Wikipedia is a product of the margins
on niin pieni, että esimerkiksi Georgiassa, jonka väkiluku on vähän alle 4 miljoonaa olisi 19 enkkupediaa muokkaavaa henkilöä. Lukijoita enkkupedialla sen sijaan riittää, maapallon ihmisistä noin 10 prosenttia lukee sitä kuukausittain.
The number of volunteers who actively update Wikipedia is quite small in Finland and the world, they are a fringe group. Last month, for example, only about 500 people, or about 0.01% of the population, edited Wikipedia more than 5 times in Finnish. So if you know 10 000 Finns, you know maybe one wikipedist. Of the world's population, so few people edit Wikipedia that it is even harder to grasp. The ratio is so small that in Georgia, for example, with a population of just under 4 million, there would be 19 people editing English Wikipedia. But the encyclopaedia has a large readership, with around 10% of the world's people reading it every month.
Of course, there are even fewer paid editors in the world. Among a small group of people, they are a kind of pioneers, lacking not only a role model but also a peer network, people with whom they can discuss their work.
Wikipediassa maksettuihin muokkauksiin suhtaudutaan usein epäluuloisesti, eikä ihme, perustuuhan Wikipedia nimenomaan vapaaehtoisuuteen. Ammatikseen Wikipediaa päivittävällä on vääjäämättä ristiriitoja ympäröivän yhteisön kanssa, välillä enemmän, välillä vähemmän. Paljon vaikuttaa se, miten hyvin hän onnistuu omaksumaan yhteisön normit ja toimintatavat. Hän on kuitenkin aina tikku muiden lihassa, se, jonka tekemisistä etsitään virheitä ja jolta oikeastaan vaaditaan virheettömyyttä.
Wikipedians are often suspicious of paid editing, and no wonder, since Wikipedia is based on voluntary contributions. Anyone who updates Wikipedia for a living will inevitably have conflicts with the surrounding community, sometimes more, sometimes less. Much depends on how well he or she manages to assimilate the community's norms and practices. But they are always the stick in the mud, their actions are sought out for mistakes or actually they are required to be flawless.
Wikipedia's rules for hidden advertising
In 2014, Wikipedia introduced rules for paid updates. The rules stipulate that they must be reported, and unannounced edits (hidden advertising) were since then strictly forbidden.
Undeclared COI (Conflict of Interest) edits were also banned: for example, you cannot edit your relative's or friend's article without telling them.
Some COI editors are paid for their work (they are called paid editors), which can be a salary or a commission, even a bottle of wine. Some have a simple conflict of interest - you want a page about your mother or your sports club to be factual.
Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article's content. Anyone editing for pay must disclose who is paying them, who the client is, and any other relevant affiliation; this is a requirement of the Wikimedia Foundation. COI editors are strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly, and can propose changes on article talk pages instead.
Paid Wikipedians who follow these rules are called White hat paid editors. Their edits are monitored very closely. They are expected to be near-perfect: since they are paid for their work, they should know Wikipedia's guidelines and processes by heart (which, by the way, is plenty). They should produce text that volunteers do not have to waste their time correcting. Since few people can do this, white hats are "strongly advised" to stay out of the article namespace (the mainspace, i.e. the Wikipedia that the average Internet user reads) and to use other methods of editing, such as AfC and ER processes.
"There was a proposal a couple years ago to require the use of AfC for COI editors here that was never "officially" closed."
What are AfC and ER-processes then?
AfC means Article for Creation.
The Articles for Creation (AfC) process is designed to assist any editor in creating a new page as a draft article, which they can work on and submit for review and feedback when ready. The AfC process must be used by non-registered users and by those who do not yet have sufficient editing experience because these groups of editors are not permitted to create articles directly in Wikipedia's mainspace. The AfC process should also be used by anyone with a conflict of interest.
White hats and other users with a conflict of interest should therefore preferably submit article proposals (drafts) through the AfC process.
Currently, there are nearly 2400 drafts waiting for evaluation. How long will this review process take? Well hard to say, it's a bit of a crapshoot, but according to this statistic there are currently no drafts more than 5 months old:
So, if the choice is between doing the article now or putting it on hold, which can easily take months, which would you choose if you had the freedom to choose?
ER, Edit request
Edit requests are requests for edits to be made to a page where editors cannot or should not make the proposed edits themselves. Requests should be accompanied by a clear and specific description of the requested change, and consensus should be obtained before requesting changes that are likely to be controversial. ... Clarity in edit requests is important, and providing the new sentences or code in your request, if possible, will expedite the process.ER requests are thus made for Wikipedia articles already in the article namespace, which white hats (or other users with a conflict of interest) should preferably not edit themselves.
106 was made in May,
30 in June,
43 in July and
51 in August.
I repeat: if the choice is between editing a Wikipedia article right away or making a request for it and putting it in a queue that could easily take months, which would you choose?
Would you perhaps be prepared to invoke time and time again sections that say, yes, this is not recommended, but hey, it is still allowed?
Note: the AfC or ER processes described above are not used, for example, in the Finnish Wikipedia!
White hats on English Wikipedia
John Broughton who has written a Wikipedia guide book maintains a list of white hat editors which contains only 7 account at the moment. Seven! Out of 38K active editors a month. I went to research what they have been doing lately.
I found out that the way I've been editing differs a lot from the others. The amount of my edits this year is way bigger and unlike others, I was editing in the mainspace.
User:BC1278 (Ed Sussman)
Live edits 5,450 (86.4%), Deleted edits 860 (13.6%), Total edits 6,310
participated in a client-related deletion discussion and one other discussion in Mayin April, created a draft which has not yet been put to AfC vote and updated an ER request which was rejected for a second time
User:CorporateM (David King)
Live edits 33,602 (83.5%), Deleted edits 6,644 (16.5%), Total edits 40,246
edited an article for a customer in Augustthe previous edits were in September (edit in the main space) and July (edit in the mainspace and ER request) of last year
User:Mr RD
Live edits 3,019 (72.2%), Deleted edits 1,160 (27.8%), Total edits 4,179
made updates to articles related to India in November-December 2021. I don't know if these were paid updates or not.
Live edits 3,019 (72.2%), Deleted edits 1,160 (27.8%), Total edits 4,179
made updates to articles related to India in November-December 2021. I don't know if these were paid updates or not.
User:Birulik - Anna (Anya) Biriukova
Live edits 69 (82.1%), Deleted edits 15 (17.9%), Total edits 84
made three Russia-related updates last year
Live edits 3,802 (98.6%), Deleted edits 55 (1.4%), Total edits 3,857 (luvut ennen bänniä)
more than 300 edits in the article namespace in customer articles this year
Live edits 4,035 (98.8%), Deleted edits 47 (1.2%), Total edits 4,082
Live edits 2,430 (98.6%), Deleted edits 35 (1.4%), Total edits 2,465
Over the years, the following accounts have been removed from this list
Former employees of Beutler:
ChrisPond, has not edited since 2014
Morzabeth, no edits since 2014
Heatherer, no edits since 2017
Accounts that have not been edited for years:
Manoillon_(Pro), only edits (2) in 2016
Wicodric, no edits since 2016
Fbell74, no edits since 2017
Pplc, no edits since 2018
Banned accounts:
Nmwalsh, banned in 2017, because of sock puppets
I'm_Tony_Ahn, banned in 2018
So is it true that only one account currently makes paid updates to the article namespace on behalf of its clients without using the AfC and ER/CR processes?
Black hats and sock puppets
White hats, i.e. accounts that make paid updates and follow the rules, i.e. are open about their activities and customers, are under strong pressure to use the processes described above. These processes are, in my view, laborious, slow and also insecure - where, for example, it takes several people to vote to remove an article, the AfC and ER decision can be made by any volunteer on the spot, alone.
Firstly, if you’re doing it properly your paid editing should be undetectable and you should be having more off-wiki fights with clients than on-wiki fights with other Wikipedians. That’s all there is to it.
Sometimes (or probably most of the time) black hats have several parallel accounts, called sock puppets. For example, one account is used to create a draft (new users cannot contribute to the article namespace) and another account is used to approve it. From time to time, so-called sock puppet factories are revealed, where there may be dozens of accounts cross-editing articles started by each other.
Over the years, I have also been asked to join Indian, Indian-African and American black hat companies, which I have naturally refused, because the way they operate does not fit my morals. There are also black hats working in Finnish companies. I think there are black people all over the world, you can find them on Upwork, for example.
Zache defended me in the debate and at the same time gave his own view on how paid editors are treated in the English Wikipedia:
Against, Jjanhone has been transparent on her paid editing and easily well enough if the paid editing is allowed all. The negative side is that if you do so then you will be targeted by DIE-SPAMMER-DIE style editors and articles are flood flagged with Cleanup-PR and other problem templates without any actual review with the only reason that it was edited by a paid editor. [...] Also, a paid editor cannot remove those templates then the editor is required to ask for input from other users. However, it is not much else that the editor can do than start discussions that are felt as disruptive and Wikilawyering. --Zache (talk) 10:23, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
If the comment went over the top, I'll translate: if you report your paid edits, you will attract a bunch of volunteer editors who will make your work as difficult as possible, for example by adding tags to your articles warning "this article contains paid updates, so it may contain problematic content". They may contain, and they may not contain. Taggers do not always justify what is wrong with the article, and are not keen to improve the article themselves so that the tag can be removed. Paid editors are not allowed to remove such a warning themselves, but are forced to start discussions, which can then be interpreted as a petty invocation of wiki rules.
Why Wikipedia needs paid editors?
The Wikimedia movement wants to get more contributors from different areas of expertise. (Of course, not all Wikipedians need new people in their sandbox.) Over the past year, I have trained companies, museums, organisations and libraries, among others, in paid editing of Wikipedia. So the guidelines on paid editing are not just for employees of companies, but for anyone who spends their time doing it. If Wikipedia is edited only in one's spare time, and on topics that happen to be of interest at that time, many important issues will be left out of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia volunteers make big choices when deciding which things deserve or do not deserve to be seen. If the crowd is skewed in one way or another (e.g. an over-representation of male/college-educated/English-speaking editors), Wikipedia does not tell the whole truth about the world.
Despite these biases, Wikipedia is trusted and its content is used by services such as Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple. It would be in everyone's interest if more pairs of eyes could ensure that the information is correct. Not everyone necessarily has the time to do this in their free time, so why not edit Wikipedia during working hours, if it suits the employer. And why not - visibility on Wikipedia usually pays off for the employer too.
The future of Wikipedia
Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making exceptions. Be bold, but not reckless, in updating articles. And do not agonize over making mistakes.PS. The translation was made using the free version of https://www.deepl.com. Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment
I don't want any spam comments here so that's the reason for comment moderation. Real comments are not only accepted - they are also appreciated :).
Voit kommentoida myös suomeksi!