On 4 April 2014 14:33, Gryllida <gryll...@fastmail.fm> wrote: > On Fri, 4 Apr 2014, at 22:14, Fæ wrote: >> *Definition of "paid volunteer":* >> Paid volunteers are employees, contractors or part time contractors of >> Wikimedia organizations or other organizations having agreements or >> partnerships with Wikimedia. The paid volunteer contributes to Wikimedia >> projects and discussions that influence the content of Wikimedia projects. >> This includes employees and contractors that may not be paid for their >> on-project activities, however their employer benefits from the content of >> the same projects. ... > If I am a student and write wikipedia articles about commercial software my > university uses in my free time, I satisfy this definition. However, I would > have no conflict of interest here, as neither I nor my university gets paid > for the new information I would write. ...
I do not understand how you are reading the definition to believe it would apply to students writing about some software they happen to use. Students pay the university to be on a course, or receive a grant from a funding body which they then pay the university, not the reverse. To be clear, this definition does not apply to students, they are not: * employees who are also volunteers * volunteers who are receiving money or given significant assets for improving content of Wikimedia projects Even a paid researcher on a university project would not meet this definition, unless the project were part funded or in partnership with Wikimedia. In that latter case, yes, we would want their interest to be declared when they were acting as a volunteer contributor to Wikimedia projects and at the same time benefiting their university project or advocating for further projects where they were likely to be employed/contracted or be credited for associated academic publications. What is proposed here is *not* a general conflict of interest policy, it is a specific policy of transparency directed at Wikimedia organization employees or employees of Wikimedia partners on programmes directly related to Wikimedia projects in the same way as can be claimed for the Belfer case. Vague associations like an employee of a Wikimedia partner organization who has no connection to a Wikimedia partnership are tangential ideas, having nothing to do with this proposal. Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
