provide a sample of their work for review.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Michael Peel]

On 18 Nov 2010, at 15:42, Fred Bauder wrote:

>> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â  wrote:
>>> 
 Any one signed up yet?
 http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>> 
>> I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
>> http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>> 
>> --
>> Amir E. Aharoni
>> 
> 
> Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> acceptable, even welcome?

What I worry about is the volunteer time that gets taken up tidying things up 
after something like this goes wrong - or worse, goes somewhat right but not 
completely (so that a simple revert is out of the question and a major cleanup 
of an article is needed, or a lot of discussion with the editor is necessary to 
set things straight). That's volunteer time that could otherwise be spent 
either productively, or tidying up after other volunteers.

It almost leads into the catch-22 scenario where the paid editors need to 
guarantee that if their work isn't up to scratch then they'll pay someone else 
to fix it...

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Andrew Gray]

On 18 November 2010 22:40, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> If it is that easy, maybe it should be a feature available as a courtesy
> to anyone or any organization that has an article about them.

And to everyone else, too :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Smith&feed=atom&action=history

All you'd need to do is produce a nice wrapper for it...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[masti]

On 11/18/2010 12:30 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Any one signed up yet?
> http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>
I'm not able to find it now but there was an article form marketing/PR 
professionals to fellow marketeers describing why not to do exactly this 
what is offered here.

The result of such editing is usually not worth ruining the reputation 
if the articles are marked as spam.

What they offer is to write them in a way it will not be easily 
dicovered. And that is braking our rules.

disgusting.

masti

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Fred Bauder]

> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Fred Bauder 
> wrote:
>>> On 18 November 2010 21:28, John Vandenberg  wrote:
 On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Keegan Peterzell
  wrote:
>>>
> It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.
>  Nice
> scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)
>>>
 That sounds similar to the role of a few WMF staff...
>>>
>>>
>>> Someone on another list discussing this suggested the WMF marketing
>>> monitoring the article about you as a service ...
>
> Which list is this?
>
>> So we would charge people to monitor the article about them? Would we
>> do
>> that for firms too? There would could be negligence liability if we
>> miss
>> something.
>
> 'monitoring' =/= 'action'
>
> It would be easy to build an RSS feed for a set of articles and 'give'
> that to any fool willing to pay for it.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>

If it is that easy, maybe it should be a feature available as a courtesy
to anyone or any organization that has an article about them.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> On 18 November 2010 21:28, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>>> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Keegan Peterzell
>>>  wrote:
>>
 It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.
  Nice
 scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)
>>
>>> That sounds similar to the role of a few WMF staff...
>>
>>
>> Someone on another list discussing this suggested the WMF marketing
>> monitoring the article about you as a service ...

Which list is this?

> So we would charge people to monitor the article about them? Would we do
> that for firms too? There would could be negligence liability if we miss
> something.

'monitoring' =/= 'action'

It would be easy to build an RSS feed for a set of articles and 'give'
that to any fool willing to pay for it.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Fred Bauder]

> On 18 November 2010 21:28, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Keegan Peterzell
>>  wrote:
>
>>> It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.
>>>  Nice
>>> scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)
>
>> That sounds similar to the role of a few WMF staff...
>
>
> Someone on another list discussing this suggested the WMF marketing
> monitoring the article about you as a service ...
>
>
> - d.
>

So we would charge people to monitor the article about them? Would we do
that for firms too? There would could be negligence liability if we miss
something.

Fred Bauder


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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Fred Bauder]

> It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.  Nice
> scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)
>
> "WikipediaExperts is a fast-growing network of experts which includes
> many
> Wikipedia editors. When a new assignment arrives we send it to the editor
> whose profile is the best fit with the subject of the article. We also
> provide support for pro-bono work of the participating editors."
>
> --
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
> ___

I think you sign up with them and get paid, but I'm not interested in
doing any more undercover work, just to find that out. I suspect they
have no "stable of writers" at present, but hope to. It is quite likely
the boss will do any writing to be done for now.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[WJhonson]

And my Knols are also not read in Africa

evidence
http://statcounter.com/project/standard/visitor_map.php?project_id=4543053

Although there is apparently one person in Pakistan who is interested.

The point of this message is that the reach in Africa doesn't seem limited 
to a  Wikipedia issue.  Nigeria at least speaks English (of a sort) so I 
don't know why they aren't more active.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Gerard]

On 18 November 2010 21:28, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Keegan Peterzell  
> wrote:

>> It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.  Nice
>> scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)

> That sounds similar to the role of a few WMF staff...


Someone on another list discussing this suggested the WMF marketing
monitoring the article about you as a service ...


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Keegan Peterzell  wrote:
> It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.  Nice
> scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)

That sounds similar to the role of a few WMF staff...

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Przykuta]

> Actually, none of these "statistics" are relevant, because the overwhelming
> majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality,
> age, sex, or race.

Sure, and user page with userboxes =/= (active) wikipedian. 

przykuta

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Arthur Richards]

On 11/18/2010 11:21 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> He was not raised in an African American culture at all.
>

Regardless of whether or not Obama was raised in whatever you consider 
to be 'African American culture', he has no doubt experienced life in a 
very different way from someone who has 'white' skin - something he 
likely shares in common with anyone living in the US who is perceived as 
non-white.  And just as there is no one 'white' culture, there is no one 
'African American' culture.  Culture cannot be defined strictly by the 
color of one's skin or ancestral roots.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Liam Wyatt]

On 18 November 2010 15:57, Risker  wrote:

> On 18 November 2010 10:42, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>
> > > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â  wrote:
> > >>
> > >> > Any one signed up yet?
> > >> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
> > >
> > > I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
> > > http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
> > >
> > > --
> > > Amir E. Aharoni
> > >
> >
> > Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> > break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> > editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> > acceptable, even welcome?
> >
>
> My teeth grate when I think that some people are getting paid to do what so
> many of us do simply for the joy of sharing.  Having said that, I can
> certainly understand why some article subjects have tired of depending on
> our rather inefficient methods of ensuring that articles on notable
> subjects
> are accurate, unbiased, well-sourced and relatively complete.  I have
> increasing difficulty rationalizing the deprecation of "paid" editing when
> a
> goodly number of what are assumed to be "paid-for" articles conform more
> closely to our policies and guidelines than what volunteer editors have
> created - or never got around to creating, for that matter. (I'll note this
> holds true for more than just English Wikipedia, as I have heard reports
> that there's significant bias on other Wikipedias as well.)  Anyone who's
> tried to rebalance an article that gives undue weight to negative issues,
> or
> to remove salacious trivia about a BLP subject, knows how incredibly
> frustrating it can be to bring articles into line with policy.
>
> Risker/Anne


I agree that the concept of "being paid to edit Wikipedia" does not fit well
with the ethos of our movement... That said, I think a lot of the problems
with paid editing in the past (however conceived) have been because the
person doing the paying was trying to game the system and circumvent the
policies of Wikipedia. Things like being commissioned to whitewash a
corporation's article is clearly a violation of the rules - not because it's
paid per se, but because it breaks Conflict of Interest guidelines. On the
other hand, if someone is employed as a subject area professional (e.g.
university professor, museum curator) and their organisation has decided
that improving Wikipedia should be part of their job description then I
suppose that is technically paid editing, but I don't believe that should be
seen as a bad thing. See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Coi#Subject_and_culture_sector_professionals

Personally I would like to see discussions about paid editing differentiated
from discussions of COI and Spam because, whilst they often overlap with
negative consequences, it they are not necessarily synonymous.

-Liam

Wittylama.com/blog
Peace, Love & Metadata
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 20:21,   wrote:
> In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:14:37 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> mill...@gmail.com writes:
>> As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one
>> clarifications:
>> * First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
>> African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
>> that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
>> background.
>> * Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
>> "which ancestors came there as slaves" I was referring to the culture
>> developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.
>
> This is not correct.  Barack was born in Hawaii, not known for having a
> large black culture.  His father left the family early.  Barack's white 
> mother,
> married again and moved to Indonesian with Barack where he lived for some
> years.  He then returned to his white grandparents living in Hawaii where he
> attended Junior High and High schools.
>
> He was not raised in an African American culture at all.

I said to myself that I won't read article about him this time. For
me, it is perfectly the same what he is. But, obviously, I have to do
my homework in such situations.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:14:37 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
mill...@gmail.com writes:


> As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one 
> clarifications:
> * First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
> African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
> that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
> background.
> * Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
> "which ancestors came there as slaves" I was referring to the culture
> developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.
> 


This is not correct.  Barack was born in Hawaii, not known for having a 
large black culture.  His father left the family early.  Barack's white mother, 
married again and moved to Indonesian with Barack where he lived for some 
years.  He then returned to his white grandparents living in Hawaii where he 
attended Junior High and High schools.

He was not raised in an African American culture at all.

W
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Kat Walsh]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Brian J Mingus
 wrote:
> I haven't seen the numbers lately but in the past it was true that the
> majority of Wikipedia's traffic came from Google. If that is still true it
> seems likely that Google's demographics mirror what we are seeing here. The
> implication is that what we are seeing here is indicative of the
> demographics of internet use in general, which does seem to indicate that
> these folks just aren't on the internet in the first place. There are of
> course other explanations, such as, they simply choose not to edit. But I
> believe if you check the demographic statistics from Hitwise and elsewhere
> there will be a strong correlation with this overall trend. Basically, these
> people are underprivileged in our society and it reflects in our
> demographics.

Commenting since I just looked at some of these papers...

There have been a bunch of studies on broadband adoption in the US;
there was one published just this month. According to it, 49% of black
households in the US have broadband at home; 68% of white households
do. Adoption is correlated with income and education, but even
controlling for that a greater proportion of white households use the
internet at home.
http://www.esa.doc.gov/DN/ (4.2 MB .pdf)

And a study on minority internet use specifically:
http://www.jointcenter.org/publications1/publication-PDFs/MTI_BROADBAND_REPORT_2.pdf
(844 KB .pdf)

Many who don't have broadband internet at home use it at public
libraries or community centers, but time on computers there tends to
be limited because there is more demand for computers than
availability.

But it's not *that* large a gap in access compared to how
underrepresented blacks are in the active Wikimedia community; I
expect it's more social factors than anything else.

Compare us to Twitter--there is a huge and highly visible black
community there; 26% of black internet users in the US use Twitter
(and 19% of white internet users), and also interesting to me is that
20-22% of US internet users Twitter across all income levels:
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/17-Twitter-and-Status-Updating-Fall-2009.aspx?r=1

-Kat

-- 
Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en
Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:mindspillage
IRC(freenode,OFTC):mindspillage * identi.ca:mindspillage * phone:ask

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Marco Chiesa]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
> I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at
> least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it
> looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.
>

I think this is part of a general dilemma about the so-called new
technologies. On a very broad approximation, Internet (and Wikipedia)
has from its beginnings been created and dominated by white, male,
relatively young and tech-savvy people, and these demographics have
tended to shape it to their own values and style. The rest of the
world (which represents a large majority of the population),
participates less in Internet/Wikipedia. I think both "these groups
are less interested in Wikipedia" and "these groups find a more
hostile environment" explain why these demographics are so
underrepresented.
Compared with the rest of Internet, I guess Wikipedia has been
successful in attracting not-so-young people (people involved in
teaching in particular), I'm not sure about other demographics.
Cruccone

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Risker]

On 18 November 2010 13:44, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta  wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
> >
> > 146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is
> active in wp
>
> After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian
> Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However,
> those numbers mean nothing:
>
> * 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1];
> population 300M+, English is native
> * 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is
> native
> * 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native
> * 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native
> * 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native
> * 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native
> * 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native
> * 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native.
> * 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is
> native
> * 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native
> * 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native
>
>


Actually, none of these "statistics" are relevant, because the overwhelming
majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality,
age, sex, or race.

While I'm sure that Wikipedia's editorship is not particularly reflective of
the world at large, using userboxes as a metric to determine representation
of various groups is not particularly helpful.  Many very involved users
don't include userboxes in their userspace (myself included), or don't use
the userboxes that involve sex, race, age or nationality. It strikes me that
I see probably 50 language-skill-related userboxes for every userbox that
confirms geographic location or sex.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 15:47, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist
> "African-American" wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be
> based on language differences.  However, I doubt that would be acceptable
> to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American
> community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.

Language differences exist and they are consistent among the African
American population. The origin of differences are creole language(s),
probably of Portuguese origin (with West African substrate, of
course), used in Caribbean. However, this is probably not enough for a
separate ISO 639-3 code, while the differences toward Standard English
are probably bigger than differences between Serbian, Croatian,
Bosnian and Montenegrin.

> I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the
> African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and
> in published books and journals is included.
>
> And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories:
> African-American culture | African American literature | African American
> studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles
> and issues linked from it.

I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at
least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it
looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta  wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
>
> 146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is 
> active in wp

After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian
Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However,
those numbers mean nothing:

* 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1];
population 300M+, English is native
* 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is native
* 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native
* 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native
* 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native
* 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native
* 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native
* 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native.
* 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is native
* 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native
* 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native

I tried to make put some other factors, but nothing has sense. There
is no consistency in the way on which Wikipedians are identifying
themselves ethnically, nationally or locally. It depends on particular
culture. (I used population of particular territories, not ethnic
population, but it won't change proportions significantly if ethnic
populations would be used.)

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 19:17, Sue Gardner  wrote:
> On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
>> it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
>> Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
>> African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
>> American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
>> Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
>> Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
>> African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
>
> Yes: click the link I sent.
>
> African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide;
> women make up 22.7%.

The numbers are according to the tech workforce, not according to the
population. African Americans stay better than women, actually: 7.1%
is 59% of 12% and 22.7% is 45% of 50%.

Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related
to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African
Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13].
With some theories why is it so [14].

The most worrying theory is: "The median age for black Americans
(according to the 2000 census) is 30 years old, a full seven years
younger than for white Americans. Black people therefore make up a
relatively higher percentage of the population within the most
relevant age groups -- Twitter is most popular amongst 25-34
year-olds."

It says, as it is confirmed at least in East and South-East Asia, that
we have a big problem, which would be just bigger as time is passing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_Wikipedians
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Polish_Wikipedians
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_Wikipedians
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_Germany
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_California
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_California
[9] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Wikipedians
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_Wikipedians
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_Wikipedians
[13] 
http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-whos-using-twitter-2010-4
[14] http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-study-results-2010-4

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Keegan Peterzell]

It looks to me like they just get paid to get volunteers to work.  Nice
scheme.  So it's not technically paid editing :)

"WikipediaExperts is a fast-growing network of experts which includes many
Wikipedia editors. When a new assignment arrives we send it to the editor
whose profile is the best fit with the subject of the article. We also
provide support for pro-bono work of the participating editors."

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Sue Gardner]

On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
> it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
> Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
> African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
> American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
> Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
> Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
> African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

Yes: click the link I sent.

African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide;
women make up 22.7%.

Thanks,
Sue

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:47, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
> well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
> ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans"
> and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
> the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
> say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
> The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
> So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
> referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
> first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
> not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
> because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one clarifications:
* First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
background.
* Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
"which ancestors came there as slaves" I was referring to the culture
developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Przykuta]

> Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
> females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
> that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
> would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
> Wikimedians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians

146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is 
active in wp

female:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Merewyn/Userboxes/Woman

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Disavian/Userboxes/Female&limit=50

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Hmwith/ubx/fem&limit=500

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Rhanyeia/User_female

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:UBX/female3&limit=100

but... not everyone want to use these templates

przykuta

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Risker]

On 18 November 2010 10:42, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
> >>
> >> On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â  wrote:
> >>
> >> > Any one signed up yet?
> >> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
> >
> > I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
> > http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
> >
> > --
> > Amir E. Aharoni
> >
>
> Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> acceptable, even welcome?
>

My teeth grate when I think that some people are getting paid to do what so
many of us do simply for the joy of sharing.  Having said that, I can
certainly understand why some article subjects have tired of depending on
our rather inefficient methods of ensuring that articles on notable subjects
are accurate, unbiased, well-sourced and relatively complete.  I have
increasing difficulty rationalizing the deprecation of "paid" editing when a
goodly number of what are assumed to be "paid-for" articles conform more
closely to our policies and guidelines than what volunteer editors have
created - or never got around to creating, for that matter. (I'll note this
holds true for more than just English Wikipedia, as I have heard reports
that there's significant bias on other Wikipedias as well.)  Anyone who's
tried to rebalance an article that gives undue weight to negative issues, or
to remove salacious trivia about a BLP subject, knows how incredibly
frustrating it can be to bring articles into line with policy.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:42, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
> >> On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:
> >> > Any one signed up yet?
> >> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
> >
> > I couldn't find anything wrong in their code of ethics
> > http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>
> Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> break Wikipedia rules, not follow them.

... Or rather, they hire someone to follow Wikipedia rules, because
they don't have the time to read through dozens of our policy pages.

--
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי · Amir Elisha Aharoni
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Fred Bauder]

> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>>
>> On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:
>>
>> > Any one signed up yet?
>> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>
> I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
> http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>
> --
> Amir E. Aharoni
>

Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
acceptable, even welcome?

Fred Bauder


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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

There seems to be nothing on Wikia, Black wiki is "about Criterion's
video game Black". Black Books wiki is about "BAEFTA award-wining sitcom,
Black Books." Nothing about African-American.

You're on to a real problem, which by the way, as should be obvious,
Americans don't know how to deal with or successfully ameliorate. As you
can see from this thread, denial is the usual defensive response which
serves to avoid the kind of detailed serious discussion you are
proposing.

If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist
"African-American" wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be
based on language differences.  However, I doubt that would be acceptable
to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American
community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.

I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the
African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and
in published books and journals is included.

And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories:
African-American culture | African American literature | African American
studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles
and issues linked from it.

Fred Bauder


> Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
> well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
> ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans"
> and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
> the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
> say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
> The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
> So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
> referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
> first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
> not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
> because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.
>
> I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic
> minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious
> underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is
> English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.
>
> This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with
> women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome
> backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that
> there are big differences between middle class Americans of African
> and European origins.
>
> Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
> females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
> that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
> would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
> Wikimedians.
>
> The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th
> century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the
> country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual
> and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot
> of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects
> were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot
> of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in
> Iran or Russia.
>
> Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is
> English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another
> language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.
>
> I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group.
> I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open
> Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American
> females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a
> comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is
> about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should
> be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community.
> But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we
> aren't.
>
> Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
> it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
> Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
> African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
> American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
> Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
> Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
> African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
>
> There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture
> distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is
> not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively
> simple wiki syntax.

Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans"
and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic
minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious
underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is
English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.

This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with
women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome
backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that
there are big differences between middle class Americans of African
and European origins.

Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
Wikimedians.

The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th
century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the
country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual
and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot
of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects
were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot
of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in
Iran or Russia.

Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is
English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another
language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.

I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group.
I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open
Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American
females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a
comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is
about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should
be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community.
But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we
aren't.

Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture
distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is
not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively
simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech
persons who are not able to adopt wiki syntax. Participation in OTT
[2] requires similar level of tech knowledge, if not higher.

Also, I think that it is possible that we are one of the causes, not
the consequence of that stratification. Not intentionally, of course,
but that our culture is giving fuel to those trends.

I wouldn't say that not so user friendly interface is the main reason
for that kind of stratification. I suppose that the picture would be
much different if we would be able to know social and ethnic
composition of those who edit once or a couple of times and then leave
Wikimedia projects.

Maybe it is about "our" and "their".

There are four Wikipedias written in the same language system:
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian. All four communities
are generally welcoming newcomers from other political areas. The
question is just about treating some of those projects as home project
and integration in the particular community. (Political issues are the
other question: you don't need to be a member of different ethnicity
to have political conflicts.) However, it is a matter of feeling some
project as the home one or not. If a person don't feel particular
project as their home project, that project is usually out of their
focus.

So, maybe African Americans generally don't feel English Wik

Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Andrew Gray]

On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:
> Any one signed up yet?
> http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135

Well, fools and their money are easily parted, I suppose.

http://wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html sounds very nice - an
improvement on most "online marketing consultancy" services that
vaguely promise this sort of thing - but I wonder what will come of it
in practice.

(I have written articles on companies. I never thought to *invoice*
them for it...)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:
>
> > Any one signed up yet?
> > http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135

I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html

--
Amir E. Aharoni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[David Gerard]

On 18 November 2010 11:30,   wrote:

> Any one signed up yet?
> http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135


Founder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Konanykhin

I don't see what could possibly go wrong with this idea.


- d.

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[Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[wiki-list]

Any one signed up yet?
http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135


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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Strainu]

2010/11/18 Ryan Kaldari :
> So for 200 years it's OK to classify anyone with a drop of African blood
> as "black" (and subject them to all forms of racism and discrimination),
> but once a 1/2 African is elected president, he can't be called "black"
> all the sudden?
>
> References:
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
>
> Ryan Kaldari

My mail was not about whether calling Obama black is OK or not OK.
What's OK in the US might not be OK in Europe and vice-versa. I've
made the point that different cultures have a different vision of
races and especially about people of mixed origin.

What is not OK from my POV is people finding offensive to call him
"almost black" or anything else than black, as Steven Walling
suggested, that I don't really understand. It seems to me like the
fact (anthropological fact, that is) is skewed to...what purpose
exactly? But again, this is a European's POV, perhaps in the States it
really is necessary to call Barack Obama black.

Strainu

>
> On 11/17/10 2:18 PM, Strainu wrote:
>> 2010/11/17:
>>
>>> In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>>> steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it,
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black.>>


>>> Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
>>> Funny how he is "African American" but of course he is equally "Caucasian
>>> American"
>>>
>> Which shows only hot dangerous "political correctness" can get. I
>> wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
>> majority, such a person will be called an European-American...
>>
>> For those of you who speak other languages than English, I suggest
>> reading the English, French, Spanish, Italian and/or German versions
>> of en:Mulatto. You will get an extraordinary glimpse of what different
>> groups consider relevant about this subject - the French have an
>> interesting comparison of the term in several languages.
>>
>>
>>> I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that "most American blacks
>>> are part white", since it's possibly also true that "most American whites
>>> are part black"
>>>
>> Citation needed?:P
>>
>> Strainu
>>
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