User talk:Dennis Brown/Thoughts

Random thoughts

This is just a place to organize my thoughts about various things. Others can feel free to edit or comment, but don't feel bad if I remove your comments after reading them, as the point of this page is to clear up ideas in my mind.

Paid Editing

Because non-admins are often reluctant to revert or question an admin out of a perceived risk of retaliation, an admin who is going to accept payment to edit an article should do the following:

1. Use an alternate account to make these paid edits (and other edits if they choose), clearly linking the two accounts on both user pages.
2. Disclose the purpose of the account and what articles they are being paid to edit at this alternate account's user page.
3. Never edit or use the tools in the paid article using the admin account, excepting extreme BLP or vandalism problems.
4. Any exception to #3 should be reported to WP:ANI immediately by the admin themselves for a simple review, as you would expect for any other admin action where there is a COI.

If we don't draw this clear and wide line between what a person does as an admin and as a paid editor, we create a situation that is ripe for abuse and feeds into the negative stereotype of admins that is shared by many non-admins. Any action that fosters this stereotype or raises legitimate concerns about the objectivity and trustworthiness of admins in general puts an undue burden on all other admins. Because of this, the burden should be on the admin that is accepting payment to take these steps as to insure that their payment is not in part due to the "political clout" afforded to them by virtue of being an administrator. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 12:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The actual danger from an admin is not article-writing but sanitizing; an admin who avoids editing an article can protect it in a preferred version, or chase away those who would change it.) Otherwise, the danger is from any editor using their prestige to influence the acceptance of content, and no editor who has prestige can avoid that. Therefore all paid editing by experienced people here is dangerous: the only safe way to use our skills is to teach the general public. I will no longer help paid editors with articles or approve it for them, because I would be using not only my skills, which is fair, but my prestige also. Rather, let them write as they see fit, and I shall comment as I see fit.

I am open to the partial change of "anyone can edit" by prohibiting anonymous editing by paid editors. The way of enforcement would be retrospective removal of the articles of those detected. But I am afraid not of missing some, but of false positives from those who foolishly imitate it, not being themselves able to tell advertisements from encyclopedia articles.

The other approach is a more scrupulous removal of promotionalism from all articles. I am about to make a pass through university articles, 90% of which are writer by their PR departments: to verify this, compare a few of them. DGG ( talk ) 15:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]