Mailing List Archive: Mywikipediaspace

Mywikipediaspace

daniwo59 at aol

Oct 1, 2006, 5:41 PM

Post #1 of 39 (2222 views)

Hello

I am currently reading the Terms of Service of Myspace. It is quite
interesting. Remember, this is a social networking site, not an
encyclopedia/dictionary/textbook/library/etc. As such, one would think that they would be a tad
more lax than us. Not so. Note that I not suggesting that these policies are
followed or that the millions of Myspace users have actually read them.
Nevertheless, it is there in writing. People who sign up agree to this. Perhaps we
can learn from them.

Rule 5:
Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace Services are for the personal use
of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial
endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com.
Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting
usernames and/or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for
the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or
linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate
links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles
without notice and may result in termination of Membership privileges.
Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the
MySpace Services.

Forbidden thing 11 is:

displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting payment or
anything of value from a third person in exchange for your performing any commercial
activity on or through the MySpace Services on behalf of that person, such
as placing commercial content on your profile, posting blogs or bulletins with
a commercial purpose, selecting a profile with a commercial purpose as one
of your "Top 8" friends, or sending private messages with a commercial
purpose;

As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms
of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own
Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.

Danny
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

delirium at hackish

Oct 1, 2006, 9:20 PM

Post #2 of 39 (2200 views)

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

>Rule 5:
>Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace Services are for the personal use
>of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial
>endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com.
>Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting
>usernames and/or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for
>the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or
>linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate
>links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles
>without notice and may result in termination of Membership privileges.
>Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the
>MySpace Services.
>
>Forbidden thing 11 is:
>
>displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting payment or
>anything of value from a third person in exchange for your performing any commercial
>activity on or through the MySpace Services on behalf of that person, such
>as placing commercial content on your profile, posting blogs or bulletins with
>a commercial purpose, selecting a profile with a commercial purpose as one
>of your "Top 8" friends, or sending private messages with a commercial
>purpose;
>
>As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms
>of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own
>Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
>
>
While it may be a good idea for Wikipedia to have terms of use, I don't
think the fact that Myspace has any particular terms of use ought to be
our guide. Myspace has the above terms for a very specific reason:
Their business model is based around selling advertising on the site.
Therefore they must maintain a monopoly on advertising on their site.
If advertisers could bypass Myspace itself and buy ads directly froms
users, who would then place them on their profiles, that would undercut
Myspace's business model. So they prohibit that, of course.

Being a nonprofit charity, we have quite different goals, which insofar
as they overlap is mostly accidental...

-Mark

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

walter at vankalken

Oct 1, 2006, 10:10 PM

Post #3 of 39 (2202 views)

>As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms
>of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own
>Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
>
>Danny
>
I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain
''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed
after 3+ years of actively participating. I feel that you would open up
a Pandora's box if you did that. I am not a lawyer but I could see that
my edits which I contributed under the previous term of service I would
now actually have to give you permission again to keep them on the site
or else I would be able to have them withdrawn, because I wouldn't agree
to you using them under the new terms of service. Can you imagine the
chaos from this?

Also you say you sincerely doubt that people read the terms of service
...... that is true most probably because they are to long and written
in legalish. A language only known to a few people and not to poor
Englishspeakers like myself. So what would be the use of new terms of
service that no-one would read and if they read it they wouldn't
understand it anyway. Leaving the board in a position to do what they
want when they want it. I am sure many including myself didn't get
involved on the projects just to start having a big brother being able
to yank us of at will and still use our years of sweat we put into this.
Speaking for myself if such a thing would happen I would pursue every
legal way possible to get all of my edits removed from the projects.

Waerth

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

wikimedia at alisonwheeler

Oct 2, 2006, 2:47 AM

Post #4 of 39 (2194 views)

On Mon, October 2, 2006 06:10, Walter van Kalken wrote:
> I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain
> ''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed
> after 3+ years of actively participating. I feel that you would open up
> a Pandora's box if you did that.

Whilst not directly camparable, LiveJournal did exactly that earlier this
year. It changed the ToS and, basically, said that continued use after
such and such a date, was explicit acceptance of those changed ToS. There
were a few complaints but, in the end, people realised that the service
they loved and used was the more important thing and they stayed.

Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

Alison Wheeler
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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

dgerard at gmail

Oct 2, 2006, 3:12 AM

Post #5 of 39 (2192 views)

On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

So how to enforce it?

- d.
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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

wikimedia at alisonwheeler

Oct 2, 2006, 3:34 AM

Post #6 of 39 (2198 views)

On Mon, October 2, 2006 11:12, David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
>> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth
>> we
>> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
>> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
>> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.
> So how to enforce it?

It is already being enforced; something of this nature though would enable
a 'delete on sight' rather than the extra delay going through AfD causes,
even though it is clear that deletion will be the result. (remember that
thing about 'process'?)

Alison Wheeler
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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

dgerard at gmail

Oct 2, 2006, 3:36 AM

Post #7 of 39 (2202 views)

On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> On Mon, October 2, 2006 11:12, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 02/10/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

> >> Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth
> >> we
> >> haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
> >> few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
> >> well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.

> > So how to enforce it?

> It is already being enforced; something of this nature though would enable
> a 'delete on sight' rather than the extra delay going through AfD causes,
> even though it is clear that deletion will be the result. (remember that
> thing about 'process'?)

I mean an arguably odious "terms of service" clickthrough. As we can
already see, it's the sort of idea that makes people cough up
hairballs. This suggests it may be problematic to inflict upon the
community.

- d.
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

lars at aronsson

Oct 2, 2006, 1:49 PM

Post #8 of 39 (2195 views)

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

> I am currently reading the Terms of Service of Myspace. [...]
> Forbidden thing 11 is:
> displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting
> payment or anything of value from a third person in exchange for
> your performing any commercial activity on or through the
> MySpace Services on behalf of that person,

The Wikipedia community's background in free software is different
from this. The reason why you cannot use your personal Myspace
account for selling advertising is not that Myspace wants to be
ad-free, but because Myspace wants to sell that advertising
themselves. On the other hand, if some company wants some
functionality added to Linux or to the Mediawiki software (for
example, to adopt to the company's file format or hardware), they
are free to pay somebody to do this, and release the modifications
under the same GPL license.

If a hotel chain wants to promote tourism in their area, they are
(and should be) free to pay somebody to write good articles for
Wikipedia about places, sights and monuments in that area. Of
course, the articles must be NPOV and contain verifiable facts,
describe notable objects, the contents must not violate any
copyrights and it must be released under the GFDL. But the
commercial purpose is not forbidden, and the WMF doesn't need a
cut from the money that went into the authoring of this contents.

If the hotel chain went and talked to Myspace, I assume that
Myspace could allow them to set up a non-personal (commercial)
account for a fee with different terms of service. I don't use
Myspace and I don't know if they sell such accounts, but I guess
it could be a good business to do so.

--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

daniwo59 at aol

Oct 2, 2006, 2:43 PM

Post #9 of 39 (2215 views)

But what if that hypothetical hotel chain wrote an article about their hotel
in the area, complete with amenities, prices for rooms, and a phone number
for booking. Would that be worthy of inclusion?

In a message dated 10/2/2006 4:49:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
lars@aronsson.se writes:

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

> I am currently reading the Terms of Service of Myspace. [...]
> Forbidden thing 11 is:
> displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting
> payment or anything of value from a third person in exchange for
> your performing any commercial activity on or through the
> MySpace Services on behalf of that person,

The Wikipedia community's background in free software is different
from this. The reason why you cannot use your personal Myspace
account for selling advertising is not that Myspace wants to be
ad-free, but because Myspace wants to sell that advertising
themselves. On the other hand, if some company wants some
functionality added to Linux or to the Mediawiki software (for
example, to adopt to the company's file format or hardware), they
are free to pay somebody to do this, and release the modifications
under the same GPL license.

If a hotel chain wants to promote tourism in their area, they are
(and should be) free to pay somebody to write good articles for
Wikipedia about places, sights and monuments in that area. Of
course, the articles must be NPOV and contain verifiable facts,
describe notable objects, the contents must not violate any
copyrights and it must be released under the GFDL. But the
commercial purpose is not forbidden, and the WMF doesn't need a
cut from the money that went into the authoring of this contents.

If the hotel chain went and talked to Myspace, I assume that
Myspace could allow them to set up a non-personal (commercial)
account for a fee with different terms of service. I don't use
Myspace and I don't know if they sell such accounts, but I guess
it could be a good business to do so.

--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

delirium at hackish

Oct 2, 2006, 4:08 PM

Post #10 of 39 (2195 views)

Alison Wheeler wrote:

>Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
>haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
>few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
>well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.
>
>
I guess I don't see how this in any way helps that goal. How is a
"terms of service" any more useful than the existing Wikipedia
policies? We can already ban anyone we want and ask them not to come
back, and don't need any sort of legal terms of service to do that. We
aren't offering a paid service, so don't need a legal terms of service
as a way of terminating anyone's right to use our service, since we
never sold any such right in the first place.

-Mark

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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

wikimedia at alisonwheeler

Oct 2, 2006, 4:19 PM

Post #11 of 39 (2190 views)

On Tue, October 3, 2006 00:08, Delirium wrote:
> I guess I don't see how this in any way helps that goal. How is a
> "terms of service" any more useful than the existing Wikipedia
> policies? We can already ban anyone we want and ask them not to come
> back, and don't need any sort of legal terms of service to do that. We
> aren't offering a paid service, so don't need a legal terms of service
> as a way of terminating anyone's right to use our service, since we
> never sold any such right in the first place.

This isn't about what we've sold or not sold, but about the effects of
time. At the moment if we discover something that is, in essence,
commercial cruft we might find that our current <process> demands it goes
for AFD rather than get speedied. That gives a delay, during which time
the advertiser (for that is basically what they are) gets free use of our
services, is able to take screenshots and use them in their advertising
(has happened), and will get mirrored to other sites.

We should be removing commercially-based 'listings' as soon as they are
discovered, and one way to stop the people placing these 'adverts' (be
they the company concerned, their PR team, or someone they've especially
employed for the task) is to make it explicit to them in terms they
undersstand (ie *legal*) that we will delete it without further notice and
without further delay. At the moment it is problematic to deal with this
stuff in that way without someone popping up and shouting that you've
abused <process>.

Doesn't stop some of us, I know, but we should formalise the solution
before the problem gets even further out of hand, not just on en: but
everywhere else too.

Alison Wheeler
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

lars at aronsson

Oct 2, 2006, 5:48 PM

Post #12 of 39 (2187 views)

daniwo59@aol.com wrote:

> But what if that hypothetical hotel chain wrote an article about
> their hotel in the area, complete with amenities, prices for
> rooms, and a phone number for booking. Would that be worthy of
> inclusion?

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.

--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

jwales at wikia

Oct 4, 2006, 9:21 PM

Post #13 of 39 (2201 views)

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. 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.

--Jimbo
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

delirium at hackish

Oct 5, 2006, 7:28 AM

Post #14 of 39 (2196 views)

Jimmy Wales 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. 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 guess I don't see what's wrong with that. We've said in the past that
we would support organizations paying people to write Wikipedia articles
on under-covered subjects, so long as they are NPOV (i.e. cover the
subject, but don't *promote* it, which is a fine line since some of
these "raising awareness" groups really do mean to raise awareness in
order to promote particular subjects, and are likely to be loathe to
cover viewpoints that directly oppose theirs). Companies paying people
to write articles seem likely to have many of the same advantages and/or
pitfalls.

On a more practical level, it's impossible for me to determine as a
Wikipedia editor whether the person writing an article is being paid to
do so or not, nor do I much care---it's either a good article or it
isn't, and I edit it or don't accordingly. Seems a lot easier than
trying to track down who wrote it.

-Mark

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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

wikilegal at inbox

Oct 5, 2006, 9:24 AM

Post #15 of 39 (2191 views)

On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@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. 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.
>
So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
the award payment?

Anthony
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

smoddy at gmail

Oct 5, 2006, 10:37 AM

Post #16 of 39 (2183 views)

On 10/5/06, Anthony <wikilegal@inbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> > unethical if they do. 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.
> >
> So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
> the award payment?

Methinks there's a slight difference between being paid by a neutral
third party to write an article and being paid by an interested party
to write an article.

In the one, the focus is on promoting article quality and Wikipedia;
in the other, the focus is on promoting a company.

Big, big difference.

--
Sam
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

lars at aronsson

Oct 5, 2006, 11:43 AM

Post #17 of 39 (2187 views)

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.

This comes as news and a surprise to me. Is it a new rule, or has
this been stated before? What is the motivation? How do you
detect when people edit Wikipedia for pay, and what sanctions do
you have against them? Is this a rule only for the English
Wikipedia or a Foundation-wide policy?

--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

wikilegal at inbox

Oct 5, 2006, 1:42 PM

Post #18 of 39 (2185 views)

On 10/5/06, Sam Korn <smoddy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Anthony <wikilegal@inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > > No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> > > unethical if they do. 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.
> > >
> > So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
> > the award payment?
>
> Methinks there's a slight difference between being paid by a neutral
> third party to write an article and being paid by an interested party
> to write an article.
>
> In the one, the focus is on promoting article quality and Wikipedia;
> in the other, the focus is on promoting a company.
>
> Big, big difference.
>
I absolutely agree, and that's why I think what should matter is the
resulting article, and not whether or not someone was paid to write
it.

Jimbo seemed to be going further than that, though. He certainly
implied that editing Wikipedia for pay is per se a bad idea.

Anthony
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

maveric149 at yahoo

Oct 5, 2006, 7:59 PM

Post #19 of 39 (2200 views)

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales@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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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

maveric149 at yahoo

Oct 5, 2006, 8:12 PM

Post #20 of 39 (2181 views)

--- Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
>
> This comes as news and a surprise to me. Is it a new rule, or has
> this been stated before? What is the motivation? How do you
> detect when people edit Wikipedia for pay, and what sanctions do
> you have against them? Is this a rule only for the English
> Wikipedia or a Foundation-wide policy?

No it is not a policy and it never will if I have anything to do with it. I'm sure Jimmy was
talking about companies paying PR firms and similar ilk to promote them by writing sanitized and
glowing Wikipedia articles about the company paying the bill. At least, I hope that is the case.
If not, then I am deeply disappointed in Jimmy and think he has started to lose sight of his own
dream. But I'm sure that is not the case.

I would *love* to see many groups pay or otherwise get people to edit Wikipedia to add NPOV and
verified content; esp in areas and in languages we now have poor coverage in.

-- mav

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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

saintonge at telus

Oct 6, 2006, 1:47 AM

Post #21 of 39 (2186 views)

Jimmy Wales 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. 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.
>
If someone gets paid by someone else to write a Wikipedia article that
falls within established criteria, how will we ever know that they have
been paid unless they announce it?

Ec

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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

jwales at wikia

Oct 6, 2006, 5:01 AM

Post #22 of 39 (2203 views)

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> No it is not a policy and it never will if I have anything to do with it. I'm sure Jimmy was
> talking about companies paying PR firms and similar ilk to promote them by writing sanitized and
> glowing Wikipedia articles about the company paying the bill.

That's right.

> I would *love* to see many groups pay or otherwise get people to edit Wikipedia to add NPOV and
> verified content; esp in areas and in languages we now have poor coverage in.

Absolutely.

There are two entirely separate issues here. Imagine that a grant is
secured to hire people as "evangelizers" and initial admins in, say,
African languages. Great. Or, imagine that a health education
organization decides that the best way to educate the public on health
issues is to have staff contribute their work to Wikipedia. Great.

Now imagine that someone sets up a website that strongly implies that
paying him will get a company a good article in Wikipedia, and follows
that up by posting blatant PR puffery and claiming that it is NPOV.
That's a very serious problem, especially in an era when we are seeing
increasing attention paid to "how to manipulate wikipedia for the good
of your client" by the lower dregs of the PR industry.

We can not and should not engage in witch hunts related to this. But we
can and should stand firm on the ethical principles.

--Jimbo
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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

alphasigmax at gmail

Oct 6, 2006, 6:18 AM

Post #23 of 39 (2196 views)

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> No it is not a policy and it never will if I have anything to do with it. I'm sure Jimmy was
>> talking about companies paying PR firms and similar ilk to promote them by writing sanitized and
>> glowing Wikipedia articles about the company paying the bill.
>
> That's right.
>
>> I would *love* to see many groups pay or otherwise get people to edit Wikipedia to add NPOV and
>> verified content; esp in areas and in languages we now have poor coverage in.
>
> Absolutely.
>
> There are two entirely separate issues here. Imagine that a grant is
> secured to hire people as "evangelizers" and initial admins in, say,
> African languages. Great. Or, imagine that a health education
> organization decides that the best way to educate the public on health
> issues is to have staff contribute their work to Wikipedia. Great.
>
> Now imagine that someone sets up a website that strongly implies that
> paying him will get a company a good article in Wikipedia, and follows
> that up by posting blatant PR puffery and claiming that it is NPOV.
> That's a very serious problem, especially in an era when we are seeing
> increasing attention paid to "how to manipulate wikipedia for the good
> of your client" by the lower dregs of the PR industry.
>
<snip>

Exactly. Allowing this sort of thing leads to phone calls to Danny along
the lines of "I paid X thousand dollars for an entry in Wikipedia, why
has it been changed/deleted?"

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

delirium at hackish

Oct 6, 2006, 9:26 AM

Post #24 of 39 (2188 views)

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>There are two entirely separate issues here. Imagine that a grant is
>secured to hire people as "evangelizers" and initial admins in, say,
>African languages. Great. Or, imagine that a health education
>organization decides that the best way to educate the public on health
>issues is to have staff contribute their work to Wikipedia. Great.
>
>Now imagine that someone sets up a website that strongly implies that
>paying him will get a company a good article in Wikipedia, and follows
>that up by posting blatant PR puffery and claiming that it is NPOV.
>That's a very serious problem, especially in an era when we are seeing
>increasing attention paid to "how to manipulate wikipedia for the good
>of your client" by the lower dregs of the PR industry.
>
>
Those are some pretty extreme oppositions, though. What if a company
decides that the best way to educate the public on what their company
does is to have their staff contribute a neutral article on the history
of the company to Wikipedia? Your first email seemed to suggest that
this is always wrong. It's true that a company paying someone to edit
an article about themselves is at great danger of producing a
non-neutral article, but I'd argue many NGOs and non-profits present
similar risks, since many have specific political aims they wish to
promote as part of their mission.

-Mark

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Re: Mywikipediaspace [ In reply to ]

andreengels at gmail

Oct 6, 2006, 11:28 AM

Post #25 of 39 (2189 views)

2006/10/6, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com>:

> Now imagine that someone sets up a website that strongly implies that
> paying him will get a company a good article in Wikipedia, and follows
> that up by posting blatant PR puffery and claiming that it is NPOV.
> That's a very serious problem, especially in an era when we are seeing
> increasing attention paid to "how to manipulate wikipedia for the good
> of your client" by the lower dregs of the PR industry.

The scary thing is... This already exists. Maybe I should have
notified the list or the board or whoever before, but having a
GoogleNews subject 'Wikipedia' gave me a link to the following
advertisement-thinly-disguised-as-press-release shortly before the
Wikimania conference:

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=16892
I checked http://www.mywikibiz.com and they do indeed claim to be in
business, charging $49 for a stub, $79 for a full article and $99 for
a full article with some extras... Then again, checking
[[en:User:MyWikiBiz]] tells me you already were notified of this
recently.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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