The moral panic on this subject is irrational. Folks are scandalized (scandalized!) by the very thought of people being paid to add articles to Wikipedia because they might have a conflict of interest. Rspeer notes that we've got along perfectly well with volunteers so far, presumably implying that volunteers are purely altruistic and few if any articles have been created by editors with a conflict. On the contrary, my guess is quite a few articles about individuals and companies of mid-level fame were created by fans, friends, associates, employees, etc. Perhaps a deep review with WikiScanner will allow us to identify some of these suspect articles, and delete them because they were created with impure motives.
There is a good debate to be had about paid editing, the reward board, content created with a conflict of interest, etc. The entanglement of money and article content is inevitable given the "free to edit" structure of Wikipedia. Banning it sends it underground, we're better off regulating it. Unfortunately the discussions (not just the RfC, but the various deletion debates and noticeboard threads) are often hijacked by puritans whose instinct is to block first and discuss second. The block on Desiphral and the attempted deletion of an entire Wikimedia project is just the latest example. Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
