User:Smallbones/Signpost 3

Possible Signpost story

Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.

Starting with matrial from 2015's User:Doc James/Paid editing We should refine these proposals and add other proposals to them. Cassify them according to the typoe of action needed to get them implemented, e.g. "Editors can do this now", "would require a minor adjustment to a policy or guideline" "require a major change to a policy" "require a new policy" "Only the WMF can do this" "would need international cooperation, e.g. at meta"etc.

1. Ban some types of paid editing

Ban the type of paid editing that occurs via sites like Elance/Upworks. They have agree to automatically remove Wikipedia related jobs from their sites if we do this. (note change at meta - they really didn't do it as planned)

- Yes I propose if we do this that the exact definition would be created by legal at the WMF and Upworks. And WiR have always and will always be excluded from a ban. WiR DO NOT operate through Elance.

1a. Prohibit most paid edits to BLPs

It appears that there are many paid edits to BLPs. This not only distorts our contents, but sucks in naive individuals and helps support and encourage paid editing. Most importantly this rule would be very simple to explain "You can't pay to get your biography on Wikipedia." Simple explanations are very important since we have had problems getting the public to understand our rules. Proposed rule:

"Paid editing of biographies of living people is prohibited, except to remove content that is otherwise in violation of this policy. Content removal by paid editors must be noted on the article's talk page or at WP:BLPN. Paid editors may add information on BLP talk pages as long as their paid status is disclosed."

2. Increase notability requirements

This is especially important in the areas of corporations and BLPs.

I think this is more a matter of enforcing existing notability requirements rather than creating new ones (through increased NPP and AfD participation or similar). I'm not convinced that notability can or should be used as a tool to prevent paid editing. Winner 42 Talk to me! 05:20, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

3. Increase requirements for creating new articles

Increase how long someone must be editing before they can create a new article without going through AfC. Maybe 6 months and 500 edits?

4. Create a new group of functionaries

Arbcom is clear that they do not see it as within their remit to enforce the TOU. We need a group of people who can receive concerns around paid editing that cannot be posted on wiki due to issues around privacy.

Discuss

I disagree. To me this is about overall juggling of titular responsibility. In practice the communities have no trouble enforcing their remits; it's arguments over remits that pass things to the WMF - or actual out-of-hands things - when a stalemate is reached. We'd rather have an arbitrary judgement than a stalemate. I'd rather have a stalement than an arbitrary judgement most of the time. Keegan (talk) 06:07, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
As has been repeatedly explained, the only group of people who can reliably make judgements about many TOU violators are the WMF as they are the only people with all of the time, tools, expertise and access to information to distinguish joe jobs from real humans. As an arbitrator who has been involved in trying to determine a connection between an off-site identity and a Wikipedia editor, it is not possible to do this with sufficient accuracy even with a group of people with arbitrator-level access. Thryduulf (talk) 08:53, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes creation of this group would be closely done with the legal team. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:48, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This needs to be a meta level proposal so the group has the remit to tackle spam that runs across several languages. We also have the problem that Arbcom has historically been so busy that it burns members out, so spinning this out as a separate role makes sense. As for whether it should be run by staff or volunteers, first lets establish if the community wants this to happen, second we need to establish if we have volunteers to make it happen. If the community wants it to happen but can't get volunteers then we need to see if the community wants it enough to add to the list of things that volunteers want to have happen, aren't finding sufficient volunteers for, and therefore are prepared to pay people to do. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes agree will need to be a meta level proposal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I hear arbcom members saying they can't do it, so obviously a new group of functionaries are needed. I don't see that this is much different from checkuser functions: private and incomplete data have to be analyzed and a decision has to be made if Wikipedia is going to keep on working. Somebody should take this to the WMF board if necessary. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:28, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Instead of volunteer functionaries the meta-discussion should propose the Foundation put together a small group of paid professionals to enforce the TOU. This is preferable from a legal standpoint as TOU enforcement is a legal question that has financial implications both for the subjects and the paid editors. If a volunteer team is used to suplement the professionals they need to be covered as agents of the Foundation. Anarchy is well and good but there must be dedicated and identified agents of the Foundation who can contact those entities who are violating the TOU and who can speak on behalf of the the Foundation - the entity with whom the TOU agreement is with. We, as editors, do not have the standing to enforce the TOU beyond the virtual space of Wikipedia itself and no real legal authority there. Jbh ^Talk 18:32, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I think it's fairly clear from this idea and others that technical solutions alone, volunteer community solutions alone, and legal solutions alone won't work. We need an integrated approach that uses the strengths of each set appropriately. The technical solutions could take some of the routine patrolling burden off of the volunteers. The volunteers can do what's appropriate for them and forward serious legal stuff to WMF Legal. Legal will have to do the black magic that only they can do. But this can form a virtuous circle where better machine- and volunteer-level stuff will give Legal more time to handle the things that really turn off the problem at its source. It's pretty clear to me at this point that the army of darkness that we're talking about fighting here is an organized, criminal-level enterprise and needs to be treated as such. In this regard I'd like to even go to "some next level shit" with US authorities, if WMF Legal hits a dead end. To me, the Orangemoody case looks like a RICO situation that they'd be interested in. — Brianhe (talk) 18:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

A number of those involved are in Indian and Pakistan and hired via Elance/Fiverr/Odesk. The US gov does not really have jurisdiction over were at least a part of the problem is coming from. Some of these paid accounts are working in 5 plus languages.

I agree this is going to need the community and foundation to work together. For the community to realize that we are here to write an encyclopedia not to try to create some utopian anonymous movement. That we need to adjust our perspective and rules to accomplish the new reality out their. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Online behavior has consequences

We shouldn't give up that easily because of non-US actor involvement, and I don't even agree that the US authorities are powerless. The services they are using to recruit overseas WP actors (Elance/Upwork) are US based and subject to its jurisdiction. There's a lot that the feds can do, once they decide to do it. Even overseas servers like The Pirate Bay and enterprises with no local nexus like Silk Road (marketplace) aren't beyond the reach of the law. I'm pretty sure that Elance didn't agree to help WP turn off the flow of recruitment of undisclosed paid editors out of the goodness of their heart. Nobody running a business wants to see records subpoenas, servers seized for evidence, or even domain takedowns (see image). — Brianhe (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

BTW, Blackshades describes the kind of Federal response I'm talking about.

Yucel ran his organization like a business—hiring and firing employees, paying salaries, and updating the malicious software in response to customers’ requests. He employed several administrators to facilitate the operation of the organization, including a director of marketing, a website developer, a customer service manager, and a team of customer service representatives.
— FBI

There are some parallels with Orangemoody: organized, employed nature of the ring and the extortion/racketeering bit (they were holding malwarezinfected PCs for ransom). — Brianhe (talk) 23:31, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

This one I actually support in some fashion, though of course, the devil is in details. There was alleged evidence, that I personally stumbled across, of some kind of nasty AfC-related business going on, from a usertalk conversation. And, I was hesitant to say anything. Because what could I say, without WP:ABF? The good-apple victim, who had their AfC-declined-article hijacked by a bad-apple editor (who later turned out to be an orangemoody sock), was complaining on an admin-page about something unrelated, and then mentioned that they didn't want to work with the other editor, not because of WP:OWN, but because (allegedly at the time) they claimed the other editor had demanded money via off-wiki channels. I would have reported that, instantly... but whom to report it to?

Not AN/I, there was no diff, it was an allegation about off-wiki stuff. Not to a checkuser, at the time there was no indication that the bad-apple was a sockfarm. I suppose WP:COIN would have been appropriate, kinda-sorta, but in that particular case, at that particular time, no money had actually changed hands, and even the allegation that one of the editors involved *might* have wanted to be paid-and-undisclosed, was pretty flimsy. So yeah, it would definitely have helped if there was something similar to #wikipedia-en-revdel ^connect , where I could have reported my suspicions about the bad-apple editor (who was NOT blocked as an orangemoody sock until about a week later), without worrying about WP:NICE.

Now, that said, I'm a firm defender of WP:AGF on-wiki, since I believe it makes the wiki-culture bearable, and any pure-text-only enviroment is going to have communication failtures and misunderstandings aplenty, so it is essential that WP:NICE is one of our pillars, hereabouts. But when I heard the guy from the Turkish startup say, "she asks for money to make it live again! Isn't it clearly an abuse of use of Wikipedia?" ... well, fuck yeah it's an abuse of wikipedia, but without a diff, where can I report such alleged off-wiki abuse, without violating WP:NPA myself? WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY is one of my favorite wiki-policies, but in the particular case of suspicions-about-potential-off-wiki-demands-for-cash-or-else-it-would-be-a-shame-what-might-happen-to-your-nice-article, I definitely think there needs to be some IRC-based or email-a-functionary-based channel, where I can explain that although I have no actual diff, my spidey-wiki-senses are tingling. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

There is an excellent way to solve the problem that "Arbcom is clear that they do not see it as within their remit to enforce the TOU." (And as Keegan says, this is mainly a matter of relative priorities, not absolute refusal). Arb Com elections is coming up in a month or two. People who think arb com should make this a much higher priority, and are prepared to do the necessary work should run for arb com, and make it clear that this is part of the reason they are running. Half or a little more than half of the arb com positions will be open this year., and there are a few of us on arbcom who do already see this as a priority. The very last thing we need at WP is another body of functionaries--we need more effective operation by the existing groups. Then, we need to complement this by the willingness of the WMF to support his with LEGAL and their other capabilities--the current effort is a good first start. DGG ( talk ) 00:11, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
It's surprising to hear that ArbCom don't consider the ToU as part of their remit when I've seen plenty of blocks by other admins citing the lack of any disclosue per the ToU as the reason for a block. In regards to a new group of functionaries - one problem I foresee would be that editors who are very active in the COI area and not all admins and even if they are, do not necessarily have the experience or community trust to have the extra tools. If they are trusted then they should be CUs but I don't see a need for a separate group. I agree though that we need a group that handles off-wiki evidence though which would include non-admins. Could there be a mailing list to which WP:OTRS would forward information to the group to investigate? SmartSE (talk) 22:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

5. Allow some links on En WP

Allow the linking to Elance/Upwork accounts on Wikipedia. Currently it is not clear if this is allowed or not.

Discuss

We should not loosen WP:OUTING because of bad actors. Keegan (talk) 06:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

People currently link to Elance accounts. Most do not consider it outing. Thus this would not be a change to outing just a confirmation of current practice. For example

6. Allow corporate accounts

These accounts are verified and have a corporate name attached to them. They are not allowed to directly edit articles. Allowing corporations a way to engage may prevent many of them from going to paid editors.

7. Delete articles by paid editors

Once an editor is confirmed to be a paid sockpuppet/undisclosed paid editor we should simply delete the articles they have created. We do not have the editor numbers to fix them all. And typically they are mostly of borderline notability.

Possibly, but only if they have not been adopted by genuine community editors. All their articles should certainly be examined to see if they meet any speedy criteria, and deleted if they do. Any criteria like this must apply only if the breach of the ToU was intentional. If someone was genuinely unaware of the ToU requirements, or tried and failed to meet them (e.g. because of misunderstanding) and complies when educated then their prior work should not be deleted unless it meets normal criteria - these are the people we want to avoid driving to undisclosed paid editing.

8. CorpProd for businesses

BLPprod has raised the bar for BLPs, we could do something similar for businesses. A sticky prod that required "from this date all new articles on commercial businesses must have at least one reference to an independent reliable source" would give an uncontentious source it or it gets deleted deletion route for those articles that are only sourced to the business's site. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:10, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This is the best idea I've seen so far. It would need to disallow news stories that are basically a rewording of the press release and mentions in business directories, but that's detail that should be easily worked out. Thryduulf (talk) 09:18, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd boost this to at least 3 references that consist of editorial content written by a reliable source, in which the article subject is the primary focus of the editorial content, and which is not mainly focused on "start-up" information. Lots of media that are generally considered "reliable sources" also allow articles that are not written by editorial staff on their sites (i.e., they allow "paid editing" by basically publishing press releases or similar 'reporting'), including just about every single business-related source. The vast majority of organizations that get start-up funding never actually get anywhere; perhaps include a requirement that the entity must have been formally registered as a business for a minimum of 2 years, and have significant reliable-source coverage of at least one successful profit-generating product/service before they are considered notable. Risker (talk) 14:06, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

9. Lower the bar for sockpuppetry investigations of spammers

We have a difficult balance between maintaining the privacy of our editors and investigating potentially dodgy edits. If "writing a spammy article on a borderline notable commercial entity" became grounds for a checkuser to check for sockpuppetry then we would be much more likely to catch rings like this in future. The vast majority of our editors would be unaffected by such a targeted change.

10. Keep some IP data for longer

Currently we keep data about the IP's used by registered accounts for three months, this was a major limitation in this investigation. A general increase would be ill advised as it would risk exposing more of our editors to harassment via lawyers acting for spammers, but we could do a targeted extension, in particular for edits by badfaith accounts such as those blocked for sockpuppetry. That should make it easier to find returning bad faith editors.

11. Automated sock identification

11a. Identify mutual patrolling

One feature of the OrangeMoody sockfarm was an interlinked group of accounts that marked each others articles as patrolled. A computer program that watched for similar patterns in future and notified functionaries of patterns it had detected would give us a chance of finding similar farms faster. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:20, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like it would be a good idea. It would not be 100% reliable of course and there would be false positives and false negatives, but as a flag for human investigation it could work. I will have to leave it to others to say whether this is technically possible or not though.

11b. Score articles on "sockiness"

Suggestion #11 is a good start, but should be part of a system that scores articles on "sockiness" or "COIfulness" based on a number of indicators. If the scores cross a threshold, the system would bring them to attention for human evaluation. You could even do it on a tool server hooked up to a Twitterbot a la CongressEdits and let the volunteer community self-organize around it. After spending some time at COIN, I have some ideas of what the scores should be based on, but this really deserves some serious thinking and testing of the scoring based on identified cases of undisclosed COI/undisclosed paid editing and socking. It should really be done as a machine learning system with partitioned learning/testing datasets, in essence datamining our own COIN and SPI datasets. As to elements of the scoring system, things I've noticed include:

Creation of fully formed articles on first edit
Creation of fully formed articles by new user
Creation of long articles by new user
Articles with certain types of content, e.g. business infobox, photo caption, logo
Approval of AfD by approver who has interacted with the submitter in certain ways. Categories of interaction to look at: interaction on any talkpage, interaction the submitter's or approver's talkpage, interaction on XfD pages, interaction on noticeboards.
Tweak interaction thresholds based on time between co-involvement on whatever page is analyzed.
Tweak "new user" thresholds

The above is just off the top of my head, if this gets traction I'll think of some more. Maybe a knowledge engineer could help us conduct good interviews of COI and COIN patrollers, and experienced admins. The neat thing about machine learning is you don't have to be perfect: you can throw a bunch of stuff into the training, and see what works. Poor correlators/classifiers will be trained out. For consideration — Brianhe (talk) 04:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Other possible factors to weigh in a scoring system include:

External links quantity/quality metrics. Indicators include:
- Multiple links to same domain
- Social media links
- Inline ELs in general
- Inline ELs without a path
Distance to deleted article titles
Density of registered vs unregistered editors (sorry legit IP ed's)
Editor trust metrics (longevity, blocks, noticeboards, corpname patterns, ...)
There could also be a voluntary (opt-in) system for various actions that could modify the trust scoring for a particular editor:
- having a WMF-verified identity on file
- participation in a "ring of trust" system along the lines of WP:Personal acquaintances
- community-bestowed reputation points

Another idea, if this scoring system worked sufficiently well, high scores could trigger automatic reversion of the article to the Pending changes protection model.

12. Write a Wikipedia article about paid editing

Already done, but keep them updated

13. Bonds for certain types of editing

Why not adopt a model from other areas and require the posting of a professional paid editor surety bond for good conduct? Bond would be forfeit fully or partially for various types of misconduct to be determined. This could be done in conjunction with one or more of the ideas above; for instance, I see it working well with #6 corporate accounts. A properly functioning market will price the bonds according to the editor's risk: a shady no-reputation actor would have to put up a lot of his own dough, but a reputable org or individual should be able to get a better rate. There would probably be some intrinsic tradeoff of privacy for accountability that the market would also see to.

14. Require real-name registration for editing and/or creating certain types of articles: small and medium-sized companies and organisations, biographies of lesser-known people

Looking at articles on small and medium-sized businesses (law firms, management consultancies etc.), the majority of them seem to have been created by a Wikipedia editor who has done little or nothing else in Wikipedia, suggesting it was a principal, employee or agent of the company in question. Same with other types of organisations and biographies of living people. These are typically articles that get relatively little traffic and scrutiny from regular editors – and the number of highly active editors per 1,000 articles is continuously shrinking (about a fifth of what it was in 2007). The problem will get worse, not better, over time. Andreas JN 466 11:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

15. Community participation in investigation tools

It's apparent from the Orangemoody case that the checkuser team is using some sophisticated case management tools (Maltego at least). Why aren't these available to trusted members of the community on an as-needed basis? This could dovetail nicely with the "evidence lockbox" idea I proposed under idea #5. For instance, I believe that many COIN volunteers have private stashes of notes, but there's currently no sanctioned way to share these. Obviously there'd need to be some protection to keep investigations private, and to create policy allowing this. — Brianhe (talk) 18:27, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes please. I suggested something similar a few months back on User:Bilby's talk page but nothing came of it. I'd certainly like WMF to help us share suspicions more privately and share tips on how to track UPE.

16. Ban all Admins from paid editing

A concrete proposal was made at Wikipedia talk:Administrators#Proposed change - 'No paid editing" for admins. Please comment there. MER-C 08:06, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

My proposal is "Ban all administrators, arbitrators, checkusers, and other functionaries from acting as paid editors."

Consider the following paragraph in the Guardian:

"The Wikipedia Foundation said the accounts were blocked over “black hat” editing – charging money for the creation of promotional articles – amid allegations that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities have been blackmailed by scammers posing as Wikipedia administrators."

It would be very good if we could tell everybody - everybody at WP:AFC, at any meetings with businesses, at the Guardian or any other newspaper - everybody, that admins are *not* allowed to accept payment for any services on Wikipedia. Do not believe those who claim to be admins and ask for money.

This would be a bright line rule that would protect everybody involved, admins, the WMF, and the scam targets.

17. Active promotion of Wiki ethics and integrity

I don't know what my concrete proposal is here, but I was shocked that #16 had to be said, I just assumed that ordinary ethics would have covered this already.

Perhaps a concrete part of this would be to have inclusion in an "ethical Wikipedians" society with strict guidelines and badge of membership. Kind of like the the statements and graphics below (see COIN convo on why this was necessary due to impersonation). If this was a thing, admins who didn't display it maybe would be shamed into either abandoning adminship, or signing up.

I do not edit or otherwise contribute to any WikiMedia article or project on behalf of any employer, client, or affiliated person, organization, or other entity; nor do I receive or solicit any compensation for any edits or other contributions.

This editor does not accept paid editing work. If somebody claims that he/she is me and is soliciting paid editing work, then they are impersonating me, and likely scamming you. Feel free to contact the proper authorities.

COI+

This user follows the COI+ agreements. Talk to me if you think I need help with my editing!

This editor is a volunteer, and is willing to write and maintain encyclopedia articles for free.

19. Tighten up business-related content guidelines

Overhaul and tighten up the existing guidelines for business-related content.

Related to the point above about CorpProd (which, FWIW, I would be entirely in favor of a specific and strict notability standard for company articles), it would also be good to see a complete refresh and clarification of the guidelines for company articles. Anyone who works on a regular basis with company articles will know that the typical content of a company article, even those that have reached FA status, is hugely variable.

20. Increase the bar for autoconfirmation

As the initial report indicated, the socks created for this enterprise made their 10 trivial edits and waited the 4 days to be autoconfirmed. This is a ridiculously easy requirement. I would suggest at least 50 edits and 30 days, making it more onerous to create large numbers of autoconfirmed socks - and that standard is still easily reached by normal accounts. (Right now, IP exempt accounts editing through a Tor network are required to make 100 edits in 90 days.) BMK (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

21. Log groups of accounts created by the same IP

Could we automatically check the IPs used to create new accounts and flag those that create many new accounts in a short period? The only legit occassion this would happen would be in the educational program. I wouldn't suggest blocking the creation, but if we could at least see the groups of accounts we could check them to see what they're up to. SmartSE (talk) 12:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Tzufun for a contemporary example of what this could detect. It's ridiculous that it is so easy to evade detection by creating accounts that make 1 or 2 edits. SmartSE (talk) 13:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)} This already happens - only 6 accounts can be created per IP per day (this can be overridden by administrators and account creators) - see Wikipedia:Account creator. I've been involved with several editathons where the limit has been hit, so the override is necessary for more than just the education programme. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

22. turn up algorithmic vandal prediction to 11

given the good work by Aaron Halfaker, we need to fund more automation of vandal detection and sock detection. he should go to school on this case, and the past history, to A/B test sock tells. the humans should stop trying to be programs, and rather be programmers and ambassadors. when the algorithm can tell good faith newbies apart from vandals better than new page patrol, it's time to tell the humans to stop. let the computer give patrolers a watchlist of problematic interactions to act on. Duckduckstop (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Not to toot my own horn, but is this a rehash of § 11b. Score articles on "sockiness"?

25. Develop procedures for identifying and imposing real-world consequences on bad actors

Currently, our sanctions against bad actors are quite limited. We can ban easily duplicated user accounts, and revert their edits. Beyond that, we are limited by a wall of anonymity. We don't actually identify puppetmasters, and so our consequences are effective only against puppets. Deterrence in this system is minimal. Proposals to require real-name participation have been repeatedly floated, and have always gotten shot down, for a number of very good reasons. However, given the scale, complexity, organization, and damage of bad actor(s) like orangemoody, it might be time to consider a formal procedure to pierce that anonymity in the most egregious cases. Once a real-world bad actor has been identified, we can seek some sort of real world sanction, from the fairly mild (publishing the name with our evidence and requesting a response) all the way to the most severe (seeking criminal prosecution by the appropriate authority).

Stage 1: Identification. There are obviously many hurdles to identifying the real identity to a contributor.

--The first is cultural: we strongly value anonymity on wikipedia. Anonymity allows free expression and participation. Many editors, including myself, value anonymity. But I don't think that value is absolute. We're here to build an encyclopedia, and in very limited cases anonymity may harm that effort. A decision to seek to identify a contributor should not be taken lightly. We can adopt a tough standard of evidence. Perhaps a body such as ArbCom should form a type of "judicial oversight" or "check and balance." A targeted user should be notified and have a chance to defend. These and other types of basic due process safeguards should obviously be discussed.

--Once a decision is made, the second hurdle is technical. I am certainly not an expert in this field. However, I am not completely sure that we are powerless. We have a tremendous reservoir of talent and time in terms of volunteers, a non-trivial amount of cash that we seem to be stacking up at the Foundation level, and lawyers on staff. Nearly by definition, a major bad actor leaves a huge amount of evidence on wikipedia. It seems with all that we should be able to make some headway. I know that we have not been able to get information from Elance and other sites when we come to them hat-in-hand. But court-ordered discovery pursuant to a lawsuit might pop those servers right open.

Stage 2: Consequences. The purpose of consequences is deterrence. In many cases, simple publication of evidence may be sufficient, and has the advantage of not depending on court action. Civil suits would be especially effective against anyone who makes a business out of violating our terms of use. At the most extreme, when crimes have been committed, we could apply to the appropriate authorities for prosecution. All of this will of course be complicated by the global nature of the project and the numerous jurisdictions involved.

I don't think this will be at all easy in practice. It is resource intensive. And that's good...we don't want to be doing this often; in fact, hopefully not ever. But even having the process "on the books" may serve as a deterrent.

26. Make "paid editor" a preferences setting - set at registration time

Build the TOU requirements into the software. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:00, 7 September 2015 (UTC). That would be good if we were trying to normalise and encourage it. But since we aren't...... ϢereSpielChequers 17:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC) That's an interesting idea. We're trying to normalize and encourage disclosure, which is currently often done in a sloppy and haphazard way, is confusing even to those who want to be transparent, and is an expectation that's fairly easy to just ignore until someone asks. A separate user group that is easy to self-select into and technically incompatible with relevant rights (e.g. autopatrolled) might streamline the process and facilitate community review of edits from these accounts. Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

28. Fork Wikipedia

It has been obvious for a while that there is tension between deletionists and inclusionists on this project. The result is a series of compromises like BLPprod that don't really suit either side, and have left room for organisations like Orangemoody to exploit the anomalies between them. A simple solution to that would be to fork the English language Wikipedia. Verifiedpedia and Openpedia could both operate within SUL and the Wikimedia family, anyone visiting Wikipedia would have the choice to only see Verifiedpedia or to see Openpedia. On Verifiedpedia the deletionists could be given carte blanche to delete anything unsourced, and unsourced or poorly sourced would become a speedy deletion class. Openpedia by contrast could go for a more inclusive approach, notability could be broadened, temporary notability could be introduced for people who the public want to know about but whose notability cannot yet be discerned. For example, anyone currently signed to a top flight team would be temporarily notable, and their articles only deleted if they left the squad without actually making a first team appearance.

Verifiedpedia would seek to avoid Orangemoody style problems by requiring multiple independent sources before anyone could create an article. Verifiedpedia could even treat Openpedia as its draft space. If you don't have Autopatrolled rights, start articles on Openpedia and when they are ready they will be copied to Verifiedpedia.

Openpedia would avoid Orangemoody style problems by enabling anyone to post a basic profile of their organisation by answering twenty questions such as name. sector, location, number of employees, website, CEO, founding date, awards won, products produced, other companies acquired etc etc and then use those answers to bot generate a stub that at least avoided some of the peacock phrasing.

Verifiedpedia would be able to mass delete all the articles in AFC, draft, or currently tagged for notability or sourcing problems, after all they could always be reimported from Openpedia if improved or if it turned out the tag was incorrect.

Openpedia would be able to move all AFC and draft articles into mainspace, redefine "draft" as unpatrolled articles, and have all unpatrolled articles set as NoIndex with a simple template at the top saying that this was a draft and not yet fully part of Openpedia.

Both pedias would be free to import articles and edits from the other. As long as an article or a section was in both then subsequent edits could be automatically ported across if editors opt in to that.

The two communities would inevitably diverge as they acquired different recruits, but they would both start with the same admins etc as anyone with user rights on Wikipedia would start with the same rights on both (though presumably many would resign or lapse from one or the other). ϢereSpielChequers 16:15, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

29. Give readers an assessment of likely article quality based on edit history statistics

There are various statistics in the database that are correlated with article quality. While they don't have predictive power, they're still potentially useful information for readers. So why not track them and share them?

For example, many promotionally tinged company articles are created and/or written by single-purpose accounts (or near SPAs) who haven't done much else in Wikipedia. This applies to paid editors' single-job socks as much as it does to company principals and employees, who usually don't bother to edit other content (unless it is to insert a link to the article on their company). Frequent edit wars deleting and adding substantial chunks of content are another indicator of potential problems. Articles that have very few editors and readers are more likely to have problems.

Checking for these indicators manually is very time-consuming. So why not automate the process, and flag the result for the reader in a highly visible way (e.g. coloured icons on the article page)? This would be a kind of potted history of the article telling the reader

whether the creator and/or main content writers are single-purpose accounts or accounts with a substantial and well-rounded contributions history how many accounts have contributed to the article how stable the article is how many people have viewed the article Readers would be able to absorb this information at a glance and keep it in mind. In time, this might also reduce the number of problematic articles being created in this way, as the incentive would be reduced. Andreas JN466 08:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)