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What's better – a blank topic in Wikipedia, or an article completed for a small payment from the subject?
March 31, 2011
5 thoughts on “What's better – a blank topic in Wikipedia, or an article completed for a small payment from the subject?”
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Clean Registry and Optimize PC
Hi there, Kohs. For all that you can be quite acerbic some of the time, this is actually an interesting question, and I’ll answer in all good faith.
You already know this, but I’ll disclaim it for any other reader: I am a Wikipedia editor and administrator and so am probably biased here. Use your own discretion in forming an opinion based on this answer.
When we consider which situation is "better", the first thing to consider is the goal of the person considering the situations. I’ll assume that we have three agents: one representative of a commercial organization (let’s say they sell "sock puppets", just for fun 😉 ); one independent reader looking for information about sock puppets and creators thereof; and one Wikipedia editor, who wants to make sure that articles are neutral, accurate, informative, verifiable, etc. I assume, for the purposes of this question, and given what context I have about your old MyWikiBiz operation, that these hypothetical articles would be located on Wikipedia rather than some other wiki or web page.
There are several variables that change the desirability of a given scenario for these agents. Here are the ones I consider, where each has the additional option of the non-existence of the theoretical article:
1. Is the article neutral, mostly-neutral (e.g. neutral tone but omitting criticism), or promotional?
2. Is the information about the company verifiable (using reliable, third-party sources), somewhat verifiable (e.g. using company website, press releases, or paid product reviews for a significant chunk of the referencing), or not verifiable (e.g. only company website and/or press releases used for referencing)?
3. Will the existence of a Wikipedia page on the company have a real-world, that is, offline, effect on their public recognition and/or sales?
From there, it’s easy to generalize for each agent which states they would prefer. Here follows, in list form, their assumed preferences:
1. Neutrality
a) The company representative
• A promotional article is desirable—it advertises, and promotes positive public opinion
• A mostly-neutral article is desirable, but may be less desirable than a promotional article
• A neutral article is preferable to no article, but may be slightly undesirable, especially if the company has historically faced significant criticism
• A non-existent article is definitely undesirable
b) The independent reader
• A promotional article is undesirable—few enjoy reading spam
• A mostly-neutral article is desirable, but may be less desirable than a neutral article, since the reader may be interested in related controversy
• A neutral article is desirable: it lets them make their own opinion by providing objective facts
• A non-existent article is undesirable, as more information is better
c) The Wikipedia editor
• A promotional article is completely unacceptable given the policy of neutral point of view
• A mostly-neutral article is undesirable, but tolerable, especially if the page is tagged with any notices that it is lacking information about relevant criticism
• A neutral article is desirable: it advances Wikipedia’s goals
• A non-existent article is ignored; though it might be slightly undesirable, it is definitely preferable to a promotional article
2. Verifiability
a) The company representative
• A verifiable article is desirable—it allows readers to find more out about the company and its history, and is less likely to be deleted by Wikipedia
• A mostly-verifiable article is desirable, especially as it will point users primarily to sources which are themselves promotional of the company
• An unverifiable article is preferable to no article, and desirable insofar as it is desirable in other categories, but is definitely less preferable than anything but a non-existent article
• A non-existent article is definitely undesirable
b) The independent reader
• A verifiable article is highly desirable, since they can find much more information about sock puppets
• A mostly-verifiable article is not very desirable, but better than anything but a verifiable article—more verifiability is better
• An unverifiable article is undesirable: readers can probably find all the information elsewhere, e.g. the company website
• A non-existent article is undesirable, as more information is better
c) The Wikipedia editor
• A verifiable article is highly desirable: it advances Wikipedia’s goals
• A mostly-verifiable article is undesirable, as it serves to use Wikipedia to amplify availability of the other sources and the perhaps non-neutral information therein, but might be tolerable
• An unverifiable article is unacceptable, violating Wikipedia’s verifiability policy—deletion will likely be advocated
• A non-existent article is ignored; though it might be slightly undesirable, it is definitely preferable to an unverifiable article
3. Offline effect
a) The company representative prefers offline effect: promotion of their brand is desirable
b) The independent reader won’t care about offline effect: he or she chooses their own actions and will either be interested in the company and its products or not
c) Wikipedia editors will marginally prefer to have no offline effect, as Wikipedia generally shouldn’t fundamentally alter what it describes. That being said, if verifiability and neutrality are established, this should not be a problem for the Wikipedia editor
In (1), though both Wikipedia editors and readers will generally prefer a more neutral article, all of the agents are at least willing to accept a mostly-neutral article. In (2), all agents desire verifiability, but it is less of a concern for the reader and even more so for the company representative, who prefers any level of verifiability to a non-existent article. In (3), it is established that offline effect is probably not a big deal, but is opposed slightly by the Wikipedia editor while promoted greatly by the company representative.
If we assume that a paid editor would produce only highly-neutral, highly-verifiable articles, then everyone wins: the Wikipedia editor takes pride in a good article, the company gets some recognition, and the reader finds more information. This is the ideal scenario. A step down from ideal rests a (perhaps more generally plausible) situation where the paid editor creates mostly-neutral articles that are largely verifiable but sometimes only mostly-verifiable—here, the Wikipedia editors are troubled at an influx of content that might be substandard. Given the interest (distinguish "interest in" from "intention to", please) of the company in omitting criticism, pushing publicity, and selling sock puppets, the paid editor is in a much more questionable conflict of interests. In the worst scenario, the company is getting hacks to post blatantly promotional pieces on Wikipedia, which are so undesirable for the Wikipedia editor and, to whatever extent, the reader, that they are generally deleted.
Since the mostly-neutral, mostly-verifiable situation is questionable, in my point of view it makes sense that paid editing in the sense you describe is generally disallowed: questionable articles aren’t really all that useful. That being said, existent articles may be more useful to the reader. In my point of view, paid editing is a better situation than non-existent articles if, and usually only if, the article can and is made neutral and verifiable. Where only a non-verifiable or non-neutral article would exist, paid editing is almost definitely a worse situation. We can always wish for an "evil bit" (< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit >) to help determine whether paid editors are sticking to good practice, or indeed, whether they’re being paid for their editing at all. 🙂
A hard-earned long-lasting legacy is arguably better. Paying for someone just to write for you is just a waste of money. You can leave your article blank until the whole nation can recognize you.
The primary purpose of Wikipedia and MyWikiBiz is different.
Wikipedia aims at providing information with a NPOV (though it fails to do so many times). To uphold NPOV and V they have the notability guidelines.
On the other hand, MyWikiBiz is a business. They allow company owners (who are disgruntled because their Wikipedia page was deleted) to say what they want and bury whatever they do not want people to read. More or less like a paid webspace.
I wonder what customers think when they come to know that the company they are dealing with paid money just to get a wiki page up. Not a very positive impression IMO.
Wikipedia is for information, not advertising, so it’s a bad idea to copy promotional content to Wikipedia (and if companies are paying for it, it’s promotional, not informational).
Blank or sparse articles on Wikipedia really disturb me, so a paid article situation sounds like a good idea to me. While a paid editor would carry some concerns about objectivity, I know that I would rather see an article with SOME content about a topic, even if it was paid for, than to just be presented with an empty page. Better yet, if the paid author of the content were transparent and fully disclosed that they received funding to write the article, then I can evaluate it for what it’s worth. I could always check the article history to see what purportedly unpaid editors did to the article, after it was seeded by the original commercial author. Worst case, I can always keep hunting on other sites for more information (which wouldn’t likely be nearly as transparent as the disclosed article on Wikipedia)!