Wikipedia Forcing Editors To Disclose If They're Paid 135
mpicpp sends word that the Wikimedia Foundation is updating its Terms of Use to keep track of editors who are paid for the changes they make. This follows last fall's discovery that a small industry had arisen around public relations firms running Wikipedia editing campaigns for paying clients. The Foundation now says, "If you are paid to edit, you will need to disclose your paid editing to comply with the new Terms of Use. You need to add your affiliation to your edit summary, user page, or talk page, to fairly disclose your perspective. ... Specific policies on individual Wikimedia projects, or relevant laws in your country (such as those prohibiting fraudulent advertising), may require further disclosure or prohibit paid advocacy editing altogether." They add, "undisclosed paid advocacy editing is a black hat practice that can threaten the trust of Wikimedia’s volunteers and readers."
Please stop this beta madness (Score:0, Insightful)
I've turned it off 6 times today. Usually I go to slashdot and open links I'm interested in tabs, since yesterday it has decided to randomly switch clicked links to beta, and switching to classic at the bottom drops me to the main page. So I had to close the tabs, find the story I want, and when I'm done, click classic, and repeat. This is ridiculous. When I tried to post this comment under beta, it disappeared after clicking preview perhaps because I don't use javascript for safety reasons. Soylentnews must be amused by their referrer logs at this point.
Re:Oh, good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, good (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it's step 1.
If [asshole practice] isn't explicitly against the rules, then that's the first defense any person who engages in [asshole practice] rushes to.
How about college students and non profit groups? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have wars going on all over wikipedia due to different views and beliefs that far outweigh the business and pr companies.
Many non paid editors have very in-depth political viewpoints, and they attack other groups reporting on information in articles they disagree with.
The worst I've seen are the feminists against male rape statistics and anything male related. I can only assume its because colleges promote such a militant viewpoint on feminism it runs over into other areas of sexual statistics and thus becomes political.
I've seen many editors who are members of originations who delete anything that could be considered a counter argument with the established, but can often be incorrect due to education and their circle of influence related to their school or organization.
Another example. An amateur historian who would find common misconceptions and provide articles to show the common viewpoint is not correct by using government links. Many editors that are enrolled in college history courses would remove his work. He finally just used his personal page and put up the corrections so at least they are online. The point was he was correction known flaws taught in higher education with GOVERNMENT backed evidence.
It sickens me, that the truth can be deleted by editors with agendas. I've seen the history re-written due to lack of publications of news and tv reportings that are from the early 80's and older. But we can have entire animated tv show episodes articles with great detail, as thats the level of knowledge as historically important.
This is why we need all magazines and newspapers online also, the history and reporting of opnion is harder to argue when the only source is wikipedia.
Re:Lipstick on a Pig (Score:5, Insightful)
What's astounding is how valuable and reliable a resource Wikipedia has become.
I know people love to scoff at Wikipedia (especially when they're losing arguments) but the fact remains that as a "source of information", this free website that allows anyone to edit posts has become the most useful and important reference resource the world has ever known.
Wikipedia is a hell of a lot more transparent than any encyclopedia ever published, and as long as you realize that Wikipedia is the beginning of your research, not the end, it will never steer you wrong. What's surprising is that the same people who look down their noses at Wikipedia probably believe that the Encyclopedia Britannica was an accurate source of unbiased information.
It remains living proof that the "crowd" can make something awesome and that free can be great.. Even the people who scoff at the idea of Wikipedia and who love to tell you who that they can't believe anyone uses Wikipedia use it regularly. And if they find information that goes against their own beliefs, they can always tell themselves, "Well, it's just Wikipedia" and can go on believing whatever crap they were going to keep believing no matter what information they were given.
I'm trying to think of a readily available reference that's ever been as useful as Wikipedia, and I'm not coming up with anything. Maybe someone can offer a suggestion?
Re:Lipstick on a Pig (Score:5, Insightful)
Except Google has been polluted by paid search results.
And it's certainly not free. In fact, given their level of data collection and the lack of transparency, you could say it's among the most expensive and least reliable ways to collect information.
Do you know of a way to challenge Google search results or rankings?
Re:Lipstick on a Pig (Score:4, Insightful)
That wikipedia is taken seriously as a source of information still astounds me.
What's astounding is how valuable and reliable a resource Wikipedia has become.
There's a difference between accurate and reliable. Wikipedia's accuracy, overall, is astoundingly good for a crowd-sourced entity. Wikipedia's reliability, on the other hand, is TERRIBLE.
Why? Because it's the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." The whole conception of Wikipedia was great, and we've built up this amazing base of reasonably good information. But it's constantly fighting against the "barbarians at the gates." From the petty squabbles, wiki-lawyering, and edit wars to the constant barrage of vandalism and spam, it's a wonder the damn thing appears as "together" as it is on any given day.
But if you start to look hard, you see the cracks. Anyone who uses Wikipedia on a regular basis has seen random vandalism. I've seen vandals who have fun just changing random digits in dates or something. It's insane. Say all you want about Encyclopedia Britannica's errors, but it is relatively stable -- when you opened the book the next time, it wouldn't have randomly inserted typographical errors and deliberate mistakes thrown in.
Wikipedia is a hell of a lot more transparent than any encyclopedia ever published, and as long as you realize that Wikipedia is the beginning of your research, not the end, it will never steer you wrong.
Except when you happen upon a page in the middle of vandalism or some stupid edit war and see something that's completely misleading. Back when I used to edit Wikipedia occasionally, I'd go looking for the stuff. It's much more common than you'd think, and every new bot they create to try to keep things clean is fighting a useless war against stupidity.
It remains living proof that the "crowd" can make something awesome and that free can be great.. Even the people who scoff at the idea of Wikipedia and who love to tell you who that they can't believe anyone uses Wikipedia use it regularly.
I don't scoff at Wikipedia, but I don't believe a damn thing I read on it until I've verified it elsewhere. Too many random edits and too many encounters with all sorts of vandalism have taught me to be suspicious.
I'm trying to think of a readily available reference that's ever been as useful as Wikipedia, and I'm not coming up with anything.
How about a BETTER Wikipedia? If we truly have achieved this great resource, isn't it time to change the rules? What works best to grow your mom-and-pop restaurant into a small chain over a few years isn't necessarily the way to stay on top as a stable global business over a period of decades. It's time to lock down good pages on relatively stable topics, verify expert editors and get them to oversee future changes.
I'm all in favor of allowing anyone to still submit suggested edits, but maybe they could be on some other version of the page than the default that most people see from search engines -- the "unstable" or "experimental" bleeding-edge version. And consensus of knowledgable editors can move suggested changes to the "stable" version when they are justified.
That's the only way you're ever going to get something that's actually "reliable," to use your term. Right now, there's way too much time spent by volunteers fighting back the barbarians at the gates (and often new volunteers who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia's convention and stumble into random disputes or fights without knowing it... and thus are driven away). Instead, that energy could be focused on creating a stable, established baseline version, without worrying that any new IP address showing up could be trying to destroy what others have created.
Wikipedia is okay, but it could be great. But it reached a plateau in terms of administrative function maybe 5-7 years ago. It's time to move onto the next stage.